Chapter Twelve

Twelve

Lonny woke in daylight for the first time since he had arrived in country to the phone buzzing. He slept a solid 12 hours and felt rested and somewhat healed of the aches and pains from his numerous beatings. He found the receiver on the bedside table and put it to his ear without stirring from beneath the comforter that was keeping him warm in the luxurious 60 degree coolness of the room.‘Hello?’

‘Mr. Doyle, this is Brent Lorne, assistant US consul calling. How are you this morning?’

Lonny pictured the schizophrenic change Brent’s face had gone through the night before and cringed, but Toy had laughed him off and told him not to worry. He was just another tool in her kit, bought and paid for.

‘Fine,’ he answered.

‘So, incredible progress over night, the ransom has come through, it’s here at CIB headquarters and we’ll need you to come down as soon as, with any luck we’ll have Tanner back this afternoon.’

‘What’s the ransom got to do with me?’

‘You’re going on the drop. We feel it would be best to have you there as an impartial witness.’

Lonny sat up, gripping the receiver hard to his ear.

‘Don’t you have cops and fucking embassy staff for this kind of shit, I’m a god damned US tax payer not a secret agent.’

‘We both know what you are, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll get the fuck over here double time.’ Brent’s voice went hard over the line.

‘And we both know what you are.’ Lonny dropped the receiver onto the cradle.

It felt good telling the smooth punk off and he squirmed in the bed like a dog getting its belly rubbed. He knew he was going to have to get up. That Lek probably would be there any minute to escort him back to the headquarters but he wanted to prolong the feeling of ease he had and mired deeper into the sheets relishing the clean comfort for another moment.

The room was cold once he got out of bed but the shower was minutely controllable and a steady stream of water at the perfect temperature washed over him as he lathered himself with the assortment of gels and creams that were tucked into a bed of excelsior in a tiny wooden box on a shelf in the shower stall.

Wrapped in the lush toweling of the robe he picked his clothes up off the floor where he had dropped them the night before, mostly drunk on Toy's tequila. They felt stale if not exactly dirty and he wished he had thought about having them laundered. Wherever his luggage had got to he was sure to never see it again. In fact didn’t want to see it. The thought of being burdened with the old case filled with his jeans and jersey’s exhausted him.

‘That’s your doing girl, part of the new me,’ he told Pearl, knowing she couldn’t hear him from there, but just wanting to include her.

He ordered his all time second room service meal from the breakfast menu lay back on the bed and turned on the TV. It was just after seven. He wasn’t going to rush out for the consul twerp.

He ate in bed, the still warm toast, two fried eggs, roasted potatoes and a strip of tough steak. But the coffee was good and he had never eaten a meal in bed except soup his ma brought him when he was sick. He flipped through the seemingly endless channels where nothing quite leapt out at him as needing to be watched until he hit upon the Fishing Show. Two men sat in a bass boat discussing extravagant tackle for a half hour adrift on a boggy and evidently fish free lake.

At eight he closed the door behind him and descended in the gleaming elevator. He held onto his key seeing no reason why he shouldn’t return that same night when all the kidnapping nonsense was finished and over. He would stop and see Pearl for a while, but she would understand that he needed another night of decent rest. They had been trying days up until now and maybe worse to come.

Lek was sitting in the Lobby facing the elevator bank waiting expectantly. He nodded when he saw Lonny and Lonny nodded back and followed him out to the waiting car where he got in the back seat again. He was enjoying this new level of respect, as basic as it might be; it was a change from getting kicked around and mocked and laughed at.

After a few minutes they arrived at CIB headquarters and Lek dropped him at the tinted double doors that led to the main Lobby where he could see the outline of Brent waiting just on the other side of the threshold. Brent greeted him politely when the doors parted.‘Good morning Mr. Doyle.’

‘Yea.’ Lonny answered.

‘Let’s go right down.’

They walked the same long immaculate corridor as they had the day before and entered if not the same then a room so similar it made no difference. This morning it was crowded with men in uniforms absorbed in the many tasks of kidnap control. They played with electronic surveillance gear and tried on body armor and compared side arms and joked and play fought. Lonny wondered why all the acting when at the very least the main cops had to be in the know, but there would be press and lots of technical devices and serious looking uniforms were good publicity.

Lonny sat down in one of the six leather chairs without being asked. Brent loomed over him with one leg up on the table half sitting and half leaning. The officers paid neither of them any attention while Brent laid out the drop off plan.

Lonny was going so that Brent could assure the Bloodwrights that there had been no corruption and that the drop had been made. He was to ride along and that was all, the kidnappers knew he was coming and he would be in no danger.

‘Yeah, no shit they know I’m coming.’ Lonny mumbled. 

Brent stared down at him furiously. ‘This is a serious situation,’ he began, but his tone and the drama of his body language were undercut by the frivolous behavior and general amount of laughter in the room. He pushed himself off the table and strode out of the room putting his phone to his ear as if it had rung, and wandered out of sight. Either he was ashamed of his collusion or didn’t feel like wasting any more time on the ruse in the face of Lonny’s knowledge of it.

The amount of action in the room, the equipment, the special police, the three higher ups, the assistant consul, seemed a lot for 150 K. Cut up five ways it was less then Jerry had offered Lonny in cash up front.

Lonny was left to wait as hours went by and the men in the room rotated in and out, all in all ignoring his presence except for a cup of coffee one young uniform brought him smiling, which Lonny took with a nod sipped at and set aside. He was no coffee snob but the sugary mauve liquid in the cup was nothing like even the most basic combination of brewed water and beans he had ever tasted.

He nodded off and slept in the soft chair with his chin resting in the cup of his hand, leaned over the table. When he woke he was joined by the three older officers from the day before along with two young men in black uniforms standing at attention. Brent sat across from him, sneering at his sloth.

Lonny rubbed his eyes and grinned a little self consciously at those around him. On the table was a black duffel bag, unzipped, revealing bound stacks of American bills. One of the uniformed men was filming the conversation taking place between the officers and the troops. The money was counted out, piled in stacks, and documents were signed. Hands were shook and the two young men took the bag with the ransom and walked out. ‘That’s it Mr. Doyle, it’s a go.’ Brent said

'Why American?'

'Excuse me?'

'Why are they doing this with American money?'

Brent smiled and nodded at the bag. 'The hundred dollar bill is the most sought after denomination in the most sought after currency in the world Mr. Doyle.'

'Seems like it would damned hard to spend here.'

'Luckily that's none of your concern, now lets go.'

Lonny stood from the table and stretched and nodded to the older men and followed Brent out to the corridor and back to reception where he paused at the automatic door. ‘Good luck, there’s your transport, The US Consular service appreciates your help.’ Brent smiled and extended his hand.

‘Sure, anything to help such an honorable institution.’ Lonny said ignoring his hand.

Brent’s staring eyes burned into him, and finally unsettled him so that he turned from the confrontation and walked towards the giant black truck that sat waiting for him.

The men in the truck were bulked up, clean cut, sharp looking guys in immaculate para-military style uniforms. They introduced themselves, name, rank and nickname in well rehearsed English; almost like a chant without the guffaws and nervous giggling he had gotten from most other Thai men he had met.

He sat in the back of the king cab, the duffel bag full of money on the floor by his feet. The truck headed directly out of the tangled streets of the city which quickly dissipated into near rural looking areas of wooden houses on dirt properties laid up against fish ponds but intermixed with factories and warehouses. They navigated through tiny dirt lanes which cut along fields of weeds and rubble which became tarmac every few kilometers to cross wide intersections jammed with traffic before dissolving back to rutted tracks. Then a few turns, another huge intersection running up the double clover leaf ramp to a six lane highway that circled the city. The driver jumped the truck up to the far limits of the speedometer, using the break down lane to pass slower traffic.

When they exited the raised highway Lonny recognized the area as the dusty industrial waste land where Toy's thugs had brought him for their first meeting. The truck pulled up to the gate of the wrecking yard and one of the cops made a call on his cell phone. As the gate pulled back on its track Lek stood holding two huge dogs by their collars. They were identical cross bred mutts with patch work coats; panting in the heat but not yet barking. He pointed, not to the main building, but towards a shipping container that had been customized as an office.

Lek and the cops greeted each other with friendly smiles and the prayer like gesture Thais use instead of handshakes. Lonny got out of the back and followed the others in without being acknowledged.

The trailer was made usable by a powerful air conditioner installed in the far well, yet the corrugated metal sides were still hot to the touch. It was outfitted with a couple of desks and a spattering of chairs. Two long florescent lights had been hung from the ceiling. A still and quiet Tanner was bound to a chair against the far wall. Strangely an open fifty gallon drum full of water sat just inside the door. It didn’t look like any place Toy would spend time. On one of the desks was a bottle of whiskey and an ice bucket with glasses around it.

Tanner was sat in a desk chair at the far end facing the corner, unconscious but obviously breathing. The men all sat waiting, for what Lonny wasn’t yet sure until the door opened and Toy came in with the other thug he had no name for.

She breezed by him, made a halfhearted prayer motion to the cops who returned it reverently. They spoke briefly out of Lonny’s ear shot, one of the officers left while the other took his camera and videoed the impromptu office, the desks, the ceiling and chairs. Then to the rear where he made a video confirmation of a drugged Tanner, checking his vitals and raising his eyelids for the camera.

The second cop returned with a briefcase Lonny hadn’t seen before and set it on the desk. Lek opened it and quickly counted out the stacks of bills. Riffling each bound bundle with his thumb, set two aside, returned the rest and snapped the case closed.

Toy took the case and invited the cops to sit, smiling. Lek handed each of the cops one of the two bundles of bills he had separated and poured out whiskey. The men clinked their glasses and called out ‘chock dee’ their own version of cheers. Toy turned towards the door calling ‘Lonny you can come with me’ as she passed.

At the door Toy set the case down, looked up and winked at Lonny while she reached into her bag that was shaped like the face of a Bunny rabbit, its pink ears sewn together to make the shoulder strap, and unfolded a quilted silver glove, like something an astronaut or chemical engineer might use. She slipped this on and reached behind the plastic drum picking up a chunk of what looked like rock salt that was bigger than her own head. She pushed Lonny through the door and following him out tossed the chunk into the drum of water and slammed the door, fixing the hasp. Yelling ‘ better-make-a-run-for-it.’ She turned on her heel and took off with the case toward a bulldozer some fifty feet away, laughing.

The explosion, though contained by the trailer, jolted the earth beneath the two as they squatted behind the tracks of the machine. The air conditioning unit blew from its brackets off the rear end and spiraled high in the air before crashing into the towers of crushed cars.

Lonny felt the smack of the concussion in his gut the way he had during artillery drills thirty years earlier, the sensation immediately familiar. The container rocked on the ground kicking up a wave of rock, dirt and debris that swelled for fifty feet and then broke over the bulldozer, crashing on their heads. White smoke poured from the bent double doors of the loading end and in the rear where the air unit had left a gaping hole.

Lonny sat with his back against the treads, his mind clearing, but the blast still echoed in his ears. He choked on the dust that had kicked up thick in the air. Toy was already surveying the destruction. ‘What the fuck was that?’ Lonny said.

‘Sodium. Wow, it made the biggest boom!’

Toy smiled at her handy work until she examined her outfit and grunted. Her gold and blue silk pantaloons and white embroidered half shirt outfit was smeared with red dust, and paint particles. Her hair was in tangles and her face grubby. Her smile drooped. ‘I need to change my clothes,’ she complained.

In the cool white of Toy’s loft within the main building Lonny had stripped and showered and dressed in a suit that was both too wide and too short but clean. Toy sat on her white couch in a pair of thin cotton trousers and a white spaghetti strapped blouse that showed off her breasts to the best effect possible.

‘Ok, we’re all done, you can go home now or when you like.’

Lonny’s passport sat on the glass table in front of the couch. Toy was drinking a glass of white wine from a bottle she had taken already cold from the refrigerator. ‘Are you hungry?’ She asked.

He shook his head and sat down on the adjoining square backed chair. ‘You killed everyone in that trailer.’

Toy sighed, twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers examining the ends, sighed again and looked at Lonny like a child. ‘I had to make my deal with police, not about money you see? I can’t explain, is very difficult. Tanner wasn’t going to live. He broke my heart, he said I old already.’ She put on a pained face still holding the ends of her hair up for inspection.

‘The cops and Lek?’

‘Two police were not my responsibility; part of my contract with the big police. Lek was cheating, taking too much money, getting his face too big. You see this way everything works easy. Police and kidnapper die in explosion; one witness see everything, you. No one live, money gone. By tonight container and police truck are far away from here.’

Lonny looked around the loft, at the other thug, at the bleached wood floor.

‘I didn’t kill you Lonny, you see I told you, we’re like best friend. You go home and forget-about-it.’

Thug #2 led him out of the building to the car. He would drive him to the BTS. Brent was going to take care of his statement. Toy promised to have his box picked up the next day, she would take care of the shipping. Lonny wrote out the delivery information. He returned the cheap pre-paid phone she had given him and all ties were severed.

In the dazzling heat of the yard he looked out over the top of the car at the shipping container still emitting steady streams of white smoke. The police truck sat in the middle distance. Its windows blown out and its side blasted with stone and debris.

Thug #2 had already started the car. Lonny ducked his head in. ‘Hold on a second, I need my bag.’ He held up a pausing finger.

‘Just a moment?’ Thug # 2 nodded his understanding.

Lonny trotted over to the truck and opened the rear door. The blue bag sat on the floor under an inch of shattered safety glass. He pulled it out and thrashed the glass fragments from it against the side of the truck, slung it over his shoulder and returned to the car, slipping into the rear seat running with sweat.

*

At Pearl's apartment Lonny headed straight for the shower, stripping off the ill-fitting damp suit, letting each piece fall to the floor as he walked. Rinsed again and wrapped in one of Pearl's tiny towels he slid the glass panel of her freezer back and looked down on her sitting up-right with the red silk wrap draped over her shoulders like a cape, the ends tied in a simple knot above her perfect breasts. Her skin was like chalk, smooth and icy to the touch. The thin flesh around her eyes and lips had turned pale lavender against the pallor of her blemish free face, framed in her thick, ink black hair and streaked with ice crystals. He ran his finger tips from the top of her cheek bone to the line of her jaw, feeling the moisture of condensation already collecting on her skin in the heat of the little room.

‘You look beautiful; I wish you could see yourself.’ He told her drawing up her plastic desk chair and lowering his bulk onto it carefully so as not to crush its legs beneath him. He set the duffel bag on the closed side of the freezer top and unsealed a box of clear plastic wrap he picked up at Seven Eleven and set it next to the bag.

‘Things have changed honey, this was a terrible day, but one that is going to set us up for the future.’ He unzipped the duffel and turned it over letting the banded bank notes tumble out, thumping on the glass.

‘I know, but listen I didn’t do nothing. That girl Toy, she’s a freakin’ psycho, I mean Jesus how does someone end up like that? The whole thing was a kind of set up, the kidnapping was just a scam for the police to get rid of two of their own and the ransom, the drop was the payoff. She blew the trailer up, they had the meeting in a container and she threw a goddamned bomb in it, killed the kid, two cops and her own guy, Lek, did I tell you about him?’

He took the first bundle and turned it over a couple of times in the plastic wrap, closing it head and tail just as he wrapped the bluefish he caught surf casting when they ran in late summer. He reached far into the freezer and tucked the pack between Pearls thighs.

‘It’s bad, I know, but what could I do?’ He wrapped another bundle and jammed it down into the foot of the freezer.

‘Soon enough though we’ll be home, and I ain’t going back to work. We can just hang out all day, watch TV, have lunch with Ma. Wait till you meet her, I think you’re gonna get along good. I’m still gonna go out sometimes to have a beer but don’t worry about that. I don’t get into trouble, just go out have a couple, watch a game and come home, you won’t be lonely.’

He shut up and concentrated on wrapping the money. With the last bundle stuffed in between her thighs Pearl reclined in the ice cream freezer like some antediluvian princess being prepared for the afterlife with all she would need to be comfortable.

Lonny slid back the glass top and watched as delicate crystals formed in the moisture that clung to the underside of it. Slowly trapping Pearl beneath the glaze, he placed his hand on the glass and felt the cold come up and wondered how she was going to keep in transit.

He made his way around the plywood and sheets of pink two inch Styrofoam that leaned against the walls and sat on the single bed now stripped to the bare hard mattress and stretched out with the slight breeze of the fan blowing across him. He was tired; it had been a staggering day in which he had witnessed atrocities carried out in so casual a fashion they seemed almost not to have happened. He shut his eyes against the weariness. He needed to close the crate but his head was heavy and his eyes refused to re-open and soon his sonorous noises echoed in the room.

He woke with a start; early morning light was already filling the room. Toy told him the truck would come early and it was already nearly seven. He stretched and yawned and slid back the glass panel and planted a kiss on the top of pearls head. ‘This is it; don’t be afraid, I’ll see you in a few.’ Standing there looking down on her he couldn't hold it in any longer and finally said it aloud, 'Pearl, I love you.' Then closed her up and pulled the plug from the wall socket and curled it on top of the panels. He fitted the two sheets of insulation on top sealing her in and zipped the crate top closed with as many screws as the faulty machine would drive in. He gave the flimsy thing a kick.

‘Christ I hope it holds.’ He had been on too many air port cargo docks to think that writing things like FRAGILE or HANDLE WITH CARE meant anything to a fork lift. He simply wrote APC's address with a fat black marker along the side and kissed the tips of his fingers and planted that kiss on the lid for safe passage.

Standing in the shower he heard pounding on the door and rushed to get his pants on over his still wet legs before opening it to the three workmen whose faces dropped when they saw the size of the box. Lonny followed them down the stairs as they strained beneath it making sure they neither dropped nor slid it down the steps as he knew so many he had worked with would have. They bashed it into the walls of the narrow stairway landing, and dropped a corner against the steps a couple of times but there was no real damage to the crate.

The men got it out to their truck and hefted it onto the bed without the assistance of any tools. Pained smiles creased their streaming faces when Lonny handed each of them one of the pink bills and mimicked how fragile the contents of the box was. They nodded and pointed and showed how careful they would be and then drove off with his Pearl frozen stiff and surrounded by cash.

Lonny walked to Seven Eleven for his morning coffee and hotdog. This new ritual had become comforting though this would be his last time observing it. It was later in the morning than usual so the pedestrian traffic was heavy and by the time he arrived at the super cooled store his shirt was wet from the walk. The girls recognized him, and one pointed to the dogs rolling on their heated steel bed and asked ‘hotdog?’ He nodded and continued to the coffee station and made a cup of the instant brew. He had sought out the familiar like any immigrant in a new land. Who had brought the hot dog here he wondered, American GI’s? Or did it make its way here the same way it arrived in America? As a kind of German sausage bastardized and made generic on a white bread roll covered in Ketchup?

Outside the store he put the paper wrapped dog and coffee on top of the phone and dialed his mother’s number. He counted seven rings before she picked up and said ‘Hello.’

He thought at first he had dialed the wrong number but the voice was his mother’s nasal whine. ‘Ma?’

‘Lonny, that you?’

‘Yeah Ma, you answered the phone, I mean you said hello.’

‘What you expect me to say?’

‘No that’s great is all. Listen Ma, I’m gonna be home in a couple days, and I’m bringing 
someone with me, someone special I want you to meet.’

‘What? Don’t talk crazy. But I need to tell you something. Things are going to be a little different when you get back, I got a boyfriend now and he’s staying here.’

‘Where’d you get a boyfriend from? No, listen Ma, I’m trying to tell you. Wait, you telling me you got a man living there? Who? The nurse?’

‘His name is Angel, and he aint just a nurse to me no more, he’s my fella. And I don’t want you feelin prejudiced against him when you get back cause he's a spic either.’

‘What are you talking about Ma? He’s your nurse; he’s like forty years old.’

‘He’s my lover.’

‘Jesus Ma, don’t say stuff like that. Look I gotta go. We’ll talk about this in a couple days.’

He ate the sandwich in three bites and washed it down with the tepid coffee while returning to Pearl's building. He wanted to give the place a wash down, clean up the construction materials and gather up whatever clothes he had left there to try and erase his presence altogether.

In the pre-work crush of foot traffic Lonny came shoulder to shoulder with him and John The Complainer grabbed him by the bicep and pulled him out of the flow of bodies before Lonny truly recognized him. He tensed as if for a fight and wrenched his arm away before he knew the face, almost disfigured with booze bloat and streaming with sweat, the eyes squinting and glazed by the early sun.'Lonny.'

'Jesus John, you okay? What are you doing around here?'

John shook his head, looked around at the street and turned back to Lonny again, 'What do you mean? I live here. I’m going home man. What the fuck are you doing here?'

'My girlfriend lives near by, well I mean not any more, anyway you alright? You look, you know, you don’t look good.'

John was dressed in casually stylish clothes that would've served in almost any situation except that they hadn't been changed in days and were stained and crusted with the remnants of all the hours he had spent wandering from bar to bar wearing them.

'No, I’m not alright man, I can't figure out what happened the other day. I cant figure out why the cops picked us up and then, you know just let us fucking go. I can't figure out why they're fucking with me. I been going over every story I worked on in the last year and there's nothing man, nothing there.'

His fingers twitched and seized in spasms as he went through the motions of lighting a cigarette that he caught between his teeth and inhaled deeply on, burning it a quarter down with the first drag.

It took Lonny a second before he laughed. The arrest seemed so long ago, so insignificant that John's phrase the other day made it comical. 'Are you still thinking about that?'

'Yeah I’m still thinking about that, you don't understand this shit man.'

'Listen, that had nothing to do with you. That was for me. You were just in the wrong place with the wrong guy. Don’t worry about it anymore.'

Now it was John's turn to laugh but there was nothing but scorn in it. 'Yeah? They were after you? You were what, like Jay walking or something? So they pulled us in and then you disappear out the back and my editors telling me not to come to work until I figure out what the fuck I did. And you say I didn’t do nothing but be in the wrong place with the wrong fucking tourist?'

John pinched the cigarette to his lips and sucked on it until the cherry burned into the filter and then flicked it hard at the sidewalk between his feet and exhaled a long plume of smoke into the already hot, hazy air.

Lonny thought a second before speaking, organizing his story and then he let it flow out of him in a kind of stream of conscious ramble.

'I’m not just a tourist, I'm a hit man. My boss sent me here to kill this kid that he thinks killed his daughter, now this kid was hooked up with this like high level criminal girl, then I guess he sort of insulted her so she kidnapped him and so I helped with that but it all turned out to be some kinda double cross between her and the cops, who she killed with some kind of king sized water bomb and she's got this jerk that works at the embassy under her thumb. So anyway I think they're all going to be looking for me, the kids dead, did I say? Yeah, so I’m on my way out of the country, me and my girl, she's gone already, but I’m leaving soon as possible. So you see that thing with the cops, that was all between me and her.'

The two stood face to face with the day workers maneuvering around them on the sidewalk. Sweat trickling into their eyes, collecting in the pits of their necks, soaking into the fronts of their shirts.'

John lifted an eyebrow ' You're a hit-man? You been here what like a week and your already talking this kind of shit, CIA, NSA what firm you with?'

'No not like that, like a regular, you know trigger man, not even a professional or anything, I mean I was a truck driver but I got fired.'

'I'm trying to talk to you and your giving me this shit?'

'Alright never mind, I gotta go, see ya.'

Lonny moved into the crowd leaving John leaning against the building calling out after him, 'Yeah go check in CIA man, see what mission your handler has for you now; fucking secret agent Lonny.'

*

When Lonny reached the corner of the block Pearl’s neighbor was coming out of the building. Lonny ducked his head and continued on towards the sky train station, mingling with the pedestrians as best he could. He would return later, for now a good rest in the luxury of a hotel, a place like where Brent had put him up. He had his passport again and could check-in anywhere he wanted. Sleep and make his flight arrangements. There was nothing at the Mansion worth retrieving and if Toy hadn’t discovered the money switch yet there was nothing to worry about, just lay low until departure.

*

Sitting at the bar looking over the pool where a few foreign women were laid out in bikinis catching the morning sun Lonny was having an actual drink, not a beer, but a cocktail of juices and alcohol. He could taste the reason people enjoyed them, the sweet tang followed by the hit of vodka, they gave you a good buzz and were easy to drink. It was his last morning in the city and he had no intention of moving from the bar until it was time to get a taxi to the airport.

He made small talk with the bartender and laughed at the well trod witticisms the boy repeated. A banter pieced together over years of listening to the jokes and one liners of men who had their two weeks in fun city, the world's largest adult play ground and could now speak of the complicated system of bar fines and various merits of Walking street in Pattaya versus Soi Cowboy in Bangkok with the weariness of a professional whore hopper. ‘One more?’

‘Sure, why not, this time give me a Mai Tai. Is that from Thailand?’

‘ I think so.’ The bartender nodded and mixed the opulent, sugary drink.

Lonny scanned the pool again and let his eyes wander over to the lobby and there was Brent Lorne and three other suited white men moving swiftly across the floor.

Lonny dropped a pile of bills on the bar and walked the long way round the pool, entering the lobby through a thicket of potted plants and made his way straight out the front doors and into a waiting cab.