Her room had all the asian five-star bells and whistles: teak floors, Chinese black lacquer console and dresser, stylish modern beige leather chairs with expansive footrests, a desk with a leather captain’s chair, and a king-size bed with a brilliant white duvet so plush it looked as if it could swallow her whole. The bathroom was all mirror and glass and marble, the walk-in shower large enough for six people. All the room lacked was the quiet dignity of the Mandarin.
Ava showered and climbed into bed in a T-shirt and panties. She extracted from her wallet the paper with Frank Seto’s U.K. phone numbers and called his cellphone. It was late afternoon in London.
“Frank Seto,” he said on the second ring.
“Ava Lee.”
“I was told to expect a call from you.”
“Thanks for taking it.”
“My father-in-law and your father have been friends for many years.”
“So I’m told. I’m calling about your brother.”
“I have three brothers.”
“Jackson.”
“He is one of them.”
Ava knew then that whatever cooperation she got would be grudging. “I’m trying to locate him,” she said.
“Why?”
“I have a client who has a business relationship with Jackson. There are some outstanding issues that need to be resolved and he hasn’t been able to reach him. He hired me to help.”
“And what makes you think I would have any interest in Jackson’s business dealings?”
“I haven’t made that assumption.”
“And what makes you think I would have any idea how to reach him?”
“He is your brother.”
“In name only,” he said sharply. “We have nothing in common. He’s been a problem for our family for many years.”
“Yet you introduced him to Andrew Tam?”
“Shit, that was completely incidental. Andrew and I were having lunch when Jackson came into the same restaurant. Believe me, I’m not in the habit of hooking up Jackson with my friends or business associates.”
“He’s burned some of them?”
“He burns everyone, sooner or later. He can’t help himself.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” she said. “It must be difficult for someone in your position.” He didn’t respond, and she knew she had gone off mark. “Anyway, Frank, I would be grateful if you could help me find him.”
“Weren’t you listening? I have no idea where he is or how to get in touch with him.”
“Would your brothers?”
“No, and neither would my mother, so your enquiries should end with me.”
“I had a Seattle address for him, but the place is vacant,” she said.
“The last address I had for him was in Boston, not Seattle.”
“How many years ago was that?”
“At least five.”
“I also had a Hong Kong address for him, in the Wanchai district. Again it came up empty.”
“We were all born and raised in Wanchai, but the rest of us escaped. He keeps going back. He likes grunge, I guess. But I’ve only known him to stay in hotels there.”
“Any particular one?”
“No. He’s strictly a two- or three-star-hotel kind of guy, and you know how many of them there are in Wanchai.”
“Do you have a phone number for him?”
“This is the number I have,” he said, and gave her the same cellphone number she had been trying to reach for days.
“Well, I guess I’ve run into another dead end,” she said.
“There isn’t much I can do about that.”
“Evidently not. Well, anyway, thanks for taking my call.”
“Make sure you tell your father that I did,” he said.
“Are you always this rude?” she shot back.
“My brother brings out the worst out in me,” he said, and cut off the connection.
Ava turned her attention to the Antonelli file and began to read it in detail. He was now her primary interest. She had hoped she would be able to work her way around him, to avoid alerting Seto that they were coming after him and the money. Now she would have to go after him directly.
The file was quite detailed. Given the short notice, Uncle’s Thai friends had done a remarkable job of using his passport to track his movements. The first official sighting of Antonelli in Thailand had been six years before. He had landed at the old Bangkok airport, got a six-month tourist visa, and then gone to southern Thailand, to the city of Hat Yai, in Songkhla Province near the Malaysian border, and checked into the Novotel Hotel. The visa was renewed six months later in Malaysia. A note in the file said that Antonelli probably drove there from Hat Yai — about an hour away — crossed the border, and then re-entered Thailand. It was all legal. Over the next eighteen months he renewed the visa three more times, flying back to Atlanta each time. On each trip to the U.S. he didn’t stay more than a week.
The Novotel had his passport on file for two years. It appeared that he had been involved in business with a fish processing plant in Hat Yai, but when the Muslim terrorists in southern Thailand targeted the city — the largest in the area, with a population of about a million people — and began blowing up hotels and shopping malls, Antonelli moved north to Bangkok. He stayed at an apartment hotel on Petchburi Road for the first three months and then moved three blocks to the Water Hotel. He had been there ever since.
After five months in Bangkok, his name showed up on two official documents. The first was a work visa through Seafood Partners. The second was a document registering him as a minority shareholder in the company; its majority shareholder was, as required by law, a Thai. The Thai owned a separate shrimp and fish processing plant, Siam Union and Trading. Ava assumed that the Thai’s shares in Seafood Partners were a sham, declared simply to enable Antonelli and Seto to do business in the country. Over the next two years, Seafood Partners shipped multiple containers of shrimp to the U.S. and became embroiled in dispute after dispute about short weights, mixed grades, and excess glaze.
The company also became an importer, buying whole grouper and snapper from India, the Philippines, and Indonesia, processing the fish, and exporting it to the U.S. The only problem was that it bought according to terms and paid well for only about six months. Then the company stopped paying invoices and started making complaints about every quality issue imaginable. Eventually the lawsuits were flying. Seafood Partners fought every claim, confident that time, cost, and the complications involved in cross-border legal action would discourage the exporters. They were right. One by one, the lawsuits disappeared.
But the Thai Department of Fisheries did not go away. All the quality issues related to the shrimp exports caught its attention. After a cursory examination, the department cancelled the licence of the processor, Siam Union and Trading, leaving Seafood Partners, even though it was the exporter of record, untouched.
Next Antonelli flew to Atlanta for what looked like six months. He seemed to have returned when they landed the Major Supermarkets business. Ava couldn’t believe that Major Supermarkets had actually given them that business. Where was their due diligence?
She read on. Antonelli maintained a Thai bank account with a balance that rarely exceeded a hundred thousand baht, about three thousand dollars. His hotel bills were paid with a Visa credit card issued by a U.S. bank. His car and driver had been paid for by Siam Union, and when that company left the scene, by the same Visa card used to pay the hotel bill.
There was no mention of Seto in the file, not in reference to the formation of Seafood Partners or in the lawsuits. She now wished she had asked the Thai police to run a casual check on him. At the very least she would have found out how often he came and went, and where he stayed when he was in Bangkok.
One thing that caught her eye was Antonelli’s cellphone number, which had a Thai area code. She made a mental note to ask Arthon the next day if he had any way to access calls made to and from that number.
At the back of the folder were copies of the assault complaints filed with the police against Antonelli. None of them had remained active for very long. Ava leafed through them and stopped before the end. It was like reading sadomasochistic pornography. She wondered what the wife in Atlanta would think about his habit of beating up defenceless women and boys. Then again, maybe she knew.
The bedside clock said it was almost midnight. Ava tried to convince herself that she was tired and slipped under the covers. Fifteen minutes later she got up, put on her linen slacks and a clean Brooks Brothers shirt, and went downstairs to Spasso, which was one level below the hotel lobby. During the day and into the early evening, Spasso was the Hyatt’s Italian restaurant. After 9 p.m. it began its transition to nightclub. Tables were cleared, the bandstand was set up, the bar was fully staffed, and security manned the door. It was one of the most popular high-end clubs in Bangkok, and Ava knew it would be going full blast until at least 2 a.m.
When she walked in, the place was jammed with the usual mix of young farang professionals — residents and tourists — and Thai girls on the make. This wasn’t a place for backpackers. It also wasn’t a place for bar girls from Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza, or Patpong, the three most popular downmarket night spots in a city that advertised in-your-face sex clubs, night markets, lurid shows, and cheap by-the-hour hotel rooms for farangs who were squeamish about taking the bar girls back to their own hotel. The Thai girls at Spasso were amateurs, part-timers, teachers and students and the like, trying to make a few extra dollars and hoping, just hoping, to hit the jackpot — a farang boyfriend who would send monthly financial support when he got back home to North America or Europe, and who might give her the blue-eyed baby that had become a status symbol among these girls.
The foreigners in the club weren’t all from the West. Ava saw some Japanese, a few Koreans, and a cluster of what looked like wealthy, hip Arabs. None of them were a natural attraction for the girls; they homed in on the Westerners. The Japanese and Koreans wouldn’t get any action until the girls had explored all their Western options and found them wanting. The Arabs would have to wait as well, and they weren’t being patient about it. One of them had ordered a large tub filled with ice and about forty shooters in test tubes. He held a shooter in each hand and waved at the girls to come and take what they wanted. He was getting the odd nibble but was having trouble getting the girls to stay.
Ava found a small table at the back of the club as far as possible from the stage, which had a set of drums and two guitars on it. To one side, propped on an easel, was a sign that read MANILA MAGIC. She groaned. Filipino cover bands were an Asian cliche. There wasn’t a five-star hotel anywhere in Asia that didn’t have one playing. The noise level in the room was already deafening; she could hardly imagine what the band would add to it.
She ordered a glass of white wine and sat back, content to dissect the action, trying to figure out who was going to get lucky. She could feel eyes turn in her direction. She ignored them, discouraging attention.
The band came onstage — three guys on the instruments and two female singers — and broke into a pretty horrid rendition of “Proud Mary.” As she watched, a blonde crossed her line of sight. From the distance she looked about thirty. She wore black silk pants and a green silk blouse.
The blonde worked her way through the crowd towards Ava, and the closer she got the faster Ava’s interest waned. She was closer to forty than thirty, and she had heavy thighs and a big ass.
“Hi, I’m Deborah,” she said. “Can I join you?”
Ava hesitated and then realized she wouldn’t mind the companionship. “Sure, but I’ve got to tell you right off the top that you’re not my type.”
The woman looked flustered. “I’m sorry, I thought you were — ”
“I am, but you’re still not my type. Sit down anyway.”
“This is a tough place for girls like us,” Deborah said, holding her own glass of white wine.
“Where are you from?”
“Washington, D.C. You?”
“Toronto.”
“Here on business?”
“Yes, and you?”
“Same.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Here.”
“Me too. This is my first trip to Bangkok, and I can’t fucking believe how great these hotels are, how great the service is.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Another five days.”
“Well, Spasso is not where you should be. These girls are focused on farang cock. They’re all very entrepreneurial, and they know that’s where the money is.”
“So where should I go?”
“Over on Royal City Avenue — RCA — there are a couple of bars you might enjoy. One is called Nine Bar; the newest one is Zeta. I liked Zeta last time I was here. Most of the girls are young — you know, early twenties — and some of them are just figuring things out, still experimenting, enthusiastic and eager as hell but lacking technique. They would take to a woman like you.”
“Are they bar girls?”
“No, not really. They don’t expect to get paid. Mind you, if you slipped them twenty or thirty dollars they would appreciate it. But it isn’t necessary.”
“Would I have any problems if I went by myself? I mean, at home I’m quite circumspect. Dyke bars aren’t my thing.”
“No problems.”
“Is it close?”
“Ten minutes by taxi. But then in Bangkok everywhere is ten minutes by taxi, according to the drivers, unless of course there’s traffic,” Ava said and smiled.
“Thanks. I have to work early tomorrow morning, so I’m going to head out,” Deborah said.
“The girls will still be there tomorrow night,” Ava said.
“Can I buy you a drink before I go?”
Ava shook her head. “No, I think I’m finally getting tired enough to go to bed. And besides, if I have to listen to another Filipino cover band murder Shania Twain, I think I’ll go crazy.”