The Blue Jungle (7)
"Bobby and Eriko. What are they doing here?"
Naomi is a struggling reporter in LA. Gangsters kidnap her because their boss thinks only Naomi knows what happened to his daughter.
He may be right: Naomi covers the porn industry, where all secrets lead to the king of sleaze, Bobby Feathers.
Paid subscribers get access to the audio of the author’s audio version of THE BLUE JUNGLE (released as a separate post). Plus access to all serials on Dark & Stormy, including GAIJIN COWGIRL and STAR FALL PEOPLE.
And now…
THE BLUE JUNGLE: CHAPTER SEVEN
NAOMI
From the thug’s grip, her arms pinned behind her, Naomi glimpsed Eriko rabbit over the edge of the sofa, ass and flip-flops squirming between screeching Thai whores.
“Let go of me!”
The crowd – diners, cocktail jockeys, waitresses – hummed to the initial throbs of danger. Rubbernecking first, then for those on the fringe, standing up, spilling their napkins, and ultimately, as Bug Eyes launched his interceptor onto a table, freaking out.
Then she was airborn, the wind stealing her scream. A thousand lights hove beneath her and the wind conspired to buoy her over the edge.
A low glass barrier saved her from the abyss but the crunch sure hurt.
Naomi creaked to her feet as the two bodyguards swarmed over karate-chopping Bug Eyes. To one side Bobby was waving his hands like a conductor trying to lead an orchestra of drunks.
The first wave of frightened tourists crashed around Naomi. They were surging for the stairs leading inside, to the exit. Eriko had gone the other way, toward the edge. Naomi pressed through the crowd, looking for the starlet.
There: on hands and knees, glancing up at Bug Eyes as he defended against high kicks and spinning roundhouses from Trat and the two bodyguards. Eriko scuttled out of Naomi’s sight.
Naomi worked her way through the crowd. The fight’s expanding geography turned more tourists into refugees. Waitresses and black-clad hosts were either running scared or gesturing useless assurances with upheld palms. One was sputtering into a walkie-talkie. Bar bouncers bounced down the stairs.
Bug Eyes’s battleswarm chainsawed through tables and overturned chairs, launched cutlery and smashed wine bottles. Toward the bar. Eriko was headed that way too, oblivious to the tornado bearing down. Naomi had to fall to her hands and knees too, desperate the find Eriko while she had the chance to lay claim.
The starlet slithered behind the bar just as Bug Eyes leaped onto it, a kick knocking a bodyguard free of some teeth.
Then Trat grabbed something from the bar and lunged.
Bug Eyes froze and his eyes extended even further. His face turned as crimson as his T-shirt. The chaos paused and the fleeing patrons sensed the fight’s paralysis.
Naomi saw Trat’s hand still holding the tip of the broken wine bottle that he had planted in Bug Eyes’s thigh.
Trat stood back, as though to appreciate the view of seeing his enemy collapse.
Bug Eyes didn’t fall. More than physical pain was driving the tension in his expression. An internal war raged in the killer’s mind.
Then he reached around his skinny waist and pulled out a fat pistol. His fury had triumphed over whatever caution had remained. Point-blank bang, one that defied the wind. The bullet had removed the top of Trat’s skull, but his wraparounds stayed on his face even as his corpse hit the ground.
The crowd, already scattering away from the fight, bleated in absolute terror. The stream pitched to a blind surge.
Bug Eyes had gone bug crazy. He squeezed his trigger once more, twice, and again. He didn’t see Eriko who had reached the furthest corner of the bar and was scrambling onto the thin glass partition.
No…
Naomi sprinted past the looming assassin. “Eriko-chan!”
The girl had gotten one ankle hooked onto one ledge and was leveraging her torso over the corner. She’d choose sixty-whatever stories over being taken home by Bug Eyes.
Naomi grabbed her wrist. It was like latching onto an angry cobra. The girl writhed and bucked but Naomi kept her from leaping. They toppled to a heap, Eriko on top, nose to nose, lips almost to lips. For a moment she forgot where she was.
The starlet untangled herself the quickest. Naomi grasped her ankle, tripping her escape, but Eriko kept going.
She sat up, her head spinning. The rooftop was emptying. Bug Eyes had finally fallen and lay in a jumble behind the bar, overwhelmed by the wound in his leg and all the blows he had suffered. The corposes of Trat and one of his men scarred the floor.
She weaved through the detritus. The restaurant’s furnishings had been completely upended. She looked over to Bobby’s table. Everyone had scattered except for Pimples, who was sitting on the furthest cushion, limbs akimbo, head upright and watching her.
She walked to him, calling his name. He seemed to be missing a shoulder – the white sofa was pooling with his blood from one of Bug Eye’s errant shots – and he was shivering.
“Hey,” she said gently, putting a knee on the seat beside him.
His eyes fluttered. He was crying. “I don’t wanna die.”
“You’re not going to die,” she said.
“I am. I am. I don’t wanna die.”
“Shh,” she said, feeling his forehead. He really was cold. He had also peed himself. Chilled blood, cooling piss. That was his end. That, with her.
“Mommy, I don’t wanna die.”
“Bobby and Eriko. What are they doing here?”
“Is that my blood? Oh God.”
“Look, an ambulance is coming. You’ll be okay. But more people are going to get killed if you don’t help me.”
“I’m dying here.”
“Does it hurt?”
“God that’s really my blood. I can’t move my arm. I can’t move anything.”
She stroked his red hair. The blood was pumping out of a hole where he once had a shoulder. It gurgled, as if in joy.
“Bobby and Eriko. Where do I find them?”
“I want my mommy.”
Naomi didn’t think. She picked up the heavy cigar lighter and pressed the base against the hole in his body, pushing up a ring of blood and muck. He screamed and she relented.
“What the fuck?” He seemed to see her for the first time.
“Bobby and Eriko. Where are they going, Pimples?”
“I’m dying and you…you…”
She raised the lighter.
“No, for God’s sake, no more, no more.”
“What’s Bobby doing in Bangkok?”
“Lining up a deal. Internet porn. Stuff...you can’t…”
“Where.”
“Poipet.”
“Where’s that?”
“I’m fucking dying.”
“Where’s Poipet?”
He was shaking now and Naomi looked around, realizing that she was torturing a dying man. There would be time to feel revulsion later. Some looks her way: Bug Eyes was clambering from beneath the bar. He grimaced and started to shuffle towards her, a wedge of glass still protruding from his leg.
“Oh no,” she said.
Bug Eyes was coming for her.
No time left. She pressed the lighter’s base down. Pimples screamed again.
“You fucking bitch!”
“Where’s Poipet?” She pulled the trigger, sending a jet of blue flame above his face. “Tell me before I burn you to hell.”
“Cambodia! It’s in Cambodia.”
She pulled away.
“Help me!” he gargled, spitting up blood. “Don’t leave me here. I’m dying, Jesus fuck!”
She touched his hand. It was a block of ice. He was trying to call out but he was drowning in his blood. Bug Eyes was lurching for her, like out of a zombie movie.
“Hang in there,” she said, grabbing her purse.
Pimples gurgled something but she was already mounting the stairs.
“Sato.” Bug Eyes sounded as exhausted as he looked.
“I had her,” she snapped. “You did this, not me.”
The killer looked around, as though noticing the carnage for the first time. She didn’t wait to learn what he thought of it.
The lifts had stopped working so she joined the crush siphoning through the emergency stairwell. Sixty-four floors in this madness – here goes.
The employees were barely in charge, as scared as the tourists, directing everyone toward the stairs, away from the elevators. She moved carefully in the throng, mindful of her bare feet and the horde of shoes shuffling around her. The shooting made the people jangly, but once they got past the initial grind at the firedoor, habit took hold and the flow became orderly. She heard a few bravado voices telling jokes in a polyglot. But some people cried.
After a few stories, the cinderblock mundaneness weighed down and the jokes tapered off. People just wanted to get out. Sixty-one. Sixty. Fifty-nine.
By the mid-fifties, the older and less fit ones began to stand to one side or sit down, causing knots that, once passed, led to faster descents. Naomi picked up the pace, her bare feet slapping on the hard and dirty concrete.
She strained to hear the rubber pit-pat of Eriko’s flip-flops.
Fifty-one…fifty…
She grew dizzy as she pushed past a family. The cool cement interior was heating up with all of those human exertions.
In the forties she met firemen. There was no fire but they were in full gear, carrying axes instead of a hose. At forty the crowd spilled out of the firewell, surging towards the change of elevator banks.
There were too many people to see if Eriko was among them. Naomi’s hunch: the girl hadn’t bothered to stick around with all of these older people. She turned around and banged back into the stairwell. Here goes again…thirty-nine…
That pitter-patter! She turned the corner and ran smack into Eriko. The surprise collision knocked them both into opposite walls. The girl had been running – back up?
“Eriko,” Naomi gasped, regaining her step first. The girl was getting up, eyes like alarm bells. “Wait.” She held up her hands, begging. “Please.” Let me at least catch my—
The girl bolted. Whatever had frightened her was more powerful than any appeal. She leaped the stairs Naomi had just descended and threw open the landing door leading to the overcrowded elevators.
Naomi heard footfalls below. Heavy and ponderous. Someone who had walked up forty storeys? She heard one step, pause, another step, pause, and again. Didn’t sound like more firefighters.
If Bug Eyes was shooting people up above, and he had a partner, then could that be…
She didn’t wait to find out. She chased after the girl, who had wormed her way through the pack toward an incoming elevator.
Naomi dived after her. “My sister,” she said, “excuse me…sorry, that’s my sister there…” She squeezed into the elevator as people angrily jostled for space. “There you are.”
The doors closed and she nestled beside the girl, who studiously ignored her as the elevator made its descent.
“Mr. Three won’t hurt you now,” Naomi told her in Japanese.
“What are you doing here?”
“They made me find you.”
“My father.”
“Yes.”
“He wants me dead.”
“No, don’t think that,” Naomi said. “He wants you safely back.”
Eriko snorted.
She put her hand on the girl’s arm. “Come with me. We’ll figure this out together.”
“Go to hell.” The girl said it sweetly, gently, keeping her voice under control in the crowd, but it made Naomi’s cheeks burn.
“It’s not safe on your own, Okada-chan. Please come with me.”
Eriko didn’t betray any surprise that Naomi knew her true name. She just said, “It’s only dangerous when you show up.” She glanced down at Naomi’s fingers on her arm. “You can hold me all you want, but when those doors open, I’m running.”
Floor numbers flashed into single digits. “I want to help you.” Nothing. “I said I want to help.”
The doors parted. “You want my red clam.” She pulled free and squirrled into the crowd, its tide carrying her away.
Naomi followed her into the ground-floor lobby, which was now full of policemen and soliders in camouflage uniforms toting machine guns. Flashers from police cars and firetrucks outside blazed through the glass walls. The cops and soldiers were guiding people to the exit.
The plaza outside was cast in strobe lighting from the emergency vehicles. Further down she saw taxis and tuk-tuks, awaiting the steady stream of fleeing tourists.
“Eriko!”
The girl stopped to turn. She looked back toward Naomi, and then her face collapsed into panic and she took off again. Naomi looked around, wondering what could have set Eriko off, and saw a fat Japanese man emerge from the next elevator. He wore a black suit and a white shirt, incongruous in the tropical Bangkok night. His hair stood up straight and was shaved into a perfect plateau. His thick arms pushed people out of his way.
Mister Eight. Sumo.
He looked right at her, then beyond her as a screech of tires filled the night.
A white Toyota careened into Silom Street, Bobby Feathers at the wheel, Eriko in the back, face framed in the rear window.
Naomi wondered if Sumo was going to pull a gun, like his partner had. Instead he leaned over, hands on his thighs, and watched the Toyota disappear. He must have been completely winded.
He walked outside and she followed into a world of sticky heat and sirens, sulfurous lamps washing color out of the street. The Chao Phraya River glimmered darkly like an Asian Styx.
“This is your partner’s fault,” she said.
Sumo turned, payback carved into his face, and Naomi suddenly regretted not having run the other way.
She retreated to State Tower and flattened herself against the wall as Mister Eight approached. He moved a hand behind his jacket, looking around to see if any cops were turned his way, and she knew he was going to pull his piece.
Then he had to stop because something was spat from the sky, landing between them with a whomp. The sidewalk bricks were loose and hinky, and when the thing impacted, it threw up errant stones. The bag of skin broke. Blood spread out from beneath the corpse.
They both halted in surprise. Sumo looked up the length of the skyscraper into the flares of the nighttime sky, then back down, and she realized it was his partner lying there on the ground, obliterated. No one would ever call him Bug Eyes again.
The impact got the cops’ attention. Uniformed officers ran her way, calling it in.
She took off into the shadows, Sumo on her heels, and she felt the bite of something sharp in her bare foot. She gasped and stumbled, knees landing hard, barely saved by her palms. Sumo closed in. She hopped out the alley’s other side and into a sulfur-lit street. She pogo-sticked as far across the street as she could before her exhausted leg lost its balance and down she went. Sumo burst from the alleyway but was blurred in a squelch of tires.
The car squealed to a halt right behind her, a streak of yellow, like a tongue of flame shielding her from Sumo.
The passenger door swooped open. Slick was at the wheel, composed, a Thai James Bond.
“Get in.”
Naomi crawled into the car. The Ferrari was built low, like a torpedo tube. The dashboard’s glow accentuated Slick’s matinee idol jaw.
“Thanks,” she said, closing the door.
“My pleasure.”
Sumo fell upon the windshield with his fists but they couldn’t break the glass.
The woof of the engine was impressive. Sumo vanished with surprising quickness.
James Bond drove with studied focus as the canyon walls blurred past. They came to the end of the lane. Cops everywhere, forming a blockade.
One came over, gesturing for the Ferrari to pull to one side.
The driver lowered his window. There was a quiet conversation with the policeman, whose features melted into something like apology. Up went the window and the engine made that amazing sound again. Slick waited a respectful moment, while they were still within sight of the police, before gunning it. They were on a bridge.
“Friends of yours,” she said.
He cocked his perfect head. “A lot of people know who I am.”
Although his voice had the singsong softness of the Thai language, it was a little harder, better grounded in English. He must have spent time abroad. Naomi, exhausted, wanted to let go and drift along the wavelengths of his voice.
“So, Risa.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What’s your real name?”
“What’s yours?”
“Boon Sucharbutra. You can just call me Boon.”
“Boon.”
“Your turn.” She knew she’d have to give it up, but it was nice, the way he prodded her with a smile.
“Naomi Sato.”
“Enchanté.”
Her aching body was happy to sink into the leather seat. Her mind tried to make sense of what had just happened.
The Ferrari ate up the bridge and they were on the other side of the Chao Phraya, a different part of the city. It was crowded, dinnertime still, but there were no traffic jams and Boon weaved through the streets with impunity.
“What now?”
“Well,” he said, “you look pretty banged up. So first we’ll get you cleaned and I’ll have someone take a look at you. And then we’ll get a proper dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m awfully hungry.”
She said to Boon, “Sounds great.” Which, despite everything, it did. The adrenaline of survival made her feel cocky. Or maybe having a gentleman rescue her in his Ferrari was a palatable fantasy, given the alternatives. His physical beauty wasn’t the same as her desiring him. No doubt many women did. But for Naomi, it was mesmerizing just the same.
He took a flyover and the buildings whizzed by. “This part of the city used to belong to another province called Thonburi. It was merged into Bangkok about ten years ago. But I suppose none of this interests you?”
“Just keep talking.”
“The name of this place, Thung Khru, means a field set within a larger area. You can’t translate it into English. It’s famous for its gardens and its canals. City people often come to this area to get a break from the concrete.”
His babbling lulled her. They were passing through wider spaces now, parks surrounded by street lamps. Joggers on the trails, a few modest restaurants or hawker stalls along the way. Temples illuminated with golden interior light softened the darkness.
He drove down a lane of high cement walls and a few anonymous gates, then stopped.
“There’s nothing here,” she said.
“I’m glad you think so.”
They waited. Two men near a gate that led to a modest shop house pulled it open. Boon drove through. The house was just a front. The walls fell away. It was dark but Naomi could appreciate they were on massive open grounds. The headlights slashed across tress and bridges mounting creeks. Small buildings dotted the landscape.
“I thought we were in the middle of the city. Or at least the suburbs.”
“Our property runs to where the Chao Phraya empties into the sea. Actually there’s nothing that way except a lot of mud. But here we’re on a little hill. Outside gets flooded but not here. Which is good because of the horses.”
The horses. Of course.
Perhaps she’d see the stables later. Before them loomed the mansion, a giant white wedding cake. It wasn’t exactly tasteful but it was certainly impressive. He spun the Ferrari around a fountain and came to a stop.
“Let’s get you taken care of.”
A uniformed valet appeared out of the darkness to open her door. Her foot hurt and the best she could do was hop and keep a hand on the car’s roof. Boon hurried around and slung her arm over his shoulder. He gave an order in Thai and the valet ran ahead as Boon helped Naomi towards the front steps. The porch was deep: on either end were old-fashioned artillery pieces, cannons.
“Just wait here.”
“I can manage.”
“Sit down and I’ll get you some water.”
A few minutes later Boon returned with a matronly woman pushing a wheelchair and a slight, middle-aged man. They were a nurse and a doctor, apparently permanently on call on the estate. The nurse helped Naomi into the wheelchair and pushed her inside. Naomi didn’t get a chance to see much, although the entrance area was large and lined with dark wood. Watching over it was a portrait of a white-haired man in an old-fashioned military outfit, the kind that went with his red sash.
They wheeled her into an elevator that descended to a corridor and into the doctor’s office. It looked like a doctor’s office anywhere: a gurney to sit on, a sink, a few instruments, and framed certificates on the wall. The doctor and nurse cleaned and wrapped the cut on her foot, and dabbed her lip with ointments. They made her take off her clothes so they could examine her for internal injuries. From what she could tell, she had earned a few bruises – big yellow spots on her hips and arms – and a cut lip, but that was it.
She sat in her underwear wondering what to do about her summer dress, all torn up. And she was without shoes – and without her purse, which had been lost on the rooftop. Along with her wallet, her California driver’s license, her credit card.
The door opened. It wasn’t the doctor or the nurse. It was Boon. Naomi had nowhere to go, so she faced him. “You should knock first.”
He didn’t hide his interest. “But then you’d put some clothes on.”
“That would be the idea, yes.”
He was carrying a small basket. “Try these. I hope they fit you. And there’s a towel here. You might want to take a shower too.” He put it on the gurney and waited by the door. “So no damage done, I’m told.”
“I’ve felt better.”
“Take your time. I trust you like fish. I’ve got a Merseult to go with it.”
The bathroom was around the corner. All black marble with stained glass windows, and a giant porcelain tub with bronze claw feet. Another time, she would have preferred to lose herself in a long hot bath. But her stomach growled and she knew she needed to stay alert, so she kept the shower quick and cold. He had given her a choice of clothes, dresses that didn’t quite fit. But Naomi found one deceptively simple number in dark green satin that hugged her curves without pinching. Its low back and miserly straps were not designed to accommodate bras, at least not her no-nonsense one, which she took off to avoid being ridiculous.
Time for dinner. She gave herself one last look in the mirror. How had she ended up here? Two hours ago she had almost been killed on the top of a skyscraper. Now she was in the mansion of a rich, self-assured scion. A man who dressed her like a lover. A man who had been doing business with Trat, the Thai thug – who was now dead – and with Bobby Feathers, whereabouts unknown.
A man with so much money and power, exuding class and charm, tied up with a sleazy American porn producer.
“You are very beautiful,” Boon said as he poured the wine. “But perhaps not in the way you are used to being told.”
Naomi cocked her head at an angle designed to suggest possibility. “Now you’ve got my interest.” She wanted to get him to talk, to try to figure out how what was going on behind that perfect, masculine doll’s face.
They were in the kitchen, a modern chamber of white and black tiles, brass lights suspended above the cooking island from tall, shadowed ceilings, and expensive kit imported from all over Europe. There was a formal table but instead they leaned over the island on stools, close and casual. Boon had dismissed the staff and it was just the two of them.
He handed her a crystal glass of wine and placed one finger on his lip, mirroring her cut.
She made a show of wincing. “I wouldn’t call this beautiful.”
“The flaw reminds us that the rest is flawless.”
“I disagree with that – but thank you.” The hokum just made her nervous but she felt powerless. There was only one way this evening was going to end so it might as well be civilized. “And so are you,” she said, in an attempt to summon Risa. “Beautiful.”
He accepted this with a modest smile. They tapped glasses and drank. The wine’s aroma was sweet but it tasted like one million very dry bucks.
“Although,” she said, admiring her drink, “so is this.” She set it on the table and leaned forward on her stool. “So what’s a man with all of this wealth and good looks doing with an ugly piece of work like Bobby Feathers?”
“You don’t really work for a Japanese production company, correct?”
“I’m actually a journalist.”
“A reporter. Please, have something to eat. You must be starving.”
Naomi eyed the spread, a simple collection of colorful Thai salads served cold. She didn’t need a fork or chopsticks to devour them all – she wanted to raise the plate up to her mouth and get to work. She forced herself to pluck daintily at a nest of glass noodles.
“You are investigating a story – about Bobby Feathers?”
“Yes,” she said.
“By posing as a Japanese pornagrapher?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“But Bobby and James already knew who you were. Your interest was actually the girl, wasn’t it?”
Naomi paused, but after what she had just been through, keeping her mouth shut no longer seemed important. “Her father heads one of Japan’s biggest crime syndicates. His name is Okada.”
“A yakuza with a daughter who is a porn star,” Boon said.
“Yeah. I guess it’s her way of rebelling against her father. He must have tried to get her to stop, because she ran away. She got herself to the U.S. by calling herself Eriko Tamaki, and disappeared. Okada strongarmed me into finding the girl, although I think he’s more worried about his reputation than about his daughter’s safety.”
“Why you?”
“I live in Los Angeles. I really am a reporter – covering the porn industry, which I guess sounds about as crappy as it is. Because I’m Japanese, though, I know a lot of people in the business from both sides of the Pacific. That’s why Okada thought I’d know how to find Eriko.”
“And you did.”
“Yeah, clever me.”
“I saw you intervene to save the girl from killing herself.” Naomi nodded, thinking maybe she should have let Eriko jump. Save everybody a lot of trouble. Boon touched her face, gently. “And I saw you getting hurt.”
She pulled his hand down. “And I’ve lost Eriko again, and if I don’t find her, the yakuza will kill me. So what business do you have with Bobby Feathers?”
“He was making inquiries about operating in Pattaya or across the border. He had gone to Trat, because Trat operates a variety of interesting and very lucrative businesses in those areas.”
“Trat’s the guy who got shot?”
“Sadly, yes. Trat was a trusted business partner.”
“He was a gangster, too. Just like Okada.”
Boon smiled. “But a Thai gangster, loyal to my family. Trat brought Bobby Feathers’ inquiry to me. I’m sorry his bodyguards were so rough with you.”
“They’re dead now,” she muttered. Exhaustion and fear caved in on her. She got the shakes, and when she attempted a sip of wine, she splashed the table. She wasn’t in the kitchen—she was on the roof of the skyscraper, being thrown by a man into space. Eriko was teetering on the corner of glass walls. Bug Eyes was shooting people. Pimples’ life was pouring out of him. And Eriko, having made her choice, was looking out the back window of the getaway car.
Naomi snapped back to the kitchen. Boon was beside her, holding her hands.
“Sorry,” was all she could muster.
“It’s all right,” he said. His hands warmed hers. He smelled like pinecones. But of course that was ridiculous, she thought. They don’t have pine trees in Thailand. “You’ve had a terrible night.”
“I’ve had worse hangovers,” her joke falling flat.
His hands gently lifted her chin. “Let me see this.” His thumb was careful not to brush against the swell. His fingers were long but masculine, and with gentle authority they shifted a lock of her hair behind the curve of her ear. The move startled her with its intimacy. She hadn’t let a man touch her like this…ever. Her only experience with them had been in front of a camera.
Risa slammed the door on Naomi’s stupid memories.
Boon had paused, sensing distance in her. Make this man happy, Risa commanded. She touched his fingers in her hair, twinning them in her own, and he smiled.
“Time for dessert,” he told her, leaning in for a kiss and she lowered her eyelids to receive it – then pulled back. “We haven’t had the main course yet,” she said.
“We haven’t?”
“Bobby Feathers and you.”
“My family has real-estate interests throughout the country, and across the border. Bobby wanted access to one of our properties. He was looking for a shelter to carry out unorthodox business, and he was smart enough to ask first. Most foreigners don’t, which gets them into trouble.”
“And what was your response?” Naomi the reporter asserted herself.
“I was prepared to decline.”
“Why?” She nibbled at her food, adding some distance from him.
“We don’t need the money and we certainly wouldn’t want the attention he could bring.”
“Why did Bobby think you’d say yes?”
“A generous cut. Ground-floor entry to a pioneering Internet business with international potential.” Boon sounded as though he was still considering it. “Gateway to new opportunities in America.”
“What is it about your property in particular that Bobby wanted?”
“It wasn’t the building itself. It was the location.”
“Thailand?” She didn’t want to blurt out the answer. She wanted Boon to confirm it.
“Technically, no.”
She shook her head. “That means…what exactly?”
He arched an eyebrow as he forked the row of sliced pork neck. “I thought you weren’t interested in Feathers.”
“Why are you?”
“Poipet,” he replied, chewing with an icy deliberation.
“In Cambodia,” she said.
“Technically speaking,” he hedged.
“That’s the second time you’ve used the word ‘technically’. Come on, Boon, what is it about this place?”
He sipped wine.
She asked, “Is it an island?”
“No.”
“Some kind of contested border area?”
“Not contested so much as unwanted. It’s across the Thai border and on any map would appear to be Cambodian territory. But the Cambodians don’t claim it. There is a strip of land, two hundred meters wide, that sits between the two countries’ immigration halls.”
Her swollen lip made eating awkward. The noodles shocked her with their spiciness. She sipped the wine but that didn’t help, and she began to tear. Boon pushed a bowl of steamed rice her way. “For the heat.”
“Thanks.” The plain rice did help. “So how come no one wants that land?”
“It suits interests on either side of the border. We are both Buddhist countries with laws that reflect Buddhist morality.”
“I get it. In a no-man’s land, you don’t have to obey the laws.”
“There’s no law to apply. Well, there is a rough sort of law, but not the government’s.”
She tried another salad. “Bobby Feathers produces pornography. So why is he going to Poipet?”
“I must admit, I don’t know. Westerners make plenty of dirty movies in Thailand already. Bangkok, Pattaya. It’s illegal but that hasn’t stopped anyone.”
“So what goes on in Poipet?”
“Casinos.”
“That’s it? No drugs or human trafficking?”
“The usual vices you’d associate with casinos are there. But Poipet exists for gambling, that’s all.” He leaned back on his stool. “My family has an interest in one of the casinos,” he said, so quietly she made him repeat it. “It’s called the Golden Fortune Resort.”
“So when an American movie maker comes into town asking about it, someone tells you,” she said.
“Yes. Our interest is…arm’s length. There’s a lot of money to be made there. Most of the gamblers are poor Thais who go there to lose what little they have. But there’s a growing international element. Money from Hong Kong, Indonesia. From China.”
“And you…”
“We make arrangements so their visits are comfortable and trouble-free.”
“Because…”
“It is lucrative. And because we don’t want any trouble either. You must understand, families such as mine, we have a responsibility to our country, to our people. We must help uphold order.”
While you’re making millions off extralegal earnings, but Naomi just asked, “Isn’t that the job of the police? The government?”
“I’m talking about a higher order than that.”
“Oh.” She had an idea of what that meant, and it scared her. “And what about you personally, Boon? Isn’t checking out a foreigner like Bobby Feathers a little, uh, menial for you? You know, like, it’s below your pay grade.”
He poured another glass. “How do you think a foreigner like Bobby Feathers knew to contact Trat?”
It hit her. “Eriko Okada.”
“Very good.”
“All this time you knew who she was.”
He set the bottle down. “We wanted to understand if she was representing her father. Bobby Feathers and whatever filth he gets up to are irrelevant. But the Okada family – that’s something.”
“Except it wasn’t. It was just the girl, who knew what names to drop.”
“But she can still be of use.”
“If you can return her safely to her father. But that could put me in danger, Boon, if Okada thinks I failed him.”
“I won’t let him,” Boon said. “There. I’ve served the main course. Now I think it’s your turn to do the dessert.”
Let me handle this. Risa again. We can still be in charge. With a sweep of her arm she sent dinner plates and wine glasses crashing to the tiled floor. His face lit up in delight. His hands seized her face and he kissed her with brutality, still tasting of Montecristo Number Five, mashing against her swollen lip.
The countertop was hard against her back. His hands yanked down the dress that would not accommodate bras, and he set about devouring her. She folded her legs against her chest, letting her thoughts wander to her practical, unsexy panties loose around an ankle. One foot was nude, the other bandaged. She tried to think of the blonde author, or Eriko, but the images didn’t match the experience. His coupling turned savage, his hand a vice around her breast, but her yelp only encouraged him and he reached for her throat. She didn’t so much wriggle against him as squirm, until her heels were pounding on his shoulders, begging him to stop.
Only after he had finished with her did she notice the blood seeping from beneath the gauze, jarred loose by the force of her kicks.
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