White Ghost (14 page)

J
ack told me you were at Berkeley the same time I was,” Sheridan said to Gage as the waiter delivered drinks to Gage and Cobra at the table in Jimmy's Kitchen. The lights bearing down from the steakhouse's coffered ceiling and reflecting off the white tablecloth and polished silverware felt as though they were attacking Gage's eyes as he looked across at Sheridan.

“I went to graduate school after I left police work.”

“Criminal justice or sociology or something like that?”

“Philosophy.”

Sheridan's face assumed an expression of feigned incredulity. “Jack told me that, but I didn't think he was serious. I can't imagine there is much opportunity for ‘All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal' in your line of work.” Sheridan offered a snide laugh. “Or maybe it's Bernie Madoff is mortal.”

Gage watched Sheridan sip his bourbon, smirking like a man who understood bottom lines, but nothing about humanity. His rigidity made Gage wonder whether Peter had been a possession that Ah Ming had taken away, not a troubled son who had needed a father.

“It's not about syllogisms.” Gage fixed his eyes on Sheridan. “It's thinking about what we're doing.”

“There certainly is nothing wrong with that.”

Sheridan signaled to the waiter to bring three more drinks. Gage caught the waiter's eye, a wave of nausea causing him to shake off the one intended for him.

“And you,” Sheridan said, looking toward Cobra, “where did you study?”

“The National Central Police University in Taipei and then at the Military College.”

“And what is it you do for a living now?”

“I'm like a private investigator.”

“In Taiwan?”

“No, Thailand. Mostly business intelligence.”

“Thailand. Interesting. I'd thought about building a factory south of Bangkok, but the corruption was so far beyond what I found in China, I didn't have the stomach for it.”

Cobra and Sheridan then began trading tales of Thai and Chinese corruption as they drank. But while finishing his second drink in the collegial atmosphere that developed between them, Cobra slipped and called Gage by his nickname among people he worked with in Thailand, Santisuk.

“Santisuk? What's Santisuk?”

“It means peaceful,” Cobra answered. “And it's more the how than the what.”

Sheridan looked at Gage. “What did you do to get a name like that?”

“He didn't kill a thief he could have,” Cobra said, “or maybe he should—”

Gage glared at Cobra and shook his head.

“Don't stop there. Tell me.”

“We don't know you well enough,” Gage said.

Sheridan looked hurt and puzzled, again excluded from
something about which he really only wanted to be a voyeur. He picked up his menu and stared at it.

Gage felt a flush of annoyance at Cobra, who never should've said the name in front of Sheridan any more than Lew would ever call Cheung by the name “Ah Ming” around strangers. But then a fragment of a question dug at Gage as he stared down into his empty glass. It was one he'd asked himself at various times in his life. But now was the wrong place and the wrong time to try to answer it and he tried to fight it, but it kept digging at him.

Who were these people really? Ah Ming and Ah Tien and Cobra, beyond the parts they played in the world and the names that served as disguises—even Santisuk.

Especially Santisuk.

Or maybe the question wasn't who they were, but what they were. A separate self? A second self? A fictional self that wasn't real, but only in the consequences of its actions?

He tried to push it away, but the thoughts drove on, gouging through him.

And did that second self die with the first, or did it live on even more tangibly than the natural one in the chains of causes and effects it had initiated in the world?

He didn't know the answers to any of those questions. But he did know that they weren't the kind a manicured deal maker in Hong Kong like Sheridan would ever ask himself.

Gage looked again at Sheridan. “Did you bring the money?”

Sheridan nodded.

“Give it to Cobra.”

Gage watched Sheridan survey the linen-covered tables, the hardwood paneling, the highball glasses, and the platinum-carded, black-suited businesspeople around them who'd never be seen handling cash in public, and then Gage saw the ruffle of his suit jacket as Sheridan passed an envelope under the table.

C
obra remained silent as they drove to Gage's hotel. Both of them knew it wasn't necessary for him to lose more face by apologizing. The slip wasn't a mistake he would've made on the job in Bangkok or Taipei, but it was an easy one to make during casual conversation at a steakhouse in Hong Kong.

Gage directed Cobra into his room and continued on into the bathroom to take some of the antinausea medication prescribed by Dr. Stern. He then sat down at the table, activated the encrypted e-mail app on his cell phone and checked for messages.

He decrypted the first one, from Sylvia. “It looks like Casey found intelligence information that there may be a connection between Sunny Glory and United Bamboo.” Gage smiled. “And here's one from Faith with a p.s. to you. She says she's relying on you to protect me from the
pi pawb
.”

“Since when does Faith believe in evil spirits?”

“She doesn't. It's just her way of saying that whatever is against me is evil.”

Gage set his phone aside. “What time is your flight to Taipei?”

“Ten. I'll stop by the yacht club on the way and pick up the GPS. Andrew was excited about having a chance to help you.”

“His older brother owns a restaurant a few blocks from my office. Some junior gangsters tried to lean on him for protection money, but he was afraid to go to the police. I asked a real gangster to tell the kids to lay off. He introduced me to Andrew at his granddaughter's wedding. He told me to call him if I ever needed anything in Hong Kong.”

“Andrew said they're sponsoring an ocean race for the next ten days. They're expecting a storm to pass through so there won't be anything unusual in him paying extra attention to their monitor in order to keep an eye on the container.”

Gage looked through the window at the lights of the slow-moving oceangoing ships in the distance.

“I'm really counting on you. You lose that container and we're dead in the water.”

“My men understand if they mess up, they'll have to swim behind it until it gets wherever it's going.”

Gage turned back to Cobra, finding him with a half smile on his face.

“Have you talked with Kai about helping you out until I can get to Bangkok?” Cobra asked.

“She'll meet me at the airport. Her heart really went out to Peter's mother. She plays the tough guy, but she has a lot more
nam jai
than she'd like to admit.”

“It's not just her heart going out to Linda Sheridan.” A glint in Cobra's eyes joined his smile. “You realize she's still hoping you and Faith will break up.”

Gage shook his head. “Kai knows that won't happen.” He shrugged. “Anyway, we have an understanding.”

“Maybe she's thinking that if she succeeds in helping you figure out Ah Ming's heroin connections, your heart will grow fonder, especially if things get a little dangerous.”

“Then I'll try to make sure we don't end up in the same foxhole.”

Cobra cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “I've never known her not to accomplish what she sets out to do.”

“As I said, we have an understanding.”

“We'll see how well she honors it.”

Cobra reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. He unfolded it and held it out toward Gage.

“This is the name of the medical clinic in Bangkok where you're supposed to go for the blood tests.”

“How . . .”

“Faith called my wife, my wife called the doctor, the doctor called my wife, and my wife called me.”

“Did Faith tell her why?”

Cobra shook his head. “She just said some confusing things about a tail wagging the dog, or the other way around, and me keeping you on a short leash or us both ending up in a doghouse.” He grinned. “I'm really not sure how all these American idioms fit together, but I still caught the meaning.”

“You didn't tell Kai about any of this, did you?”

“No.” Cobra's grin faded. “It wasn't my place.”

L
ying in bed after Cobra left, Gage wondered whether it had been a mistake asking for Kai's help. While few in Thai society moved more easily between the aboveground and the underground, none had the history they had together, one that left him with a doubled view of her: as a woman and as a DEA dossier.

Thai name:
Sukanda

Chinese name:
Chen Mei-li

B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles

M.B.A. from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok

Owner:
Siri Construction

Retired:
marijuana—ganja—trafficker

Marital status:
mia noi,
minor wife of the former marijuana exporter and current minister of the interior, in charge of the police and domestic intelligence

Gage hadn't been sure what Kai had seen in him when he'd come to Thailand on that trip fifteen years earlier: the rescuer
of her father's investments in the United States that were almost lost in a real estate scam, a way out of a failed marriage, or love at first sight.

It turned out to be a little of each.

Exhausted when he'd left Bangkok, Gage had missed all of Kai's cues, ones that had been formed in a society that had a named smile for every occasion, no matter how painful. And like Chinese culture, where face was the currency of life, well-read Thai signals saved face, and Gage had missed them altogether. He hadn't realized the nature of Kai's feelings until he returned to Thailand on a money laundering investigation a few months later, one on which the fate of a London private bank's future rested. He'd called ahead and asked her to introduce him to Li Chung-yun, a heroin trafficker known as Eight Iron—and not because he played golf, but because he'd used the club to beat an informant to death who'd betrayed him to the United Bamboo. Kai knew him well since her construction company had built shopping centers and office buildings for him in northern Thailand.

When Gage had entered the arrivals area of the Suvarnabhumi Airport on this second trip, Kai's driver intercepted him and took him to an executive suite at the Emerald Hotel, then handed him a key card and walked away. As Gage looked through the darkened room toward the window overlooking the lights of downtown Bangkok, he saw a candlelit dining table. And as he emerged from the hallway into the room, Kai rose from the couch and glided toward his jet-lagged body and pressed up against him before he could form a face-saving sentence that would back her off without humiliating her. Only then did Gage realize that Kai thought she, and not the case he'd been working on, was the real reason he'd returned to Bangkok. He'd pulled away and held her by the shoulders at arm's length.

“Who will know but us?” Kai had asked.

“Isn't that enough? Your husband's collection of wives and mistresses may be a model over here, but it isn't for me and Faith.”

Kai stepped back toward the couch and drew on a silk robe. She didn't camouflage her disappointment in either anger or in a juvenile pout.

Instead, she'd asked, “Can we still have dinner?”

“As long as you stay on your side of the table.”

Kai put on a face of disappointment, real, but exaggerated. “Is that where I have to spend the rest of my life?”

Gage nodded.

Kai shrugged. “Then I guess we have an understanding.”

B
ecause Kai's husband was the minister of interior and in command of the airport security, Kai was able to meet Gage at the gate when he arrived in Bangkok from Hong Kong.

As they walked toward the arrivals hall, she wearing an embroidered Cheongsam silk dress and he in a suit, they knew other travelers were examining them through the lens of stereotype, assuming that he was a
farang,
a foreigner, there to meet what the Thais called a chick, a sex toy rented for the week or the month, or perhaps an Internet-ordered bride to take home.

Nausea surged through Gage as they stepped into the exhaust-fouled air outside of the airport. He gritted his teeth and tensed his stomach in a failed attempt to fight it off as he climbed into her Mercedes parked at the curb.

“I spoke to Eight Iron,” Kai said, as her driver pulled into traffic. “He'll meet us tonight. I promised him if he gives you what you want, you'll give him a way to hurt United Bamboo.”

Gage held his breath for a moment. The nausea lessened. He breathed again.

“Will he object to you translating?”

“He trusts me. And like they say on American TV, he knows where I live.”

“What time?”

“Not till seven o'clock.” Kai smiled and glanced at her watch. “It's too bad we have an understanding,”

Gage forced a smile back. “I feel safer because we have one.”

As they drove south on Rachadapisek Road toward downtown, Gage saw the residue of the second Asian economic collapse, the first caused by the Thai devaluation of the baht in the 1990s and the more recent by the U.S. mortgage crisis. The recovery had been weak. During his last trip, at the bottom of the collapse, he recalled thinking that the two names for the city, Bangkok, meaning plum orchard, and Krung Thep, meaning City of Angels, had seemed either indictments or satire. Then, the skyline, marked by half-empty office buildings, jagged and towering concrete monsters, had seemed both hopeless and foreboding in the polluted air of Bangkok. Even now, many of the stores that had once drawn up-country teenagers to the city for work were still dusty hulks, the windows plastered with frayed and yellowed signs advertising Versace, Rolex, and Armani, luxuries that remained beyond the reach of those who didn't work in the resurging underground economy. And the used car lots on either side of the street still overflowed with repossessed or surrendered Mercedes, BMWs, and Volvos, the onetime status symbols of those who'd ridden high.

“How has Siri Construction been surviving?” Gage asked as they passed an abandoned high-rise.

“A few projects were canceled, but having a husband who's a cabinet minister guarantees that we kept most of our government contracts.”

“The prime minister should've put Somchai in charge of finance instead of interior. His ganja dealing did more for the
economy than globalization and all the free trade agreements combined.”

“The prime minister offered it, but he wanted interior, and he put two hundred million baht into the prime minister's campaign to get it. He needed to be in charge of the police so they couldn't cooperate with the DEA and extradite him to the U.S.” She grinned. “Of course, I wouldn't mind visiting him there, especially if they kept him near San Francisco.”

Gage gave her a sour look and shook his head.

She winked at him. “A girl's got to try.”

G
AGE LAY DOWN IN BED
after Kai dropped him off at his hotel. Night sweats were keeping him awake, but he hadn't taken the sleeping pills prescribed by Dr. Stern, fearing a chemically induced grogginess when he met Eight Iron.

A ringing sent him reaching for his cell phone on the side table. It was Sylvia.

“Lucy's disappeared.”

Gage swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.

“I tried to reach her on her cell and home phones, but she didn't return my calls.”

“Did you go to her apartment?”

“Her neighbors haven't seen her for days. I drove right from there to her mother's house. Linda hasn't heard from her either. She called her husband. He wanted to fly over, but she convinced him to let us look into it first.” Sylvia paused. “I hate even to say the words, but do you think Ah Ming picked up the drumbeats and grabbed her?”

“A hostage is no good unless you use it. And he's not using it.”

Gage thought back on Sylvia's comment about Lucy's anger and her comment about the shortest distance between two points.

“Have Linda e-mail you photos of her, then send people to
scout around East Wind. I'll bet she's playing surveillance cop and sitting on a rooftop or at an office window watching with a pair of binoculars and making cell-phone videos, thinking Ah Ming will commit a crime in the middle of his parking lot and all she has to do is call it in to the police. Grab her before his guys spot her.”