He laughed. He caught himself.
‘That was all right with you?’ Cross asked.
‘Sure. That’s how we talked. He hid his sentimentality around me, but he thought the best of people. I don’t. And it appears I’m fucking right.’
Cross slid the photograph from his pocket. He set it down on the table beside him and put his hand over half of it, covering the body of Marshall Talbot.
‘Come here a minute, if you will, tell me if you know this girl.’
He came over. He looked at her.
‘No. Never saw her before. She was with him?’
‘They were found together.’
He shook his head.
‘Was he having an affair on the side?’
‘No.
‘He’s human, Thad. He couldn’t be tempted?’
‘He couldn’t. He simply couldn’t. He was so honest, so loyal, so true to his word. He couldn’t have had an affair.’
‘How is it they moved to Woodruff Place? It seemed like an odd location for Sarah.’
‘It was. It was the compromise. She wouldn’t move to Irvington, the snob. He lived in a great neighborhood. So they compromised with Woodruff Place – you know the Magnificent Ambersons, history, big homes, and all that – and that way neither one of them was happy.’
‘He didn’t give her everything she wanted?’
‘Whatever I told you about him wanting to help and do the right thing didn’t mean he was pushover. He was tough as nails for a cause and he put his foot down with Sarah over where he’d live. He wouldn’t live in what he considered to be the very snooty Carmel. And he said he’d never live in a McMansion.’
Before Cross left, Thad had consumed three no doubt very strong drinks. He promised he’d do anything he could to help Cross or the police find the murderer.
‘You have to go out for anything?’ Cross asked as he headed toward the door.
‘No, why?’
‘Just thought if you needed anything I could pick it up.’
‘I have enough gin in the house.’
Cross stopped by the grocery on Illinois and 52nd and picked up a steak and a bottle of wine. Casey went out into the twilight and spent a little longer than usual. He must have caught the scent of something wild. The neighborhood had various critters roaming about: possums, squirrels, raccoons. As old as he was, the old hound couldn’t resist the scent of the wild.
There was a call from Kowalski on the answering machine.
‘I have a wonderful evening planned. And I’d like to see the evening through. So don’t kill anybody until tomorrow. But give me a quick call. Let me know where things stand.’
Cross called him.
‘Anything new?’
‘Not really. Nobody knows the female victim. But according to Marshall’s best friend, the two wouldn’t have been an item. Marshall Talbot was a saint.’
‘What’s he doing with the Taupins?’
‘He wanted to save the daughter from herself,’ Cross said.
‘You know the old bastard bought some land once. On it were a couple of buildings that were historic landmarks. That little problem would have prevented him from selling it for development. He had them torn down and then told the authorities that it was a mistake, the wrecking crew got the wrong address. Oops, it was all a big mistake. He paid a fine that was more than covered by the highly profitable sale price he got for the land once the obstacle of “historic status” had been removed.’
‘Nasty man.’
‘Lots of stories, but he wasn’t exactly the mafia type.’
‘You’re saying he wouldn’t sink so low as to hire someone to make a hit?’
‘Morally, I don’t think he’d quibble about having someone shot, but it’s hard for me to imagine that he’s that tough. It’s a big jump from code violations or squeezing a business dry to bumping a guy off. He operated within the law, often barely and was willing to pay the price if caught.’
‘Never enter a battle you can’t win . . .’
‘Right. Murder is a helluva risk.’
‘So is keeping you on the line.’
Cross might have thanked him for checking in, but Kowalski was someone else who didn’t like sentimentality.
FIFTEEN
Morning rituals completed and nothing on the agenda, Shanahan went to the rooftop pool, which he and Maureen had to themselves. There was almost a hint of blue in the sky, and the air was not so rancidly thick as it would become as the day wore on. Maureen swam gracefully, effortlessly, it seemed. Shanahan watched until he was interrupted by a young man in a white shirt and black pants.
‘Are you Mr Shanahan?’ the boy asked.
Told that he was, the boy handed Shanahan a note, scribbled in Thai. Shanahan recognized the phone number as Channarong’s and assumed he was supposed to call him.
He mimed phone call to Maureen and descended the stairs to his room.
‘We have an address for Fritz,’ Channarong said. ‘One of the mahouts came through.’
‘That’s impressive,’ Shanahan said. ‘I suspect he’s not there, but I think we should look around, don’t you think?’
Channarong picked them up in front of the hotel. The taxi took the three of them across town to an unremarkable area of multi-story modern buildings. They stopped in front of the address the mahout had for Fritz Shanahan. It wasn’t the dirty, rundown place of a man on the run that Shanahan would have imagined. It was a clean, new building settled in a slum. The manager, a thin woman with hawk-like eyes, denied there was a Shanahan in 403. She brought out a ledger, on which ‘Feiht’ had been penciled in beside the room number.
‘No Shanahan,’ she said, not quite pronouncing it right. She said it while casting furtive glances at the old detective. The way her eyes moved it looked as if she were trying to look behind his beard. ‘Look like you,’ she said. It was an accusation.
Channarong said something in Thai. She said something back.
‘I told her you were his brother. She thinks you are him. Apparently, Mr Feiht is two weeks late on the rent.’
‘How much is it?’ Shanahan asked.
He asked her and she responded, face forward, but eyes on Shanahan.
‘Five thousand baht.’
Shanahan dug in his pocket. ‘Tell her she can have it if she let’s us in and leaves us alone.’
‘Pig in a poke,’ Maureen said. ‘The place might be spotless.’
‘That will tell me something too.’
Like the exterior of the building, the interior of the apartment was a small, but clean one-bedroom with a small balcony that overlooked a swimming pool. The air conditioning was off. Shanahan switched it on. The room was tidy and held very little that was personal.
‘You want me to sit here and look pretty or do you want me to help?’ Maureen asked.
‘Looking pretty would be enough, but if you want, you could go in the bedroom. Search the drawers and closets, all the clothing.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Anything that’s not clothing. Pieces of paper, maps, correspondence, anything.’
‘And me?’ Channarong was smiling.
‘You can just sit there and look pretty, if you like.’
‘I’ll go talk to the manager, see what she knows,’ Channarong said.
Shanahan started to push the button on the answering machine, but had second thoughts. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said to Channarong, ‘let’s listen to the messages. Someone might have left a message in Thai.’ He pushed the button.
‘You know, Fritz, it would be so much better, if you know what I mean, for you to come by and see me rather than for me to spend so much time trying to find you. Under the right circumstances, all can be forgiven.’
‘That was Mr White,’ Shanahan said.
‘His English is good.’
The second message was in Thai. Channarong waited until the caller disconnected.
‘I don’t know who was speaking, but it said that you were
looking for him.’
‘Hmmn,’ Shanahan said. ‘But it came too late.’
‘Unless your brother checks his answering machine.’
‘Probably not. Calls can be traced.’
There were no other calls.
The call from Mr White was before Shanahan met with him. The second call came in after Shanahan had met with him. The calls revealed only two things, which Shanahan had already suspected: Mr White wanted to find Fritz, and Fritz spoke Thai.
Channarong left to talk with the manager. Shanahan poked around the living room. It was tidy and held no clues to anything. There were a couple of English-language newspapers on the kitchen table. The last date put Fritz’s departure no earlier than the fifteenth of the previous month. That was probably when he took off.
The bathroom had the usual: a couple of cheap, throwaway razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, deodorant, a bottle of aspirin. All items easily left behind to suggest that he might or might not have planned to return. He’d check the bedroom. Maureen was going through the pockets of a jacket left in the closet.
‘Odds and ends in the drawers,’ she said. ‘Couple of socks with holes in them and some tattered underwear.’
Shanahan glanced around. No luggage of any kind. That indicated to him that Fritz probably hadn’t been abducted. It didn’t clear up for sure whether he planned to return. If Shanahan were a betting man, he’d bet Fritz had no intention of coming back. Leaving a few things and not closing out with the apartment manager was a smart tactic against his pursuers. Using a fake name meant he felt threatened.
When Channarong came back he said that the only thing that the manager recollected was that Mr Feiht had inquired about the weather in the North. ‘It was an incidental thought after I badgered her about everything he ever told her.’
‘North?’
‘Chiang Mai, maybe,’ Channarong said. ‘It’s fairly close to routes coming from Burma.’
‘And?’ Maureen asked.
‘The best rubies are smuggled in from Burma.’
‘He went south,’ Shanahan said. Channarong gave him an odd look. ‘He had to have gone south,’ the old detective said. ‘He’s running away. He needs to cool off. If he went to ruby country he’s more likely to run into someone he knows.’
‘Why would he . . .?’ Maureen began.
‘He told her in the subtlest way so that it would appear the information she revealed would be by accident on her and Fritz’s part.’
‘She hasn’t been questioned,’ Channarong said.
‘Yet.’
‘What’s south?’ Shanahan asked Channarong.
‘He’d go to Phuket to have the most escape options,’ Channarong said. ‘On each side of a long narrow strip of land is water. On one side you have the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea and on the other is the Andaman Sea, which is part of the Indian Ocean. That area has countless islands.’
‘How do we get there?’
‘Fourteen hours by train,’ Channarong said.
‘Or?’ Maureen said.
‘One hour by plane. And a short bus trip, depending on where you’re going. Into Phuket City or Patong or some other place.’
‘How hot is it down there?’ Shanahan asked.
‘The air is better. There are sea breezes,’ Channarong said, smiling. ‘I say it’s a net gain.’
‘Net gain,’ Shanahan repeated. ‘You should hang with a better crowd. You’ll go with us?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. And if I did I wouldn’t be worth much,’ he said. ‘I don’t know that area very well. I can connect you with someone down there. He is a little . . . uh . . . unpredictable, but he is a good person.’
Shanahan had little choice.
It was still early in the day when the plane lifted off. Shanahan wondered if he’d been followed. He didn’t want to bring Fritz’s enemies along. On the other hand, when they figured out he didn’t know where his brother was, they seemed to lose interest in him. And Shanahan couldn’t be sure that Fritz was in the South. He might have gone to Cambodia or Vietnam. He might have gone north after all. He could be in Milwaukee for all he knew.
But he also believed that to have survived for so long in a foreign environment, Fritz had to be pretty savvy. As Channarong said, the South afforded two coasts from which to launch a boat in the middle of the night. It allowed him a certain cover. As a farang in a place with so many tourists he wouldn’t stand out. Also, as Channarong told them, Phuket was about as far away from the business of smuggling rubies as one could get and still be in Thailand. That kind of business happened much further north.
Maureen sat by the window and looked out. She was happy to be out of Bangkok, Shanahan thought, and happier still to be heading toward palm trees, sunny beaches and sea breezes. Shanahan reached a decision of his own. He decided that if he couldn’t pick up the trail in Phuket, he’d stop looking and would feel at least slightly better that he had tried to find him. The world was too big and his funds were too small for this to go on too long.
Channarong had made hotel arrangements, putting them in a non-glitzy hotel slightly off the beaten track, up and away but not far from the boisterous Patong Beach. Once Shanahan was there, Channarong promised to call him to set up a meeting with the new guide.
‘What are you going to say to him?’ Maureen asked.
‘Who?’ Shanahan knew the ‘who’ she was referring to, but he hoped he could avoid an answer.
‘Your brother.’ She gave him the look she always gave him when he used a cheap ploy for delay or outright evasion.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you nervous?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you want from him?’ she asked.
‘You’re not going to give up, are you?’
‘Yeah, I’m giving up now,’ she said. ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt.’
He wanted to ask what she meant, but that would keep the conversation going and the burrowing deeper. He didn’t want that. He simply didn’t know. And that had been gnawing at him since the dreams began. What could either of them expect after all this time?
Channarong had described their accommodations accurately. They were fine, though – clean if a little ragged. There was a small kitchen, air conditioning, a big, comfortable bed, and a wide balcony that provided a view, distant though it was, to the ocean.
As Maureen and Shanahan unloaded their bags, the phone rang. It was Channarong.
‘You have a shadow,’ Channarong said.
‘That means I exist,’ Shanahan said.
‘That means someone is following you. They had you at the airport in Bangkok.’
‘How do you know?’
‘When you checked in, a man followed you to the counter, asked where you were going. He reappeared with a ticket and got on the same plane. I talked to the attendant he talked to.’
‘You followed me into the airport? Why?’
‘Our friend, Mr Kowalski, told me to make sure I kept you safe while you were in Bangkok.’
‘Beyond the call,’ Shanahan said. He was impressed but also deeply disturbed that if he was right about Fritz being in Phuket, he had led his pursuers to him. ‘Thanks. Let’s hold off on our new Phuket guide. I’ll let you know if I change my mind. How will I recognize the tail?’
‘Not by looks. A male Thai, maybe about thirty-five . . .’
‘Everybody could be thirty-five here.’
‘Dark hair, brown eyes,’ Channarong said. Shanahan could imagine him smiling. ‘He has an odd tic,’ Channarong added. ‘He exercises his hands. If you have a cat you’d recognize the movement. It’s what a cat does sometimes when it can’t find something to scratch.’
‘He splays his fingers and then closes part way?’
‘He did that while waiting for you to finish getting your boarding pass. And again while you were waiting to board the plane. He was behind you.’
While Shanahan was wondering what to do about this deve
lopment, Channarong continued. ‘You might have a few hours before your phone is tapped.’
‘Thanks for everything,’ Shanahan said.
Shanahan took Maureen outside and they walked down to where the land began to drop off. Below and to the right was Patong, the epicenter of boisterous tourism. Down to the left were other beaches with less development. He could smell the salt in the air and realized he could breath again.
‘We’re being followed.’ Shanahan explained the situation. ‘What we have to do is pretend we’ve given up on our search, that we’re staying a few days to have a short vacation before we leave. When we’re in town, I want you to call Cross from a public phone or buy a cell phone and tell him to give us a call tomorrow evening and ask us about our progress in finding Fritz.’
‘Why me?’
‘I want to see who is paying attention to your leaving the table.’
‘Then we lay low for a couple of days?’ Maureen asked.
‘Maybe not exactly low.’
‘Have fun,’ she said.
‘Go down to Patong, have a few drinks, a nice dinner.’
‘Was this part of your job in the Army? Laying low and having dinner and drinks?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Did you have someone run into town and make phone calls for you?’
‘It was a long time ago,’ he said.
She gave him that knowing look. It said without uttering a word, ‘you have no secrets from me.’
SIXTEEN
Cross now had a sense of some of the personalities who might be involved in the deaths. He had yet to gauge Raymond Taupin’s wife and he had not found the man who came at him with the shotgun that evening. He was glad to have a sense of something other than the haunting image of Edelman at the end of rope, an image with which he had spent a good portion of the night grappling.
Now, having let Casey have his morning stroll in the yard beyond the front door and feeding Einstein, Cross realized he had to face the day, reminded himself that he had to make it productive. His freedom being at the pleasure of others was in danger of suspension at any moment. With morning coffee, he went over the records of Raymond Taupin, deciding to search for the man whose name was on the board of nearly all of Taupin’s companies.
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