probably left over from the Vietnam War. Thailand was a big R amp; R center, rest and recuperation for the troops. If I remember right, they had a big air base around here somewhere. That’s probably where it came from.”
“So?”
“So the U.S. government doesn’t buy cheap stuff. You’re probably looking at a twenty-thousand-dollar filing cabinet-to go along with their forty-thousand-dollar toilet seats and their fifteen-thousand-dollar hammers. And even if they overpaid, that’s heavy-gauge steel. You won’t find that in Office Depot.”
“So where’s the nearest locksmith?”
Just as she says it, there’s a tap on the glass at the door. I turn and look over the top of the cabinets. I see Harry’s silhouette backlit against the lights out in the hall. “Come on, we better go.”
“What’s the matter, getting nervous?” says Joselyn. “You don’t like the idea of doing time in a Thailand jail?”
“We can try and figure out something tomorrow,” I tell her.
Joselyn and I start to move toward the door when I look up and see Harry’s shadow receding like a sprinter away from the glass. “Hold on a second!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
As we are standing there, another shadow approaches the door. This one is much smaller than Harry, with a feminine form.
I twist off the Maglite. Joselyn and I retreat back down the aisle as fast as we can. We reach the end of the row just as we hear the key in the lock at the door.
It opens as we slink around the corner behind the end cabinet. I am down on one knee with Joselyn behind me. She has a hand on my shoulder, breathing in my ear as the lights in the room suddenly flash on.
The unexpected brilliance blinds me. I hear the door close and then the click of high heels as they cross the linoleum floor and head down the aisle directly toward us.
I push back against Joselyn, trying to retreat. Just as I do, the woman slows down. She takes a few tentative steps and then stops. For a few seconds I hear nothing, then the jiggle of keys. It’s followed by a slight metallic click, and an instant later a drawer slides open.
I can’t resist. I ease my head toward the corner of the cabinet until my left eye just clears the edge.
The woman is standing in the aisle maybe ten feet away with her back to me. She is leaning over an open drawer removing papers and a few envelopes, putting them in a bag.
Joselyn taps me on the back. She wants to know what’s happening.
I shake my head, wave her off.
A second later the woman closes the drawer. She pushes the lock back in, turns the key, and removes it. She straps the bag over her shoulder and heads for the door.
I slowly settle back against Joselyn.
The door opens, the lights go out, and then the door closes behind the woman.
Joselyn lets out a long deep sigh. “That was close. Now it’s time to get out of here,” she says.
“No! You stay here in case we need to get back in.” I twist on the flashlight and hand it to her as I get to my feet and head down the aisle.
“Where are you going?”
“She just cleaned out the drawer,” I tell her.
“You mean WOD?”
“Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Liquida saw the girl coming out of the building as he sat on the bike with the engine purring. She had the white canvas bag, carrying it with the straps over her shoulder. He could tell there was something in it from the way it drooped.
She walked a short distance up the sidewalk on the other side and then slowly began to cross over. Liquida watched her as she carefully threaded her way through traffic.
He looked to see if anyone was following her. It was possible they could be watching her from a distance. If they were, all hell was going to break loose in about twenty seconds.
She reached his side of the street and headed down the sidewalk in front of Liquida’s hotel. Just as she stepped off the curb across from the beer bar, the kid on the taxi bike pulled out of the side street directly in front of her.
They talked for a second as Liquida watched. Then the kid handed her the five-hundred-baht note. She took it, and a second later handed the bag to the boy on the bike.
The kid took off like a shot, turned north onto Second, and screamed along the shoulder of the road, streaking past the stalled traffic like lightning.
It happened so quickly that Liquida barely had time to react. He slapped the face mask down on his helmet, twisted the throttle, and took off after him. He tried to gun it and glanced down at his speedometer just as the flailing form darted out from in front of the stopped bus. He jerked the bike to the left. The guy did a toreador move to the right, hips and ass in reverse. Liquida screeched by him, shaving the front of the guy with the right side of the bike and the hot muffler.
He didn’t bother to look back. Instead, Liquida twisted the throttle all the way over. The bike shrieked along the side of the road, leaving all of the commotion behind. Liquida raced along, trying to catch a glimpse of the kid, but the taxi bike was gone.
By the time Harry sees me coming out of the office door, the woman with the bag is halfway down the stairs.
He steps out of the men’s room. “Let’s get out of here.”
I put a finger to my lips.
“What’s up?” he whispers.
I motion for him to join me at the stairwell. We wait until I hear the wooden door downstairs open and then close again.
“Come on!” We head for the stairs.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?”
“The gal with the bag…”
“Yeah.”
“She may be delivering to Liquida,” I tell him.
We hustle down the stairs into the hallway on the ground floor. We stop just inside the door that leads out to the street. I open it six inches or so, just enough to see out.
“There she is.”
She is off to the right, walking up the sidewalk away from us. The loud flower print of her dress and the oversize bag over her shoulder make her easy to track even with the glut of pedestrians at rush hour.
“Let’s go.” Harry tries to push by me.
“No, no. I can see her fine from here. Give her a second. See where she goes. She’s starting to cross the street.”
“What, you’re gonna let her get away?” says Harry.
“No, but if Liquida is out there somewhere watching her, he’s gonna bolt the minute he sees us. We may not get another chance.”
I watch her as she crosses over. I am getting a little nervous. If she jumps into the back of one of the little blue trucks, the ones they use as buses, and heads down a side street, we could lose her.
“What’s she doing now?” says Harry.
“She’s over on the other sidewalk. Let’s go… No, hold on! She stopped. She’s talking to somebody.”
“You think it’s Liquida?”
