Adult-FanFiction.org : Comics

Canary Air	By : Nos4a2 Category: DC Verse Comics > Birds Of Prey Views: 7065 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Birds of Prey,nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
- 4
CHAPTER THREE
Jet lag makes the day and night stretch into a thousand years, an infinity as wide and deep as the universe. Nong and I talk into early morning, telling mostly lies. She tells me what she can about the Khmer. Her people are from the jungles deep in Cambodia. She speaks their dialect and knows how to contact them, those mad disciples of Pol Pot and his genocidal legacy. Nong tells me her family were loyalists and lived through the bloodshed of those years by betraying everyone around them. I remember watching the Cambodian war unraveling with my mother, a pile of human skulls on the six o’clock news.
This woman is unknowable; my Western mind can’t seem to comprehend who and what she is. I listen as she tells me about life as a mercenary and a revolutionary, as a whore. I wonder how much of it is true and what she’s added for effect. There is no way to verify what she tells me: all of Barbara’s resources are useless here, in the dark green jungles of her mind. I ply her with scotch, hoping she’ll let something slip, something I can use against her, something to deny the horror of what she describes so matter-of-factly. I’m drunk before she is.
Nong kisses me again, and I let her, perhaps because of the jet lag, perhaps because I’m lonely and drinking and thinking of Oliver. This kiss is different; there’s desire behind it, at least on my part. I want her. Her wants and desires seem unimportant because I’m paying her for this, for the kiss and for the horror of her stories. But she’s aggressive, desperate even. Her tongue slides inside my mouth and I know why she’s a professional. She makes you believe that she wants it as much as you do.
My shirt comes off and I watch as she explores my bare breasts with her tongue and fingers. With her eyes, which is what I find most erotic. Just watching, looking at me, at my body which has begun to age. Ripen, like a fruit. I’m drunk.
She pushes against my shoulders and lowers me to the couch, still watching me with those glassy-innocent eyes. Her hair is soft and dark; it falls around us like a cloud. It smells like jasmine, one of those spices my mother described in her stories to me when I was a little girl. I say the word, jasmine, whispering it against her skin.
She is so soft and slippery; I try to tug her close, to feel her against me, but Nong pulls away, kissing me to apologize. Her lips on my breast, her fingers edging closer and closer to where I want so badly to be touched. Suddenly she’s there, inside, stroking me. I wonder if this is the first time she’s done this with a woman, but I doubt that it is.
She’s watching me again, watching as my eyes fall close and my head falls back, sighing. Every part of me is throbbing to some unheard beat, like in the club. Ba da ba. One finger - a thumb? - rubs my clitoris, the other buried deep inside, in and out, her hand rhythmic in its stimulation. I spread my legs wider and her mouth is gone from my breast, moving lower.
I should stop this now, I think. Stop before I do something I have never done before and have never wanted to do. I’m not gay, I remind myself. This isn’t Dinah Lance, Bird of Prey, florist, survivor. I’ve had some strange sexual adventures in my time, but they were limited to men. Blind men, super-powered men, extraordinary men…but always men.
That’s Barbara’s voice in my ear, I think. Advising me to pull back, to do the right thing, to behave normally. Babs doesn’t disapprove of alternative lifestyles, of course, but she can be a bit of a prude when it comes to sex. I like to think of myself as more open-minded than that.

And, admittedly, I’m enjoying myself too much to stop Nong and that fabulous mouth.
Her tongue enters me, and then everything goes Technicolor. Things became more intense, brighter, the fog of sleeplessness and alcohol burned away.
I remember making a lot of noise, thrashing around, really enjoying sex for what seems like the first time in years. It hadn’t been rock-my-world wonderful since Ollie, and I’d forgotten how much I’d missed it, that burning ache, that feeling of desperate satisfaction.
I felt it with Nong, with her mouth and hands and lips and breasts. After the orgasm faded, I think I fell asleep, or passed out. And when I woke up, I was missing a thousand baht.
She’d left me a note, promising to call when she’d found something. Maybe she just wanted some time to spend my money before telling me the Khmer didn’t know where Ollie was. Or maybe she wanted to tell her friends about the American girl who’d lost it with a Thai prostitute in some generic hotel room. Who’d just had some of the best sex of her life, and couldn’t stop crying about it.
*******************************
Another Bangkok morning dawns hot and muggy. I’m wearing sunglasses, jeans, a T-shirt. Tourist uniform: no point trying to hide the fact that I’m a stranger in this country. My blonde hair and missing baht prove that I’m a neophyte. >
Barbara’s back, although she’s monitoring, not saying much. I’m a little afraid of her voice this morning. Maybe she knows. There was enough electronic equipment in that hotel room last night to allow a hacker of Barbara’s skill to play spectator in my adventures with Nong, and I’m not sure what she’ll say.
I get a crackle of static as a warning, and then Babs is in my head. “Morning,” she says, her voice brisk, business-like. So she knows. Maybe. Does she feel betrayed?
“I’m hung over,” I tell her immediately. “Tell me something good.” Ollie on CNN, laughing about his brush with the Khmer, grinning in that boyish way I once adored.
“You need to head to the Dao Phyra Bridge on Sukhumvit. Take the off-route on Soi 4.”
“What’s going on?” I ask her, hailing a bike. A different boy again. Babs narrates over the jam-packed Thai freeway, and I remind myself never again to attempt to travel anywhere in Bangkok during rush hour while I’m hung over.
“There was a body discovered beneath the bridge,” Barbara tells me. “Matches Emerald’s description.”
Emerald. Ollie’s code-name on the Oracle network. My heart stops, and I start shivering in the muggy heat, cold all over. “Is it him?”
Crackle of silence, then a quiet “No, I don’t think so.”
It’s funny, but as the relief washes through me, I think of Nong and what it felt like to be with her, the hollow pleasure, the pale sensations that faded by dawn. This is why people frequent whores, I think. To avoid the kind of emotional responsibility I have for Ollie, despite what he’s put me through in the past. It’s easy to walk away when you’ve paid up front.
“Tell me,” I growl, wanting to know why a man who looked like Oliver Queen was found dead beneath a bridge in Bangkok.
“The body was discovered at six this morning. Witnesses say the vic is about 5’11, blond hair, beard, blue eyes. American. They haven’t been able to get any kind of ID, though.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll see,” Barbara promises.
***********************
It’s not Ollie. I know that right away as the kid brings the bike to a stop. There’s a green Mercedes parked beneath the bridge, near the brown river flowing with all kinds of unimaginable human and industrial wastes. I can just make out the back of a man’s head slumped in the driver’s seat.
There’s a crowd standing well back from the Mercedes and I approach slowly, Barbara whispering caution. It is now nine a.m., and so this has officially been a crime scene for three hours. I wonder where the cops are.
“Traffic reported it,” Barbara tells me. “They called it in as a parking violation. District police haven’t investigated.”
“Why not?”
I can almost hear her shrug. “Finding out is your job.”
So she does hold a grudge. My morning has just gotten that much harder.
The witnesses, as it turns out, hail from the squatter’s camp to the west of the bridge, near the river. There’s a whole village of them who bathe and cook and dump their sewage into the Suma River, a tributary that feeds into the Mekong. I guess that they’re the ones who called in the Mercedes, although why they reported it to Traffic without robbing it first is something I don’t understand.
I ponder the question for exactly the the amount of time it takes me to get close to the car. I lean in close to the driver’s window to get a look at the body inside, and the sound of something hitting the glass makes me jump backwards. It takes me a moment to process what it is I’m seeing. There is a small cobra throwing itself against the drivers-side window, launching itself against the glass, its fangs in strike position. The cobra is after me.
It’s then that I notice that the interior of the car moves. Slithers, really. There are at least a thousand snakes filling the inside of the Mercedes, mostly cobras. Highly venomous under normal circumstances, but these snakes are vibrating. The way that one little guy keeps launching himself against the window makes one thing clear: these are no ordinary snakes.
“Babs, you’re not going to believe this one, but…” I start, then take a closer look at the vic. Cause of death is pretty obvious. There is a giant python wrapped around his chest and shoulders, and right now the snake is trying to devour his head. The slightly blue tinge to his skin makes my own feel tight and constricted. This man was crushed to death by the giant snake, which killed him before the cobra poison got a chance to work through his system. One of the smaller snakes has bitten into his eyeball, and I turn away from the sight of the tiny cobra’s fangs locked deep into the man’s eye socket.
I won’t sleep tonight.
“Jesus, Babs, what the hell is this?”
Barbara doesn’t have an answer. I pull out a digital camera from my purse and start snapping pictures. Interior of the car, all the writhing cobras. The python, which looks to be about thirty feet long and must weigh close to five hundred pounds, is shaking violently. Drugged, I guess. The snake continues its slow consumption of the man’s head.
The doors of the Mercedes are jammed with simple pieces of metal, and for that I’m grateful. The thought of opening those doors to a tidal wave of snakes is unthinkable. My Canary Cry would almost certainly shatter the glass of the car and allow access to the dead man inside, but I consider the onlookers and think of what a thousand doped-up cobras could do if they were allowed to escape from the car and make it to the river.
So I do what I’ve rarely done before. I stand back and wait for the authorities to arrive.
They’re slow in coming and even when they finally do, it takes a while for things to get organized. It’s almost noon, unbearably hot, and the stench of the river is getting worse. The Mercedes has been opened, the snakes rounded up by trained handlers from a reptile farm near Pattaya. It took four men to carry out the python. One of the Thai police got a little trigger-happy when they opened the doors of the Mercedes and all those cobras started spilling out. I think he got about a hundred of them before the snake handlers convinced him to stop shooting.
The Thai police ignore me, thinking I’m a tourist only interested in taking pictures of this strange murder scene. The digital camera transmits the images back to Gotham, and when Oracle comes back online, she sounds faintly tense, disturbed.
“Whoever did this is one sick bastard,” she mutters, and I nod, watching the Thai police contaminate the scene. Not that I expect forensics to be much good, but it’s painful to watch as the police fumble around and destroy evidence. I have to consciously resist the urge to beam the scene back to JLA headquarters and let some of the detectives on the team go nuts. They’ll never complain about American CSIs ever again. Even our Thursday night forensic shows look more competent than this circus.
There’s a small Thai man examining the car with more precision than the rest of them. He looks closely at things, putting it together in his mind. He’s the only one who thinks to look at the passenger-side door and see how the lock was jammed, trapping the dead man inside the homemade snake pit.
I make the approach softly, trying not to distract him, but he knows I’m there anyway.
“You see anything?”
His softly-accented English surprises me. The other Thai policemen don’t speak English, and my stumbling attempts at Cantonese only garnered blank stares. I’m grateful to talk to someone who understands me.
I shake my head and he rises from his crouch by the door, dusting his pants off carefully. He’s well-dressed, although the clothes are a bit old. Not out-of-date, but worn and carefully mended. Second-hand Armani, maybe. I stick my hand out.
“Black Canary, member of the Justice League of America.” That title usually impresses, even in places that haven’t yet mastered a working sanitation system. I’m famous; those who don’t recognize the name know my legs. Fishnet tends to impress.
The Thai detective recognizes me, maybe, or at least the name of the JLA. I know he’s a detective by the way he sizes me up. His mind works in forensics, in facts. “Detective Sonchai Jipeecheap,” he introduces himself, shaking hands. His manner is quiet, respectful. He keeps his eyes on my face and smiles in a friendly way.
“Dinah,” I say, flirting a little just to see where it might get me. His smile dims and he nods at the car.
“Did you know this man?”
I shake my head. “Got an ID?”
Det. Jipeecheap frowns. “He is American, we think. The FBI will be interested.”
I nod sympathetically. Quantico is always tough to deal with. “I might be able to help,” I offer. “I’ve got resources and the jurisdiction to act in this country. The JLA is attached to the UN, and I can investigate as an independent party. As long as we stay in touch with the FBI, I’m sure we can solve this thing without more nosy Americans showing up and making things tough for you.”
The detective looks a little shocked at my offer; I’m a little shocked myself. But something is telling me that I’ll be involved in this case sooner or later. At least this way, it’ll be on my own terms.
“Why is the Justice League interested in this?” Sonchai asks politely, and I don’t really have an answer for him.
“This was a gruesome crime,” I try. “And the victim looks like someone I’ve been looking for.”
“But this wasn’t the man you were after?” he asks, and I shake my head. No, not Ollie. But enough like him to make me feel a little sick.
The reptile truck is all loaded up, the snakes safely inside. It peels out with a plume of diesel smoke, leaving behind the hundred or so dead cobras that the Thai cop used for target practice. Most are in pieces. Sonchai and I pick our way through the reptile corpses, getting another look inside the Mercedes.
“Was this a rental?” I ask the detective, who shakes his head.
“Illegal taxi,” he explains, pointing out the black-and-white plates. “Only tourists are inexperienced enough to use them. Just because the car is an expensive American model does not mean it is safe.”
I glance at Det. Jipeecheap, crouched beside me. He’s at least a head shorter than me. His body is small and compact, a little like Nong’s. Poor nutrition. Sonchai either grew up in the jungles like my one-night stand, or was raised on the streets of Bangkok. His face is wide and open, his expression serious, his mouth faintly amused. There is a strangeness to his face, and I realize it’s because his skin is lighter, his light blue eyes rounder than the other Thais. A half-caste, I guess, maybe a souvenir from the Vietnam war and all those American GIs who took R&R in Thailand. A Buddha necklace peaks out from the open collar of his shirt. I don’t know enough about Pure West Buddhism to be sure, but I think the red band on his wrist and the necklace indicate he’s some kind of holy man, an arhat maybe. I trained in Hong Kong – different kind of Buddhism, different world.
“Have you seen this method of execution before?” I think to ask. He rises, shaking his head, and leans across the seat to open the glove box. I wince, expecting more cobras. Instead, there’s nothing. No license, no registration, although I’m not sure such things are necessary in Thailand. We search the rest of the car carefully, wearing the thin latex gloves Sonchai has brought with him. The Thai forensics people hadn’t deemed them necessary. I’m digging under the seat, hoping that all the cobras were collected, when I find something. The entire car was clean, vacuumed out by whoever murdered this man. They missed something, however.
They usually do.
“I can’t read this,” I say, handing a much-folded letter to Sonchai. He takes a look, turning the paper over.
“It’s not Thai,” he tells me, frowning. “But this is a phone number.”
I look. The numbers aren’t Arabic, but the dashes separate the numbers into an eleven-digit listing. An International number, maybe? The lettering on the paper is in an elegant script neither Western nor Chinese. Barbara will be able to decipher it, I have no doubt.
“Can we go to your office?” I ask Sonchai. “I need a fax machine.”
*********************
The detective’s car is old, rusted and small, probably manufactured in one of the old Soviet states before Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe. It looks like most of the vehicles on the road in this country. The interior is immaculate, the upholstery worn and mended like his clothes. My eyes are constantly drawn to the red Buddhist bracelet on his wrist, which catches the light from the overhead sun and glows like a fire. He drives, darting in and out of traffic, forcing his way into open spaces, ignoring red lights like they’re mere suggestions. He drives like everyone else in this crazy place.
“What brings you to Krung Thep?” he asks pleasantly, not just making conversation. He wants to know, but he asks me so directly and honestly that I don’t mind telling him.
“I’m looking for an American named Oliver Queen,” I explain. “He disappeared six weeks ago. I tracked him to Bangkok and the Hilton. He was there with a few bar girls as recently as the night before last.”
Sonchai looks at me out of the corner of his eyes. “Is he an enemy of your Justice League?”
I smile at the little man’s gentle anxiety. No country wants to harbor an enemy of superheroes. Or an enemy of America. “No,” I tell him softly. “He was a member of the JLA, a long time ago. And he’s a friend of mine. I’m worried that he’s in trouble.”
Sonchai accepts that and keeps driving. We reach his station a little after 1pm. I read a sign in small-print English. District Eight.
“You getting this, Babs?” I whisper as I follow Sonchai up a flight of stairs into the police station.
“I processed the pictures,” Barbara responds. “You say the snakes were shaking?”
“Some kind of drug,” I tell her. “I can forward you a sample of the snake blood.”
Sonchai turns to me. “Did you say something?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Silent partner.”
“Ah,” he replies simply. An accepting man.
The station is crowded and noisy. People of all ages and occupations wait on the hard wooden chairs in the reception area. Peasants, mostly, waiting perhaps to pay tribute to the District Chief. The Royal Thai Police are a business like any other here in Thailand, corrupt to the core. I know organized crime in this country actually is the police, and local merchants must pay a fee to their District Chief. I know the Chief controls the drug trade in and out of Bangkok, using his police as carriers and informants. I am about to meet this man I know so much about.
Sonchai leads me into the squad room, which somehow resembles most of the ones I’ve been in, although this one clearly hasn’t made the transition to computers. Paper is everywhere, covering the small wooden desks, sliding off into untidy piles on the floor. Chaos reins supreme here as on the streets of the city these men are supposed to serve and protect. We pause outside a glass-lined office with shuttered wood blinds, and Sonchai knocks softly on the door. Someone barks a response in Thai, and we enter.
The District Chief’s office doesn’t look like a throne room. It looks like a regular office, with a chair, a desk, a couple of lamps and paper covering every available surface. A map of criminal activity is tacked up on the wall behind the desk. Prostitution in red, drug trade in green. Most of it overlaps.
The Chief himself is an imposing man of perhaps sixty, tall, graying hair neatly combed to the side in a style my grandfather might have favored. His brown face is lined, and his smile is wide and friendly. He stares unabashedly at my body, obviously in approval. I ignore his raw sexual appraisal, thinking it the polite thing to do.
Sonchai talks softly in Thai for a moment, then translates into English for my benefit. I start thinking it’s time I learned the language, trusting Sonchai to translate accurately but not the District Chief or his wandering eyes.
“Colonel Vikorn,” the District Chief identifies himself, raising my hand to his lips. My skin crawls. “What brings you to Thailand?” he asks through Sonchai. The detective explains while I study the crime map, wondering if it’s supposed to be a display of Vikorn’s sense of humor. The red areas are focused in his district. The Colonel nods, satisfied at Sonchai’s explanation for my presence. Sonchai asks if I can use one of the station’s fax machines, and the Colonel gives me permission. I leave the office, letting the two policemen discuss the details of the case while I contact Barbara and try to solve it.
I fax her the letter we found in the Mercedes, along with a thumbprint of the victim. He’s identified as John C. Jones, an American from Star City. When his picture comes up on the machine, I think I’m looking at Oliver’s twin. Same blond hair, goatee, defiant glare. But it’s not Oliver, I remind myself. Just someone who looks like him. Was Jones killed because of his resemblance to Ollie?
Sonchai joins me just as I’m getting Barbara’s analysis of the letter. The language isn’t something she’s familiar with: it’s in some kind of code. We listen in awkward silence as the fax machine prints the information. I get the feeling that Sonchai wants to apologize to me.
“Colonel Vikorn thinks you are very attractive,” he says to me softly, almost next to my ear. “I suggest we leave as soon as the fax is complete.”
“I think I can protect myself against Vikorn,” I tell him, a little offended.
Sonchai nods, although it’s clear I haven’t quite convinced him. And I admit that I’m probably wrong. There’s something about the District Chief that makes me uneasy, and it’s not about a sexual threat. Vikorn is a dangerous man.
The fax completed, Sonchai and I leave the station. I note the way the other police ignore him, carefully averting their eyes. So he’s a pariah. There’s one in every corrupt department.
We pile back into Sonchai’s car and he pulls out into the mad rush of traffic. I watch the city for a while and then ask, “Where are we going?”
“The reptile farm, about the snakes,” he explains in his golden accent. His English really is spectacular, and I’m curious about him.
“How far?” I think to ask, wondering if Nong has called me with information about Ollie. I should check my messages.
“Four hours in this mess,” Sonchai sighs resignedly. “I apologize for the way things were at the station. The police don’t like farangs.”
“Vikorn seemed to like me fine,” I reply, my tone dripping with irony.
Sonchai nods. “He’d fuck you, but you aren’t his type.”
The use of the blunt term surprises me. Until now, Sonchai has been all softness and decorum, so quiet and reserved I’m only dimly aware of his presence. But he’s been cataloging things, filing them away. He’s a detective.
“What is his type?” I ask, trying not to be offended by Sonchai’s sudden, unexpected awareness of the situation.
The car has stalled in traffic, at least a mile from the city’s center. It might take all day to make it across Bangkok and reach the road to Pattaya. I resign myself to it, as Sonchai has. “He deals in children,” Sonchai tells me. “Prostitution, sex tourism…it’s a lucrative business.”
My mouth hangs open in shock, and I stare at my new friend, seeing red. “You’re aware of what he does? And you let him do it?”
Sonchai doesn’t try to defend himself, doesn’t say anything at all. He simply stares ahead, quietly. “It isn’t a question of ‘let’. I do what I can, but Vikorn is one of the most powerful men in Krung Thep.”
That silences me for a few seconds as I contemplate Sonchai’s statement. The time it took for the police to show at the crime scene this morning. The incompetent forensics. No one was interested in solving this case.
“Was the American in the car connected to it?” I ask. The detective shrugs narrow shoulders.
“Probably,” he tells me. “What did your friend find from the note?”
I look at Barbara’s fax. The code will take longer to decipher, she’s scrawled at the top, but she’s made out the number. 2-066-905-1054. It’s attached to some kind of business here in Bangkok called Purple Lilly. Drugs, I theorize. Or prostitution.
Sonchai doesn’t recognize the name of the company, although he tells me that the number isn’t in one of the city’s sex districts. It’s an upscale area code where all the high-end clothing designers and jewelry stores are. Versache, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karon. Their clothing is manufactured in one of Thailand’s numerous sweatshops, then sold to rich tourists on vacation or shipped to the United States.
“So our American was connected to this Purple Lilly business, and he looks like your friend. Is the man you’re looking for a part of all this?” Sonchai asks me, so quiet, so hesitant. As if he’s embarrassed to be asking.
I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “But Oliver is a good man. He would never get mixed up in child prostitution.” My certainty convinces Sonchai, or at least dissuades him from asking any more questions like that. And I’m certain myself, thinking of Oliver with his grandchildren, Lian especially. He loves that little girl, and I know that Ollie would never do anything to hurt a child.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, watching the traffic crawling around us. Sonchai glances at me, then nods. “Why are you mixed up in it?”
“I am not,” Sonchai replies, not offended. Maybe he’s relieved that I asked. And I’m glad to hear his denial, because I like him and I don’t want to think this man is part of an industry that pimps children.
“Then why work for Vikorn? I know how Thai policing works: you have to make money on the side because your salary is at a starvation wage. So you do things that are illegal, and you have to give your District Chief his cut. I noticed in the station that your fellow cops don’t seem to like you very much. Are they afraid of you? Or disgusted?”
He thinks a moment before replying, an act of meditation and reflection that I admire even though I can’t relate. “I am an arhat,” he tells me. “Do you know what that means?”
“You’re dedicated to a holy way of life,” I reply, thinking of my sensei back in Hong Kong and his explanations about the wonders of the Three Jewels of the Buddha. I never bought into it myself, but it’s an admirable philosophy. If I were the spiritual type, I might even be tempted to convert.
Sonchai nods. “I murdered a man, years ago. I was sent to a monastery: it was either that or death. My teacher determined that, as punishment for taking a life, I must work to improve the lives of others. I am an honest detective, Ms. Dinah,” he tells me, his strange blue eyes in that round Thai face penetrating, convincing. “The Colonel says every force must have one.
“I do not take bribes. I do not sign illegal papers, or look the other way when a bar-girl is being mistreated. When there is a crime of international interest, I am summoned for my English skills and my integrity. I serve my place in District Eight and I work for a better Thailand. This does not absolve me of my sins - when I die, I will be reincarnated as an insect or a dog - but I do what I must to pay for my greatest sin.”
His declaration has a strange affect on me. I don’t question the integrity of this man. His eyes burn with the fire not of a zealot, but of an honest person who carries great guilt and is now committed to doing good, for their own souls as well as others. I’ve been in the hero business long enough to recognize that look.
“What about the child sex trade?” I ask him, testing him anyway. “What do you do about that?”
He looks at me then, long and hard. “What I can,” he replies, and the subject is clearly closed. Silence descends again, and with it comes the voice of the Oracle.
“BC?” she whispers, and I reply, not caring what Sonchai overhears.
“I’m here.”
“I’ve got more information for you,” she tells me, and I know she’s been listening at least since the police station. “Your vic, John C. Jones, was a piano man.”
“Billy Joel piano man, or is that some kind of slang you kids are using these days?” I tease.
“He was a music teacher, back in the States. Played backup with a few well-known groups in the ’80s, had a TV concert, toured on his own for a while. Jones moved to Thailand about five years ago, opened a music academy called Purple Lilly for the well-to-do children of American ex-pats and the Bangkok elite.”
“I think he was involved in the child sex trade,” I tell Babs. “Anything in his file about suspected pedophilia?”
“Nothing I picked up on…” Barbara says, trailing off, running a search. I listen to her type. “I can give you his address in Bangkok off that phone number. Check it out.”
“I’m supposed to go to a reptile farm,” I remind her. “Those snakes were seriously messed up. And there’s still that pesky little problem of finding Oliver. Still no word about what he was even doing in Bangkok?”
She doesn’t answer, which is as good as a solid ‘no’. I can tell this whole thing is bugging her; Babs hates it when she doesn’t have the answers I need.
“Your friend has a suggestion?” Sonchai asks. I repeat Barbara’s order about going to Jones’ home and trying there, leaving the excursion to the reptile farm for another day. He agrees reluctantly, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing: we have to see that snake evidence soon, or it may ‘disappear’ before it has a chance to be made useful.
Everything here is impermanent.
*************************
- 2
- 3
- 4
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Canary Air