Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

“This is my friend,” said Liquida.

She glanced at the taxi driver seated next to him. The kid was hunched over the bottle of beer, his eyes cast down at the table. There was enough road grit on his face to know he probably hadn’t showered in two days.

Liquida leaned toward the bike driver. “What’s your name?”

The kid looked up and said, “Kee.”

“This is my friend, Kee,” said Liquida. He wanted to make sure that the next time the girl saw him she would recognize him, so that there would be no problems. “If I get busy, sometimes Kee takes care of things for me.”

“I see him before,” she said. “Over there.” She gestured toward the taxi stand where his friends were still hanging out.

“Yes, well, I have a problem, you see. I wonder if you would mind doing me a favor? There are some papers I have to pick up in an office just across the street. Right over there.” Liquida pointed lazily in the direction of Second Road. “I have a conflict, you see, and I cannot go over and get them right now. It’s helpful to have someone who speaks such good English. I wonder if you would mind walking across the street and picking up these papers for me?”

She turned and looked back toward the street, the direction where Liquida had pointed. This was not the usual request from one of her male customers. “I don’t know. I’m not really supposed to leave, not unless I am bar-fined out,” said the girl. A bar fine was the amount of money a customer paid to take a girl out of the bar.

“I’d be happy to pay you if that’s the problem,” said Liquida.

“How much?”

“I don’t know… Say five hundred baht?”

She flexed her eyelids, jerked her head back just a bit and smiled. “You going to pay me five hundred baht just to walk across the street, pick up some papers, and come right back?”

“Yeah.” The way she looked at him, Liquida knew he’d stepped in it. He tried to do some quick calculations and realized that he had just offered the girl fifteen bucks for a quick two-minute stroll across the street. This was probably two days’ wages working in the bar.

The money was too easy. Now she was suspicious. “Why can’t you get it yourself?”

“The problem is I’m supposed to meet a friend. He should be here any minute.” Liquida regrouped instantly. “If I’m not here when he shows up, he’s liable to leave thinking I decided not to come. And he doesn’t have a cell phone, so if I miss him I may not be able find him later. So you see, I have to stay here. And when my friend gets here, we have to leave immediately for a meeting and we need the papers. So you would be doing me a big favor.”

“Why can’t he do it?” She looked at the biker.

“He’s waiting for a fare; guy went up to get something in his room, said he’d be right back down,” said Liquida. “He can’t leave. Listen, if it’s too much trouble, don’t worry about it. I’ll find somebody else.”

“Let me talk to my boss,” said the girl.

“Sure, no problem. Go ahead. We’ll wait here.”

She walked away and disappeared around behind the bar. Liquida sat waiting, thumping his fingers on the table to the beat of the music as the taxi boy sat drinking his beer.

A few seconds later the girl came back. “My boss says I can go so long as I am back in five minutes.”

“No problem. I’ll show you where it is. It’s just right across the street.” Liquida got up and told the taxi boy to sit tight. He picked up the beach bag and escorted the girl to the front corner of the bar where it bordered the sidewalk on Second Road. From here they had a good view across the street and to the south about a quarter of a block. He told her about the green door just beyond the tailor’s shop, next to the pharmacy. He waited for a break in the stalled traffic that was now bumper to bumper until they got a glimpse of the door. He described the interior of the office and told her the filing cabinet she was looking for should be in the second row from the right, about halfway down. Liquida hoped they hadn’t moved it since that first day when he set up the account and they gave him the tour.

Then he grabbed one of the bar napkins, took a pen from his pocket, and wrote something on it. He handed her the napkin.

“There will be a label on the drawer that will look just like this. It will have this typed on it in big letters. You can’t miss it. Just go ahead, take everything out of the drawer; there shouldn’t be that much. Drop it all in the bag and bring it back here. That’s all you have to do.” He handed her the beach bag and the keys and told her which one was for the office door and that the other was for the cabinet drawer. He gently took her arm and eased her toward the sidewalk. He thanked her and then watched as she slowly threaded her way through the stalled traffic toward the other side of the road.

Harry was wondering what in the hell was taking so long. At first he was worried that something might have happened inside. He was tempted to knock on the door, but as he got up close to the translucent glass he saw the faint flicker of a light inside. They must have found some kind of a flashlight. He left them alone and checked his watch.

He felt a little obvious standing outside the door, so he wandered down the hall toward the restrooms forty feet away. Just as he got there Harry heard footsteps coming down the stairs behind him. They were coming fast. There was no time to go back and tap on the glass. Besides, whoever it was was moving so fast they were probably on their way to the ground floor and out of the building, unless it was a call of nature.

Harry figured he could hide in one of the stalls. He opened the door to the men’s room and stepped inside only to discover that the room was a single-holer, one commode. Good news was, there was a latch on the door.

He waited to lock it to see if whoever it was would go on down the stairs. They didn’t. The footfalls suddenly stopped. Harry eased the door open just a crack. There was a guy, six feet tall, Caucasian, in slacks and a polo shirt standing just outside the stairwell. He was looking at the door to room 208 as if he was in a trance.

The thought suddenly hit Harry that perhaps there was a motion sensor inside the room. If so, the janitor who fixed the lights might have reset it when he locked up, in which case it may have triggered a silent alarm. They needed to get the hell out of here.

The guy in the polo shirt walked away, down the hall in the other direction. Just as Harry started to take a deep breath, the man came walking back, headed straight for the bathroom. Harry closed the crack and locked the door. Six seconds later he heard the door handle jiggle, and somebody pulled on it.

If Harry had known the Thai word for busy, he would have used it. But he didn’t. So he just held his breath and hoped the guy would go away. A few seconds later, he heard footsteps going the other way, and then elephant feet on the stairs again, all the way down to the ground floor.

Harry waited a couple of seconds, lifted the latch on the door, and peeked out. The coast was clear. He walked quickly down the hall toward the dark office. It was time to leave. Just as he got there, elephant foot was back. Coming up the stairs two at a time. Harry knew he was screwed. He stood there frozen, waiting for his fate. The guy was close enough that Harry could hear him breathing. Any second the man would step out of the stairwell and into the hall and Harry would be standing there in front of the dark door. That is, until he realized that the sound of the thudding footfalls was now coming from overhead. The guy had gone on up to the next floor.

Harry let out a deep sigh. He was standing there catching his breath when he heard them. Much slower and lighter this time, a tapping patter on the concrete steps. High heels. The place was getting busier than Union Station. Harry turned around and rapped on the glass. “Come on!”