Catching a Big Break
Chapter 18
The surveillance of Wu’s mortuary had been ramped up a couple more notches based on Angie’s report of the drug rip-off, although we didn’t tell the cops why more undercover manpower was needed. It would have been a foolish move on our part if we’d tipped the police about his activities now. We were angling for a bigger fish named Kris Amar and Wu was to be the bait. We hoped he’d swallow it: hook, line and sinker, to stay with the fishy thesis. In this instance, our goal was to snag a particularly loathsome species of Indian fish; a real lunker, no less!
Our little team got together every morning after breakfast at the hotel and pored over police logs and surveillance photos of the past 24 hours, the street intelligence collected by Angie’s operatives, and every bit of gossip we could lay our hands on. Anything and everything was literally on the table for review and discussion.
One particular report intrigued me. It was a story out of Myanmar about two police officers being killed at their duty station outside Yangon. They had not only been stabbed, but strangled as well. Well, well, I thought. Could Mr. Amar be up to his old tricks? Burking and garroting were uncommon killing methods in Southeast Asia according to Chi. Was I wrong thinking that Kris was in Vientiane? All the intelligence gathered before I left the States clearly suggested he was in was in the Golden Triangle. Perhaps yes, maybe no, it was simply the Confucian dichotomy coming into play again.
Yet, Yangon was well south of the Triangle, so maybe I was mistaken as to his whereabouts. However, my faithful gut told me otherwise and it never lied, especially when it was growling and clamoring for a tasty Burger King or McDonald’s double-cheese with the works. I’d had my fill of Thai food.
So what was Amar up to? I wondered aloud to my colleagues. No one answered and it wasn’t meant as a rhetorical question. However, the question promptly took a backseat to what I saw next.
Our daily get-togethers included looking at all the surveillance photos taken of and around Wu’s mortuary. Most were black and white snaps, but some in color. Since the vast majority of the people in the pictures were Thai, Chi and Angie would do most of the looking, looking for anything or anyone who might seem out of place. Buddhist monks were high on our list of suspects, assuming Angie’s informant was right about Amar’s new persona and disguise. I’d never say they all looked the same aloud, certainly not, but they all looked the same to me. I had trouble differentiating one from another, although my colleagues had no difficulty whatsoever.
They’d comment on the street scenes and if anything piqued their interest or suspicion, they’d hand me the photo and explain their concerns. Frankly, I couldn’t find anything amiss so far and tired of the mostly repetitive shots of buildings, delivery trucks, people, cars, noodle carts, tuk-tuks and the like. Just normal street activity as best I could tell.
I usually read the English language Bangkok Times while they went about their work. I noticed Disney on Ice was performing Aladdin at the ice rink in the capital’s convention center. I believed I could be a star performer in the show since I’d skated through most of my government career. I did pretty well, except for a few pratfalls along the way as Jersey Briggs liked to remind.
My entertaining musings were interrupted when they passed me a clear headshot of a foreigner entering the mortuary. I held my breath while looking closely at it and I couldn’t believe what or who I saw. I was shocked to the core and couldn’t reconcile what I’d just seen before my eyes. There had to be a mistake or a plausible explanation why he entered the mortuary last night, but I couldn’t think of one at the moment, nor later for that matter.
“The farang in the snapshot entered the building about closing time, 9 pm. He left 20 minutes later according to the police report,” Chi related to us. He then showed the next photo of him leaving.
“Did the cops follow him by any chance?”
“No, their orders were to remain at their positions until relieved,” Chi replied.
“Damn! No matter though. This is an important break in the case. I don’t know exactly how this fits into finding Amar, but I strongly believe there’s a connection.”
“It’s time to up the ante in this game. We’re not playing by Hoyle anymore. From now on, we’re using my rules, meaning there aren’t any,” I boldly and foolishly asserted to my small audience. False bravado and blustering were never in short supply in the DSS, bombast and pomposity either. Jersey Briggs’ name immediately sprung to mind.
I told Chi and Angie to make duplicates of the photos and pass them around to their respective teams of watchers. I wanted to be immediately notified if he was spotted.
I also instructed them to set up around the clock surveillance on this side of the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge. Our target would be an Indian monk crossing into Thailand. I needlessly informed them that this one wouldn’t be wearing a headdress of feathers. They understood the corny, Amerindian joke and politely laughed to save my face. It was a time like this that I really appreciated the Thai social culture.
“Oh, by the way, there’s something I forgot to mention earlier,” Chi spoke to no one in particular. “A local guy named Nanong Priap was found dead in his apartment last night. He’s reputed to be a low-level drug player with a very checkered past. There was a bullet hole to the back of his head and it appeared he’d been tortured before he was killed. The numerous cigarette burns on his face and groin attested to the fact.”
“The police find the murder strange since the ballistics test confirmed the bullet to be a 10 millimeter, not a very popular round here. However, it’s standard issue for many police departments and federal agencies in the States due to its reputed, stopping power. As you know, your cops believe it a superior weapon to the 9 millimeter automatic because of that feature alone. Also, mutilating a person by that method is very un-Thai. It’s considered too slow and too crude in our culture.”
“Acid thrown in the face for the purpose of disfigurement is the way it’s done here. And the act is usually committed by a woman against a woman,” Angie interrupted.
“I don’t know if this has anything to do with our case, but the cops found it unusual and that’s why I pass it along,” Chi continued.
I absorbed what Chi just mentioned, but I had no idea if the information had any relevance to our investigation. However, I now had a frisky, 900 pound gorilla rummaging through my mind and the last thing I wanted to do was piss it off!
After they left the room, I went directly to the hotel safe, pulling out the one-time code pad. Denny had the corresponding decryption key in his office. We were making good progress in the investigation, but I wasn’t sure he’d believe what I was about to tell him in the encoded e-mail. It was an incredible bombshell!
I typed out the message in encrypted form, severely limited in my word count. It read as follows in plain text:
Good progress in investigation.
Something important you must know without hesitation.
You have a traitor in cahoots with major drug trafficker named Wu.
It’s Ron Johnston who’s connected to Kris Amar, my target too.
Burma Shave, my friend!
***
Denny was stunned, finding the whole notion preposterous to say the least. The little ditty was awful and really much below Dickey’s usually high standards for verse. It was downright embarrassing to tell the truth and a backhanded affront to Foreign Service protocol on diplomatic discourse. The syntax was off and it lacked the necessary, crisp construction of iambic pentameter. At least he was somewhat accurate in his geographic locale, but the country was now called Myanmar.
Fortunately, it would never go public to suffer the scorn of strict grammarians from other federal law enforcement agencies, if Denny had anything to say about. He owed at least that much to his good friend.
Wordsmiths in the Foreign Service were greatly valued for their writing skills since the organization rarely took any meaningful actions. That was because making a decision and acting on it could be dangerous and career limiting, if one wasn’t careful. Besides, who the hell could remember the old, iconic advertizing signs whizzing by at 60 miles an hour in their misspent youth? More to the point, who cared about such things these days other than Dickey Avery? It was just more of his teases and quirkiness playing out and apropos of nothing.
Jeez, Ron Johnston? It was simply impossible in his mind. Damn it, Dickey had screwed-up somehow and in some way. It couldn’t be true. He and Ron played together on the consulate’s softball team and were good buds, friends who’d socialized together on many occasions over the past couple of years. No, there must be a plausible explanation for Dickey’s accusation and he planned to find out what it was.
There was no way Ron could be dirty, Denny though. Like the Thais, unpleasantness of all kinds was assiduously avoided in the State Department’s Diplomatic Corps.