World of Trouble (9786167611136) Page 9

  “It was a client,” Shepherd said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m a lawyer, Liz. That’s what I do.”

  “Look, Jack, I can tell you know something, something important, and—”

  “Damn,” Shepherd interrupted, looking at his watch. “I had no idea it was almost eleven. I’ve got an appointment. Got to run, Liz.”

  He shoved the rest of the bran muffin into his mouth and stood up.

  “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll call you.”

  “Look here, you slick bastard, if you even think of leaving this table before you tell me what you know about all this, I’ll—”

  Shepherd was certain Liz’s threats would be both inventive and terrifying but, before she could work up a decent head of steam, he snatched his telephone and Charlie’s documents off the table and bolted for the door.

  FIFTEEN

  SHEPHERD DODGED ACROSS Silom Road through the traffic and walked up a quiet side street overhung with a dense canopy of willow trees. He stopped, pulled out his telephone, and called Pete.

  “So you got lucky last night,” Pete said immediately.

  “I was just having breakfast.”

  “Bullshit. I could hear that broad from the Times. I know she was with you.”

  When Frank Sinatra died, Pete became the last man on earth to use the word broad in connection with the identification of a woman.

  “I went out for breakfast. I just bumped into Liz by accident.”

  “Bullshit. I’m a trained law enforcement officer. I know when people are lying to me.”

  “You’re with the FBI. Everyone lies to you.”

  “Just admit it, Jack. Give an old man a thrill. You got lucky.”

  “You’re younger than I am.”

  “Hell, almost everybody is younger than you are.”

  Shepherd dodged a helmeted motorcyclist who for some reason apparently preferred riding on the sidewalk to riding in the street. When the whine of the bike died away, he tried nudging Pete toward a more productive topic.

  “Did you find out anything about Robert Darling and Blossom Trading?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Can’t get anything past you. You really are a trained law enforcement officer, aren’t you?”

  “Okay, be a prick. I got nothing for you.”

  “You mean if I don’t tell you some smutty stories, you won’t give me any information?”

  “I meant that I got nothing for you. Zip. Nada. The Bureau has no interest in either Robert Darling or any company named Blossom Trading.”

  “They’ve dropped the investigation already?”

  “There is no investigation. Never has been.”

  “But Keur told me—”

  “I understand that, Jack. But there is no investigation. Period.”

  “Are you shining me on here, Pete?”

  “I could be.” Shepherd could hear the grin in Pete’s voice. “But I’m not.”

  “Did you check out Keur?” Shepherd asked.

  “Yeah. Leonard Keur is a senior agent working out of the D.C. field office. Is that what he told you?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “So there you go.”

  “But then why would he—”

  “Keur was just pulling your chain for some reason. I wouldn’t worry about it. Hey, I’d be the first to admit that we do that kind of shit every now and then, but don’t quote me, huh?”

  “I don’t see why—”

  “Got to go, Jack. You owe me one.”

  Then Pete hung up without saying goodbye.

  ***

  SHEPHERD WALKED BACK to the Grand thinking about what Pete had just told him and not seeing how it made any sense. When he got there Hamster had disappeared from his perch on the couch in the lobby, but Mr. Tang was still sitting behind the front desk just like he had been when Shepherd left for breakfast. He was sucking energetically on a pencil while he studied a computer monitor so old Bill Gates’ initials might well have been scratched on the bottom. The thing with the pencil was something Mr. Tang did when he was worried and Shepherd had noticed that it always seemed to soothe him. Sometimes he wondered if the taste of lead had a tranquilizing quality that might work for him, too. Maybe he ought to try it and find out.

  “Business very bad,” Mr. Tang said, glancing up. “Very bad.”

  “Then maybe I should ask for a discount.”

  Mr. Tang gave Shepherd a hard look, then quickly dismissed the comment as a joke, a poor one from his point of view, and went back to studying his computer screen.

  “I’m serious,” Shepherd said.

  Mr. Tang didn’t even bother to look up again, not believing for a moment such a thing was possible.

  “Your friends tired of waiting and go,” he said instead, his eyes still on the screen.

  “What friends?”

  “Your friends,” Mr. Tang repeated. “They come about ten, wait a while, but you no come back. So they leave.”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Tang?”

  “Said you give them key so they wait in room.” Mr. Tang gave Shepherd a hard look. “Don’t do that no more. Don’t give nobody key to my rooms.”

  Shepherd was accustomed to conversations with Mr. Tang being uninformative, but this time he understood exactly what the old guy was trying to say and he didn’t like the sound of it one bit. He headed straight for the steps and took them two at a time.

  Shepherd half expected to find the door to his room hanging off its hinges or something equally dramatic, but the door looked just like it always did. It was closed and still firmly attached to the wall. Gingerly, he tried the knob. Locked. Just as he had left it.

  Could he have misunderstood Mr. Tang? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

  He took out his key, fitted it into the handle, and turned. Released from its bolt, the door gently drifted open of its own weight. He stepped inside.

  No, he hadn’t misunderstood Mr. Tang.

  His room had been tossed, although it looked like no real damage had been done in the process. The stuffing wasn’t torn out of the sofa, the lamps weren’t smashed on the floor, and the mattress hadn’t been ripped open. Still, somebody had searched the room, somebody who either wanted him to know it, or at the very least, didn’t mind. The sofa and chair cushions were piled on the floor, the television set was turned sideways on its table, and one of the drawers in the desk had been left standing open. Some of the mess was probably his own fault, he hadn’t exactly tidied up before he left for breakfast, but then again he hadn’t taken all his socks and underwear out of the dresser drawers and dumped them on the floor either.

  He stepped into the bathroom. His shaving bag was upside down on the floor and a bottle of Tylenol had been dumped out in the sink.

  He closed the toilet lid and sat down on it to think. Had he been hit by burglars while he was out having breakfast? Who was he kidding? He knew the answer to that one without wasting time thinking about it. Nobody robs hotel rooms at ten in the morning. Too big a chance at that hour the occupant is either still there or could suddenly return.

  The sound of soft footfalls from the living room cut short Shepherd’s reverie and he looked around quickly for a weapon of some sort. He remembered reading once about an assassin using a toothbrush to dispatch his target, but he wasn’t quite sure of the precise technique required and it was probably too late to work it out right then. He was contemplating the toilet brush as a possible alternative when Mr. Tang’s head popped into the bathroom.

  “What they do?” he asked.

  “Don’t sneak up on people like that, Mr. Tang,” Shepherd snapped. “It could get you in real trouble some day.”

  “They search room, huh?”

  Shepherd waved his hands and Mr. Tang backed out of the doorway and released Shepherd from the bathroom.

  “They really mess up room,” Mr. Tang said, looking around.

  Shepherd didn’t have
the heart to tell him that some of the mess was exactly the way he had left it.

  “How many men did you see, Mr. Tang?”

  “Three,” he answered immediately and nodded his head vigorously. “Or four.”

  “So was it three, or four?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tang said. “Maybe.”

  Shepherd knew Mr. Tang well enough to see that line of inquiry had already hit a dead end so he tried a different tack.

  “Were they foreigners?”

  “Not think foreigners,” Mr. Tang shook his head. “Spoke Thai, look Thai. I think all Thai.”

  That was interesting, although of course it didn’t prove anything. Maybe representatives of Charlie’s opposition had come calling, but then again Thais could be rented relatively cheaply for all sorts of heavy lifting and anybody could have hired a few mugs to toss his room. Knowing his visitors were Thai didn’t help him to figure out what they wanted or, more importantly, who sent them.

  “Did you give them a key?”

  “You not listen to me?” Mr. Tang barked indignantly. “They say they have key so they come upstairs. I tell you not give anybody key to room.”

  Then Mr. Tang put Shepherd’s question together with his answer and a cautious note crept into his voice.

  “You not give them key?” he asked.

  Shepherd shook his head.

  Mr. Tang made a hissing noise as he drew air in between his clinched teeth.

  “How long were they here?” Shepherd asked.

  “Not long. Half hour maybe. They come down and say they not wait any longer. Then leave.”

  “Were they carrying anything?”

  Mr. Tang’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “Did you see them take anything with them?” Shepherd clarified. “When they left.”

  “No,” Mr. Tang shook his head firmly. “Not see anything.”

  Shepherd nodded. He began ushering Mr. Tang toward the door while he continued to look the room over for any suggestion as to what his callers had been searching for.

  “You gonna call police?” Mr. Tang asked.

  Shepherd hadn’t thought about that yet, but now that the subject had come up, it didn’t seem to him to be a very good idea. The kind of Thai cops who would answer a call about a break in at a foreigner’s hotel room were more likely to be looking for a contribution to their personal benevolent fund than to have any genuine interest in locating the culprits. Besides, he was already getting more attention than he wanted and calling the cops to report a break-in could go nowhere good.

  “No need, huh?” Mr. Tang nudged. “No problem. No police. Police bad for business and business bad now.”

  “Okay,” Shepherd said. “No police.”

  “No police.” Mr. Tang actually rubbed his palms together in delight. “I get maid.”

  Shepherd shook his head.

  “No, I’ll take care of it,” I said. “No maid.”

  Mr. Tang looked doubtful.

  “Thank you for coming up, Mr. Tang, but everything is fine. I’m going to straighten up and I’ll see to it that everything is put back exactly like it was. No problem. No police. No maid.”

  “Yes. No problem. No police. No maid.”

  Mr. Tang was still nodding as Shepherd closed the door on him.

  He put the cushions back on the couch and sat down, but he didn’t bother to look around to see if anything was stolen. It hadn’t been. There wasn’t anything in that room worth stealing. No money, no jewelry, not even a laptop since he had decided he didn’t feel like carrying one around this trip and had left it back home in Hong Kong. His passport, wallet, and telephone were all in his trouser pockets.

  Even if there had been something worth stealing in the room, Shepherd would have bet it would still be there. Boosting a few odd items clearly wasn’t why his visitors had come to call.

  He looked at the envelope Adnan had given him, the one with Charlie’s Thai banking records in it. He had put both it and his phone on the desk when he came through the door and now both were sitting there looking profoundly conspicuous.

  The more Shepherd thought about it, the more it seemed obvious that his visitors had been looking for what was in that envelope, or something very much like it. Something that would tell them what he was doing in Bangkok and how it might be connected to Charlie Kitnarok. They were looking for Shepherd’s notes and files, or at least a calendar or an address book, but they had found none of those things. The only documents he had with him were in that brown envelope, and his calendar and address book were on his cell phone.

  Shepherd got up and turned the television set back around, then he closed the desk drawers and started picking stuff up off the floor. Not that he was much of a housekeeper, but there was something about knowing that somebody’s hands had been pawing through his underwear and socks that gave him the creeps. Better to clean up the place a little so he wouldn’t have to think about it. Putting things back where they had been wouldn’t change anything, of course. What had happened had happened. But something about the process made him feel better anyway. At the very least, his hands now were the last to have touched his things, not some rented thug’s.

  Regardless of how much better it might make him feel, Shepherd didn’t intend to waste a whole lot of time cleaning up his room. He needed to get moving. Because the sooner he got Charlie’s money moving, too, the sooner he could get the hell out of Thailand and go home to Hong Kong.

  And right now, going home to anywhere sounded pretty good to him.

  SIXTEEN

  IT WASN’T A very long walk from the Grand to the head office of Bangkok Bank up on Silom Road. Shepherd covered the distance in fifteen minutes, the envelope with his notes for the wire instructions and the documents Adnan had given him tucked safely under his arm.

  Ten minutes more and he was sitting in a visitor’s chair staring across a cluttered desk at a nervous-looking man who said he was Tanit Chaiya. Shepherd figured there was a reasonable chance the man actually was Tanit Chaiya since there was a black nameplate on the desk in front of him that said: Tanit Chaiya, Executive Vice-President, Bangkok Bank.

  Shepherd could have called first, of course, but he hadn’t. He had learned a long time ago that sometimes you found out things about people when you turn up unannounced. Sometimes they were even things you wanted to know.

  Tanit was wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and a nondescript blue tie. He looked like he had stepped straight out of a Wal-Mart ad. Tall and skinny with heavy black glasses, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Woody Allen, except for being a lot taller. In Shepherd’s experience, it was unusual for a Thai to be tall and look like Woody Allen, but Tanit actually was and he actually did. It was even more unusual for a Thai to get straight to the point, but Tanit actually did that, too.

  “I have received a valid power of attorney from our account holder authorizing me to accept your instructions on his behalf,” Tanit said.

  Shepherd wondered why he was being so careful not to mention Charlie by name. Maybe somebody was listening.

  “Do you have instructions for me?” Tanit concluded with what he probably thought of as a smile on his face.

  “Yes, I do. The funds you hold in the accounts in question are required for a major corporate transaction and we need for you to wire them to Citibank in New York.”

  “I am required by Thai banking regulations to inquire as to the nature of this transaction.”

  “My client is purchasing an interest in the Los Angeles Lakers.”

  Shepherd kept a straight face. Tanit kept a straight face. In fact, Tanit’s face was so straight it didn’t move at all, which was when it occurred to Shepherd that Tanit had no idea what the Los Angeles Lakers were.

  “That’s a basketball team,” he added.

  Shepherd watched Tanit think about that.

  “You client is buying a basketball team?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “In Los Angeles?”

  “Yes.” />
  Tanit examined Shepherd carefully for any hint that he was being made the butt of some obscure joke, possibly one with dubious cultural connotations in which he would end up looking like an idiot. Shepherd smiled blandly at him. If somebody was listening, it would be interesting to see what Tanit did next. Shepherd’s guess was that Tanit would just get on with the script rather than run any risk of rocking the boat, and after a moment that was exactly what Tanit did.

  “You are asking on behalf of the account holder to remit funds abroad?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what amount?”

  “We require remittance of the total balance of all the accounts that you are holding in his name or the names of companies controlled by him. The remittance should be made in United States dollars, of course.”

  They were talking about nearly half a billion dollars, but Tanit didn’t even blink.

  “Of course,” he said. “And do you have the details of how these funds should be remitted?”

  Shepherd opened the flap of the envelope on his lap and handed Tanit the instructions he had prepared.

  “A complete list of the accounts to which the funds should be wired and the amounts to be wired to each account is included in these instructions.”

  “Naturally I must also ask for appropriate identification,” Tanit said, “to confirm formally that you may exercise authority over the accounts listed in the power of attorney and instruct me to execute the transfers.”

  Shepherd pulled his passport out of his pocket and handed it across his desk. Tanit accepted it, nodded gravely, and carefully copied down the particulars on some kind of form he had in front of him.

  “As to the purpose of this remittance,” he said, “I have recorded that the account holder will purchase the Los Angeles Lackers.”

  “It’s Lakers,” Shepherd said. “L-A-K-E-R-S.”

  “Ah,” Tanit said, then bent back to the form and wrote some more.

  When he was done, he returned Shepherd’s passport, stapled the instructions he had been given to the form, and pushed it across the desk for Shepherd’s signature. The form was entirely in Thai, a language that in its written form is as incomprehensible to westerners as Sanskrit, which is more or less what it actually is. Shepherd signed the form anyway. Signing documents you couldn’t read might not be the approved way to conduct business in New York, but in Thailand it was an everyday occurrence. Shepherd returned the form and the instructions to Tanit, then he handed him the brown envelope filled with the documents he had been carrying around.