Gina Takes Bangkok (The Femme Vendettas) (15 page)

“Yeah,” she replied. “Good ones. Bad ones. It’s been so long since I left I’d forgotten what this place means to me. Now that I’m here and in the thick of things, well, it feels like I’m finally back where I belong.”

“Darae would be happy to hear that. She’s always had great ambitions for you.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“She’s a smart lady, Gina. If you’re going to choose the path I did, you couldn’t have a better person in your corner. And that Kannon guy isn’t too shabby either.”

“Dad!”

“Not that it’s any of my business,” he continued. “All I’m saying is if a girl were going to have a partner in crime he’d make a good one. Tough. Smart. Loyal. A family man. There certainly are a lot worse choices.”

“You giving me a sales pitch, Daddy?”

“From the way you look at him, the way he looks at you, I think it’s a done deal.”

Gina gave her father a gentle hug. “We’re booked for three dates. After that, who knows?”

His arms stayed around her, his stupid cigar poking her cheek. “Who ever does? Only I had to get in my two cents worth before my birth certificate expired.”

She batted at his cigar. “I swear you just sit around thinking up new ways to describe your death.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the life of a poet, isn’t it?”

Gina climbed into the boxcar and sighed. Kannon was standing in the room, gun trained on a man in a chair who seemed completely unconcerned by the threat. He was a short, fat, young Thai, horn-rimmed glasses
set on his impassive face, his body squeezed into a Starcraft t-shirt two sizes too small.

“Does a day go by you’re not pointing that thing at someone?”

Kannon glanced her way, then did a double-take. “Why are you wet?”

“It’s not my fault,” she said, sliding the door closed behind her. “I was swimming when you called and you made it sound like an emergency. I barely had time to dress and no time to fix my hair.”

“Swimming? There’s no pool on the yacht.”

Gina, refixing her wet knot of hair, stopped. “Kannon. You must be joking. The yacht’s in a swimming pool. It’s called The Gulf of Thailand.”

Kannon flexed his grip on the gun. “The water’s got sharks, Gina.”

She might’ve felt flattered by his concern, except that he was being silly. “Pfft. There’s not that many, and most of them aren’t any bigger than me.”

Kannon stretched his neck, like his tie was too tight. “Gina. Hard to date a dead woman.”

“I bet. I stick with the live ones myself.”

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?” their prisoner suddenly boomed at them in Thai. That explained Kittyjack’s earplug recommendation. Good thing the boxcar was way at the end of the market.

“I take it you’re Capslock,” Gina said, switching to their prisoner’s language. “I’m looking for a woman named Victoria Wakai.”

“If I tell you what I know, will you let me go?” he demanded at the same decibel level.

Gina motioned for him to lower his voice. “Sure.”

“First, I should tell you that I’m only tech support,” the hacker replied, ignoring her cue to pipe down. “I run sites for all kinds of clients, no questions asked. I’m only a businessman. You understand?”

No, she didn’t. That had always been a problem for her. Never understood how to turn a blind eye. “Yeah,” Gina said. “Sure. Where we can find her?”

“I don’t know where she is,” he shouted, “but I know her partner, and the asshole owes me money. If you can find him then maybe you can find her.”

Gina backed away a few feet in an effort to save her ears. “What’s the guy’s name?”

“Ek Choeun,” he replied. “Cambodian guy. He’s some sort of tribal leader there—calls himself a sorcerer.”

Oh, wonderful. “So you’re saying he’s in Cambodia? That’s not a lot of help, now is it?”

“No, he’s here in Bangkok,” Capslock yelled. “Been here for a few months now.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know where he lives. He runs a couple of businesses. One’s out in 70 Rai called—”

“Been there, killed them,” Gina said. “What else?”

The hacker looked at Kannon, then kept on. “Yeah, well, he also runs a kind of black magic service. A lot of businessmen in Taiwan and China believe that crap, and they pay him a load of money to curse their enemies. I don’t know where he operates from, though.”

Gina held up her hand to Capslock and related what she’d learned to Kannon. “What do you think?”

“I think Mr. Microphone here told us everything he knows. The problem is who else is he going to tell if we let him go?” said Kannon, adjusting his aim upwards to the man’s head.

When Gina translated what Kannon said to the hacker, he snorted. “Lady, it’d be suicide for me to tell Ek what I told you. I keep out of trouble.”

There it was again. The attitude that it was okay to profit from the misery of others. Gina felt her skin crawl the way it had when the pedophile in 70 Rai had touched her. “You seem to think that just because you run things from behind a keyboard you’re somehow innocent of the crimes. And I’m not talking about some petty fraud. You have any idea what’s on her site?”

If Capslock was in the slightest bit repentant, he did a great job of hiding it. “Yeah, well, you are probably guilty of a few crimes yourself. Like I said, I only host the stuff. No questions asked.”

He was right. She had killed two strangers days ago, and before that—. She took a deep breath. No. Whatever her crimes, Capslock couldn’t sluff off his own responsibility. Gina stepped up and kicked him in the shin. “You want me to tell my friend what you just said? Because you sound an awful lot like those fuckers in 70 Rai before he put a bullet in their heads.”

Although Capslock still looked defiant, his next words were pitched low. “What do you want?”

“You’re going to keep on with what you’re doing for now. Don’t want to tip off Ek. But the next time we’re in touch, you’ll have forty-eight hours to get out of Bangkok, and stay out. You understand?”

His nod was a jerk of the head and Gina stepped back.

“What the hell was that?” Kannon asked.

Gina made for the door. “An attitude adjustment. Leave him. We need to find out everything we can about this witch doctor, and I know just the person we should talk to.” She stopped, realizing something. “That is, if she hasn’t gotten herself eaten yet.”

LWIN KINJO SMILED beatifically at the Siamese crocodile as she stroked its snout. Though the old woman was an even one hundred years of age, she handled the huge reptiles around her like they were kittens.

Gina and Kannon watched from a safe distance up the bank. “Puts my little dip with the sharks in perspective, doesn’t it?”

Lwin cooed to the beast, even as its tooth-lined maw opened in a satisfied yawn.

“Jesus.” Kannon cursed with total reverence. For the first time ever, he sounded impressed. “My father had a way with animals, but even he wouldn’t do anything like this.”

What? Kannon had dropped a bit about his past. Another first. Gina smothered her glee, and pretended that it was natural for him to do that with her. “Oh, she’s one tough battleaxe. It’s her gang that pretty much runs sporting events in Bangkok.”

“I knew about The Smiling Crocodiles, not about their boss. I wouldn’t bet against her.”

“Not many would.” Gina hesitated, unsure whether or not to continue. Kannon was Yakuza, and he might be a tad sensitive about his heritage, and right now, they were actually having a nice conversation.

“What is it you want to tell me?”

“Am I that obvious or are you that good?”

For the second time that day, he almost smiled. “Let’s go with it’s obvious I’m good.”

“Huh. Okay, this is it. Lwin has killed hundreds of your countrymen.”

“What? Her?” Kannon frowned.

“Yep. All by her lonesome. In the 40’s Lwin lived on a Burmese island called Ramree,” Gina began. “Place was a Japanese stronghold, and the soldiers didn’t treat the locals very nicely. Took anything they wanted. Raped the pretty girls. Shot or beheaded anyone who stood up to them. That said, when the Allies attacked she went to the Japanese commander and offered to lead his troops to a place the Americans and British wouldn’t dare follow.”

Again, Gina hesitated. This time for dramatic effect.

“Gina—” Kannon stretched out her name warningly.

“A mangrove swamp. She led about a thousand Imperial troops right into the heart of it, then when night fell, she disappeared.”

The old woman tossed a fish into a crocodile’s mouth which snapped shut. “Her pets attacked, I’m guessing.”

“Hordes of them,” Gina said. “Outside the swamp, the marines could hear rifles firing. Men screaming. Crocodiles splashing and rolling in the water, drowning their catch. In the morning, Lwin led about twenty soldiers out of the swamp to surrender. They were all that was left.”

Lwin nuzzled her croc, then stood and walked calmly toward them through the tangle of reptiles sunning themselves at the water’s edge.

“Why did she save the soldiers she did?”

“They say she spared the ones that had shown kindness,” Gina said. “Apparently a few of them had treated the locals with respect and didn’t deserve to die.”

The woman arrived at the top of the bank, and pressing her hands together, Gina bowed deeply. To her surprise, Kannon did the same.

Ancient eyes sparkled amidst the deep wrinkles of Lwin’s tan face. “Gina,” she said in Thai, “So good to see you again. Who’s your handsome friend?”

“Kannon Takahama. Alak Montri’s man. You heard he was kidnapped?”

“Who hasn’t? The work of his best lieutenant.”

“It was, and someone else, we believe. Do you know anything about an Ek Chouen?”

Lwin’s twinkly softness vanished and she suddenly spat. “Yes. Come.”

At the pace of someone half her age, she led them from the pond to a modest thatch house overlooking the water, its light frame set on stilts. How the place stood up to the tropical storms that battered the area had always been a mystery to Gina, but Lwin had lived there for over five decades without issue—ever since she’d married one of the soldiers she’d saved from the Ramree swamp. Gina made a mental note to tell Kannon about that happy ending. Maybe on their first date.

Inside she watched as Kannon’s normal deadpan expression was suffused with surprise and admiration. The place was a tattoo parlor, though not a typical one. Every wall was covered with photographs of Thai kick-boxers, some of them recent, others dating back to the 1960’s, and all were adorned with tattoos depicting crocodiles in one form or another.

Gina came alongside him. “She does magical tattoos. They protect from bad luck and curses. Give people strength or courage or a long life. That kind of thing. She did mine.”

“I don’t think many here would need magic to win,” Kannon said, looking at a particularly fierce boxer in a black-and-white photo. “Look at his hands. You can tell he trained seriously. Very seriously.”

Lwin gestured for them to sit with her at a table. Gina took a seat across from her, expecting Kannon to stand as usual. Instead, he made a series of unusual moves. He sat down right beside her, so close their knees almost touched. He took off his sunglasses and pocketed them. And then he turned his dark liquid eyes on Gina. Looking into those eyes was like plugging herself into a socket.

“Tell Mrs. Kinjo that she does exceptional work,” he murmured, his pillow-talk voice making her tummy clench.

“Should I also tell her you make my heart go thumpety-thump?”

The flash of his warm eyes sent more sparks through her. “No.”

Gina stuck to the original message and Lwin bestowed him with the same affectionate smile she’d given her pets. “What can you tell us about Ek Chouen?” Gina continued. “I hear he’s a very bad man.”

Lwin looked ready to spit again. “He is. And very big. They say he’s strong enough to strangle an elephant. But it’s not just him that you have to worry about. His whole clan is cursed.”

Oh no, bad juju. “Yeah?”

“He and his people are descendants of the rakshasas,” the old woman explained. “Reincarnations of people who made pacts with demons, polluting their souls and coming back as monsters.”

“Sounds familiar,” said Gina, thinking of the sharp-toothed berserker held prisoner aboard
The Pink Pussycat
, and the men they’d encountered at the defiled temple.