by James Newman
“Understand we have a problem in Fun City.”
“Joe, my boy, the clock is ticking. Yes, yes, we never should have trusted them, but Hale’s business is usually sound and hindsight vision is twenty-twenty. We’ve used him before and his reputation is quite good professionally. Personally I hear he’s a bit of liability. The East is a constant headache. I don’t know why we take their business.”
“Do you have a copy of the policy?
“Here,” he handed over the policy. Joe scanned it for red flags. The policy showed Hale on Bluegreen’s behalf had made an overpayment of one hundred and sixty two thousand dollars, which Wordsworth had banked and then realizing their mistake had paid back. Some clients used the financial markets to clean money.
“What’s this?”
“An error, we paid back the funds. When somebody sends you almost two hundred thousand by mistake you don’t sit on it and ask questions. You pay it back to them, Joe. We’re gentleman here.”
“Yeah I see it. This additional premium was eighteen thousand dollars. Bluegreen paid you one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. It’s an easy mistake. Banking error perhaps? So you pay back the difference. Look, this is an old trick, Wolfe. Pay some bad money to a financial institution and get the clean money back. When I’m looking at this I can also see a sweetener. A lump of bait dangled on the rod before they file the big clam. Either way it pays to be careful when someone sends you a large sum of money. Watch whose money you pick up,” Joe put the document back down on the box.
“We had no reason to suspect anything at the time. I don’t do the IBA accounts. It’s this fatality; the claims girl Carmen handled it. She’s a good looking girl and when she goes into the market with a claim underwriters tend to settle it without looking at the small print. The first claim looked real enough, still does. Not the first time a backpacker has died while living the dream. We settled the first one, but now... We get another fatality. We can stall, and ask for more information but the most we have is a week or maybe two before its crunch time. Listen, Joe, as far as I know this has not travelled any further. This can’t go public. My balls are personally on the line here.”
“My balls are also on the wire. The market will know about this sooner or later. When they do it’s not because we’ve been screaming about it from the rafters. We both know the market right?”
“We trust you, Joe.”
“Let’s just say I know how the other side think, anticipate their next moves, and catch the bastards when they least expect it.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Ok. It’s really very simple. I fly to Bangkok on Sunday and I will have a look around. I will submit my report within a week, maybe two. Is the Broker aware of our involvement?”
“Not that I know of”
“Well, make that call. I need to meet with the broker in twenty minutes time. You can tell them as much or as little as you like, I’ll be asking questions and not answering them. Keep it confidential.”
“The syndicate is in trouble, Joe. I’m getting it in the rear end from the Shareholders and the board. What do I tell them? We take a high premium from some third-world country then we should expect to be shafted?”
“No we don’t tell them that. We deal with them carefully. Let’s just keep an open mind. If I don’t solve this case the syndicate will put me back on the other side. I don’t want to go back to the other side.”
Dylan stood up, nodded, and walked out of the room, through the revolving doors and onto the street. The sky opened and rain fell down in heavy droplets onto the pavement. Dylan sheltered by a cash machine for a moment before darting across Ledenhall Street to the massive Swiss Re Tower that shot up into the rain clouds like an angry phallus. He noticed a money-broker that had cheated him out of a fortune. Dylan had had a portfolio of shares that made a tidy sum before the walls came tumbling down. He hadn’t had the heart to rebuild it. His first instinct was to take chase of the broker, but the steps kept him from the hunt.
Let the bastard choke on it.
He cut-through Bury Street and Mitre Square before arriving at the wine-bar on Bevis Marks. He took a table to the back of the bar. A television screen played the kind of pop videos that suggested the world was an ice-cream cone waiting to melt in the lap of a hot young girl. The lounge was narrow and deep with a bar all the way along one side and a glass front looking out onto the grey. The black, the brown, the human disasters blurred outside. The broker entered the bar and placed a pile of green files onto the table. She offered her hand. It was as cold as a lizard’s. Joe shook it. She was cute. “Hi, my name is Carmen Collins.” She smiled half Latino, Spanish or Italian. A symmetrical nose was perfectly synthetic. Joe wondered if she could play the ukulele. Wide lips parted to reveal a wide smile. She wore a full length beige winter coat with fake fur at the cuffs and collars. Had she stepped out from the pages of a Parisian fashion magazine?
“Hi, I am Joe Dylan. I fly to Bangkok on Sunday. I am investigating your client. But where are my manners? You need a drink?”
“Thanks a glass of white wine.”
Joe walked to the bar. The barmaid was staring at the row of old friends above the bar. Each bottle was like a bullet with his name on it. Joe remembered that the barmaid had her own issues with the bottle; her husband ran the joint and kept her lubricated night and day. He had seen her at a meeting at Aldgate church during a brief snatch of sobriety.
The meetings didn’t work for everyone.
“A glass of Gavi and one glass, no hang on, better make that two glasses, have one yourself.” She opened the bottle and poured the drinks. Joe watched her twisted face concentrate into a knot of addiction. A face bloated from playing second fiddle to the bottle. She cracked into a smile as she poured herself one and tossed it down. “And give me a soda water, no ice,” he said.
“You off the sauce?” she said.
“Eighty-six days.” Joe said. He took the order and sat back down and placed the two glasses on the table. Carmen took a sip and smiled.
“I’m interested in the diving aspect of the policy. How did it come about?” he asked her.
“The client warned us to include this in the policy. We couldn’t make it work as part of the package so we drew up a separate policy endorsement and attached it to the cover. That’s a good wine, what did you say it was?”
“It’s a Gavi, Italian. And where do you come from? You look slightly foreign if you don’t mind me saying,” Joe wanted to say exotic but stopped himself.
“My Mother is Portuguese, my father is from Putney. It’s a running joke that I am Putugese.” She smiled and gently touched Joe’s wrist above the table.
“I like that. Now, do we have a copy of the policy?” She passed it over and he looked through it. “What can you tell me about a guy called Hale, the retail broker?”
“Every ones got a story about James Hale.”
“Yeah, that’s cute. Tell me one.”
“He plays hard and he works hard. He’s a freelance retail broker. Apparently he’s great with numbers. He gets in bed with big corporations and then he phones us.”
“Is he straight?”
“Well. Look I’m not here to gossip, but apparently Hale likes to party.”
“Not something you’ve experienced Carmen?”
The broker smiled awkwardly and changed the subject. “Our standpoint is that we trust Bluegreen and the information they have given us through Hale. If, however, you find anything to the contrary, please let us know” She passed Joe her card “We’ll have to consider our legal options.”
“Of course you do,” Joe told her. “We all have to consider our options. What options do you have for dinner tonight?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said what options do you have for this evening?”
“I have no options that will involve you on a non-professional level Mr Dylan.”
“How about on a professional level then?”
With that she
stood up and gave Joe the kind of look that only beautiful women can. She walked out of the door. On the bar sat half a glass of Gavi and enough time to drink it. He thought about knocking it back. The meetings came back to him; “don’t pick up”. The waitress walked over and looked at the glass.
“You aint drinkin it?” she said.
“I can’t drink booze. I’m on the program,” he told her again.
“Waste not, want not,” she said, picked it up and knocked it back like it were life itself.
Joe drank his soda and stood up. He saw Carmen through the window making a telephone call. Her back was turned to him. He paid the bill and walked out of the door, listening.
“Wordsworth Bangkok....Boss. Carmen Collins... I have some information regarding the Bluegreen policy...Yes, I know...We are doing our best...Things have taken a turn...There is this investigator... From London... They are onto the divers claim...Who?...A Mr. Joe Dylan...Yes... Joe Dylan will be in Bangkok Monday...Be prepared...”
SEVEN
Turtle Island
The body of a centipede
SHOGUN WATCHED the younger man’s fists hammer into the punch bag. Jinx was toned bronze ripped muscle. He was a pair of blue trunks and black gloves. His skin was fair enough to be considered high caste and his feature’s angular enough to be handsome. Jinx brought up a knee, an elbow, and then another fist hit the bag. He gave the bag hell. His last blow rang out in the gym and then the gymnasium fell ghostly quiet. Shogun walked up to the fighter side-stepping punch bags hanging from the ceiling and freestanding weights on the concrete floor. The fighter hadn’t seen him enter the gym.
“Are you winning?” Shogun asked.
Jinx span around with his guard up. Ready to pounce, before realizing who it was, Jinx nodded, dropped his gloves and smiled. His hands rose back up, his boxing mitts pressed together in the prayer motion. Shogun was in a way his father. Jinx had never known his father.
“I will answer the question for you, Jinx. ‘A Muay Thai boxer never wins. Outside the ring he must be an artist and a gentleman. Inside the ring he is an animal but he must have intelligence. An intelligent animal understands the next move his opponent will make.’ You looked good against that punch bag. The punch bag was not the champion.”
“I am training.”
“Excellent, Jinx, excellent. Take a shower. Put some clothes on. I have a job for you.”
“Five minutes. I’ll meet you outside.”
Shogun smiled. Jinx was twenty-one years of tough muscle who swam into Shogun’s family with the tide of poverty behind him. He had grown up kicking the coconut tree acquiring a huge capacity for pain. Shogun liked the way he danced in the ring. The pupil of the oldest teacher on the island, Jinx knew the ropes and the tricks. The kick lost to the punch. The punch was defeated by an elbow. The elbow was destroyed by the knee. Spirit and heart won the fight. You couldn’t fake Muay Thai anymore that you could fake acquired wealth, a good meal, art, or a poem. A victory in the ring was the ultimate victory. It could not be faked or cheated, it was, what it was. He was at the top of his game and they both knew it. He was Muay Thai.
Jinx walked towards the truck. In a tree above them a pair of collared doves cooed. That smell of Som Tam from a nearby stall. Shogun was sat in the driver’s seat. Jinx walked over to the vehicle. He looked in the back passenger seat. He looked at Franco. Dead. His heart hammered inside his chest. He was dead. Words escaped him. It was not his doing. The dead man’s eyes were wide open and his mouth was twisted into a tight death smile. Or was he snarling? Jinx retched bile. He bent over and spat it out on the street. He stood up straight. His eyes danced between Shogun and the corpse like he was watching a vulgar bout of table tennis.
“Relax, Jinx. He is as harmless as the bag you have just been punching.”
“Couldn’t the police take care of this?”
“Jinx, there’s a saying. ‘If you want something done properly, then do it yourself.’ You don’t tell anybody about this. Not your sweetheart, not the noodle lady, and not the girl from Isaan who massages your body and your ego from time to time. Get in the truck. Close the door behind you.”
Jinx opened the front passenger door. “Get in the back,” Shogun said, waving a hand to the back bench-seat.
“With him?”
“Yes. His karma has been decided. The spirits have risen from the body and now dwell in the body of a centipede. This is just dead meat, Jinx. Dead. Meat.”
Jinx sat in the back and looked at Franco. His skin was pale and the eyes were open. He reminded Jinx of something he had seen at a temple freak show. He had paid ten baht to enter a haunted house. Inside waxen corpses, rubber, paint, despair, hate. “Did the farang have money?”
“No, but there’s this thing called insurance. They guarantee their lives against accidents. We are the insurance agent so the money flows to us. ”
Jinx looked at the body again. He could see the bullet holes, the dark blue shirt thick with dried blood. “But this man has been shot.”
“Yes. But not when we’ve finished with him. Pull his body up straight.” The body kept slumping down the seat. Jinx reluctantly adjusted the corpse’s position.
“I had a grandfather who had insurance with the Krung Thai Bank. He died in a motorcycle accident. My mother got fifty thousand baht,” Jinx said.
“That’s it Jinx,” Shogun pointed a thumb at the dead Italian. “This here is your grandfather,” He pointed a finger at himself, “I am your mother, and Lloyds of London is the Krung Thai Bank.”
“Very clever,” Jinx smiled nervously at the dead body in the back seat. “He doesn’t look too happy.”
“Yes. I can see that. Sit closer to him, tell him the one about the sick buffalo and the frog in the coconut shell. Put your arm around his shoulders and hold his head back. You can kiss him if you really want.”
“But, boss.”
“What?”
“I’m scared of the foreign ghost.”
“You’re scared of what?”
“I watched it on a TV show. The Shock. The foreigners have ghosts.”
“Listen to me carefully. You want to be scared of something? Be scared of a real man. A real man that has a .22 in his pocket and has no reason not to use it. Put your arm around him.” Farang Ghosts, Shogun grinned. “When I was a monk at Watt Tha Thong I spent hours meditating next to dead bodies before they were cremated. The human body is full of corpses. What did you eat for breakfast?”
“Moosab kai jial”
“You have an unborn bird and a dead pig inside you. Your body is fuelled by ghosts.” Shogun watched an airplane fly over the island. With every flight that arrived he got a little richer.
“You believe in ghosts, sir?”
“They believe in me, but they don’t scare me.”
They drove to the small beach resort. Every morning the town was hung-over and slow. Shogun watched a woman riding a moped, obviously a whore going back home after a trick. A kid walked along the street holding coke-a-cola in a bag of ice. A black and white dog laid on its side panting under the shade of a shop awning. They drove past bars, a seven-eleven, a boxing ring, another seven-eleven A foreigner stood outside an empty bar drinking from a large bottle of Leo Beer. Shogun stepped out of the pick-up. A cat was resting beside the door. The cat stood up and raised her bent knotted tail. Shogun was careful with cats. Killing one was the same as killing a monk. Shogun opened the padlock and pushed up the metal shutters. He then pulled out another key and opened the door to the diving school. They carried the dead man inside. They laid him on the floor and shogun took off Franco’s shorts and shirt. They looked at the naked corpse.
“Over there,” Shogun pointed to where some wetsuits hung on a row of pegs, “One of them must be his. Find out which one and put it on him.”
“How do we know which one?”
“Use this,” Shogun said pointing to his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a board pinned to the wall behind the main desk. On
the board photographs were mounted. “You see which suit the farang is wearing in the photograph?” Jinx closed in on a picture of Franco smiling topside of a boat wearing a blue and yellow diving suit. “That is the suit he must wear. You can see from the picture that it is his.”
Jinx smiled. Shogun was smart. Smarter than his grandmother who taught him about cultivating rice. Smarter than his dead grandfather who had bought the Krung Thai insurance. Smarter even than his trainer who showed him the technique for removing the delicious sweet sap from beneath the bark of the coconut tree. Shogun was the smartest man he had ever known.
They worked at getting the body into the wetsuit. No wasted movements. No talking. The dead skin on rubber squeaked and snapped. Shogun grabbed an aqualung, regulator, mask and a pair of fins and walked back to the jeep instructing Jinks to follow with the dead diver. Jinx dragged the body by its feet to the truck and they both got him into the back seat again.
“Good work, Jinx.”
“It is nothing,” Jinx grinned.
Shogun drove. He was heading for Dead Man’s Well. Tropical flowers and palm trees. A flight of butterflies flew across the road. Buffalos grazed in fields. They travelled up and down hills. Shogun took a small side road leading to the sea. The lane came to an end. The land stooped where sudden jungle began. They parked the truck and headed through the undergrowth until they reached an area of rock pools. They carried the body to an isolated rock pool, the smell of tropical pollen. Shogun and his brother Rang had swam there as children. Neither of them could touch the bottom.
Shogun and Jinx lifted the dead man. They swung him three times before tossing Franco into the water. He made a splash and then rose back to the surface, bobbing twice, before succumbing to science and nature.
Dead Man’s Well.
They walked back along the jungle path. His brother’s police motorbike was parked next to the truck. Officer Rang held his hands in a prayer-like motion with his fingertips above the bridge of his nose. Shogun returned the gesture with his fingertips slightly lower.
