Harlan Wolff - Bangkok Rules

This was what Carl had hoped would happen. For the first time that night he felt safe and confident he was going to get to walk away and have a future. He’d held out the money and General Amnuay had taken it. He had even left Carl with half of it so he obviously had no idea how much Carl would have paid. Thailand was home and he had not wanted to have to leave it. Deal done.

Bart Barrows had his lips squeezed tightly together in an attempt to suppress laughter. Anthony Inman was whimpering and tears ran down his face. He knew that without the general’s protection Thailand was about to eat him alive. His game was over and there would never be another godlike day to feed his addiction. In a matter of a few minutes he had become completely powerless. This was confirmed by the general cutting himself in for half of the money as if he wasn’t even there and they hadn’t been in business together for almost forty years.

“It will be done, general. And should you need me to answer questions to the police or media I will answer only as you instruct me to. I’ll contact your office and let your people know how to reach me.”

Carl went out the door and down the stairs past the dozen men with shaved heads and heavy boots. They opened the way and let him pass, as they had not been ordered to the contrary. He left the hideous building by its front doors, rolling up the rusty metal shutter. He stepped out onto the pavement of the main road where he saw George sitting quietly in the unlit car. Carl got in.

“It’s done,” he told George.

“Where are we going?”

“The worst bar on Soi Cowboy, or possibly the best, depending on how you look at it.”

“You think it’s safe now?” George asked as the car moved forward.

“We can assume it is. We head south in the morning to let things calm down. Oh, and by the way George, thank you,” Carl said as he stretched his aching back.

“Think nothing of it. Someone has to look after you,” George said with a smile.

George dropped Carl at Soi Cowboy then went to dump the car. There were too many CCTV cameras around Bangkok to continue using the stolen car after the case went public. Anyway, they wouldn’t need a car on the island. George had told Carl that he would go to their houses before dumping the car and pack bags for them. Carl had handed him a key and told him some things to grab for him, not that George needed a key.

Carl walked up the narrow lane that was Soi Cowboy with its over forty bars with their neon signs advertising adult Disneyland. He knew where he was going. Carl pushed through the curtains and went in.

He was well on his way to being drunk and was contemplating calling Jacqueline when a pretty young girl sat down beside him watching as he consumed glass after glass of whiskey. She was naked from the waist up and her pert young breasts became the focus of Carl’s attention.

“Why do you drink so much?’ she asked him.

“I drink to forget,” Carl said to her left breast.

“What’re you trying to forget?” she asked with concern.

“I can’t remember,” Carl told her.

The world’s first capture of a serial killer via live feed was passed around social media like a fuck photo in a Catholic school. Some Facebook and Twitter users commented on how staged it seemed and that two of the men in the video did not later appear in the official police statements. The biggest complaint from the conspiracy theorists was that the picture was just a little too grainy to identify the faces properly. The last thing Damien’s Finns uploaded to the site was an expression of gratitude to ‘Expat Watch’, a fictitious organization of anonymous undercover volunteers that allegedly assisted the Thai police in their unenviable task of investigating major foreign criminals.

Due to the very average quality of the video, CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera only ran the story for a day. A Thai government spokesman said, ‘We do not comment on home videos posted to the World Wide Web unless they contravene specific laws of the Kingdom of Thailand’. Shortly after that the story was sucked into cyberspace to float around on the sea of yesterday’s news.

Mad Mike had been right as usual; Inman’s arrest made the front page of all Thailand’s newspapers. When the police discovered a walk-in safe at his Las Vegas Real Estate office with shelves loaded with jars of pickled ears the story made the front page a second time. General Amnuay declared himself a hero and Carl’s name was never mentioned, much to his relief. The interrogation was perfectly choreographed and Anthony Inman accepted his guilt in a windowless room at police headquarters. After that he never spoke again. The system that had protected him for so long had lined up against him and he didn’t have a hope in hell.

It was in General Amnuay’s best interest that Anthony Inman spent the rest of his days in a dark cell without any contact with the outside world so that was what was going to happen. His crimes carried the death penalty but foreigners never got executed in Thailand. You never know though; perhaps they would make an exception for Anthony Andrew Inman.

Carl read all of the English language papers every morning on his idyllic island beach. He held onto the money for a few weeks to make sure they weren’t coming for him. When he felt reassured by the passing of time he transferred a million US dollars to his preferred Thai-Chinese moneychanger who operated from a backroom on lower Sukhumvit Road. Then he contacted General Amnuay to send one of his trusted boys to collect it at his convenience. It had been a long time since Carl had a general on his payroll.