The White Flamingo (6 page)

A seat above a tank of water filled with hundreds of fish, two cms in length, these fish fed on dead skin and foot sores.

Verruca, they dug special.

Joe rolled up his pants.

Dipped in.

Nibble, nibble, little fish, nibble.

The Killer
was working the nightshift.

The fish kept nibbling.

Kelly would not be safe, any bargirl on the seventh or eighth road hustling tourists were not safe.

Nibble, tickle
, bite.

That’s it,
callous, hard.

The Detective
’s lack of judgment bothered him like an insolent child on the shared custody gig. Nibbled at him over the cheeseburger and spoke about uncle Dave.

Trips to Disneyland.

Nibble.

Sometimes instinct got in the way of responsibility, he reasoned
; it was all part of
the slip
. The cigarette smoked over the pool table at Slim Jim’s bar, and the stash of China White that he kept chip, chip, chipping away at. He had to get off the train before it derailed.

One fish floated to the surface.

OD?

He
remembered the steps, to recognize the problem, to come to believe in a power greater than himself, and to hand over his self-will to that power. Hotel rooms were like prison cells when one had a habit. Fish spas better. They were a sanctuary and a sentence, hotel rooms. The cruel joke was that one needed to indulge in whatever poison that kept one in the prison to have the strength to venture outside. Some needed alcohol, some coffee, and some needed to smoke six cigarettes before venturing out into the day.

Some needed fish, nibbling.

The fish, hundreds, of them fed on his feet and legs. The spa, no picture of Christ, no memory, distant, troublesome memory hovering above.

Only fish.
      

The pill bottle was the best clue he had. At least the killer had a motive. Whoever was taking those pills was taking them for a reason and the reason wasn’t pretty. The drug was used in the early stages of the HIV virus. Tammy had been HIV positive, and
had not been too vocal about it. The Detective figured that there were a few punters on the streets of Fun City who were in for an unhappy surprise sometime in the near or distant future. Most of the regulars that walked the Fun City streets were simply too scared to have themselves tested, and therefore let the virus grow until it mutated into the very thing that terrified them most.

On the wall a widescreen
television hung above the tanks. Four cops led a tall very thin man away from the front entrance of an apartment block. Joe could make out the reporter’s language. She spoke clearly.

Name: Sebastian Bell.

Age: Twenty-three.

He had been seen with the deceased, Tammy, the night of her death, and was found to have disturbing pictures on his computer hard drive. The court had ordered a warrant to search his apartment. The news report showed some screenshots from the kid’s computer screen (murder victim’s photographs and images of road accident victims
) some pictures from the crime scene. Tammy’s mutilated body spread across the pool table in Slim’s bar. A knife had been found in the apartment. The camera shot, a close up. Like a fifty-piece jigsaw puzzle, it was easy and convincing. However, there seemed to a piece that was missing, motive. Perhaps the kid was mentally ill, or perhaps he had caught the virus. The locals would buy the story until the next victim or until the kid bought his way out of the can. For now though, the story was neat and impressive, like imaginary wars, and Indian hustlers that told your fortune for a dollar on the street.

The
mobile snapped him out of it.

“Hello?”

“Joe this is Hale.”

“Where are you?”

“In a bar.”

“That’s obvious, Hale. Which one?”

“It’s called The Corridor and does exactly what it says on the tin.”

“What’s that?”

“Limits your view on the world. Seventh Road.”

“So you’re calling me to tell me you’ve found nothing?”

“On the contrary, Sherlock. I found one of Tammy’s old, erm, lovers?”

“Lovers?”

“Well, customer, sponsor, spouse, spare part, loser, whatever you want to call it. You know the drill. His side of the coin was love and her side of the coin was the coin.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

Frog-scratcher toweled his feet dry.

ELEVEN

LATE AFTERNOON
.

The Corridor Bar.

The old customer was a bald-headed west country Brit named Bryan. Surprised that Hale had managed to track down one of Tammy’s customers, Joe sat on the bar stall next to them and ordered a soda water. He had heard these stories a million times before. Nowadays, it was an example of what happened when greed, vice, and money took over a beach and pushed a country’s traditions and tolerance to the limits.

“
This is bad.. The girls are just trying to make a dollar.. The cops here can be absolute cunts.. And ever since the Russians have moved into Pattaya.. They have been treating the girls worse and worse.. Its like, we have the Russians now.. We dont need you bitches anymoreThis is bad.. The girls are just trying to make a dollar.. The cops here can be absolute cunts.. And ever since the Russians have moved into Pattaya.. They have been treating the girls worse and worse.. Its like, we have the Russians now.. We dont need you bitches anymore.. And had their id's checked.. This is bad.. The girls are just trying to make a dollar.. The cops here can be absolute cunts.. And ever since the Russians have moved into Pattaya.. They have been treating the girls worse and worse.. Its like, we have the Russians now.. We dont need you bitches anymore :(.. And had their id's checked.. This is bad.. The girls are just trying to make a dollar.. The cops here can be absolute cunts.. And ever since the Russians have moved into Pattaya.. They have been treating the girls worse and worse.. Its like, we have the Russians now.. We dont need you bitches anymore
She worked just over there,” the bald-headed man said, pointing to a Chinese laundry across the street. “She was there all hours God sent, I kid you not. She slept at her Aunt's salon nearby. A nice country woman in her mid-thirties, the aunt was. Spoke better English than she did. Tammy spoke hardly any English at all, just down from the countryside. A good girl, you know what I mean, Tammy. At least at first,” Bryan’s line of vision fell across the street.

“What changed her?”

“This place, I guess.” Bryan took a drink from a bottle with a green and gold label with the image of two elephants head butting each other. “I used to get me togs all cleaned by her. I’d stop and ‘ave a chat like. Her English wasn’t great, so I’d teach a little bit bilingually, like. Over the next few months, we got on really well. With help from the Aunt and myself, Tammy started to learn English. I learned she was from a small town up country. She’d worked in factories, had one son and an elderly mother and father, neither of whom can work. There’s one drunken brother whose son she also takes care of.”

Hale stopped him. “You believe this story. This story about the
drunken brother and the son? And the auntie? I mean, you really believe it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, carry on, with your story.”

“Her mother fell ill and she had to go back home to help out.”

“Did the brother go too?” Hale asked with a grin.

“I don’t know. I never met the brother. She said he
was a bad man, but what could she do? Same family. We kept in touch. About a month later, I had to go to the capital, get a new visa. I used to phone her from back home, like. I came back like and I ‘ad a phone call, like from Tammy, asking me to go to see her like in the bar she had started working at, like. She wanted to show me off as her English friend. She was so pleased when I turned up. Such a small bar. Loud pumping music, blacked out windows, a couple of poles for the dancing girls like. It was a sad day to see her working in a place like that but she needed to work to keep the son, her brother's son, and to help her parents, like. The laundry Tammy worked at before had closed, like. Her friend had told her of this bar and asked her down to work in it, like.

“
She knows I am currently single, like, and also that I really do fancy her. Tammy told me she wants us be in a relationship, like. As the talking went on and on, I told her she would have to leave the bar because I don’t go with lady work bar, like. Then the talk turned to her friends who have Foreigners that give them money every month and take care of everything, and that I should give her five hundred dollars a month. I refused. She dropped the amount to three dollars a month. I refused that too. I told her I do not want to buy her every month, like.

“
Then, this woman who had, six months earlier, been shy and working in the laundry shop, started shouting. She started calling me names next. Called me a '’fucking man’, and some other choice words.”

“Then what happened?”

“Next thing I know she’s dead.”

“Happens,” Hale said.

“But if I could only have helped out, helped out a little, then she would still be here. Don’t you see this?”

“Did you use protection?” Joe asked Bryan.

“We were in love.”

“That’s not the question, did you use protection?”

“At first, yes,” Bryan said.

“Between me and you, get yourself checked out,” Joe said. Bryan said nothing. Joe figured he wouldn’t get himself checked, but chose it best not to push the issue. 

“It would have happened anyway, mate,” Hale said.

“How long have you been here, mate?” Bryan said to Hale.

“Too long to count the years. Fun City is a dangerous town.” Hale took a long drink from his beer and continued his rant. “The guys who send out the lettuce on a month-by-month basis to the hookers who do the long distance Facebook gig. The long game, they call it. A version of your laundry scam, with feathers and whistles. That auntie was an older hooker showing her the ropes. The laundry was a daytime cover before she hit the bars. The brother was either the husband or the boyfriend, and most certainly the father of the child of whom she was certainly the mother.”

“You’re too paranoid you are,” Bryan said.

“They will bleed you until you die. I remember once, some insane German tart took a jump from the apartment building. She splattered out there on the floor. The foreign residents spoke about what a shame it was that a woman had died so young. The locals talked about the figures. Their little faces lit up with excitement and greed. They wanted to know how old she was, what floor she was on, her birth date. Her room number. Why? They wanted to use the numbers for the national lottery. Death is lucky here, bro. I don’t know much about this culture. What I do know is that death doesn’t bother them and they are more than happy to profit from death. Death is an opportunity for them. A shame what happened to Tammy on the table. You wouldn’t know her date of birth would you, Joe?”

“
No.”

“You see it’s hopeless. 
Most of the locals in this town are from up country. Up until about thirty years ago, these people had been sitting in the jungle with no electricity, no fan, no lights, no nothing. If they wanted to eat, they went out into the jungle, either shot something with a bow and arrow, picked something from a tree, or dug a hole and pulled the bastard out. Grubs, they liked especially. Any kind of insect will do. I once took my girlfriend to the zoo. She walked around saying
delicious
and
cannot eat,
pointing her fucking finger at the animals.”

Hale could feel the beer moving him. Loosening the gears. Oiling the wheels. He held court in The
Corridor beer bar. The heart-broken foreigner was all ears. Strangers walked in from the streets to listen. A man with a rat’s tail wearing a Metallica T-shirt propped up the bar. Hale continued. “Let me tell you a story. All of you. Lend me your ears and your beers. Once upon a time, there was a small village in the northeast. Life was very simple back then. It was a simple and primitive existence. Everybody was happy. They had no idea that across the jungle and the rice fields, folks were sitting in high-rise blocks watching a box that had sound and pictures inside it. Cracking open cans of liquid that made you happy. Now upcountry, they had the jungle. They’d all sit in the trees eating fruit and spitting out betel nut all day long. For entertainment, they would tell old stories and procreate within their close-knit family groups. They’d spit and piss through the holes in their tree houses and forage for grubs in the forest. All very
comfortable
.

“
One day,
The road
came.
The road
brought with it beer and cigarettes.
The road
brought Coca-Cola and disposable razors.
The road
brought all the wonderful things that we westerners know and hold close. But where did the road go? A few of the younger men decided to find out. They rode a buffalo cart along the road until they came to a town and then a train station. They hid in a bunch of rice sacks and took the train to the city, to the lights, to the jobs. There was this thing called money, with it you could buy stuff. You could gamble, drink, and be merry. After a period of two years, one of the young men returned to the village driving a new car. He showed the villagers all the beautiful things that he had bought. He said that there was work for everyone in the cities. He took another young man and two young women with him. They were pretty in a rural way and very hungry for money. Money was good. They liked it. It was a great adventure.”