by James Newman
2015 edition.
Spanking Pulp Press.
ISBN 978 – 1-4092-7754-5
Copyright – J. A. Newman
1 3 4 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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This is a work of fiction. No characters in this book are intended to have any resemblance to any person living or dead.
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Table of Contents
Copyright Page
BANGKOK EXPRESS | JOE DYLAN | CRIME NOIR BOOK #1 | By | James A. Newman
BANGKOK EXPRESS
JOE DYLAN
CRIME NOIR BOOK #1
By
James A. Newman
The series:
Bangkok Express #1
Red Night Zone #2
The White Flamingo #3
The Black Rose #4
Fun City punch #5
ONE
Death Island
Fear is Natural
FRANCO CUT the long-tail outboard motor.
Tropical sea surrounded the coconut forested mountains. Limestone Mountains, palms and low level buildings were circled by beach land. Above the sands a flock of white terns wheeled in the sky, heading towards the sea. An airplane flew overhead leaving a trail of aviation fumes in the cobalt sky. Tropical fish swam in the coral beneath the boat; the colours danced and reflected the rays from the relentless sun overhead.
Franco faced his only passenger and asked her, “Are you ready?”
“I think so, but I am a little scared.” Alexandra, twenty-three, Finnish, had blue eyes that shifted nervously, her hair fell in braids down to the wetsuit that tightly hugged her small athletic body.
She wore a tiny nose stud.
Alexandra was a backpacker, a traveller.
Backpackers travelled in convoys to the islands clutching guidebooks. They were safe in numbers, wore beer slogan T-shirts and fisherman’s pants authorizing their collective individuality. Backpackers changed their image and their philosophies more often than they changed their underwear, Franco thought, popping open the icebox and grabbing another beer. He cracked the can open and swigged from it greedily. Next to the Styrofoam boxes the remains of their breakfast were:
Chicken fried rice,
A slice of lime,
Orange juice.
Franco leant over the equipment, closer to Alexandra, crouching, eyes level with hers. He took another drink from the beer and put it down next to the Styrofoam boxes. “It is okay to be sacred. Fear is natural. Fear hates to be confronted. Look fear in the eye.” It was a line he had used before back when he had juggled lit batons on the beach, when he had promoted bars, handed out flyers. Franco had breathed fire for a while before setting alight a deadlocked hippy’s goatee. He had begun by painting henna tattoos on sunburnt bodies and it evolved from there. Some people do whatever’s necessary to extend the tropical dream. Prolonging the holiday was a fine art. No one skill was good enough.
Yet a few smooth conversational lines were essential.
Fear is natural.
He had many more lines just like it.
Franco, a well-oiled machine slipping into gear, his arms and legs were strong and bronzed. A dark brown fringe hung between his dark Latin eyes. The beach chicks thought he was cute and he tended to agree depending on if the beach chick was cute or not.
Fear is natural.
He had many more lines just like it.
Alexandra smiled nervously like a child considering disobeying her parents, knowing she would have to trust Franco or swim back to shore. The American couple hadn’t shown up, probably sleeping of their bucket of booze induced hangovers in one of the beach bungalows. She wished she had also slept in, but here she was and she always made a point of following through on her commitments whatever they were.
Franco stood up towering over her and began checking the equipment.
Her diving equipment was as follows.
List – HAVE COLLIN HELP.
Her fear comforted him. Her naivety made him wise. Her weakness was his strength. She giggled nervously. Franco smiled while checking the equipment. They snapped on masks. They pulled on fins. He checked her aqua-lung. The cylinder valve was slightly loose. He turned the wheel counter-clockwise and listened to the hiss of escaping air. He tightened it again. The needle on the submersion pressure gauge was zero. They swung on the aqualungs and clipped them tight. They positioned the regulator mouthpieces and perched on the edge of the boat side by side with their backs to the water. Franco held up one finger. She looked up to the blue sky. Two fingers, she smiled. And three, they dropped backwards into another world.
Alexandra swam up to a seahorse and tried to touch the creature with a forefinger before it darted behind a coral reef. A lone scissortail swam lazily past. She let her weight carry her down. Franco turned and pointed towards the reef as he dove deeper, twisting, enjoying the feeling of his weightlessness. Alexandra sank deeper towards the seabed.
They swam through an old wreck, out one of the windows. She saw something glimmer on the seabed, approached with her legs kicking behind her. She brushed the sand away to reveal a gold necklace. She picked it up and wore it on her left wrist as a good luck token.
They explored a coral cove, where Alexandra twisted her small body through the rock formations. She lost sight of Franco. It mattered not for her journey was what this was all about. Away from institutions of learning, away from parents, family, away from the relationship, the boyfriend turned stalker, away from the mobile telephone, the social media, the line messages, the bitchy friends, dull fashions, magazines, televisions, away from it all.
The rock formation, she thought, was wide enough to allow her to punch through the opening and make it through to the other side.
It wasn’t.
Franco spun around. She was moving with sudden urgent gestures A panic attack, Franco thought, or maybe asthmatic.
Fear is natural.
He swam over to her. Her hands were shaking the regulator. He checked it. Dead. He adjusted it. Dead. He pointed up to the surface. Her body was alert with anxiety. Eyes searching. Arms thrashing in the water. Losing the fight. She was too young. He passed her his regulator. She grabbed at it sucking at the oxygen. Franco thought about the next move. Experience had to be earned. Something had to be done. Something had to be earned.
The bail-out bottle.
He unstrapped the bail-out bottle and pulled the pin. He watched as Alexandra took a breath. Franco thought back to his training. Emergency ascent. He unzipped a section of her suit and positioned his regulator. He filled her suit with O2. Replaced his regulator and let her go. She kicked as she headed up toward blue sky, the surface. He watched her body become smaller as she rose.
Rocks.
The rocks found her. A crevice. He swam. She was unconscious. He put his arms around her and rose towards the surface. He lifted her small body broadside the boat. Her legs were still submerged. Her body was weighed down by her equipment. He pulled himself aboard and then dragged her onto the boat. She landed on deck like a horrendous catch.
He looked at her. She was unconscious. Her shoulder destroyed. The scapular was visible poking through a tear in the wetsuit. Blood seeped out onto the deck. The side of her face had suffered terrible rupture. He breathed heavily. His he
art hammered as waves of adrenalin coursed through his body. He tore off her facemask. Alexandra’s nose came with it leaving behind an awful cavity. Something glimmered inside the bloody pulp. The nose stud. It reflected a beam of sunlight that made his stomach clench. Franco winced. Her face was a bloody mess. Like an exotic fruit opened up and sliced on a roadside stall. The wind carried a sudden gust of meat and ozone. A wave of nausea turned his stomach again. He leaned over the boat and lost the chicken fried rice with four spectacular retches. He watched a string of his own saliva hang from his mouth before being picked up by a gust of wind and thrown to the waves. He leaned over the side of the boat and splashed his face with seawater and walked over to the driveshaft. He pulled the outboard to a start and listened to the roar of the propellers. He headed back to the island his heart hammering as he steered the boat toward land.
Fear is natural.
TWO
London
Eternal now
JOE DYLAN wore a single-breasted navy-blue suit, black brogues and a gold Omega watch that told him it was almost nine. The morning wind blew bitterly across the river. He watched a flock of gulls swoop down and then perch on the banks next to a brood of cormorants; their black wings held out to dry in the morning wind.
Joe knew what it was like to dry out. Simple pleasures replaced the bottles and the crazy women since he made the promise to quit. With sobriety time ran slower. He could observe and reflect on life’s hurdles without busting a gut trying to jump them. Joe was present – the past and the future were eternal now. A river and a flock of birds were the world. Sure, the ghosts came back to tempt him now and again during his weaker moments but he had no real fear of ghosts. Real people were enough to deal with. The coordinator talked about delaying gratification. The coordinator was a lapsed roman catholic who liked to ‘fess up in the rooms.
Joe walked across Tower Bridge and joined the business-suited workers heading to their offices and their desks in the square mile. He walked through a cloud of diesel fumes as he crossed the road. The smell of bacon and espresso wafted from a nearby café. A dynamite blonde with race-horse pins trotted past an old tramp sat on a throne of cardboard. He wore a suit that shone with grime. Joe remembered the old days, the restaurants, wine-bars and the cute women. The coordinator had told him to glance in the rear-view mirror but to never stare. The women and the drinks had left a huge gap in his life. Maybe the old derelict men in doorways held similar memories. Everyone had gaps that needed filling. Everyone had a past. None of those pasts were perfect.
Joe crouched down to the level of the homeless man and said, “Hey, Vern. What’s new?”
“The fear is coming Joe, if only I had a little juice.”
“I’m on it. Kestral Super?”
Dylan knew the drill, had sung the song before. He crossed over into Ledenhall market and bought a four-pack from the off license, the cans shook in his grip, he thought about it. How it was the worst and the best thing that could happen to a man, cold, crisp and lethal. That click somewhere in the back brain and with the click somebody somewhere flicked the lights on whether it be over a velvet sofa in a late night jazz club or streetlamp above a patch of piss stained pavement on a busy morning street.
There was an old Martini advert...
Anytime.
Anyplace.
Anywhere.
Paid the shopkeeper and walked back over to Vern and handed him the four pack.
“May we thank the lord for what we are about to receive,” the old man grimaced as he opened the first can and got it down good in two bites.
“Stay lucky, Vern,” Dylan said, the concrete clicking beneath his heels.
This void in his life, the gap, Joe had filled with the international flights, the hotels, and the assignments. A financial criminal turned fraud investigator. There were the Mexican ship building bandits who found a wreck and burned it. A gang of Nigerian militant youths who stole a small fleet of vessels. The Greeks and their mythological insurance claims. Like roaches, mold, and bad pop music fraud and corruption bred in every nook and cranny of the globe.
Danger was everywhere.
Women floated along the street and sat drinking coffee in Starbucks. They chattered into iPhones and walked swaying their beautiful behinds. They glanced at their reflections on mirrored surfaces. Applied make-up on the morning train. So many faces in one place at one time, merged and morphed into one. The face of an angel, Kali, The Temptress.
The London pubs overflowed with merriment, flirtations, dreams, nightmares, and empty promises. The windows clouded-over with boozy happiness. Life was spent inside a restaurant looking at a list of items he could never order. He was powerless over the menu. The menu always won. He stopped trying to beat it. The price was small but the cost was enormous. The trick was to not pick up. One drink, line, or one woman was too many, and a thousand were never enough. He liked a shot of the hard stuff and he liked women and now he had to avoid them the same way a priest avoids the whorehouse on the hill.
Don’t. Pick. Up.
Joe glanced at his Omega. Being punctual was an important part of the program. Recovery was a bitch. The steps were necessary.
One. He admitted that he had a problem and was powerless to solve it. Two. He came to believe that a power greater than himself was watching over his sorry ass. And three, he handed all his shit over to that power. Most of the old alcoholics found God, but Joe wasn’t convinced. Omnipotence was a tough pill to swallow without a good shot of whiskey to wash it down.
Joe reached the office and smiled at the doorman. He rode the elevator to the sixth floor. Mary, the secretary knew how to wear the kind of expensive perfume that created a little suspense. She was a well-built woman who Joe suspected liked to party. She led Joe across the office. She wore an impossibly short skirt that detailed every curve and contour of her mystery.
Ninety days.
“You can go in now, ‘e’s ready,” she said.
“Thanks, darling,” Joe smiled, opened the door and walked into the coordinator’s office. It was a large room with a window, a filing cabinet and a designer sofa designed for discomfort. There was a landscape painting hanging on the wall and in the corner a Chinese pot holding dead purple flowers.
The coordinator’s grey eyes looked directly at the investigator. “Sit,” he said and took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. He was a large man with a luncheon schedule designed to keep it that way. His suits were tailored-made on Fenchurch Street and he had lunch at Caravaggio’s. He was a creature of habit. Joe sensed a hint of sadness or shame in the old man’s eye. “I have some good news and some bad news, Joe. Which do you want first?”
“Give me the bad.”
“The syndicate are concerned about your performance, Joe. That case in Mexico made them nervous. They are keeping you on as a personal favour to me. They know about your past. They want me to send you packing. Out on your ear, as it were.”
“And what’s the good news?” Joe knew the Mexico case hadn’t turned out peachy. The crooks were in government office and there wasn’t a thing he could do to solve it. The material evidence was destroyed by an earthquake. At least that was the party line.
“I convinced them to give you one last shot. I figure you ought to take it.” The coordinator stood up and wobbled over to a filing cabinet, opened a drawer and picked out a lever-arched file. Joe found it impossible to sit comfortably. Who had said what to whom? He felt mildly persecuted. He remembered step number three. He handed his anger over to the higher one. Who was the higher one? A bearded dude from Palestine or a guy sitting under a tree in India? Maybe there were hundreds of them battling for power. God only knew. The important thing was to keep his side of the street clean.
Ninety days clean.
Joe looked out of the window and counted to ten. One. Two. Three. Cold sunlight glimmered from the glass windows on the opposite building block. Four. Five. Six. Construction cranes added more grey. Seven. Eight. Nine.
Autumn was sliding into winter and London would soon be Baltic. Ten.
“I have an idea that you have been to Asia before?” The coordinator said.
“Yeah...I had a look around, sir.” Joe thought back to the fifteen months he’d hauled a backpack around the third world. There were terrifying bus journeys, pseudo-spiritualism, beer and lots of women. He was hoping to find himself, he did, but what he found wasn’t any better or any worse than the version he’d left behind. He looked out of the window again, smiled and said. “Which part in particular, sir?”
“Thailand.”
Joe’s eyes widened. “Correct. I spent four or five months there after I left the insurance brokers. You know that, sir. I can speak a bit of the language.” Joe remembered a crash-course in a ten-dollar hotel with a bargirl who was as cute as a piranha fish.
“That’s what I thought, Joe. What can you tell me about the country?”
“The infrastructure is good sir, some of the best roads in South East Asia. The people are open and friendly on one level sir, but it’s hard to tell what’s going on in their minds.”
The coordinator nodded and leaned back on that chair, put his hands behind his head and cleared his throat. He didn’t speak but his eyes told Joe to carry on talking.
“Difficult to truly understand the nation however long you stay there, sir. They say that you are born with Thai knowledge and you cannot acquire it as a foreigner. I am not sure that is, however, entirely true, sir.”
“I hear they’re quite tough little bastards?” The co-ordinator said with a grin. “What about law and order?”
“The Thai police force are a well regimented criminal organization, sir.”
The coordinator chuckled and leaned forward, elbows on the desk. A stack of papers contained by a brass paperweight of an elephant next to a framed photograph of his insolent twelve-year-old son. “I like that.” He lifted up the paperweight and shuffled the pile of papers. He passed them to Joe. “Read this. You fly out to Bangkok Sunday. I’ve just come off the telephone with Wordsworth at Lloyds.” The coordinator nodded towards the telephone. “They underwrote an insurance cover for a couple of diving schools in the far east. Business they had underwritten as a favour for a Bangkok client.” He coughed onto the back of his hand and continued. “The client is the hotel chain Bluegreen International. Bluegreen bought a multi-million dollar Hotel liability package. The divers’ package was part of the deal. The syndicate have authorised the investigation.”
