Monday morning finally showed up. Carl had been awake most of the night waiting for its arrival. He was bored and hungry, very hungry. Carl had not left the room the previous evening and so he hadn’t eaten anything and his stomach was burning. He needed breakfast and was angry with himself that he was holed up in a room without windows, scared of hitting the streets. Carl decided that he was going to get a good breakfast and whoever was looking for him had better hope they didn’t find him, not when he was in that kind of mood. Hunger and boredom made him brave.
Showered, unshaved, and dressed in the same clothes, he went out. Carl saw the man he had tipped the day before and called him over. Carl told him that he was on the run from an obnoxious wife and didn’t want to be found. He put another five hundred baht note in the man’s hand and told him that he wanted to keep the room and to please not let anyone else in there. The man promised to lock the door and suggested Carl look for him when he came back. There were no guest keys. Carl wondered if the man ever slept.
There was a bar on Patpong that Carl had heard opened early and served American breakfast. Not the hotel buffet kind of American breakfast but the real, cooked on a griddle, eggs over easy kind of breakfast. He had his issues with the USA but had to concede that they were way ahead of the rest of the world when it came to making his favourite cooked breakfast.
Carl had been told that the place was owned and run by an old Texan and his wife. He had heard that they spent six hours every morning cooking and entertaining customers. The old couple would leave the bar at noon at which time it turned into a rather old-fashioned hooker bar run by their young manager. Funny set-up but Bangkok is a funny old town.
When you are on the run your priorities change. Carl could hide in a room with no windows or he could have a really nice day out. Hopefully, his toughest decision would be whether to have a massage after breakfast or stay at the bar and play with the girls. Playing with the girls would have been a delicate operation as his pockets were still stuffed with money and it was best if that didn’t become common knowledge.
Carl had never been there for breakfast before, so nobody should be looking for him. As nobody would know him he thought he could have some fun playing the tourist for a change. He had often observed that the tourists appeared to have more fun.
Carl got out of the taxi right in front of the door to reinforce that he was a tourist. He could smell the country sausage cooking on the griddle before he opened the door. The booths were all occupied so he went straight to the bar and sat down. He could eat at the bar, he could talk to people, he could even flirt with the waitresses. Carl was slipping comfortably into his chosen role for the day.
“Carl! What the fuck are you doing here? Off reservation for you isn’t it?”
Bart bloody Barrows! The old Patpong hound. Man of all seasons. Early riser. The last person Carl wanted to bump into that morning. Bart went everywhere and talked to everyone so in a few hours the place they were in and the rest of Patpong would be off limits to Carl.
“Good morning Bart how’s the daughter situation?” Carl asked him, trying to sound friendly.
“Little slut came home in the afternoon. I took away her mobile phone. That should fix her,” he told Carl as he unsuccessfully tried to manhandle the passing waitress. “Never seen you here before,” Bart stated as he let go of the very upset waitress.
“I’m not a morning person, but I heard good things about the breakfast here so I decided to make the effort.”
“Is it necessary for you to talk like a damn limey all the time?” He didn’t need anything from Carl today so any attempt at politeness was off the table.
“Well, Bart, that’s what I am.”
“Thought you were South African!”
“No Bart, from a little town called London.”
“Just kiddin’, I knew that. You come from the land of lousy teeth, warm beer, fish and chips, and Princess Died. Did I get the name right?” He guffawed at his perceived wit. “Went there once. Didn’t like it.”
“Don’t know much about it. I left the place at sixteen and haven’t been back much,” Carl told him trying to manage the conversation so he wouldn’t let Bart annoy him any more than was absolutely necessary.
“Can’t have been that good then, could it boy?” He pronounced it ‘bwoy’. Only Bart Barrows would call Carl ‘bwoy’ after he was past the fifty years old mark. Something to do with Carl’s having arrived in Thailand so young seemed to allow certain old Bangkok hands to claim superiority by not acknowledging that Carl had grown up.
Carl managed to eat his breakfast without telling Bart Barrows what he really thought of him. The grey-haired owner was telling Bart that he was not allowed to play with the waitresses in the morning. He had to wait until after noon for that. Carl took the opportunity to get away without Bart noticing. Carl paid his bill hurriedly and left.
Bart Barrows had cost Carl his anonymity so it was back to the pavements. One of the side effects of believing that people want to kill you is an immediate need to procreate. Carl was aware that he needed to get laid sooner rather than later. He would require somewhere to hide as well. The short-time hotel was not good for his soul.
It occurred to Carl that he might as well make a little noise around the Patpong area. Bart Barrows, gossipmonger extraordinaire, had made it necessary for Carl to start avoiding Patpong. So, while he was still there he might as well make his presence felt. As long as the people wishing him harm ended up looking for him in Patpong they wouldn’t be looking for him where he was really going to be. He walked the full length of Patpong Road without finding an open bar. It was still very early in the morning.
In a building just around the corner on Suriwongse Road at the Wild Orchid Bar, a place that Carl typically avoided, there would be an old man holding court. The famous American was known to be there every morning surrounded by his adoring fans. It was a place Carl rarely went to because it was common knowledge that this man didn’t like him and vice versa. He was one of Bangkok’s famous old Asia hands and was found fascinating by the barflies for having been the CIA’s man in Bangkok prior to his recent retirement. Since his retirement he had spent every bad-tempered morning at the Wild Orchid Bar drinking himself silly. Nobody knew what he did in the afternoons.
Carl walked in and sat at the bar. He ordered a Bloody Mary. It felt like Bloody Mary weather. He was sitting in his usual spot, as Carl had expected he would be. Arthur Sciacci, ‘Art’ to his friends and fans, was a small feisty man with a crew cut. He had boxed Golden Gloves in his youth and still had plenty of scar tissue on his face to prove it. He was Texan-Sicilian by birth and a Langley man by design.
Art was at the corner of the bar, sitting on a stool just to the right of the door, turned sideways so he had his back to the wall and could see every movement and everyone enter and leave. He was talking at all the people around him, providing his daily update on world politics, which meant he was giving his evangelical opinion on what America was really up to that week.
The bar’s regulars saw him as their Yoda, but Carl had always heard the rattle of Darth Vader and the dark side of the force in his voice. Art had seen Carl come into the bar and was watching him from his vantage point. Carl got his drink and felt Art’s eyes on him analysing his every move as he started drinking the Bloody Mary.
“I ran into one of your old friends from Saigon the other day. We had a drink together,” Carl told him. “Anthony Inman I think his name was.”
“No you didn’t. Inman died years ago,” Art replied, full of confidence.
“No?” Carl asked quizzically. The game was on.
“No!” he said as he got off the barstool. He was standing at the bar, bouncing from one foot to the other boxer style and leaning forward in Carl’s direction. “I’ll tell you what you are up to.” He was playing to the audience now, feet still and waiting for all eyes to be on him before continuing. “Carl is playing amateur detective. Over the last twenty years Victor Boyle has refused to accept that Inman’s dead and has hired every private detective in Asia to find him. None of them could find him and Carl is the last detective to get the job, bottom of the list. Even an old friend of mine who spent twenty years with the FBI before going private was given this case and didn’t find him so what chance does Carl have?”
Carl didn’t want to ruin his morning by telling him that Inman had an office at the other end of Silom Road and had probably driven past the Wild Orchid Bar hundreds of times. Carl was planning to let Art have his fun for a while longer.
“How’re you getting on with your client?” he asked Carl with a grin.
“Fine.”
“Funny that, I heard he was shot dead on Thursday evening in front of his hotel.” Art began laughing loudly.
Carl decided to take a gamble, he had a hunch. “Guess I won’t get paid then.”
“There’s nobody left alive to pay you is there? Tony Inman probably died years ago and some Swiss bank will inherit all of the money. Let me tell you about this case of yours Carl. The two scumbags took their money to America where Inman was in charge of investing it. But he ran off with it instead, being the disloyal piece of shit that he is. His heartbroken sidekick Victor Boyle found himself without money or leadership. The moron spends the rest of his sordid life chasing after it, even hires you as a last resort. Then with you on the case he dies on the street like a dog. Maybe you should come with a health warning.”
“Guess so.”
“Why are you here fishing for information? Your client is dead on a slab at the morgue. Don’t you have anybody’s wandering wife to follow?”
Carl pretended to be reluctant to speak. Made it appear that he was not sure what to do. Art was from the agency and was trained to spot a lie. Lies typically flow so Carl knew that his one couldn’t. After appearing to wrestle with his better judgment Carl made his move.
“I spoke to Victor Boyle last week shortly before he was shot and he told me that you were the third man.” Carl was dragging Graham Greene into the game now. It seemed apt.
“Third man? What’s a motherfucking third man mean?”
“He said that you were their partner in Saigon. That you were in the Phoenix Program together, that and a few extortion rackets on the side and all that kind of stuff. He said that you recommended him to hire me. Would have liked to do it yourself but you told him you couldn’t because we didn’t get on.”
He was bright red, beyond angry. In spite of all his training he was about to fall into Carl’s trap with a little help from his own arrogance.
“Me their fucking partner? Me? I fucking hated them! They had a partner, Colonel Bao from Vietnamese intelligence. He had a share of their money until his car blew up a few weeks before Saigon fell. My best friend investigated their activities in Nam and pointed out that they arrested an unusual number of young girls they claimed were working for the communists. None of these girls were ever seen again after Inman and Boyle had their fun with them. A day after he showed his superiors the math was off the scale and didn’t add up, his car blew up with him in it. This was just days before the fall of Saigon when he would have gone home to his wife and children in Houston alive instead of in pieces in a motherfucking body bag. Fucking Inman and Boyle were the biggest scumbags in the whole of South Vietnam. They were into every racket that they could find. They made millions before they left the agency. Inman supposedly ran off with at least twenty million dollars and the idiot Boyle spent the rest of his life looking for him. Fucking good thing Boyle is dead or I would kill him myself! Me? Their motherfucking partner? Fucking scumbags!” He was contorting his face and spitting saliva as he spoke the last words.
Carl smiled to let him know that he had got what he wanted from him. Art realized what had happened and that Carl had made him lose his temper on purpose. Instead of continuing to be angry he became calm and smiled at Carl.
“What are you really up to Carl? You are not writing a history book on Vietnam I assume?”
“Working on staying alive Art. Mostly I’m just working on staying alive. Your friend was a good investigator. Focus on the young girls Art. You’ll be able to work out the rest from there.”
Carl paid his bill and was getting up to leave. Carl was the centre of attention and all the barflies were interested in the man who had taken on their hero and was still standing.
“If Inman is really out there and knows you are after him staying alive won’t be easy. Take care of yourself Carl and don’t start your car without looking under the hood first.”
“Thanks Art,” Carl said as he stood up and paid his bill.
As he passed Art on his way out he heard him speak into his drink so quietly that only Carl could hear.
“Get that scumbag for me Carl. If he is still alive somebody better nail him. Like permanently, for all the widows and orphans.”
“Don’t forget the grieving parents Art. There are a lot of them too,” Carl said with his back to the audience passing Art at the bar as he pushed through the door into the morning sunlight.
Carl had got what he wanted. He had found out where Victor Boyle fitted into the story and, maybe more importantly, that Boyle had probably been Inman’s sidekick in his murder games. He assumed that Boyle had needed a leader and couldn’t pursue his sport without the senior partner. It begged the question as to what Boyle had missed the most. Had he spent twenty years chasing the money or had he wanted back into Inman’s murder games? Things had started to get interesting. The case was not only about a serial killer; it was also about money, lots and lots of money. Carl would stick with it no matter what. Just because he sometimes believed in good old-fashioned justice didn’t mean that he was above the money.