“He said broker.”
“Okay, that’s something. Can you think of anything else?”
Daeng said nothing for several seconds. “No. That’s it as far as I can remember.”
“Thanks. If you do come up with something, call me,” Quinn said. “Doesn’t matter what time.”
“I will.”
Quinn hung up, and looked at Orlando. “Not Daeng. But Nate did have a job set up through a broker. That’ll narrow things a bit.”
She nodded without looking up from her laptop. After a moment, the printer whirled to life and spit out two sheets of paper. Once it was done, she closed her computer and stood up.
“All right, we’d better hurry,” she said.
She handed him one of the printed pieces of paper. As often happened, they were on the same wavelength again.
In his hand was one of two tickets for a flight to Los Angeles.
CHAPTER 7
Bangkok, Thailand
What Daeng hadn’t told Quinn was that the thing he’d come home to deal with turned out to be nothing. The message he’d received from Ton a week earlier had concerned a Burmese refugee kid, one Daeng had personally helped get onto the right path. According to the note, the boy had been arrested by the Bangkok police for drug trafficking, an offense punishable by death.
When Daeng couldn’t get ahold of Ton right away to get more details, he had caught a flight home the next day, knowing the arrest had to be some kind of mistake because there was no way the kid would get mixed up in something like that. And he was right. Only it wasn’t the police who’d made the mistake, it was Ton. The kid was not in jail and had no idea what Daeng was talking about when Daeng tracked him down.
Relieved but frustrated, Daeng had called Ton to try to figure out where the miscommunication had occurred, but Ton was still not answering his phone. Daeng had then checked around and learned that the man had gone northeast to Issan to visit family. That didn’t explain why he wasn’t answering his mobile, though. As a member of Daeng’s loose organization of misfits, Ton was expected to have his phone on him at all times. Not about to travel out to the countryside himself, Daeng wasn’t going to do much about it until Ton called him back.
Over the following few days, Daeng had become so preoccupied with checking in on his network of people and businesses, and making sure everything was still running smoothly, that he’d shoved all thoughts about Ton to the far reaches of his mind. He knew they’d get things cleared up soon enough.
Maybe that had been a mistake.
He headed into the bathroom with his mobile phone, turned on the speaker function, and tried Ton once more. As the line began to ring, he applied shaving cream to his face. Receiving no response, he punched DISCONNECT, finished his shave, and jumped in the shower.
In less than five minutes, he was dressed and making another call as he walked through the house.
This time the line was answered with a grunt.
“Yai, wake up,” Daeng said.
Another grunt.
“Come on. I need you.”
“Who is this?” Yai asked, his voice a slur.
“Who do you think it is?”
There was a rustle on the other end. “Daeng? Sorry. It’s kind of early, you know?”
“Yeah, and I’m already up and dressed.”
“Oh…um…what’s going on?”
“When was the last time you talked to Ton?”
“Ton?” Yai seemed confused for a moment. “Little Ton? Or Big Ton?”
“Little.”
“Uh, I don’t know.” Yai paused for a moment. “Well, he did tell me he was going away.”
“When was this?
“If you hold on, I can check the time on his text.”
“Wait, he told you by text? Not on the phone or in person?”
“Yeah.”
“When was the last time you actually talked to him?”
Another few seconds of silence. “Maybe a week ago. It was a Friday, I think.”
“Did he say anything about visiting his family then?”
“No. Not that I remember. Why?”
“Have you tried calling him since?”
Daeng could almost hear Yai shake his head. “I didn’t have any reason to.”
“What about a number for his family in Issan? Do you have one?”
“He should have his mobile. Just call that.”
“I have called his mobile. He’s not answering. But I need to talk to him now.”
“Okay, okay. Um, let me think.” Yai fell silent for several seconds. “Dom might know. She’s been hanging out with him on and off for a while now.”
“Get ahold of her. Tell her to call me.”
“Sure, of course.” A pause. “You want me to do that now?”
“Yes,” Daeng said. “Now.”
While he waited for the girl to call him, he cut up a mango, and started to eat it. Two slices in, his phone rang, only it wasn’t Dom. It was Yai again.
“She’s not answering,” Yai said.
“You tried more than once?”
“Yeah. Three times. Maybe she sleeps deeper than I do.”
Maybe, Daeng thought. Then again…
“You know where Ton lives, right?” he asked.
“Sure,” Yai said.
“Meet me there in twenty minutes.”
“It’s going to take me a little more than-”
Daeng hung up.
Ton lived in the rooftop apartment of a building near Silom. Yai was waiting out front when Daeng’s taxi pulled to the curb.
“You go up yet?” Daeng asked.
Yai shook his head. “Just got here.”
“Come on, then.”
They went inside and took the scuffed-up elevator to the seventh floor. From there, they had to climb the stairs one more flight to Ton’s place-a four-room structure built right in the middle of the roof. It had a wide wooden patio at the front, and a jumbled storage area behind.
A plank pathway led from the stairwell door along the edge of the roof to the home’s side entrance. Daeng knocked when they reached it, but, as he expected, no one answered.
He tried the knob and was surprised to find the door was unlocked. He glanced back at Yai, who also looked confused.
“You armed?” Daeng whispered.
Yai reached around to the small of his back, and pulled a gun out from under his shirt.
Daeng’s intention had been merely to find a way inside, where he was sure they’d find some way of contacting Ton’s family in Issan, but as he opened the door, he instantly knew a call to the countryside would be unnecessary.
The smell of death rushed through the opening as if it had been waiting for someone to let it loose.
“Shit!” Yai said, blinking his eyes and twisting his head away.
Daeng looked around, and spotted several old rags by the back corner of the house. They were dirty, but better than nothing. He retrieved them, gave a couple to Yai, bundled together the two he’d kept, and pressed them tightly over his nose and mouth.
Yai looked surprised. “We’re going in?”
Daeng answered by doing just that.
They found Ton and Dom in the living room, sitting side by side on the couch, their throats slit. A swarm of flies hovered around their bloated corpses like auras. Their eyeballs and tongues seemed to be trying to jump out of their head.
Yai groaned twice before rushing out of the room.
Daeng could hear him just outside the front door losing whatever was left in his stomach from the previous night. Daeng didn’t have the same problem. Even before he’d started working with Nate removing all sorts of bodies, he’d seen more than his share of the dead. Instead of running out, he moved closer, looking for any clues as to who had done this and why.
But whoever slashed Ton’s and Dom’s necks had left no calling card.
“This is very disturbing,” Christina said.
Daeng remained silent, letting the woman process what he had told her.
They were in a storage room at the back of a restaurant Christina owned near Khao San Road, just one of dozens of businesses the American woman had around the city. She’d been in the Thai capital for decades and was known in certain, very exclusive circles as someone who got things done. She and Daeng had used each other’s services many times over the years, and she had always exhibited a level of protectiveness over him, not quite as if he were the son she never had, but close.