And Brother It's Starting to Rain by Jake Needham

Author:Jake Needham [Needham, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9786167611396
Publisher: Half Penny Ltd (Hong Kong)
Published: 2019-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Right after breakfast the next morning, Tay went down to the lobby and checked out the desk clerks behind the long reception counter. They were all attractive young women who appeared to be in their twenties, but that was not why Tay was checking them out. He was looking for somebody who appeared deferential, somebody not likely to ask him too many questions.

When he had made his choice, he walked directly up to where the woman was working, her head down studying something on a computer screen.

“I’m Inspector Tay of the Singapore Police.”

The woman’s head snapped up and Tay saw her body tense. He held up his warrant card.

“Who is the hotel’s security director?”

The woman’s eye darted back and forth as if she was looking for help. Tay didn’t want to give her time to find any.

“What is his name, please, madam?”

“Uh…” Her eyes darted back and forth again, but seemed to find nothing. “Khun Robert,” she stammered. “Khun Robert is Director of Security.”

Khun is a polite form of address Thais place in front of almost everyone’s name, particularly people whom they think might be of superior status. Thais are good at keeping social and professional rankings of status straight. They have to be to live in Thailand.

But Khun Robert? Now it was Tay’s turn to look startled.

“Your Director of Security isn’t Thai?” Tay asked.

“Oh yes.” The young woman nodded her head vigorously. “He Thai.”

Odd. A Thai named Robert?

“Would you get him for me, please?”

The young woman hesitated. Her eyes did the flipping around thing again.

“Right now,” Tay snapped in his best policeman’s voice. He hoped it would intimidate the young woman without scaring the crap out of her.

It worked fine. She jerked up a telephone receiver without any further hesitation and said something in Thai that Tay thought included the name Khun Robert. She waited a few moments, glancing back at Tay and offering an uncertain smile, and then began to speak again in a tone that was decidedly deferential. Tay had little doubt that she had reached the Director of Security.

When she hung up, she said to Tay, “He coming.”

Tay thanked her and walked across the lobby away from the reception desk where he stood looking out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at Pattaya Bay. He did that for three reasons. The first was that he didn’t want to have this conversation in front of a desk clerk who would almost certainly be tempted to gossip about it later. The second was that he needed some time to size up the Director of Security before he had to make his pitch to him. And the third reason was that he wanted to check the lobby for cameras.

He found several and was just wondering whether there were others he couldn’t find when he glanced back toward the reception desk and saw a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit talking to the young desk clerk. Any doubt as to who it was evaporated when the woman pointed toward Tay and the man turned to look.

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