Exploits (18 page)

“You have an interesting notion of romancing a woman, Lucifer,” she said.

“I'm just here to announce my feelings and intentions,” I said. “The romancing comes a little later, after I've run my bankroll up at your tables downstairs. Though,” I added, “if you want to get a head start on the romancing, I got no serious objections to that. I could bring us up a couple of beers and lock the door behind me.”

“I'm afraid I'm a bit busy right now.”

“No problem,” I said. “I can come back in an hour or two, after you've slipped into something more comfortable, like maybe the bedroom.”

“Is this the way you sweep them off their feet in America?” she asked with a smile.

“Well, truth to tell, ma'am, I ain't been back to America in quite some time, and I ain't never encountered an American girl with your virtues. Or if she had ’em, they sure as hell weren't in the same places.”

“I assume that's a compliment,” she said.

“No, ma'am,” I said. “It's a statement of absolute fact. I know you got your detractors here in Bangkok, but I ain't one of ’em.”

“Oh?” she said. “And who
are
my detractors?”

“Well, one of ’em is an English feller named Reginald McCorkle, who was buying me drinks down in the bar until I was smitten by your rare and exotic beauty.”

“What did Reginald McCorkle tell you?”

“Nothing important,” I said. “Probably he just wants you for himself, which is an understandable but unacceptable position.”

She stared at me for a long moment, while I stared right back, my attention kind of torn betwixt her jewelry and her lungs.

“You are the most interesting man I have encountered in years, Lucifer,” she said at last. “I do believe I shall let you pay court to me.”

“I
knew
you couldn't say no to a good-looking young buck like me!” I said happily. “And being as how I'm a man of the cloth, it'll likely do wonders for your reputation too.”

“There are a few ground rules we have to agree to, Lucifer,” she said.

I wasn't aware that sex had any different ground rules in Siam than anywhere else in the world, but I perked up and paid attention, just so I wouldn't break no local taboos and wind up in the hoosegow while the Scorpion Lady wasted away grieving after me.

“I do not tolerate any competition,” she said. “If you make a commitment to me, you make it willingly and totally.”

“You got it,” I said. “Should I get the drinks now?”

“I'm not finished,” she said. “I also pledge to make a total commitment. If we are to become romantically involved, everything I have is yours.” She paused. “That includes my nightclub, my house, my business interests, everything.”

“I suppose I could adjust to that,” I allowed.

“From this moment on, you are a full partner, Lucifer,” she said. “In fact, I think that, starting tomorrow morning, I will turn my import-export business over to you.”

“Well, that's mighty generous of you, Scorpion Lady,” I said. “And I promise you won't be sorry you done it.”

She got to her feet. “As I said, I have business to attend to tonight, but why don't you come back at, shall we say, six o'clock in the morning?”

“I'll bring my toothbrush, my pajamas, and me,” I promised.

She walked me to the door, then grabbed me and gave me one of the more memorable kisses I'd ever got from a gorgeous lady smuggler, and then I was out in the hall and I heard the door lock behind me.

I climbed down the stairs, and walked over to the bar for a celebratory drink, and found Reginald McCorkle still sitting there.

“Well?” he said.

“Brother Reginald,” I said, “you were dead wrong. She's the sweetest, prettiest, friendliest flower in all of Siam's gardens.”

“I take it you hit it off with her?”

“You might say that.”

“It's too bad,” he said.

“You may have seen her first,” I said, “but I spoke up first. Try to be a good loser, Brother Reginald.”

“I don't plan to be any kind of loser at all, Reverend,” he replied.

“You're too late,” I said. “She's head over heels in love with me.”

He pulled out his wallet and flashed a couple of official-looking cards at me. “Do you know what this means?” he said.

“It means you're a civil service employee,” I answered.

“Read it carefully, Reverend Jones,” he said. “I am in charge of the British High Commission in Siam. We've been after the Scorpion Lady for three years.”

“That ain't none of my concern,” I said.

“I hope to make it your concern,” he said. “I want to enlist your help.”

“Out of the question, Brother Reginald,” I said. “I love her with a mad and all-encompassing passion.”

“I just want you to consider it.”

“Never,” I said. “She's the heart of my heart and soul of my soul.”

“I should add that there's a million-pound reward for any information leading to her capture and conviction,” he said.

“On the other hand, she's just a woman,” I said. “I can always get more.”

He grinned. “I knew I could appeal to your better nature. When are you seeing her again?”

“Six in the morning.”

“I'll tell you what,” he said. “I'll be waiting in that little restaurant across the street. As soon as you leave here, come over and we'll discuss what you've learned.”

Well, I figured the best he could expect was a lecture on whatever Oriental love techniques I learned, but I agreed to meet with him, and then I started walking back to the hotel, but a couple of ladies of the evening stopped me and struck up a conversation, and I decided that by the time I got to the hotel I'd just have to turn around and walk right back to the Black Scorpion, and besides I couldn't see that my pledge of eternal fidelity officially took effect until six in the morning, so one thing kind of led to another, and I left their company at about five o'clock, feeling mightily refreshed and ready to seize the day at such time as it should make an appearance.

I was banging away at the door to the Black Scorpion at six on the dot, and the Scorpion Lady clambered down the stairs and let me in.

“Here I am in all my masculine glory,” I told her. “You ready to play Romeo and Juliet, or have you got something more exotic and Oriental in mind?”

“Ah, Lucifer,” she said sadly, “I wish that I had time to introduce you to the more esoteric delights of the flesh, but we have a business to run. It will simply have to wait.”

“It will?” I said.

She nodded. “You are in charge of my import-export business, remember?” she said.

“I had in mind something more in the way of importing a little ecstasy to you and exporting the memories of a brief but happy encounter with me when I left here,” I said.

“Tonight,” she promised me. “But for now, you have work to do.”

“Tonight for sure?”

“For sure,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “What do I have to do?”

“In the alley behind the Black Scorpion you will find an empty truck with the keys in the ignition,” she said. “I want you to take it to the Acme Fertilizer Company on Phaya Tai Road and pick up a shipment from them.”

“A shipment of what?”

“Fertilizer, of course,” she said. “Then drive to the river and pull up to the Scorpion Freight Company.”

“And then what?” I asked.

She smiled. “That's all. Just leave the truck there and come home. They'll unload it and return it tonight.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “I pick up a load of fertilizer from Acme, I drive it over to your shipping company, and that's
everything
?”

“That's right.”

“Son of a gun,” I said. “I thought there was more to running a million-dollar business than that. I'll be here by noontime.”

“
You
may be,” she said, “but I won't be back until nine in the evening. I'll be waiting for you then.”

“You won't have long to wait,” I promised her.

“All right,” she said, starting to shut the door. “I'll see you then, Lucifer.”

“As long as I got all day, I don't suppose there's no harm in my going across the street and grabbing a little breakfast first,” I said.

“None at all,” she said. “Until tonight, my love.”

“Til tonight, my ... uh ... scorpion,” I replied, and then I moseyed across the street and sat myself down at a table. Reginald McCorkle pulled up a chair a minute later.

“Well?” he said.

“I got to pick up a shipment of fertilizer at the Acme Fertilizer Company and deliver it to the Scorpion Freight Company,” I told him.

“When?” he asked.

“No particular time,” I said. “Long as I deliver it before dark, there ain't no problem.”

“That's it?” he said. “No other pick-ups, no stops in between?”

“That's it.”

“Then we've got her!” he exclaimed. “You'll drive directly to Acme, fill up the truck by seven o'clock, and then take it to a secret warehouse that I've leased on Set Siri Road. We'll have almost ten hours to discover what she's smuggling before you have to drive to her freight office. This is the break we've been waiting for, Reverend Jones!”

“I got a special request, Brother Reginald,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Whatever we find, don't arrest her before midnight.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I got a romantic assignation arranged for nine o'clock tonight, and I'd hate to see the love of my life get marched off to the hoosegow without a chance at one last fling with a handsome and caring young man like myself.”

“All right, Reverend Jones,” he said. “It's a deal. We've been trying to arrest her for three years; I suppose an extra few hours won't make all that much difference. Now we'd best be started.”

“After I eat breakfast,” I said. “And since I'm working for the British High Commission, I think it's only fair and fitting that you pick up the check.”

“All right, but be quick about it.”

Well, so as not to cause him undue consternation, I ate a light breakfast consisting of nothing but orange juice and oatmeal and steak and eggs and hash browns and toast and biscuits and a few cups of coffee, and then I went into the alley behind the Black Scorpion and found this beautiful brand-new truck waiting for me. Sure enough, the keys were in the ignition, just like the Scorpion Lady had promised, and I drove out to Phaya Tai Road and cruised up and down it til I finally found the Acme Fertilizer Company. I backed up to one of their shipping docks, and before I could even tell ’em who I was or what I wanted, they began loading the truck up with bag after bag of fertilizer, and after about twenty minutes, when it was filled to the brim, they had me sign for it and then I was on my way again.

I spotted Reginald McCorkle's car waiting for me just outside the fertilizer factory, and I followed him to the warehouse he had leased on Set Siri Road, and pulled into it behind him. He closed the door and turned on the lights while I climbed out of the cab of the truck.

“What now?” I asked him.

“Now we start examining your cargo and see what she's trying to smuggle out of the country.”

“Surely you got a staff to do that kind of menial labor, ain't you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “There was no one I could be sure I could trust. There's just you and me, Reverend.” He unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. “Let's get to work.”

We each pulled a bag of fertilizer out of the back of the truck, and he tossed me a knife.

“Open them very carefully along the tops,” he said, “so that we can close them when we're through and no one will know that they've been examined.”

I did as he said, and poured the contents out on the dirt floor.

“What have you got there?” he asked, while working on his own bag.

“Looks like about fifty pounds of elephant shit to me,” I said. “Smells like it, too.”

“Sift through it carefully,” he told me. “There could be a bag of drugs or diamonds in the very middle of it.”

“Sift through it with
what
?” I asked.

“Your fingers, of course,” he said, kneeling down and going to work on his own pile.

After five minutes we had both determined that the bags contained exactly what they were supposed to contain, and nothing else.

“Ah, she's a sly devil, that one!” said McCorkle, never losing his enthusiasm. “Probably only one or two bags contain the goods.”

“You ain't seriously suggesting that after we pick all this stuff up and throw it back into the bags and seal ’em up that we do the same thing all over again with the other seventy or eighty bags?” I said.

“Do you know a better way?” he demanded.

“Not off hand,” I said. “But that don't mean there ain't one.”

“More work and less talk,” he said, pulling another bag off the truck. “Just keep thinking of the reward.”

Well, I spent the next five hours thinking of the reward, and the three hours after that thinking of a bath, and by the time four o'clock rolled around we had to admit that what I had in my truck was a few tons of elephant shit and nothing else.

“Probably this was just a test run,” he said when we'd gotten ’em all loaded back into the truck. “Once you deliver it and show up back at the Black Scorpion, she'll know she can trust you. Tomorrow you'll pick up the real stuff. I'll be waiting for you in the restaurant again.”

Well, I drove on down to the river, and spent about an hour hunting up the Scorpion Freight Company, and then I left the truck there like she had told me to, and walked the four or five miles back to my hotel. I'd done more lifting and working than I'd done in years, and I ached everywhere, and I took a long hot bath and finally stopped smelling like an elephant about halfway through it.

I showed up at the Black Scorpion club a little after nine, and dragged myself up the stairs to the Scorpion Lady's room.

“You look terrible, Lucifer,” she said.

“It's been a long, hard day,” I said. “We'll get around to the hanky-panky in a couple of minutes, but first I just gotta lie down here for a second.”

I walked over to her bed and collapsed on it, and the next thing I knew she was shaking my shoulder and telling me that it was six in the morning and it was time to take the truck back to the Acme Fertilizer Company and make another pick-up.