towards the house. He looks Vietnamese, she thought.
“Get out of the car,” she said to Jeff. “Go around back and pretend you’re still peeing.”
He went without question.
The Land Rover emerged from the driveway. It stopped and the Vietnamese man climbed in. As it turned the corner both passengers took a hard look at Jeff. Ava was slumped down in her seat but was able to get a clear view of them. Jackson Seto was driving.
Jeff waited until the Rover was well down the road before getting back in the Jeep.
“Now what? Do you want to follow them?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Where do you think they’re going?”
“A hundred to one they’re headed for the city.”
“It’s just about dinner time. Is there a restaurant district?”
“Nearly all the decent places are in a four-square-block area.”
“Any of them Chinese?”
“A couple.”
“Let’s give it fifteen minutes and then we’ll head into town. We’ll cover that area and see if we can find their cars.”
“And if we can’t?”
“That’s my problem for tomorrow.”
The sun was setting as they were driving back to Georgetown. Jeff hit a couple of potholes, and Ava was sure they were going to lose a tire.
Georgetown had taken on a different look. It took Ava a minute to realize that it was because only part of the city was lit while the rest was blanketed in almost total darkness. “Is there a power outage?” she asked.
“I guess you could call it that, except it happens every night. They only have enough power for half the city. So they alternate between east and west on a nightly basis. Tonight the east end gets electricity and the west end has to make do with candles. Most of the businesses have their own backup generators.”
“What a place.”
“Yep.”
“The area we’re going to, will it have power tonight?”
“Yeah, we’re lucky,” he said, and then turned towards her. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I’ve been curious all afternoon. Just what is it we’re doing, following this guy?”
“It’s just business.”
“What kind of business?”
Ava stared at the road. “I think it’s better if I don’t share that with you.”
“Better for who?”
“Me.”
Jeff shrugged. “We’re getting close to the restaurant district. I’ll circle.”
It took less than five minutes to find both cars, which were parked outside a restaurant called China World. “The Chinese are so predictable,” she said. “You could drop them in Paris on a street lined with three-star French restaurants and they’d still go looking for something Chinese, even if it was a hole in the wall.”
“Are you going in?”
“No, we’ll wait for them to come out.”
They waited for an hour. The girl exited first. She was big, about five ten, and was wearing jeans that showed off muscular thighs and a high, firm ass. A tank top accentuated her large, round breasts, and Ava could see that she didn’t need a bra. She blew a kiss towards the restaurant door, got into her car, and drove off. “That’s a body,” Jeff said.
The Vietnamese man came out next, with Seto a few steps behind. He’s Seto’s bodyguard, she thought, or some kind of bumboy who doubles as a bodyguard. He was small, but she knew that didn’t mean anything. His type could be tough, vicious, and fearless to the point of stupidity. He was a complication she didn’t need.
Seto too was a thin, reedy shadow. He was maybe six feet tall, but he slouched when he walked, making him look shorter than he was. He was wearing a pair of high-waisted black slacks secured by a belt that was on its last notch. Ava thought he looked almost emaciated; she could see that his chest was concave beneath his white dress shirt. His face was alive, though, his dark brown eyes darting here and there like a rat’s, his mouth drawing hard on a cigarette.
They climbed into the Land Rover and drove away. “Let’s follow them for a bit,” she said.
They had barely gotten the Jeep in motion when she saw the Land Rover pull into a parking spot no more than two blocks away. The neon sign over the door read ECKIE ' S ONE AND ONLY CLUB. Seto got out by himself, walked past the bouncer, and disappeared through the door.
“You know this place?” she asked Jeff.
“Everyone knows Eckie’s. It’s the best club in Georgetown, one of the few places that doesn’t need cheap beer and sluts. They import some good DJs, and it’s where the high-priced girls — amateurs and pros — go. Tourists and locals with money are the target.”
“Who owns it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who is Eckie?”
“Don’t know. I’ve been there a few times and I never met anyone called Eckie.”
She sat quietly, weighing her options while watching the Vietnamese bodyguard smoke. The few approaches she could think of were flawed. Confronting him in the bar wasn’t much of an option. No one knew her, and if there a fuss they would likely support the local — and that was without his bodyguard jumping in. If she tried to talk to Seto outside, Vietnamese involvement was a certainty, and it was too soon for her to trigger that kind of response without knowing more about to whom and how Seto was connected. Antonelli had said that Seto had strong ties with the police in Georgetown; she needed to find out how far up the chain those ties went. Still, doing nothing wasn’t an option.
“Could you get me a local SIM card?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow morning okay?”
“That’s fine.”
“You’re not going into Eckie’s?”
“No, there’s nothing for me to do tonight.”
“So now what?”
“I’m going back to the hotel.”
When they got to the Phoenix, Ava climbed out of the Jeep and turned to Jeff. “Call me when you have the SIM card. I assume you’re free tomorrow if I need you.”
“The day is clear so far.”
She passed seventy dollars through the window.
“Thanks.”
“Jeff, I don’t want you to discuss any of this with anyone. Not a word. The name Jackson Seto doesn’t exist for you.”
“You didn’t have to say that.”
“It’s always better to make things clear,” she said, and threw another twenty-dollar bill onto the passenger seat.
(19)
Ava woke up early and was downstairs by six. The coffee shop wasn’t open, so she drifted over to the business centre. It wasn’t open either. She went to the front desk. “Can you open the business centre for me?” she said.
“It don’t open till seven.” A young man in a sports jacket two sizes too large was manning the desk.
“Do you have a key?”
