I looked over at Willow. It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her expressive eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Her head was turned to follow the Hong Kong-Kowloon ferryboats plying their way back and forth across the choppy, ship-clogged harbor. There was a brisk breeze blowing. We remained silent, each keeping to private thoughts.
Whether intentional or not, Sir Hodley-Smythe made certain that we entered the Glouster Hotel without being noticed. We were taken to the employee entrance in an alleyway. A round-shouldered Chinese porter, supervised by a turbaned Sikh, took our bags. The swarthy-faced Indian was unsmiling and laconic.
The rear part of the hotel had a spicy aroma. I could hear the clatter of utensils and the babble of voices coming from the kitchen. The service elevator rose at a snail’s pace. The bearded Sikh could not ignore Willow, but the sidelong glances he gave her were uncharitable.
The fifth floor room to which I was taken was in the rear of the building. It contained one double-size brass bed. The porter dropped our bags in the hallway next to the door. The Sikh held out a registration card and a pen. All it required was my initials on an already filled-in form. “What about the lady?” I asked.
“She is your guest, sahib. That is how I was told.” His face was immobile, yet his narrowed eyes carried a knowing look as if to tell me he had been party to quiet assignations innumerable times before.
Willow laid a hand on my arm. “Let’s not make waves, Nick. It’s not worth it.”
The Chinese porter bowed low from the waist when I gave him an American dollar. I knew better than to offer the proud Sikh a tip.
After the door was closed, Willow and I faced each other. It was the first time we had been alone without something pressing to keep us from feeling a close one-on-one relationship.
The boat ride had been a fast one. My hair was tacky with salt spray. The warm Hong Kong temperature and flagging humidity added to my discomfort. I knew Willow felt it too. “I’ll match you to see who uses the shower first,” I said.
“You go ahead,” she returned.
The water, lukewarm, was nevertheless relaxing. I emerged from the bathroom swathed in an extra-large towel. Willow lay stretched out fully clothed on the bed atop the spread. Her sun glasses were pushed up and rested on her forehead. Her eyes were closed. I thought she was asleep.
While I stood there, her eyes opened. She looked curiously at a couple of visible scars on my body, but she made no comment. She got off the bed, walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
I stripped the double bed and climbed into it, covering with a sheet. I was almost asleep when she came out of the bathroom.
Her hair was done up in a towel. Besides that, she was wearing the dark-lensed harlequin glasses and a smile. Period.
“Something tells me you’re an ass man,” Willow said, turning to exhibit a real butterball type. She glanced at me over her bare shoulder.
“I give equal billing to all erogenous zones,” I corrected her, scrutinizing the lovely scenery. “I also nibble and sometimes I bite,” I warned her.
She came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her skin was dazzling and its texture was like satin. From her admission about regular workouts to keep herself in shape for rough-and-tumble movie stunts, I figured she was mostly hardened flesh. When I ran my fingertips over enticing portions of it, I found one or two pounds attached to each curve not evident when she was dressed. There was no particular expression on her face, but as my hands moved over certain sensitive areas, she would close her eyes and draw in her breath.
She stretched out on the bed and pulled me over on top of her. Despite my reputation, I’m very selective about women. If it doesn’t start right, more can turn me off than on, but Willow had a way with her.
She reached the rapid-breathing, passion-quickened state after very little activity on my part. She suffered sweet agony in order to prolong the foreplay. When my readiness was complete, she arched beneath me and stuffed a pillow under her tail. I didn’t have to remove her glasses; they had fallen off during her preliminary gyrations.
I slid in, bringing forth a deep, shuddering sigh from her moist, parted lips. Her reactions were innovative, far from mechanical, and highly expert. She had the type of firmly rounded belly that mated perfectly with mine.
I’ve oftentimes heard the comment that muscle-broads are no good in bed.
That’s a crock of night soil.
What I got was better than what I gave — both times.
Only a call on the house phone telling me that we had to leave to catch the Air India flight for Bangkok kept the well from running dry.
Eleven
Thailand is not the storybook country travel brochures and old National Geographic magazines might lead one to think it is. While it still has superb rice lands and vast stands of teak, both of which thrive from a guaranteed rainfall that insures agricultural abundance, the ancient city of Bangkok has become just another overcrowded metropolis jammed with pitiful humanity. A few islands of modern civilization built from commerce based on exports of silk, ceramics, and silver are surrounded by a sea of ghettos filled with peasants coaxed into the city by the flood of U.S. dollars.
In the wake of American soldiers that once poured themselves and their paychecks into a profusion of nightclubs and bars, whole streets remain crowded with garish neon signs and Thai village girls. Outwardly, Bangkok is one of the world’s liveliest cities. Of the two million people who attempt to survive in the capital city on the Gulf of Siam, few were as fortunate as Lak Bu Chen.
In less than an hour after arriving in Bangkok, Willow had gotten a line on the transplanted Vietnamese. The information came from an unlikely source: a grubby street vendor hawking brass ashtrays and candlesticks fashioned from U.S. Army 105mm howitzer shell casings. She conversed with the wizened, squatting man in at least two Lao dialects while a trio of persistent pedicabs hovered around sensing a fare. We chose one. The thin sinewy driver bell-clanged his way through crowded streets, bearing us further into a squalid part of the town. We were close to the docks when the toothless, perspiring pedaller drew over to the curb. We were in front of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. “Is this the place?”
“Nippon-Kishiwa Trading Company is what the sign says,” Willow translated. “Rue Chiang Mai, Number eighty-five.”
It looked like a fire trap to me. Maybe just a trap. I eased open the only door. Loose hinges let its bottom rasp on dusty concrete. The place was empty except for a littering of empty cartons and rat droppings. The interior of the building was dim. Unwashed windows further reduced the waning light of day. In a glassed-in office against the far wall a bare light bulb, shaded by a cone-shaped metal reflector, concentrated it’s beam on a desk where a man sat using a telephone. He hung up and peered in our direction as Willow and I approached. Willow had her right hand buried in her shoulder bag. I was alert as well.
The black-haired individual rose and moved to the open office doorway. He was a short, stocky Vietnamese with the flat, broad face more common to Koreans. His business suit was rumpled. A frayed-collared shirt was open at the throat; he wore no tie. Since I’d been in the company of Willow, he was the first man I’d seen who ignored her. His eyes were wary and locked on me. “It’s me, Chen, Wee Low Kiang,” Willow called out.
His straight-line of a mouth wreathed itself into a big-toothed smile of recognition. He answered her in some mountain dialect of lilting Vietnamese syllables, leaving me out entirely. It was only after we had crowded into the small office that Willow introduced me to Lak Bu Chen. His slightly protruding eyes measured me critically. The hand that he offered in greeting was woman-soft but muscular. He spoke English with an American accent picked up from watching old John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. As an English-speaking sergeant in a Vietnamese paratrooper regiment, he had found a niche and spent the last years of the war at a U.S. air depot, becoming an expert in logistics. He became proficient at moving supplies, especially the diversion of post exchange stocks to the Saigon black market. He had developed a profitable arrangement with U.S. sergeants in charge of military service clubs. For a while after the evacuation of U.S. forces from South Vietnam he had what he thought were deeply-anchored ties with black market operators in Hanoi. He had visions of building what would become a worldwide consortium in surplus war materials in the post-war period. Instead, he was lucky to get out of Vietnam alive. He’d lost everything but a few valuable contacts, an indomitable spirit, a crafty mind, and an insufferable, arrogant ego. Lak Bu Chen had an outgoing personality. You knew he was a crook, and that he’d sacrifice anyone to save his own hide, but you still couldn’t help but like him. He seemed disappointed in me, though, when he found out I’d never visited Boot Hill in Dodge City, Kansas or made a pilgrimage to the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.