On the fourth attempt he was waiting for a response at the end of the pause but instead got the sound of a phone ringing in one of the rooms. He hung up the phone immediately. The target was staying at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Macau. Carl made an online airline booking to fly to Macau in the afternoon and booked himself a room at the Wynn Hotel and Casino. He was not going to stay at the Venetian Hotel, as it would have made it too easy for the target to get his real name.
Carl checked and confirmed that the ten thousand dollars was in his Singapore bank account. The money was already there and he wondered if he was letting his suspicions get the better of what was so obviously good for business. He found it hard not to feel a certain fondness for a client that gave him large sums of money so quickly and easily. Carl felt that sometimes he had quite a lot in common with the girl with the green fingernails.
Carl was standing in his office and going through all of his standard last-minute actions before getting a taxi to the airport. He checked his passport to make sure his re-entry visa was properly dated and stamped. He printed out his ticket with all the required reference numbers. When he checked his emails, he saw that the background check he had asked for had been emailed to him by his contact in Los Angeles. There was also the daily report from Boonchoo. Carl printed both emails including attachments, put them in his bag, and left for the airport.
Once in the taxi Carl made the necessary phone calls. He rang George to tell him he was on his way to the airport and would be out of contact at least until Sunday. George told Carl he already knew what time the flight was. He had heard it from the compound’s underground maids’ network. Remember, it is only a secret until you tell somebody, Carl reminded himself.
The next thing Carl did was to call the colonel. He told him he was going to Hong Kong. If he had said Macau the colonel would have assumed that he would end up broke which would not be good for the colonel. Most people leave their money at the casinos, and the colonel’s friends, like most Thais, were fearless gamblers, betting incredible amounts on the turn of a card at the baccarat tables of Macau’s casinos. Fortunes were sometimes lost in a single weekend. So Carl created a story of a small job that he needed to do in Hong Kong to avoid a lecture on the evils of gambling. Before they ended the call the colonel told him he was meeting some police associates on Saturday night and would ask them what they knew about the student murders. The colonel said one of his friends was in the department that was investigating the most recent cases.
Carl felt he had everything under control. Thinking everything was under control was always a foolish thing to do. It was Asia and anything could happen.
The last call on his list was to the old man working the surveillance.
“How is it going?” Carl asked him.
“Nothing much happening. He goes to work and goes home. We took pictures of his car, his house and his office. I send you all the pictures daily by email. Last night he went to the airport with a bag. My son went to the noodle shop where his staff eat their lunch and heard that he is due back in the office Monday morning.”
“Very good. Take the weekend off and start again Monday morning.”
“Thank you,” he said. Then before Carl could hang up he continued.“Just one thing. There was an unusual event at 2:35 yesterday afternoon. He had a very loud argument with another foreigner at his office. It started outside on the street when our subject arrived in his car. He was confronted and then the argument continued as they went upstairs shouting at each other. The foreigner doing most of the shouting left about fifteen minutes later. He was smiling when he left. My son jumped in another taxi and followed him to the Sukhumvit Grande Hotel.”
“What did he look like?’ Carl asked, dreading the answer.
“Very old and very fat. I have a picture.”
“That’s all right, I know who he is. We will talk again on Monday. Thank you.”
Shit! Never trust a client. The case was flowing nicely and everything was in place and then his own client blew his cover. He hadn’t considered the possibility, even though these things happened. They happened a lot. Carl should have been used to it. But, more importantly he should have planned for the possibility. It was extremely foolish of him to assume that on whatever case he was working on, that this time everything was going to be different. Clients were impatient and acted foolishly.
Carl needed to rethink his situation before he got to the airport. Anthony Inman knew that he had been found but had still gone to Macau. That could mean he was not concerned or it could mean that he was. So it made no difference to Carl’s understanding of his new situation. Was there any reason to believe that he would be aware that it was Carl who had located him? Not likely, but certainly not impossible. Would he take it personally if he knew it was Carl? No reason to think so. Most people didn’t. As long as he was not a raving lunatic he should see Carl as a nuisance, not an enemy. Like a person being sued would feel towards the lawyer retained to sue him. Not that Bangkok private investigators had the luxury of assumed respectability that often protected lawyers.
Reality check. All Carl really knew was that he didn’t know very much. The real decision to be made was whether or not he should get on the plane to Macau. He found the adventure was irresistible so he had spent ten minutes doing mental gymnastics for nothing. Of course he was going to Macau.
Carl arrived at Suwarnabhumi Airport with plenty of time to kill. He strutted in like he owned the place to cover up the stress that had taken a grip on him in the taxi. Airports are not good places to be seen acting nervous and upset in. Not unless you liked being touched up by a gorilla in a uniform. He avoided the new automatic check-in machines and went to a counter with a human being behind it. Carl was old-fashioned about such things.
The name of the airport should be a warning to visitors. The unpronounceable name ‘Suwarnabhumi’ for an airport built to receive millions of visitors who don’t speak Thai is a declaration that the locals are planning to have it all their own way. The correct pronunciation is soo-wah-nar-poom but only a handful of foreigners can work that out from the complex spelling. Typically when tourists asked Carl how they should pronounce it to Bangkok’s taxi drivers so they could be understood, Carl always told them, “Airport!” That worked most of the time, he told them.
Carl spent the long journey from the security check to the departure gate trying to work out what had been bothering him since the first day when he had taken the case. The long distance walk gave him plenty of time to think. The conclusion he reached on arriving at the departure gate was that it was the money. The money had come too easily for Carl’s subconscious to be comfortable with. The rest of Carl had of course been ecstatic. The voice at the back of Carl’s head was reminding him of something. It was saying that people who pay that much money and that easily usually have a guilty conscience. Carl put his doubts aside for the second time. He was going to Macau and he was going to play poker with somebody else’s money. What could possibly go wrong?
Once in the air he soon wished he had stayed on the ground. Carl had taken a Bangkok Post newspaper from the rack at the door of the plane. He waited until the plane had taken off before opening it. He had only taken it for the cryptic crossword. A quick glance at the headlines on his way to the cryptic crossword was his habit. Unfortunately Carl got stuck on page three and never made it to the crossword page.
He had noticed a small headline in the top right hand corner with a couple of paragraphs below it; a seventy-year old tourist had been shot outside the Sukhumvit Grande Hotel. Victor Boyle, a tourist, had been shot Thursday evening as he left his hotel. A motorcycle with two men in dark clothing and wearing black crash helmets had pulled up beside him as he was getting into a taxi. They shot him three times and fled through the Bangkok traffic. The paper reported they were believed to be professional killers as the shooter had calmly walked up to his victim and checked for a pulse before fleeing. The deceased was said to be a very large man and a US citizen from the state of Nevada.
After all the years Carl had been operating as a private investigator it had finally happened; he had lost his first client. Who the hell was Victor Boyle? Carl thought his name was Victor Inman like his brother. He hadn’t checked, which was stupidity bordering on total incompetence.
He went to the luggage locker above his head and took the background check on Anthony Inman from his hand luggage. Carl sat down, put his glasses on, fastened his seatbelt and started reading. It was all there as he expected; the marriage and divorce, the children he had abandoned, and his company directorships. There was no mention of him and the CIA of course. It was pretty much what Carl had been told by his client. There was one glaringly obvious thing missing though; Anthony Inman didn’t have a brother!
Chapter 11
Macau from the air was only recognizable to Carl from its shape and the location of the bridge that joined the
