NINE
About two dozen high-backed wooden stools with gray seat cushions faced the narrow, L-shaped counter. I slid onto an empty stool and looked around. A small vase of flowers sat on the counter next to a stainless steel water pitcher and a bottle of chili sauce. The flowers were plastic, but somehow they still looked tried and bedraggled. I knew just how they felt.
Took Lae Dee is really nothing more than a little food-service counter stuck up at the front of an all night Foodland where a lot of foreigners shop. Its name translates from Thai as “cheap and good.” At least, it does if you pronounce it right. Since few foreigners struggling with Thai can manage the tones, Took Lae Dee sometimes comes out with a rising rather than a falling tone, turning the translation of its name into “sorrowful and good.” Took Lae Dee is a major hangout for the Bangkok nightshift so I always thought those two dueling translations framed the place pretty accurately.
Behind the counter a Chinese-looking woman in a white cap scraped fried rice from a wok onto a plate. A plastic ID badge with a tiny picture was clipped to her apron and made her look more like someone employed in a defense plant than a counter girl at an all-night diner. Another cook was showing off, flipping a wok full of noodles into the air and then slapping the wok smartly with a long-handled ladle before catching them again. When he saw me watching him, he flashed me a big grin and bowed slightly from the waist.
On the other leg of the counter three Arabs in white robes sat drinking tea and whispering quietly among themselves. Beyond them, two sweating, middle-aged men spoke German to each other and halting English to their young Thai companions. The older of the two men was with a girl who was round and dark with a pleasant face and a nice smile, probably not long out of some upcountry rice field. The other had a stunner draped all over him.
The stunner was tall and slim with skin like poured honey and a cascade of glistening black hair hanging around her shoulders. Stylishly dressed in a short, red leather skirt, white blouse, black spike heels, and a matching belt with a heavy silver buckle, she was a real showstopper. The guy looked like he was about to have a stroke from all the attention he was getting from such a gorgeous creature. I suspected he might very well, not right at the moment perhaps, but almost certainly a little later when he got down to business and discovered his dazzling companion was actually a
“Help you, sir?”
The girl who walked up behind me was young, not more than eighteen probably, with big eyes and a slightly dumpy air about her. I wondered what she saw when she looked at the Germans and their companions for the night.
The girl bobbed her head and scribbled briefly on a thick pad before walking away. A few moments later a different girl, one of those who was scurrying around behind the counter, put a white ceramic mug down in front of me. I watched her pour the coffee and nodded in acknowledgement of her slight smile. I was jumpy enough already and really didn’t need the caffeine, but I lifted the mug anyway and reflexively sipped at the thick, bitter brew. With my free hand I pushed myself around on the stool and warily checked out what I could see of the interior of the supermarket.
I spotted the man almost immediately. He was half obscured by a tall stack of Diet Coke cans, looking me over without trying to hide it. I saw him glance at a woman standing next to him and place his hand on her arm. Then she followed his eyes and examined me too.
The man was a westerner about my age. He was wearing khaki shorts, an expensive-looking golf shirt hanging over his belt, and dark loafers without socks. Either he was completely bald or he had shaved his head cleanly and his scalp gleamed in the light. Oddly, he had a thin rim of neatly trimmed gray beard that ran all the way from ear to ear. The overall effect was to make his oval face look almost upside down. At a glance the man was largely interchangeable with the lean, tanned, middle-aged Western guys you could find around any of the five-star hotels in town favored by visiting executives. Well off, poised, cocky almost.
The woman was another story. I doubted she was interchangeable with anybody.
She was probably in her twenties and looked Chinese, except that she was at least six feet tall. Slim, graceful, and feminine in spite of her height, she was dressed in loose, dark slacks and a man’s white shirt. Her dark eyes looked tranquil, yet something gave her a quality of vigilance. She made me think of a cat lazing in the shade of a summer’s day, ready to spring into motion at the first sign of a pigeon.
I was already willing to bet this was the guy who had called me; and since the woman looked as if she was standing guard over him, I wondered briefly if that meant
The man gave a little tug on the woman’s arm and they started toward me. When they were still fifteen or twenty feet away, she moved slightly to one side and leaned back against the chrome railing separating the store’s grocery section from the counter where I was sitting. Her posture remained relaxed and she cupped her hands around the top rail and stretched her legs out in front of her, crossing one ankle over the other. When she did, I couldn’t help but notice that they were very nice ankles indeed.
The man slid onto the stool next to me. “I didn’t think you’d recognize me,” he said.
But he was wrong. I did recognize him.
I had no earthly idea how it could be. It made no sense at all. But there was absolutely no doubt in my mind. This was Barry Gale.
I took another sip of my coffee just to have something to do and studied Barry over the rim of the cup. He was leaner than he had been back in Washington and his facial features appeared to have been scrambled up somehow, although I realized it might have been the absence of hair and the addition of the beard that gave me that impression. He looked different, but he looked the same, too.
“You’ve changed some,” I finally said.
“That was the idea, Jack. That was the whole idea.”
Barry’s eyes went away from mine, sought out the woman leaning against the chrome railing, and then came back to me.
“I had some redecorating done.”
“Redecorating? You had plastic surgery?”
“I guess I should have asked them to make me look more like Keanu Reeves and less like Jerry Ford, but I didn’t give it enough thought at the time. We were in a hurry.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
Barry ignored my question and looked away at a thick-legged blonde woman who might have been Russian pushing through one of the checkout stands with a white plastic bag. She was holding the hand of a tiny Thai girl who didn’t appear to be more than twelve.
Suddenly Barry dug down into his baggy shorts and produced what looked like a card of some kind, thrusting it out and wiggling it at me.
“They fixed me up with a whole new life, Jack. Look here.”
At first I thought the card was a driver’s license, but when I took it from Barry I saw it was actually a Hong Kong identity card. It certainly looked authentic enough, although I was certainly no expert on such things, and had what was probably supposed to be Barry’s picture laminated onto it. As with most ID cards, however, the photograph had a vaguely generic look to it and I wouldn’t have sworn an oath that it was the same man who was sitting in front of me right now. The name on the card was Arthur Daley.
“Stupid fucking name they picked for me though. Can’t imagine where they got it. Normally I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass, but I ask you, could I ever be somebody who’s called Arthur Daley, Jack? Could I?” Barry took the ID card back from me and shoved it into his pocket again. He shook his head. “Shit, man, no way.”
“For Christ’s sake, Barry, what the hell is going on here?”
“I’m not sure I know, Jack.”
Barry spoke quickly, furtively, his eyes rolling around the room.
“I’m living in a dark place and I don’t know how to get out of it. God help me, but I think you might be the only guy who can do anything to help me.” He turned his head and looked at me as if he could hardly believe things had come to that.
