Dickie Blackmon went on to explain about Rafa’s latest venture, a boutique hotel on Ko Phi Phi that was slated to open this weekend. The Villa Delphine, and yes, Dickie had put a few dollars into the thing himself. After a string of failures, Rafa looked like he’d managed to turn things around. The hotel was booked for six months. It had received a glorious write-up in the international press. All he had to do was open the doors for business. Then the police arrived. “They’re talking a twenty-year sentence.”
“Blackmail and extortion? Against who? Why?”
“Details are sealed in the complaint. Seems it has to do with his old shop in Switzerland. Geneva, I think. PetroSaud. Know it?”
Simon shook his head. He’d lost touch with Rafa when he’d left the bank, though, of course, that wasn’t the real reason. “Blackmail? The Rafa I knew didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body.”
“People change,” said Blackmon. “Look at you.”
Was that a compliment? Simon didn’t think so. “And Delphine?”
“She’s beside herself. I have her tucked away at the Oriental in Bangkok. The police dragged Rafael to the most notorious jail in the city.”
Simon set his elbows on his desk, fingers steepled. Dickie Blackmon hadn’t driven all the way from his home north of the river to give him news about a woman Simon hadn’t spoken to in ten years and the man who’d once been his closest friend, no matter what kind of trouble they were in.
“So how can I help?”
“Can’t put one past you, can I?” Blackmon stood, rolling his shoulders. “I’m working a deal to get him out. If I can secure his release—and believe me, that’s a big ‘if’—I need you there…on site…to be my eyes and ears.”
“A deal?”
“Just a question of getting to the right man. It’s Thailand. Rule of law written in pencil, not ink. Short of murder, everything’s negotiable. Maybe that too.”
“I’ve never been to the Far East. I don’t know anything about Thailand.”
“I don’t need you to do the talking. Already have a lawyer to do that. I want you there as my proxy and to bring him home.”
Simon weighed all he’d heard. Something was missing. He wasn’t interested in finding out what. “Bad timing,” he said with a pained smile. “I’d like to help, but I can’t. There’s someone here I need to look after. I’m sure you can find another person better suited to the task. Someone who speaks the language, to begin with.”
“Kidding me? Everyone speaks English over there.”
“A former government official. Someone the Thais respect. I fix cars for a living. I’m sorry, Dickie.”
Shaking his head, Dickie Blackmon approached the desk, staring down at Simon with all his fury. Hammurabi standing tall to deliver his code. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what, Dickie?”
“‘Sir Richard’ to you, pip-squeak. You think it’s me wants you to go? I made my opinion of you known loud and clear ten years ago. You’re a guttersnipe. A pissant. Sure, you clean up nicely, but you and I both know what you really are. A thug. One more punk from the wrong side of the tracks trying to put one over on the rest of us. A convict, no less. Did you really think I’d sit still and let you marry my daughter…after all that I’d found out about you?”
Simon remembered the day, one of his worst. The threat from Dickie, still a long way from being knighted but one of London’s wealthiest businessmen. Stop seeing his daughter or he’d go to the bank and give them everything he’d dug up: the truth about a felon named Simon Ledoux who’d done four years’ hard time in a French penitentiary for armed robbery and attempted murder. At Les Baumettes, no less, home to the worst of the worst.
Simon rocketed to his feet. “Time to go, Dickie.”
“Not quite yet.” Sir Richard Blackmon drew a fat envelope from his jacket and dropped it on the desk. “Travel documents. Flights. Hotel. Even a map of the city. I’m old school. Prefer things printed out. Don’t trust all that digital mumbo jumbo.”
Simon looked at the envelope. “I told you, no.”
“You did indeed. But, you see, I’m not the one asking. It’s your friend Rafa. He isn’t cooperating. He says no deal until he speaks with you.”
“He asked for me?”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Dickie chuckled, a connoisseur of humiliation. “I thought so too.”
“Well?”
“He told me to give you a message. Something about needing the monsignor if he was going to get out of this.”
Simon kept his eyes locked on Dickie, hoping his surprise didn’t show. “‘The monsignor.’ He said that?”
