Dead Girl Beach (12 page)

Lights from the Riser Room faded into the distance behind them. A small party of beer-drinking, macho males hauled out cases of beer from the bar into a patch of yellow light beyond the front door. They pounded their dark hairy chests in some sort of weird display of ancient, tribal bonding and then scampered across the beach, making wild, excitable sounds that tore off into space.

“I'm glad I no longer work there,” Lawan said as they hurried up the beach.

“You quit your job.”

“How'd you know?”

“Bennie told me.”

“I'm happy I quit on him. I wasn't sure at first, but now, I'm glad I made the decision. It couldn't happen to a bigger…” she paused, unsure about whether or not to go on. “Oh, well. Never mind.”

“What do you have in mind, now?”

“For my next job?”

“Yes. The thought had occurred to me.”

“Borrow money from pessimists—they don't expect it back.”

Seabury gave her a sick look. “That's an old one-liner. I'm amazed you've heard it.”

“I heard it in Melbourne. I studied two years there before Mother died. After the money ran out, I came back home.”

“You heard that sick joke in Melbourne?”

“Where else? At least it's better than the one about Saltwater Crocodiles.”

“I won't even ask.”

They worked their way up the beach, along the edge of the crowd. Up ahead, a toothy grin shot out of the darkness at them. “Hey, Mister. Want to party?” We got a cooler of beer. Just bring the girl.”

The young, male tourist looked at Lawan and ran his eyes up and down her small, trim body. What he saw excited him.

“Right nice
stoof
you got there, Mister,” he said to Seabury. His accent was Cockney, his face sweaty, and his eyes glazed in a drunken stupor. Now, he stared past Seabury, as if he wasn't there, and glanced down at Lawan.

“You with the old goy?”

Lawan's look brushed him off. Seabury grinned as they skirted past him and continued up the beach. Holding the flashlight on the ground in front of him, Seabury noticed how the beach had quickly changed. The lower part was white sand, clear, blue water, and thousands of sunbathers during the day. The upper half at night was littered with the grisly shapes of black, volcanic rock that sprang up everywhere across the sand.

They had just skirted the edge of a large boulder into a private area where a group of partiers stood around listening to music and drinking beer. Suddenly, Lawan stopped. She stared across the sand. No more than ten yards away, she saw the face. It was rough and chiseled. She caught sight of the tattooed tear under his left eye. The prison tear, as she called it—the one where the recipient had to have killed someone there to earn the warrior badge. It was Parry Langer.

He was drinking with a young crowd, standing at the edge of the group. His face was red and bloated. His hand circled the waist of a young blonde, barely twenty and dressed in a string bikini. The bottom half barely covered the essentials.

“It's him—” Lawan gasped for air, excited. “That guy—he's the one who came to the bar. He and that dreadful woman.”

Seabury stared at the brawny, round-shouldered figure of Parry Langer. He had flat feet, skinny legs, and a back as wide as the shell of a tortoise. Shirtless and in his baggy, blue shorts, he finished his beer and separated from the girl.

“Gotta go. Wish I could stay.” He staggered off up the beach with his flashlight skipping across the ground.

“I can't believe it.” Lawan's voice sprang up high into her chest. “It's him. It's…him.”

Seabury pressed a finger to his lips to silence her and pulled her back behind the boulder. He looked at Lawan and shook his head. A sad smile crossed his face, disappointed that Lawan had lied to him.

“Cut the act, Lawan. You already know him.”

“Excuse me?”

“It wasn't difficult to figure out. You know him from somewhere in your past—before you came to work at the Riser Room.”

“What?”

She recoiled a little. A tiny “V” cut into the skin on the bridge of her nose. “You need to start leveling with me. Suma's up there with Greta Langer, and she's in serious trouble. I know what Greta's plans are, and believe me. They're not good. So, you need to tell me all you know about the Langers.”

Lawan lowered her eyes. Her face was warm and flushed, ill at ease, and caught in that awkward moment between honor and humiliation.

“Okay, okay,” she said.

* * * *

Walking at a brisk pace, Lawan and Seabury stayed close behind Parry Langer. Parry, after drinking heavily, still tramped up the beach at the pace of a military march. Dropping back to allow Parry to get far enough ahead, they used the swelling crowds and the boulders strung further up along the beach for cover. Lawan, embarrassed and keeping her voice low, told Seabury her story.

“Mother died,” she said, “and Suma and I had a father we never saw. We reached a point in our lives where we needed money to survive. I was depressed and drinking heavily, then…every day. Yes, me—the one who never touches a drop. I fell into a state of despair. We had grandparents in Phuket, and Suma went to live with them while I went to Bangkok. I tried to work and send home money, but it was never enough.”

She dropped her eyes, blushed, and went on. “My drinking got worse. I lost my job at a disco bar near Nana Plaza and checked into rehab. I straightened out, but I needed money and started turning tricks in hotel bars along Sukhumvit Road. One day, Greta Langer found me, and it was like a miracle.

“She took me away from that life and, at the time, I couldn't be more grateful. She gave me a room in her luxury, high-rise apartment, bought me new clothes, and gave me a job working as her secretary. I worked for eighteen months. Then, it got to be too much—Greta, she can be…difficult.” She paused to catch her breath and went on. “Then, one day, I ran away. I took a bus down the coast and eventually ended up here on the island, far away from Bangkok. I was terribly naïve. I actually thought she'd never find me.”

“She found Suma, instead—someone who looks like you.”

“As it turns out…yes.” A cloud of guilt and shame moved across Lawan's face. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Sam, I'm sorry.”

He said nothing. Fifty yards ahead of them, Parry stopped in his tracks and turned around. His head tilted up, his eyebrows arched, and his small, green eyes swung back down the beach in their direction. A large boulder lay just ahead. Seabury grabbed Lawan's hand and pulled her behind it.

“Has he seen us?” Lawan whispered.

Seabury pressed a finger to his lips, and Lawan stopped talking. Grave and suspicious, Parry started back down the beach toward them. Seabury waited and held a hand up, signaling Lawan to be silent. Parry was nearing the edge of the boulder, now. Not far from the edge, something caught his eye. He moved his flashlight across the ground and came to a sudden stop. A crab skittered across the sand, inches from his feet.

“Fucking crab.” He took a kick at the cretin. “Like to bite me, wouldn't you? Well, that ain't gonna happen.”

He shone the flashlight over the sand. The crab crawled off toward the water. Parry wasn't very bright. His attention span was limited. After he'd seen the crab, he forgot why he'd reversed course and come back down the beach. Now, he turned around and tramped on toward the boat shack, where he'd moored his outboard alongside the pier.

Not far away, a few fishermen stood out on the pier in a halo of yellow light above the front door of the boat shack. Others crawled up ladders and joined them, leaving their boats secured to a string of lines for the night, nosing up and down in the water. Lawan raised a hand to her mouth.

“Wow! That was close,” she said, tense and a bit shaken.

Seabury stared back up the beach. Parry had stepped onto the pier and climbed down a ladder into the middle of a row of boats. Moonlight spread out over the water in a soft, powdery ash, and waves rolled gently against the wooden stanchions beneath the pier.

Parry found his boat and jumped inside. A quick pull on the rope, and the outboard's four-horsepower motor sent a wild roar back into the night. Seabury waited a few minutes. Then, he and Lawan scampered up the beach.

“I know. I'm sorry,” Lawan apologized as they neared the end of the pier. “I've made such a mess of things.”

Seabury kept quiet and stared off into the distance. Parry powered out of the bay. Light from his lantern wobbled in the darkness as his boat skipped across the water, heading out to sea.

A few minutes later, Seabury burst through the door of the boat shack, paid cash for a rental. Not long after, he and Lawan motored out of the bay and into the ocean. In a wild instant, Seabury thought he could hear the sound of Tara Bennett's voice racing through his mind.
Greta's dangerous. She's targeted you for murder
.

Seabury powered the outboard through the waves. The night was dark and eerie in the moonlight near the coast, and scarier still once he left the bay and entered the vast, seemingly endless expanse of open water further out on the ocean. Parry Langer slipped around the jagged promontory at the far end of Sunrise Beach and cut inland toward the safety of the shoreline.

The distance between Sunrise Beach and Kontee wasn't far—less than one nautical mile. Signs posted everywhere warned tourists not to swim from Sunrise to Kontee Beach. Dangerous riptides were in the bay, and the distance between the two beaches was deceptively further than it looked. Macho, male, Full Moon party animals—on daring bets from their buddies—attempted to swim to the beach, but strong ocean currents swept them out to sea, and they vanished without a trace.

The two-horsepower outboard motor growled under them, now. Lawan was up front, with Seabury at the rudder behind her. Near the edge of the promontory, Seabury ratcheted his speed down and skirted the edge of the dark cliff into Kontee's wind-swept bay. Lights from tents strung up along the beach showed in the distance. A quarter mile off shore, Parry swung his outboard past the line of tents. Seabury followed, keeping a safe distance behind him. Waves crashed over the bow, and salt spray blew back on them.

“How much further? I'm starting to get scared.” Lawan's voice began to crack.

“Not far. I see Parry's light. It's swinging into the lagoon.” He pointed to his left, across the water. “He'll motor around the reef, up through the lagoon, and dock the boat on shore. We're not going in that far,” Seabury said.

As Parry entered the camp, he waved the goggles back and forth in front of Greta. On a metal folding chair, she sat sipping a beer. When he got close enough, she cocked her arm and was about to throw beer in his face when she suddenly stopped.

“No use wasting good beer on a bum like you.” She stared at him with a look of scorn. “Took you long enough.” She moved closer. She saw Parry's red, bloated face and the sick, syrupy smile that cracked his mouth open, and she glowered at him. “I see you had a little nip down below, didn't you?”

“So what,” he said, handing over the goggles.

“And your hands…I bet I know—”

“So what.”

“Where they were. All over one of those young things.”

He shrugged in a drunken stupor, his eyes red and sleepy. He inhaled a full breath of air and tried to clear his head. “I think I'm being followed.” Her head cocked to the side, and she squinted up at him. “There're two of ‘em.”

Greta's mouth pulled into a straight line. “Yeah, I thought so,” she said. “I've been expecting him.” She turned away then back, again. “How did it happen?”

Parry looked tired, irritable. “How did what happen?”

“They tail you.”

“Dunno. I just come back…with your goddamn goggles. How am I s'posed to know? I ain't Sherlock fucking Holmes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Besides, I ain't worried. They come around here snooping, and I'll take ‘em out with that gunna yours.”

“Don't go anywhere near that gun. I mean it.” She stood up and finished the rest of her beer. She crunched the can into the sand and seemed to calm down. “I know it's Seabury,” she said. “I've got a little surprise for him.” She lit a cigarette and puffed twice. The smoke swirled over her head and into the air. “Well, anyway,” she said, changing the subject. “FYI, we had a visitor while you were gone.”

She had this thoroughly annoying habit of starting everything out that she thought was important with FYI—For Your Information—which clearly annoyed him.

“So, who was here? The bogeymen? Or maybe it was—let me guess—uh, Captain Kid.”

“Neither, wise guy.” Greta looked at him and winced. She shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, “Is this dickhead for real?”

“No—obnoxious one,” she said. “This creepy, stone-faced guy with the accent of someone with a mouth fulla chopped fingers came up on us. Right outta the blue, he comes sneaking up on Suma and me. Yeah, yeah. I knew all the time she wasn't Lawan. Anyway, you know what the guy wanted?”

“A ticket to the Ice Capades?”

Her head cocked to the side. Cold, blue eyes speared him with a nasty look. “No, smart ass. He came to collect money Arun Songsiri owed you to pay off his gambling debts. He said the wrong guy got the money. The money should've gone to his client.”

Parry sniffed the air like a bloodhound. Then, he brought his eyes back down and looked at her.

“I smell Bennie Zee in alla this. That schmuck's put a contract out on me.”

“Well, the hit man's six feet under, now—back up in the forest.” She pointed to a spot near the timberline off the beach. “I overpowered him and took him out.” Greta puffed up, proud of her accomplishment. “Well, anyway,” she said. “He's up there.” She pointed toward the forest. “Go take a look if you want?”

“At a goddamn grave? Are you serious? I don't care about it as long as he's dead.”

“He's dead, all right. In fact, FYI—”

He spun on her before she could get the next word out. “Geez, can you quit with that FYI bullshit. FYI…FYI…Everything that comes outta your mouth is FYI. It grates on mah nerves. Sayin' it all the time reminds me of those Jesus freaks back home in Kilgore, always preaching the Bible and sayin', ‘Jesus made me do this. Jesus made me do that.' What a freak show. So, knock off the shit, will yah. I'm tired. You got any beer?”

“For you—oh, toothless wonder—an oasis-full.”

He flipped her off, went over, and fished around inside the cooler. He found a local Thai beer and snapped open the can. He walked back over. “Where's what's her name?”

Suma?”

 “Yeah.” Parry guzzled his beer.

“Not your concern.” Greta waved him off.” Her skin flushed in a furrow of reddened wrinkles. “I don't tell my secrets. I've lived long enough to know that.”

“Okay, but where is she…really?”

“What did I just tell you?”

“Don't play games. Where'd she go? She ran off on you?” He drank more beer while she leered at him. “My God, you didn't. Tell me you didn't, Greta. You didn't let her get away, did you?”

She turned away, rolling her eyes into the air.

“Well, did you?” The voice sprang out at her.

Greta stared at him. A finger pushed up to his face. “Don't you ever. Don't
ever
question me, again. Who the hell do you think you are?”

She was livid, and the sight of her fuming backed him off. He cowered sheepishly in front of her. “I was just asking, that's all,” he said. “You don't have to get so—”

“Angry,” she cut in. “I'm getting sick and tired of all your questions. You need to back off. Let me take care of things.”

“Okay, Greta.”

“Here.” She took his hand. They walked around to the other side of the fire. “Under there,” she said. Parry raised a black tarp and stared down at Suma's dead body.

“Whoa! Saints be Jesus. Ya'll went and done it.” He scratched his head, still looking down. A moment later, he finished his beer and tossed the can down in the sand. “Yeah, I think I'll take a look at that grave, now. Make sure you put that mofo to beddy-bye.”

“I did the job. You'll see. Take a look.” She pointed to the forest and a deer trail that knifed through the underbrush. “It's over there—a big mound of dirt. Even a drunk like you can't miss it.”

Parry took his time and had another beer.