Dead Girl Beach (10 page)

They bought pairs of rubber sandals at a night market at the edge of Had Rin. At a bridge overlooking a
klong
—creek—that drained into the ocean west of town, they tossed their shoes —weighed down with rocks —into the water and watched them go under. Then, they drove in silence north up the coast for another twenty minutes before reaching Red Parrot Bay.

The round, dome-like shape of the luxury villa sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. Seabury noticed there were windows all around on the side facing the ocean as they drove up the hill. Greta Langer's villa stuck out on the edge of a cliff like the dark, haunted mansions he'd seen in horror movies. Probably modern with all the amenities, Seabury could only imagine what was inside. A spacious dining room that opened onto a balcony, four or five bedrooms with built-in wardrobes and cabinets, a fitted kitchen with modern oven, double-door fridge, appliances, and utility room, a maid's room, a gazebo out back, and log cabins for the security guards. The opulent display of wealth and modern living was nothing Seabury could afford, or ever be able to afford, and he thought about all that Texas oil money she inherited as the car's headlights swept across trees bordering the road.

A paved road led to the security shack at the top of the hill. They drove in a cloud of smoke, and a loud roar from the faulty muffler under the car shot back into the night. The moon rose higher above the mountains as they reached the top of the hill and stopped in front of a guard shack painted red. Seabury rolled down the side window and looked out.

The security guard—a tall, unfriendly Corsican with eyes skittering like flying insects under the brim of his cap—leaned down and stared inside the car. The blue uniform fit snugly over his wide, massive chest. He gave Seabury the kind of look a man gives another when he sizes him up and wonders if it's safe to go any further.

“I'm looking for the Langers,” Seabury said.

“Not here,” the guard said.

 “Where are they?”

“Don't know.”

Seabury's brow furrowed.

“You're on watch and don't know where they've gone?”

“That's right.”

 “I don't believe you,” Seabury said. The guy responded with a thick, blubbery grin and shook his head. In the light coming in through the open window, Seabury noticed the hard, malicious light that had entered his eyes. In the darkness behind them, Seabury sensed something angry and unsettled lying there, like a tripwire ready to go off.

“I told you what I know.” The guy's voice reached a hard, abrasive edge.

Seabury took a deep breath. “Okay, Captain.”

He let out a sigh and tried to stay calm. Seabury couldn't figure out why the guy wanted to get into it with him—unless it was to regain a sense of lost pride. Seabury told him he didn't believe him, and it must have made him angry.
Oh, boy
.
Not another one
, Seabury thought.

He had been in barroom brawls before, from Port Moresby to Rotterdam, Cape Town to Istanbul. He'd fought in alleys smelling of piss and week-old garbage. He remembered the scowling, red-faced bartenders with paunches and sleeves rolled up above their elbows having the final word.
Not in here. Take it outside if you wanna fight
. So, they took it outside. The fight lasted until the other guy's jaw or nose was broken, and he slumped over on the ground, wanting to quit.

Seabury looked at the guy leaning in through the window. Maybe, he was looking to add to his reputation. Beat up on a bigger guy, tell all his friends, and end up intimidating the next guy in the same way. Seabury wasn't sure what he wanted. It went beyond refusing to give him information about the Langers. The security guard wasn't polite or professional. He didn't act like any security guard Seabury had ever seen.

“I don't want trouble,” Seabury told him. The guard sensed the tone as a sign of weakness. A thin, scornful smile played across the guard's mouth as his eyes moved up and down Seabury.

“Chicken, huh?”

Seabury said nothing.

“Hey…
pluck, pluck, pluck
.” The Corsican squawked again and sniffed the air. “I smell the odor of chicken shit.”

Seabury shouldered the door, and it flew open with a loud bang. The guard's chest took the impact of the swinging door, and he reeled back and dropped to his knees, holding his chest like he'd just had a heart attack. For a big man, Seabury was quick and agile. He flew out the door and clubbed the guy in the face with his beefy fist. Then, he grabbed the guy's arm and wrenched it behind his back.

“Sam!” Lawan shouted inside the car and watched as Seabury took the guy to the ground.

“I won't ask, again,” Seabury said.

On his knees, in surprise and shock, the guy looked up at Seabury. “Okay…Okay. They went to Sunrise Beach. That's all I know…honest.”

Seabury let go of his arm, and the guard stood up. Seabury watched to see if he would retaliate. The guy looked like he was thinking about it, but at the last moment changed his mind. Seabury got back inside the car. Lawan swung around and drove back down the hill, toward the highway, and raced off toward Sunrise Beach. In the guard shack behind them, the Corsican was on the phone, talking to Greta Langer.

“Yeah, he showed up here. The big guy. Looking for you.”

“And?”

“A woman was with him.”

“And?”

A harsh, guttural sound came over the line. “I told them you were at Sunrise Beach.”

“Okay for now, but I think he'll figure it out. He's not as dumb as he looks.”

“Do you need anything?” the Corsican asked.

 “No, stay put. I'll take care of things on this end.” Greta hung up.

The Corsican slumped down into a chair. He felt his jaw. It was starting to swell.

Had Rin, on the southern tip of Koh Phangan Island, was two miles south of them. The island was a large strip of land that jutted out into the warm waters of the Gulf of Thailand. This time of year, during high season and the coming Christmas holiday, the town bustled with thousands of tourists. Too many people milling about, drunk and dancing on the beach, far into the night. How was she ever going to find Suma there? How?

Her hands gripped the wheel, and her knuckles turned white. She drove furiously into the night. Seabury sat on the passenger's side, lost in thought and staring out the front window.

Lawan felt the apprehension climb high into her chest and settle there with the lump in her throat. She called the Riser Room earlier and spoke to one of her friends, Duan Sakda. Duan told her that Suma hadn't shown up for work. The friend sighed and moaned over the phone at the news that Lawan had quit her job, and the call ended with both women close to tears.

The Riser Room—at the main entrance to Sunrise Beach—brimmed with a loud, boisterous crowd of Full Moon partiers. Here every month under a full moon, European Alpha Males partied non-stop on the beach with scantily clad young women. Buzzed on crystal meth and warm beer, they had techno, trance, and
goa
music to keep them company. Wild sounds screamed out of fifteen sound systems strung out over the beach, and the noise drifted back toward the ocean.

On really slow nights, Lawan would watch the crowd through the front window near the end of a large, wrap-around bar. The group—numbering close to 20,000—would dance on the beach for a long time before they got thirsty. Then, they would run in and buy more beer in smaller groups of five or six people, depending on how thirsty they were and how many cases of beer they wanted to haul outside. After they got tired of dancing at about 10:30, they came in and stayed permanently, watching the nude floorshow that started at 11:00. After that, business boomed.

Out on the beach, the music blared. At times, it was so loud that it shook the walls and rattled the front windows, and the dancers kept dancing on and on and on, in a marathon that never seemed to end. They stomped feet in the sand, they spun around; they turned and twisted back and forth, in and out, side-to-side. Their pale, sweaty bodies contorted into impossible angles as the hot, sizzling, mood-altering tempo soared to a feverish pitch around them.

Lawan remembered the nights she stared out through the front window. Lawan heard Suma complain about a job with no future. “This place is a snake pit. I need to get out of here…fast!” Suma had shouted.

Always patient, always ready to take life as it came, Lawan washed cocktail glasses, dried them, and put them away. She waited on customers straggling in off the beach. She went back to the dressing room, helped the regular girls fit into their long, sequined gowns, and stood around while they decided on what frilly, feathery, G-string costume to wear during the nude floorshow. At 10:30, most of the dancing had stopped out on the beach, and the crowd poured in through the front doors to get seats and watch the girls perform dance acts up on stage, in and out of their clothes.

Time elapsed, and the Riser Room closed promptly at 2:00 a.m. After that, the sisters swept the place down. They cleaned tables and rearranged furniture. They saw Bennie Zee's pet group of cashiers balancing the till under his watchful eye. A while later, the bar manager's small, trim body slipped from the shadows of the club like an aging, silver fox and walked over. Go home, he told them without another word, and sent them away with a rude, dismissive wave.

A freight truck coming in the opposite direction swept past Lawan. The wind battered the small Toyota. It pushed the car to the side of the road and jarred her out of her thoughts. Lawan fought the wheel and got the car under control. Seabury stared across at her.

 “You okay?” he asked.

For a moment, she said nothing. She just froze there with her eyes pinned to the road. In the distance, a halo of light arched into the dark sky above Had Rin. On the road, headlights swept past the black, cone shapes of tall trees. Long, uneven patches of wild grass glittered amongst the darkness. Closer to town, lights from shops and tiny, roadside restaurants appeared and swept past them. Lawan stayed quiet for a long time. Seabury was the first to speak.

 “You need to trust me.”

“I'm worried. I think that dreadful woman has Suma.” Lawan glanced to the side at Seabury. He saw tears well up in her eyes. “I think something awful has happened to her.”

To Seabury, his life up to this point had a schedule and discipline. He was a leader—a bright, stable, and unusually competent employee, not a wanderer or roustabout looking for his next job. He moved on the orders of other men, men higher up in the intricate network of maritime shipping, a team member transporting freight over vast oceans.

In the impenetrable, blue silence, the persistent growl of rugged diesels churned over the sea, powering the freighter toward dark, mysterious places in distant lands—places that challenged some primeval need inside him to roam and seek adventure.

Out there, away from the reality of bustling crowds and the dark, commercial world with its angst and daily grind, he managed to avoid all of it—commuter traffic crawling at a snail's laborious pace, bumper-to-bumper traffic, cars at signal lights with engines snorting. Nameless faces, important people—busy, technology-trained, hard-edged people producing profits—compressed into the tiny windows of high-rise offices above crowded, congested streets. All of them were to some degree involved in the restless, dynamic, ever-changing flow of world commerce.

He was in that world now, living a life of chaos and uncertainty. A girl he knew had gone missing. She was out there now, somewhere in the dark night, alone and in trouble, and he had to find her.

Seabury wasn't opposed to being onshore. He didn't mind if it was for short periods of time. Now that Dao's death had shattered most of his illusions about finding another woman, he couldn't see himself getting married and settling down to the life of a family man.

Onshore, it had been always the same…other people's problems…weak, helpless people caught in the grip of the antagonist's madness. Somehow, he was there, immersed in all of it and trying to help out the victim.

His home was the sea, and the sea for the most part was quiet and peaceful. Onshore, it was just the opposite. The land was a dark, vile, and dangerous place—a theatre of the absurd with its brutality, murder, and mayhem disguised beneath the bright, glittering lights of the world's great cities. The sea was his home. At sea, he felt peaceful and content. Now, he longed to be back there.

Lights flashed inside the car from shops and restaurants along the road. Seabury sat in the seat, cramped and restricted. He'd pushed the seat back as far as it would go. He flexed his broad shoulders over the back of the seat, and his face looked dark and distant.

“What?” Lawan asked.

He turned back to the voice. “Nothing, just thinking.”

In the light from the dashboard, Lawan looked worried. Seabury saw the fear move from her eyes down onto her face.

 “I'm afraid about the cabin…and all that blood. I'm worried about Suma,” she told him.

Seabury's hand went up. He shook it back and forth, calmly in front of her. “We'll find her…don't worry.”

Lawan's eyes drifted back off him.

 “Hey, I know you have beautiful eyes, but could you please keep them on the road.” Seabury chuckled, joking with her and trying to make light of the tense moment.

“How's this?” She sat up and looked straight ahead.

“Better. I wouldn't want to ditch the car in a mango swamp. They might not find our bones until some land developer decides to put up another shopping mall.”

“How dramatic. Maybe, there's a job for you on the Silver Screen.”

“You never know. If Mel Gibson made it big in America, maybe I could, too. No. Come to think of it, acting's not my thing. I like a tall bottle of Corona, a freighter out of Seattle, and the open sea in that order. As you can see, my needs are simple.”

He was surprised at how he was going on, but it seemed to be working, because the fear vanished from Lawan's face. The car shook and rattled down the road, now. Seabury smelled exhaust fumes leaking up from beneath the floorboards. The wind whistled in through a seam of cracked rubber around the doorjamb.

Light from the dashboard flickered through the darkness inside the car. It moved onto Seabury's thick, bushy hair—cut short and layered atop a wide, oblong face. The face was not old but boyish and ruggedly handsome in the way of his ancient Hawaiian ancestors.

He could trace his lineage as far back as the 1700s to Queen Kamehameha. She was a leader ahead of her time, a deep thinker. She was very intelligent, although at times moody and introspective. The trait was as much a part of Seabury's nature as eating his next meal.

“Not much further,” Lawan said. “Another mile…no more.”

Seabury could see lights up ahead as they neared the outskirts to Had Rin. “I want to get down on the beach—into that big crowd—and look around. Maybe, we can spot Suma there.”

The car raced on into the night.

* * * *

Ten minutes later, they reached the turnoff to Had Rin. Lawan drove down a street bordered by shops and bars in the downtown section, crossed over to Sunrise Beach, and screeched on the gravel inside a parking lot above the ocean.

The finger from a metal sign pointed down to the beach. A wooden ramp led them past a collection of small, open-air bars and commercial stalls selling hard liquor down to the entrance of the beach. Up ahead, a hot and hellacious crowd swarmed the beach. Red, orange, blue, and yellow beach costumes pushed out from the shadowy light of a full moon.

A robust, ribald, and noisy crowd danced to the booming tempo of psytrance music piped out of loud speakers on wooden stages strung out along the beach. Thousands of heads —dark, blonde, brown, bald—bobbed up and down. Loose jointed, limber youth fueled by yah bah, beer, and cannabis turned and twisted in energetic bursts of speed and power as the fierce, pounding beat rocked the night and scorched the sand beneath their feet.

“I don't see her anywhere.” Lawan cried above the noise.

Seabury grabbed her hand and worked his way through the crowd swirling up around him. As they moved on, scouring the beach, heads sprang up from the shadows and swept past them. Seabury, trapped in a graying mist that spiraled up before his eyes, scurried ahead with Lawan at his side, and a crowd came back at them from the opposite direction.

Eyes—dazed and glowing, like chips of glass in hot, sagging flesh—swept past them with cool indifference. Another wall, just as large, pulled up behind them, crowding their backs and shoving them along. Off to the right, a stage appeared. Heiko & Maiko Techno Rock blared from speakers. Seabury heard the lyrics.

Don't look astonished, the ground will burn
.
Blam! Blam! Blam!

Girls wore string bikinis. Young, sexy-looking girls drinking beer and dancing, dancing, dancing with their boyfriends or other girls flashed by in the corner of Seabury's eye. The music blared on in a loud, cavernous roar.

Hip hop crap, never again. Pull out the drugs. That's what you like
.
Blam! Blam! Blam!

The air torched hot with fire. Up past the bandstand, Seabury stopped. He looked at Lawan.

“Not here,” he said.

Lawan's voice sank in desperation.

“Too many people. It's hard to see anything.”

They were near the front door of the Riser Room when Seabury pulled out money and handed it to Lawan. He pointed to a stall selling hard liquor across the beach near the bar.

“You can rent a chaise for 120 baht,” he told her. “There's something I have to do. I won't be long. I'll meet you over there in ten or fifteen minutes.” He walked off before Lawan had time to protest.