Or perhaps he was just imagining it all. Maybe the teenagers were whispering about their boyfriends. Maybe the old man looked at everyone like that. Maybe the tailor was just hoping for a customer. It was impossible to tell. Eddie understood well enough that Caucasians were useless in Asia. They were too big, too white, too awkward, and too hairy. A round-eye could walk Silom Road for the rest of his life and never know for sure if an Asian was watching him.
Eddie felt like he might as well have been wearing a helmet with a red light on top, like the fire chief’s hat with the flashing red beacon that he had given Michael for his fourth birthday. The damned thing had nearly driven Jennifer crazy until the battery finally ran down and the beacon stopped working. She told the kid that the light had died and gone to heaven.
Jeez, what would Jennifer tell Mike now if my light went out?
Eddie pushed the thought into the back of his mind and walked on. Being chased by guys with guns had left him ravenous and he looked around for a place to get something to east. An unassuming sign on the other side of the street caught his eye because he liked the straightforward message outlined there in red and green neon: THE KITCHEN.
That sounded just about right to him so Eddie bolted across Silom Road without taking any more time to think about it. Dodging a minivan that was doing its best to occupy two lanes at once, Eddie reversed direction briefly. As he did, he caught a flash out of the corner of his eye of something that shouldn’t have been there.
Although it was nearly midnight, the temperature was still well over ninety and the humidity was reminiscent of a particularly efficient steam bath. A farang wearing a tan suit was just behind him. A suit?
Eddie stopped on the sidewalk and stood for a minute studying the display in the window of a leather shop. Tan Suit stopped further up Silom, appearing equally absorbed in the window of a tailor shop. Eddie figured it had to be the same guy Bar had spotted a couple of nights earlier watching them from outside Popeye’s.
***
WHEN Tan Suit decided it was safe to risk a quick glance up the street, he discovered Eddie had somehow disappeared while he was studying the window of the tailor shop. He began to walk quickly toward the spot where Eddie had last been, scanning up and down both sides of Silom Road. Tan Suit knew he was rapidly approaching the entrance to Patpong and he started to worry. If Eddie had made him and had somehow gotten into the thick crowds there, he would have no chance at all of picking him up again.
Another fifty paces and Tan Suit was standing under the big archway at the entrance to Patpong. He shook his head. The little bastard had given him the slip, although whether by accident or by design he wasn’t absolutely certain. Anyway, he guessed it amounted to the same thing. He dreaded having to explain how it had happened.
Tan Suit felt a gentle nudge against his arm and he moved aside for a thin Thai boy who was apparently blind judging by his dark glasses and metal stick. The boy limped by, pushing a cart with clattering wheels, and a very old man, also blind, tagged along behind him. The old man was holding onto the boy’s belt with one hand and carrying a small accordion in the other.
“Pretty much says it all about this city, doesn’t it?” Eddie said, strolling up next to Tan Suit as the two blind men led each other away.
Tan Suit hated doing surveillance on smart-asses like this. They always thought they were so clever when they made you, and you could never convince them that you didn’t give a flying fuck.
“I’m here for your protection, Mr. Dare.” Tan Suit shaped his features into a disinterested, dead-eyed stare. “You should be grateful.”
“Grateful to who, or should it be ‘to whom?’”
This one was a real beauty all right.
Tan Suit pulled an identification wallet from his jacket and flipped it open just enough for Eddie to get a quick glimpse.
“I’m Agent Morris,” he said. “United States Secret Service liaison officer at the American Embassy.”
Morris put his identification wallet away with more care than was really needed and Eddie assumed he was using the time to compose an explanation for his presence that would fall somewhere between the entirely unenlightening and a total non sequitur.
“My instructions were to keep you under close surveillance after you left the embassy in order to prevent anyone from harming you.”
Yeah, that was useless enough to meet even the toughest test.
“Look, I’m just doing my job here, Mr. Dare. Go on as you were and don’t worry about me.”
“Who are you supposed to be protecting me from?”
“Patience, Mr. Dare. Everything comes in good time. That’s something Asia will teach you.”
Eddie looked at Morris, shook his head, and turned away. What an asshole, he thought. What an incredible asshole.
“You won’t see me again unless I’m needed,” Morris called after him.
“I will unless you get a lot better at following people,” Eddie called back.
Still shaking his head, Eddie continued down Silom Road to The Kitchen. He pushed through a metal door and found himself on a concrete staircase that smelled faintly of urine. Climbing up one flight, he walked into a dining room that looked exactly as he would imagine the best restaurant in Sioux Falls must have looked in 1975: dark-paneled walls, straight wooden chairs with plastic seats, red tablecloths, candles stuck in wax-covered bottles, neon beer signs over the long bar, and elderly waiters in short, white jackets with large, starched napkins draped over their arms.
As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Eddie selected a table near the door and looked around the nearly empty restaurant. There was a young farang couple near the back; four Japanese girls at a big, round table; and several men sitting separately at the bar. What really caught his eye, however, were the two people who had come in right behind him. For a moment he told himself he had to be mistaken, but of course he knew he wasn’t.
The two Secret Service agents who had come to his office in San Francisco, Reidy and the woman with the amazing headlights, were standing in the restaurant’s entrance watching him with expressionless faces.
Holy shit, Eddie thought. What next?
Reidy and the woman walked over to Eddie’s table, pulled out chairs, and sat down without a word. Eddie didn’t say anything either. He just folded his arms and glanced from Reidy to Headlights and back again. He tried to remember the woman’s name, but couldn’t come up with it. He wondered for a moment if referring to a federal agent by the size of her front porch was a criminal offense.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie said to Headlights, “but I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Does it matter?”
“Trust me,” he said. “It would be better if you reminded me.”
Reidy and the woman exchanged looks while Eddie waited.
“Sanchez,” she finally snapped at Eddie. “Agent Valerie Sanchez.”
When Eddie didn’t say anything, Sanchez glanced at Reidy again. He nodded, and she lifted a black briefcase with gold clasps and balanced it on her lap. She unsnapped the locks and removed a large, brown envelope, then closed the case and put it the floor. Reidy took the envelope from her and laid it on the table in front of Eddie.
“We brought you a present,” he said.
“All the way from San Francisco?”
“No, it’s a little something we picked up not far from here.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We shouldn’t have.”
Eddie picked up the envelope, ripped open the flap, and pulled out the contents. He was mildly surprised to find himself holding a small stack of 8 x 10 glossies and he looked up at Reidy with a quizzical expression. Reidy just pointed back to the pictures, so Eddie twisted the stack around until he could see the first photograph. When it registered that he was looking at a nice shot of the general wearing a lovely little black dress, Eddie struggled to keep a straight face.
Reidy and Sanchez watched him without expression as h
e shuffled through the rest of the photographs.
There was the general on a horse dressed like a cowboy; the general wearing a police uniform; the general sitting at a large desk in a business suit with a crowd of Chinese men around him; the general in a baseball uniform looking strangely like a slim Tommy Lasorda; and then back to the general in the dress, a slinky black number with an amazing bust-line. Eddie’s eyes flicked involuntarily toward Agent Sanchez.
Eddie tossed the stack of pictures on the table. “Okay, so he likes to dress up. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means he’s dressing up like a general, too, Eddie.”
Eddie must have looked confused, which would have been easy since he was, so Sanchez jumped in helpfully.
“The man’s an actor, Eddie, not a general. He’s a Dutchman who has lived in Hong Kong for the last fifteen years. He makes his living doing bit parts in Asian movies as the token European, male or female.”
Reidy wiggled his eyebrows up and down a couple of times when Sanchez finished talking. It was such a stupid gesture that Eddie almost laughed out loud. Instead, he reached out for the pictures and flicked slowly through them again, just to have something to do while he was trying to think.
“You haven’t even heard the best part yet, Eddie,” Reidy went on.
“Better than the general in a dress?”
“Oh yeah. A lot better.”
“Cut the crap, Reidy. What are you trying to tell me?”
“The guy’s nothing but a broken-down actor,” Reidy said. “He isn’t the one who hired you to track down Harry Austin’s stash.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me now who did.”
Reidy smiled very slowly, and the way he did left Eddie knowing he wasn’t going to like what he heard next.
“He’s fronting for Vietnamese intelligence. Now that Austin’s dead, they’re pinning their hopes of finding out what he did with the money entirely on you.”
“Really?” Eddie said after a moment of silence, mostly just to be saying something.
Reidy leaned close to him. “Yeah, Eddie, really.”
“I get the feeling you still haven’t gotten to the real bottom line here.”
Now Sanchez leaned close to Eddie, which he found far more interesting than when Reidy had done the same thing.
“Good guess, Eddie,” she said. “You want to hear it now?”
“Yeah, sure. Now would be good.”
“Then here’s the deal,” Reidy said, taking over again.
It looked to Eddie like they thought the tag-team routine gave them some kind of an advantage over him. Actually they were welcome to any advantage they would like to have, he thought, if only they would get to the point.
“We have a better offer for you,” Reidy said. “Better than the Vietnamese.”
Eddie was about to ask Reidy how he knew that the general had offered him anything, let alone what it was, but Reidy kept going before he could raise the point.
“We want you to locate the money from Operation Voltaire, just like they asked you to, and then turn it over to us.”
“That’s not a better offer.”
Reidy mimed disappointment, shaking his head slowly.
“You mean patriotism really is dead, Eddie?”
Eddie waited Reidy out.
“Okay, then here’s the rest of it,” Reidy said after a few moments had passed in silence. “In return for your cooperation, you will get one percent of whatever is recovered. That could be as much as $4,000,000 the way we figure it, a hell of a lot more than the lousy mil the gooks offered you.”
Eddie thought he saw Sanchez flinch slightly at Reidy’s choice of words, but if she did, she covered it quickly.
“And then there’s the bonus that comes with our offer,” Reidy added.
“Bonus?”
“Yeah. We won’t kill you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Eddie. Don’t be a jerk. You don’t really think you’re just going to turn that money over to the Vietnamese and then wait while they type you up a check for $1,000,000, do you? Get serious. You’ll never see anything from them. They’ll just shoot you when this is all over.”
“But of course I can trust you absolutely, huh?”
“Hey, man,” Reidy said, flinging his arms open with a grin so wide it threatened permanent damage to his face. “We’re your government. If you can’t trust your government, who can you trust?”
And then he winked.
Eddie winked back, but he didn’t waste it on Reidy. He aimed it straight at Sanchez, and then he smiled as her upper lip curled in disdain.
“I already told you,” Eddie said. “I can’t help you. And this part is none of your business, but I’ll tell you anyway. I told the general exactly the same thing.”
“I think you know a lot more than you’re letting on here,” Reidy said.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Harry Austin liked you. He would have cut you in on whatever he did. You took a bullet for him and he never forgot it.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“A lot of people know about it.”
“Oh, yeah? Do they know it wasn’t a VC bullet? Do they know it came from a little .22 some bargirl had stuck in her bra and that she was just drunk and pissed off that Harry wouldn’t buy her out for the night?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Do they know I caught the bullet in my ass scrambling to get the hell out of her way so she could get a clean shot at him?”
“Cut the bullshit, Eddie. Harry Austin always thought you saved his life. The two of you were friends and he trusted you. We think you know what he did with the money.” Reidy shrugged. “It’s that simple.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Eddie pushed back his chair and stood up. “How long do I have to decide?”
“Take all the time you want, Eddie. All the time you want.” Reidy reached out and clapped him on the arm. “Just as long as you do it before the gooks get sick of all your fucking around and burn your worthless ass.”
“That probably won’t be very long,” Sanchez added. “I’d say the end of next week would be pretty much it for you.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right, Eddie.” Reidy switched his campy grin back on, and tweaked it up a little. “The end of next week, buddy. The end of next week.”
Twenty-Four
BACK outside the American Embassy’s front gate, Bar shuffled his weight from one foot to the other.
“I don’t get it,” he said to Lek. “What the hell just happened in there?”
“Maybe Chuck’s tired,” she ventured. “It’s late and I guess he wanted to go home.”
“Chuck doesn’t get tired. And he hasn’t been home since 1994.”
“What happened in—”
“That was a joke.”
Lek looked confused, but she didn’t say anything.
A taxi crawling slowly along the curb pulled up right next to them. The driver racked the engine to get their attention and pointed toward his rear seat with a hopeful expression on his face. Bar shook his head. The driver flapped his hand up and down, unwilling to give up, but Bar ignored him and turned his back.
He was going around in circles trying to figure out what Dare was really up to. It was starting to give him a headache. If he had any sense, he would follow Chuck’s lead and just go home, too, but he was way too wired for that. Maybe he ought to call Dare up and simply ask him what he was up to. What did he have to lose? If Dare didn’t come up with a story that made sense, Bar could just wish him a nice life and go home to bed. But if he told him a really good story…well, he guessed he would wait until he heard it to decide.
When the young marine guard behind the embassy gate began eyeing them suspiciously, Bar grabbed Lek’s elbow and towed her up the sidewalk toward the heavy traffic on Rama IV.
“Did Harry really have a pile of money when he died?” he asked her.
“He was well off, I guess, but I don’t think he was rich.”
“Didn’t you say he warned you that he had a lot of money and people might come after you because of it?”
“I really don’t know what he meant by that. I never saw it.”
“Has anybody ever done that?
“Done what?”
“Come after you. Come around asking you a lot of questions about Harry.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know, what he did or who he hung out with. Things like that.”
Lek shook her head.
Bar wasn’t certain he believed her, although he couldn’t offhand see any reason why she would lie to him either. Still, it didn’t make sense. There was quite a crowd out there with a serious interest in the life and times of Harry Austin and he didn’t see how it was possible that no one had ever gotten around to talking to Lek about them. Dare had even asked him about Harry Austin, and he didn’t know the guy from a bar of soap. Lek had been married to the man, for Christ’s sake. Why hadn’t anyone ever taken a run at her?
“Where are we going?” Lek asked while Bar was still pondering all that.
Bar hadn’t thought about it when he pulled her away from the embassy gate. He just wanted to get away from the place and shake off the queasy feeling it always gave him. But now that she had asked the question, the answer popped right into his head. And he was absolutely sure it was exactly the right one.
***
TWENTY minutes later, Bar and Lek got out of a taxi under the high portico in front of the Oriental Hotel. Bar smoothed back his hair and nodded obligingly at the young boy in crisp whites who swung open the lobby door for them.
With Lek trailing behind him, he headed straight for the registration desk where a tiny, prim-looking westerner in a morning coat stood sorting through a stack of papers.
“Could you tell me what room Mr. Edward Dare is in, please?”
The little man looked up slowly. His puffy cheeks and small black eyes made Bar think of an offended frog.
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