The Blue Jungle (8)
A noir novella in 10 chapters. "I have to be the one to find Eriko.”
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.
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And now…
THE BLUE JUNGLE: CHAPTER EIGHT
NAOMI
He drove her back in a black Audi RS4, the machine’s quiet power slaloming through Bangkok traffic with ghostly confidence. For a while he let her silently watch the city gather. Soon they were in Bangkok, on giant Sathorn highway, the artery hardening with traffic.
She had assumed he’d just dump her in the street, or at best call her a cab. She didn’t believe he’d really try to defend her against Okada. But he seemed to have enjoyed her. She still had bruise marks on her throat from where he had choked her while her heels pounded his shoulders. After that, was there any shame in being dropped off at a cheap hotel on a street of red lights?
She hadn’t sold her body so much as saved her own skin. And if he wanted to drive her back, then let him. She wasn’t through here, and she was going to need all the help she could...earn.
She said to Boon, “That Japanese who fell. Okada called him Mister Three.”
“I can find out his real name.”
“That doesn’t interest me. He and Mister Eight killed my friend back in L.A. They sent me photos of what they had done to her. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“So it seems you’ve got a problem.”
“I have to be the one to find Eriko,” she said.
“I’ll tell Okada you deserve partial credit.”
They progressed through the city, tunneling below the cavernous skyscrapers and past the crowds thronging the market streets. Bangkok pulsated outside their dark, air-conditioned bubble. The Audi prowled along the noisy festival of Sukhimvit, and she let the spectacle distract her.
Boon said, “I’ll have to attend to family business today. I can’t take you to the border. The best I can do is have one of my men drive you there. And then I will find this Mister Eight and anyone else in Bangkok working for Okada, and I’ll make sure they don’t bother you.”
“I lost everything tonight – all my money, my cards.” For starters.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He turned off the highway and down a city lane. “Is this you?”
They were crawling through the girlie bars. The red-light zone extended for blocks in all directions. Traffic here was slow, tuk-tuks and taxis dropping men off and waiting for fares. Women wearing more makeup than clothes were everywhere, on the streets, adorning the doors and windows.
“Yeah, this is me,” she said, spying her hotel down the street.
The Audi pulled up to the entrance. Naomi hesitated before getting out. “I need to take a shower first. That okay?”
He checked his watch. “Half an hour.”
The room had been tossed. Her belongings were strewn everywhere. The furniture had been gutted by a knife and blobs of yellow stuffing from the mattresses and cushions lay about like tumbleweed. Most of her clothes had been ripped apart.
She was too tired to say anything. She wasn’t even surprised.
She showered and picked up a few pieces of clothes that were intact. Then she realized what else she had lost with her purse: the Kyocera. Fortunately her Japanese passport had been locked in the room’s safe, and Okada’s hitmen hadn’t found a way to molest it.
But now she didn’t know how she’d ever be able to alert Sumo once she tracked Eriko down again.
Of course, she didn’t have any illusions now. Sumo might kill her even if she delivered the girl to him. But she didn’t feel like she had any choice. She’d have to find the starlet before Boon did, and hope.
As for the driver’s license and her credit card…she had a feeling she wouldn’t need those again.
Naomi suddenly felt the weight of everything.
“Meredith,” she said, but she was done with crying.
She packed her meager possessions and walked downstairs and out of the hotel. Boon was leaning against his Audi. Another Thai man in a blue suit stood nearby, hands crossed patiently in front.
One of the night managers chased her from the hotel but Boon said a word and handed him a wad of baht, and the man went back inside.
She didn’t bother thanking him again.
“He’ll take you,” Boon said, referring to the man in the blue suit.
“Okay,” she said. “I need money too.”
Boon handed her more cash. “I shouldn’t be handing you money in this neighborhood. I have a reputation, you know.”
She wasn’t in the mood for his joke, if that was what it was. She just pocketed the bills. “I should go now.”
“His car is just over there. He doesn’t speak English, I’m afraid. Come here.”
She kissed him on the cheek and he grabbed her ass as he found her mouth, and then he opened the door to his Audi.
The hotel man came running back out, calling to her and waving a thick envelope.
“Now what,” she sighed.
Boon intercepted the package. “It’s got your name on it.” He passed the envelope to her. She saw her name scrawled in big, loping Roman letters.
Seeing her hesitate, he said, “Fine, I’ll open it.”
“No, wait.” She knew it must have been left for her by Sumo, but her protest came too late. “Don’t.”
Boon had already ripped the seal. A plastic DVD case fell onto the car’s roof.
Shit.
He turned it over and saw Risa Nakamura on the cover.
He handed it to her. “From Okada?”
She nodded without touching it. “Twisting the knife. So now you know.”
“So you’re not a reporter after all.”
“I did those movies in Japan. But I quit. In America, I really am a reporter. Just a reporter.”
“What we did – was that a performance too?”
“No, Boon,” she lied.
“You’ve been with many men.” He grinned. “How’d I stack up?”
Like a monster. But he might enjoy being told that. “You were the prettiest,” she said, snatching the DVD case from his hand.
“Pretty?”
“You were great. Really.”
She walked toward the man in the blue suit, burying the evidence in her bag. Boon sauntered behind as they walked to the waiting Kia. “Great like how?”
She kissed him to shut him up. “What, still worried about your reputation, after what you did to me?”
That did the trick. She threw her bag in the backseat. Boon had something else for her. She almost protested but he simply handed her a cell phone. “If you find Bobby or Eriko, call me.”
“How about if I need an emergency lift out of there?”
He smiled. “The only number I left on this phone is mine. Hey.”
She looked at his hand around her arm.
“I’m not done with you,” he said as she closed the door.
Bangkok’s johns and whores acted out their nightly pantomine. Massage parlor signs painted Boon’s face a bloody crimson. She faced ahead.
“Be careful what you wish for, Boon.”
The border was four hours away.
The speedy highway delivered them to a small town, an emerging matrix of low-built concrete buildings coldly lit by fluorescent lights. A steady flow of tuk-tuks, cars and pick-up trucks congealed along the road, their lights illuminating a rising cloud of dust.
Buses pulled into the road from a station alongside. The familiar sign of a 7-11, brightly lit, silhouetted a line of skinny men.
The driver idled the car near the bus station. Beggar girls surrounded them, flagging their dirt-covered magazines and wilted marigolds.
She got out and the driver took off without warning. She watched the Kia disappear in a cloud of dust.
She ate junk food from the 7-11 and waited on the steps. When enough time had passed, she joined a small queue of Western backpackers and Thai peasants dreaming of slot machines. They traversed a bridge over a litter-strewn creek. Ahead loomed a square gate arch topped by three pagodas. The road here was just a wide boulevard of unpaved dirt, beaten flat by the traffic.
Beyond loomed a multi-storied, sprawling white structure, one of the casinos. Dark and ragged Cambodian children surrounded her, the hive humming with extended palms and grabby fingers. Naomi hoisted her suitcase above her head and broke through their mass.
Tall buildings loomed over the white structure, glass and steel towers heedless of the squalor below. Beyond them would be the official Cambodian immigration hall.
The unpaved street flowed with desperados beneath footbridges linking the casinos. Poipet Resort Casino. Diamond Slot Club. Grand Diamond City Casino. A Lexus pulled into one of the parking lots, past the Thai punters shuffling on foot.
Bobby and Eriko would be in one of these places. It felt like their kind of town.
Ahead was immigration into official Cambodia. That wasn’t her destination. She turned around, looked past the murder of beggars, and headed for one of the hotels.
The lobby café was a far cry from the five stars promised on the shiny plaque by reception, but the Golden Fortune Resort had little competition to fret over.
Naomi didn’t have a plan beyond getting a proper late breakfast. The Western fare looked greasy and wan, so she opted for fried rice. The café, with its cheap wooden tables and uncomfortable cushioned booths, was quiet; the hotel’s customers were all congregated in the casino hall.
Naomi finished eating and pulled her luggage back to the marbled lobby. The receptionists wore polyester emerald uniforms. They didn’t speak English. Naomi wrote down Bobby and Eriko’s names and any aliases she could think of, including Okada, but the hotel had no record of any of them. She tried James Exeter a.k.a. Pimples, she tried Duke, she even tried Naomi Sato and Risa Nakamura. Zero.
She spent the morning trying the other hotels but came up empty. Each hotel entrance involved checking her bag through an X-ray machine, which after a while added to the frustration. By lunchtime she was sweaty and exhausted.
Nothing to do now but wait. She returned to the Golden Fortune.
Bobby had probably never come here at all. The gunplay had convinced him that whatever scheme he and Eriko were cooking wasn’t going to happen. They were probably halfway over the Pacific by now. Naomi had come up empty, which meant returning to L.A. and starting over, if such a thing were at all possible.
She checked her cash. Boon had given her enough to pay for a couple of nights.
The idea of spending another minute in this shithole made her feel nauseous. She could just get out of here, go anywhere. America. Japan. Anywhere.
Meredith. Okada’s threat. The DVD? These guys would never leave her alone. She had to force the bile of frustration down.
It was lunchtime and the punters thronged the lobby of the Golden Fortune, forming an unruly line to attack the buffet. There was a rush-hour long line for reception, mostly Thais and some rough-looking Chinese men holding little clutch bags. The last person in the line was a tall white man – he must have had two feet on her – wearing aviator sunglasses. The back of his sleeveless top read ‘Bendigo Bombers’ over bright blue and yellow striped bars. He carried a men’s leather holdall gym bag.
Resigned to a tedious wait, she rolled her luggage to the back of the queue, behind Bendigo Bombers. His black hair and dark complexion gave him an indeterminate look from somewhere between Mexico and Greece.
She would have welcomed the chance to hear English, but didn’t want to make herself visible.
A bellboy bent down to take the man’s holdall.
“Leave it, mate,” the man drawled, and the bellboy withdrew his hand without a smile. The bellboy stepped towards Naomi, reaching for her wheelie.
“No thanks,” she said. For a moment the youth looked unsure what to do. He looked around and sauntered away into the crowd.
“Bloody retard.” The man looked down at her, his eyes hidden. “He try to pinch your bag too?”
“Isn’t he the bellboy?”
“First time I saw anybody lift a finger in the twenty-four hours I been here.”
“You think he’s a thief?”
“Reckon.” He was checking her out shamelessly. “Canadian? Yank?”
“Japanese.”
“But you sound like a Yank.”
“I live in California now.”
“Right. And naturally you’re just passing through Poipet, the armpit of Southeast Asia.”
“Naturally.”
He extended a lanky bare arm. “Lucas. From Australia by way of Bangkok.”
She shook his hand. “Naomi.”
The crowd advanced and they moved close to the desk.
“So you’re on your way out?” she asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“I’m not staying. I’m just, uh, looking for a friend.”
“Now that doesn’t sound suspicious at all. Not in a beautiful place like this.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, it’s kind of messed up.”
“If your friend is keen to hit the tables, my advice is you fold your hand. The only thing I learned coming here is that there’s actually no reason to ever come to Poipet.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on staying.”
She said it with a note of finality and Lucas fell quiet, but then he turned around again. “And there is no poker here. I hit every casino. Only the Golden Diamond has poker, two tables in one of the VIP rooms. It’s no questions asked, no ID or anything. About the only thing they want to know is it’s gonna be whisky or beer. But the rake, get this, the rake is five percent.” He shook his head in disgust. “Unbeatable, five percent. No real poker player would ever put up with that. Those punters up there…bloody drongos.”
She pointed her nose towards the desk. “Your turn.”
“Right.” Lucas leaned over the desk. He settled his bill with a fistful of Thai baht. As he waited for the receptionist to print out a receipt, he said to Naomi, “I’m headed back to Bangkok, if you want a lift.”
Naomi hesitated. Was there any way out…
Lucas sensed her pause. He raised his shades, exposing dark eyes raccoon-ringed by pale skin. “I’m a gent,” he added with a wink.
She said, “I need to find my friend.”
“Your friend, right.” He lowered his shades. “Well, Naomi-san, it’s been a pleasure but this Aussie is cashing out.”
“Bye,” she said as he headed for the exit, and she felt stupid all over again.
Stupid times ten, because to her surprise the hotel was fully booked. She tried asking for the manager, thinking she’d drop Boon’s name, but the impatient Thais behind her overwhelmed her at the desk and she dragged her luggage away, fuming.
She hurried after Lucas. The outside heat was greasy, the skies graying. A storm was coming. She hurried past bellhops in cheap leprachaun outfits who loitered by stacks of suitcases and golf bags they weren’t taking inside.
Who would come here for golf?
She walked down the long curving drive to the dirt lane. Lucas was waiting with arms folded. “You look lost,” he said.
“I’m not lost, exactly,” Naomi replied, still thinking that no one would come here for golf. There were no golf courses here that she could see.
“It’s none of my bizzo, but you’re not with your friend and this is no place for a lady on her own.”
Golf bags were a great way to smuggle things into hotels other than irons and woods. Such as cameras, lights, microphones and a mixing board. In golf-crazy Japan, it was a standard ruse for porn producers who wanted access to a hotel room. No hotel would condone shooting on their premises, but neither would their staff ever question a group of men traveling with a load of golf equipment.
“You really want to help me?”
Lucas shrugged, hands extended.
Naomi gestured toward the bellboys. “I need you to distract them. For as long as you can.”
“Interesting,” Lucas said, walking up to her. “Tell you what. I scratch your back, princess, and you tell me what’s really going on. Deal?”
She smiled. “Deal.”
She followed him up the sloping driveway. Lucas walked over to one of the bellboys, exaggerating his gestures. Naomi slipped behind them to the stack of golf bags. She unzipped one on top.
Golf clubs. Irons.
Lucas was swinging his arms, trying to fix the bellboys with a tale of grand injustice. She unzipped the next bag and a plastic tube of golf balls fell out. They skittered everywhere and the leprechauns turned from Lucas to her.
She knelt to unzip one of the bags in the middle of the stack. The bellboys were rounding on her, one on either side of the wall of luggage. Naomi frantically sought the zippers for one, two, three more bags before the young men physically accosted her, each taking an arm and marching her toward the car ramp. Her laughter must have flummoxed them. Peeking from inside one of the golf bags was a Canon XL-1 video camcorder.
The bellhops sullenly repacked the guest items she had let fall to the ground. “Sorry,” she said.
Lucas sauntered up from the road. “Everything all right?”
“Put your arm around me,” she whispered, slipping one hand around his waist. His bare arms were sweaty but she rested her head on his chest. Loudly, she said, “I just thought those were our bags, honey.”
“Er, yeah,” Lucas said. “I mean, no, our stuff’s in the room already.” His arm felt like a seatbelt.
“Then let’s go up,” she said.
“Good idea.” He smirked at the bellboys and they headed back to the entrance, he with his holdall and she pulling her wheelie. “I don’t suppose we ought to have a pash,” he said, moving his lips close to hers.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Once inside the lobby, he took her arms in his hands, gently, and said, “This is great, but I think I’ve now earned a little information.”
Naomi looked around. No one was paying them attention any longer. The lobby felt torpid. Lunch was over and the action had returned to the gaming halls.
“I’m looking for a friend, a Japanese girl,” she said. “She’s in trouble. She’s here with an American man and a film crew.”
“A film crew?” Lucas smirked. “Either they’re investigative journalists or…”
“Or they’re using the rooms here for their own purposes.”
“Right. Got it. So let me guess. You’ve come all this way to get your mate. Is she like the bloke’s bird or is she, um, a performer?”
“Maybe both.”
Lucas removed his aviators. “Reckon you’ve got yourself a partner, Naomi. I don’t have to be in Bangkok till tomorrow.”
“What do you do, Lucas?”
“I play poker.”
“I mean professionally. For a job.”
“I play poker. Last year I came in fourth in the World Series of Poker. Vegas has always been good to me. But lately I’ve found some of these Asian places can be a goldmine. You just have to get on a VIP table in Macau with a couple of corrupt Chinese cadres new at this kind of thing – they think getting lucky is smarter than knowing percentages. But like I said, Poipet ain’t that kind of place.” He smiled. “What do you do?”
“I’m a reporter in the U.S.”
“Don’t write about me, okay? I wouldn’t want to spook any of these guys.”
“That’s a promise.” She looked out the windows. The bellboys were on the move, carrying the golf bags inside. “It looks like they just checked in.” But there was no sign of Bobby or Eriko in the lobby. “I need to found out what room they’re in. I tried their names, but they’re not registered. They must be using aliases.”
Lucas went quiet for a moment. They watched the bellboys shift the golf bags and a few pieces of luggage to a spot near the elevators.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” he said.
“I don’t suppose you can follow them and get me a room number?”
“No worries. But then what?”
“Then I have to get inside that room.”
“Will they let you in?”
Naomi nodded. “Yeah, I think they will.” She gazed up at the tall Australian. “I’d feel more comfortable, though, if I knew you were nearby.”
“Can this fella make trouble?”
“His name is Bobby Feathers. Yes, he can make trouble.”
Lucas let out a ponderous exhalation. “I’ve had my share of barroom biffs, but I’m a gambler, not a bodyguard.”
“I think if you just look, uh, tall like that, it might be enough.”
“I’m your man.” He gave her a wink. “Hang on.” They watched as the bellhops loaded the golf bags onto a bronze trolley. One of them pressed the elevator button. “Kiss me for luck,” he said.
He didn’t give her an option. He put his hands on her again and bent down. Naomi shifted her face so his lips got her cheek. She pecked him and pulled back. “Better hurry,” she said.
Lucas lowered his sunglasses and sauntered over to the two bellboys as they pushed the trolley into the elevator. It was obviously too crowded for the tall foreigner but he smiled and said something, probably flippantly, as he wedged himself inside. The bellboys frowned but couldn’t do more once Lucas was upon them. The doors closed.
Naomi folded her arms and waited. She wasn’t sure if getting this stranger involved was a good idea. He wasn’t shy about his intentions. It was a poor bet on the gambler’s part. But for the time being she knew she’d have to bluff him along.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Bobby and Eriko weren’t here: that the camera was a canard. It could belong to a rich Thai or a Chinese, perhaps the kind of man with so much money, gained howsoever, that it made them careless. This entire place was sloppy.
Outside, the darkness had crept up. The blue skies were already turning overcast, bleeding the light’s warmth. Her mind juggled Bobby and Eriko and Meredith and Boon and a brash Australian keen to get inside her panties.
The light died outside: when night struck, its victory was immediate. She started to feel conspicuous, standing in the lobby for such a long period of time as the casino lights rippled to life. The staff behind the front desk looked her way.
Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. A Cambodian woman in a cheap-looking Chinese cheongsam, sides slit up to her waist, asked her if she wanted to order something from the lobby menu.
It took another five minutes for her Perrier to appear with a glass. She unscrewed the cap, too nervous to care about the lack of service, and Lucas plopped into the seat beside her.
“Where’d you go?” she asked a little too hotly.
“Took the stairs,” he said, breathing hard.
“And?”
“Mind?” He reached over and poured a slash of water into the glass. He kept the bottle for himself and drank it, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Lucas let out a loud ahh.
Naomi forced down her impatience. “So where are they?”
“Your boy’s a big spender. Top floor, presidential suite. Room twenty-six oh two.” He mopped his face with the cocktail napkin. “The bellboys wouldn’t believe me if I said that I was going to that floor. So I took the lift to 25 and the fire stairs up. There was one room door open, so I figured that was where they were unloading the luggage. I went over, right, and saw the room number, twenty-six oh two.”
“And?”
“And I peeped my head in. Sure enough there was one of the bellboys. He spotted me and I didn’t want to wait for the lift, so I hoofed it back to the stairs.”
Naomi knew she needed to be grateful. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t suppose you saw anyone else there? Heard anything?”
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“You think the bellboy said anything? About seeing you?”
“No idea.”
“Well, it probably doesn’t matter.” She had already made up her mind. “I’m just going to have to go up there. If it’s not Bobby, so what? I’ll just say sorry, wrong room.”
“And if it is him?”
Naomi said, “He’s not the one I’m worried about.”
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