They went back to Carl’s short-time room and opened the bottle of Ardbeg. The adrenalin was pumping so hard that the neat whiskey tasted like water. George was sitting on the bed and Carl was in the room’s only chair. They poured themselves another shot from the bottle on the bedside table before either of them spoke. They had not said a word throughout the drive back, not even when they stopped at a 7/11 store and Carl had jumped out to buy bottled water and cigarettes.
George opened the conversation. “What do we actually know about General Amnuay?”
Outside the room they could hear car engines, doors slamming and drunken arguments between people who did not speak the same languages. There was laughter too as a lot of the working girls enjoy themselves as much as the customers. Thais love a party. The Russian prostitutes are very different to the local girls though. From somewhere close to the door of their room they heard the cold professional accent from that part of the world telling an Italian who hardly spoke any English that, with the Russian girls, it was always money up front and she didn’t care how the Thai girls did it.
“Amnuay is a very scary character,” Carl said as he sipped his whiskey. “The army’s Mr. Big of the underworld. He is rumoured to be behind illegal casinos, massage parlours, drugs, and now we can assume, gun running to Japan. I read once that heavyweight politicians and certain men in uniform have their own camps for housing assassins, hit-men’s holiday homes. They use these camps to hide the assassins from the authorities between jobs. The article was written at the height of the Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt conflict when people were telling journalists things that are historically never spoken of in Thailand. It sounded very credible at the time,” Carl said softly as, if they could hear the comings and goings from outside, then the people outside could hear them too.
“I didn’t think the people that tailed you from the airport were boy scouts,” George replied, also speaking softly.“They had the empty eyes of men that have killed without personal motive.”
“They weren’t police either. They are ex-soldiers that got caught running guns to the Yakusa on behalf of Amnuay and Inman.”
“Why aren’t they in prison then?” George asked.
“Because nobody in Thailand went to prison, the only men charged were US marines that smuggled the guns on military flights between countries. The ones that got caught red-handed. Even though the case was thoroughly investigated by the FBI and the US military police, none of Amnuay’s people were touched. That shows the power such men wield. The ex-soldiers that are looking for me have become guns for hire. The colonel described them as Ronin.”
“He watches too many movies.”
“General Amnuay is a lousy enemy to make. I have avoided crossing paths with people like him all of my life. I hoped men like him would never even know my name. He makes the situation a little too complex for my liking.”
“Could you reason with him? Do what you usually do and send someone you know of military rank to talk to him on your behalf?”
“I have no value in his eyes so there is nothing to negotiate with,” Carl replied.
“Maybe we can bypass him and just focus on Inman.”
“Trouble is people like Inman with money and powerful friends don’t go to prison in Thailand. The only wealthy people that are in prison are the ones that offended the aristocracy. Apart from that, Thailand is a perfect democracy. Perfect in that everybody does whatever they want to do and gets away with it. Apart from the poor but nobody counts them.”
“I think some of the victims were from relatively middle-class families.”
“Nobody takes the middle-class particularly seriously either,” Carl replied.
“What are we?”
“Middle-bohemian George, definitely middle-bohemian. And none of them like us,” Carl said with a hint of a smile.
George went to the bathroom and Carl poured them both another drink. When in doubt, get drunk. There was a fight somewhere outside the room. From what Carl could work out, one of the girls was beating up a verbally abusive customer. Then more voices as people arrived to break up the fight. Carl didn’t object to the noise. He found noise comforting in his situation. When they came for him he knew there would be nothing but silence.
When George came out of the bathroom he said, “Do you have a plan yet?”
“Maybe,” Carl said sitting back down in the chair. “Obviously we need to nail Inman. If we show the world what he is, all his big friends will have to turn their back on him. They have to, no matter how much money and old CIA business is on the table.”
“His goose is cooked then. He is just a very old and vile foreign criminal and you’ve buried enough of them in your time,” George said hopefully.
“That’s entirely the wrong attitude,” Carl replied. “It is extremely dangerous to belittle your enemy. It leads to unpleasant surprises and, what is worse, it removes all of the justification for fighting them in the first place. We must not underestimate this man. He’s obviously insane but unfortunately he is not stupid. Quite the opposite in fact.”
“So how do we start?” George asked.
Carl was glad George was feeling committed. Carl was a loner but this was not a time that he wanted to be alone.“Well we know where the killings are being done now. There will be DNA everywhere. Unfortunately an investigation into a foreigner in Thailand is never subtle. In fact, it is like a herd of elephants paying you a visit if you know what to look for. Inman will know the signs. He will soon know if he is being investigated.”
“So he could destroy the evidence,” George suggested.
“Worse than that. He would use General Amnuay’s boys to hinder or stop any police investigation. He can certainly intimidate the newspapers enough for them to ignore the story. Once the phone calls started we would never motivate anyone to look at Inman again.”
“You make it sound very bleak.”
“It is fucking bleak George but continue we must. Do you remember old Mike from Glasgow?”
“The horrible alcoholic journalist that I can’t understand a word he says? That Mike?”
“That’s the one. He has been known to go against the local paper’s policy of self-censorship and say what he thinks. If he could write about the murders from the stance of police incompetence and how a foreign serial killer is getting away with murder in Thailand, it may just stir up the necessary hornets’ nest.”
“Then what?”
“Then when the police are defending themselves and claiming it isn’t true we, with a little help from my friends, declare Inman the prime suspect to the media at the Foreign Correspondents Club,” Carl said confidently.
“You think that will work?”
“No I don’t. Not as a solution to the real problem but it will get him off my back for a while. I am hoping he will be too busy sticking fingers in dikes to worry about me and once the cat is out of the bag I will no longer have the sole possession of the information that makes it necessary to kill me. If it’s public knowledge I become less important.”
“I know most of what you know,” George said.
“I suggest we make sure nobody else knows that fact. I will go and talk to Mad Mike tomorrow morning, I mean this morning.”
“Do you know him well?”
“He was a mourner at two of my weddings,” Carl replied.
“What do you want me to do?”
“We need some sleep, we can get about four hours by my calculation. Then, in the morning I want you to find us a safe house. Somewhere we will not be found. This place is too horrible to lie low in.”
There was a knock on the door and Carl signalled George to open it as he put his hand on the gun still tucked in the front of his jeans. Carl’s man walked in, much to Carl’s relief, as he felt too tired and drunk to shoot anybody. The man looked around the room and then sat himself down uninvited on the bed facing Carl. As always he spoke Thai to Carl. He began by apologizing about the fight that had happened just outside the door and said he hoped it had not disturbed them. Carl told him it hadn’t. Then the man leant forward and said, “Do you want girls? I have nice girls, very young and all the way from Chiangmai. These girls are very white skinned, the best.” He was assuming that because Carl spoke Thai, his taste in women, or rather, in young girls, would be Asian.
“No thank you, we are a little too drunk tonight,” Carl told him.
“These girls are very skilled and pretty, they can do whatever you ask. They can even make a drunken man happy. They haven’t been working for long and they don’t have many hairs yet. They are new enough to the work that they still feel a sexual need, if you know what I mean.”
Carl knew that these girls would be permanently based in the short-time hotel. They would have been bought and paid for in the North and brought to Bangkok as brothel workers. Many of the older short-time hotels also functioned as brothels. This was the sex slave trade and it was a side of Thailand that usually made Carl very angry. These girls would be totally under the control of some old hag and never dare to question her power. It was a far cry from the go-go bars where the girls were relatively free agents. This was the ugly side of the Thai sex industry. He couldn’t afford to be angry in his predicament so he just smiled and said, “Another night would be better, thank you. We must sleep tonight as we have things to do in the morning.”
The man got up to leave. Then halfway to the door he stopped, turned around, and walked back and sat back down on the bed.“Do you want some boys? Nice young boys,” he said as he studied Carl and George closely.
“No thank you,” Carl told him pointing at George. “You see we have each other.”
The man looked at George and looked back at Carl. He had not thought they were a gay couple. He had just been doing his job when he offered them the boys. He shrugged his shoulders in acceptance that he could not expect everybody’s sexual preferences to be transparent to him even after all the years he had been opening and closing bedroom doors for them. Nothing surprised him anymore. Not in his line of work. He walked out of the room and closed and locked the door behind him.
George checked the door was thoroughly locked, then turned and said, “Phew, that was a close one.” Which got Carl laughing, followed by him coughing up raw whiskey that his laughter had made him swallow the wrong way. George started laughing as well and they both laughed like they had never laughed before until tears streamed down their faces. The man had unknowingly released the dense fog of tension that had been filling the room prior to his arrival. It felt good to laugh out loud. They felt alive.
They drank most of the whiskey then slept, drunk, with their clothes on under the mirrored ceiling.