Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [89]
Anita Somsak, Sami’s sister, was a beautiful, intelligent woman and she had made it clear the last time we’d met that she would like it if she and I were to share more than her brother. Why the hell did life have to be so fucking complicated?
“Goodbye, old friend. I’ll tell Sakura you’ll call on her when Tuk Tuk has been laid to rest for a decent amount of time.” Sami was gone again and I hadn’t even thanked him for the money. I debated calling him back, but in the end I just started back for the other end of the pool.
33
Thomas Lu was smiling again, despite the continual ache from his injured shoulder. Everything was finally falling into place. He was ready for his return to Singapore. While in exile, he had been busy, very busy. His business interests in Singapore and abroad had been taken care of by trusted lieutenants while he’d been out of the country.
Apart from the fallout of the Intella debacle, where he was definitely persona non grata as far as the other members of the syndicate were concerned, he had survived and his other businesses, both legal and illegal, were flourishing. Lu had no criminal charges against him. Officially, no one had pointed a finger at him for the slaughter of Stanley Loh and the others.
While the Intella Island syndicate members well knew Lu had been behind Stanley’s killing, they weren’t telling the authorities anything. So that particular case, the mysteries surrounding the battles on Sentosa, and the various building and warehouse fires were still unsolved. Chinese mainland gangs and drug wars were still the official explanations. However, for the past month, there had been no more gangland deaths or fires, and Singapore, it appeared, had returned to normal.
In preparation for his return and in order to defend himself against Sami Somsak, Thomas Lu had augmented his seriously depleted force of strong-arm men by calling on reinforcements from the Fang Triad. He had a plan for Somsak, one that would get the Thai drug lord out of his hair once and for all. That plan was already being put into action. He, Thomas Lu, would not even be in Singapore when stage one of it was executed, and no one would be able to connect him to it or anything else. At its conclusion, Sami Somsak and his entourage would be no more.
As for the Colombian threat, here Lu was less sure of himself. Those monitoring the movements of Carlos Mendez and his compatriots had reported that Mendez had left for home. Would he return to Singapore to exact revenge for his brother’s death once he knew Lu was back in residence? Or had Mendez entrusted his death to the Thai gang boss? If so, when Somsak was finally dead, would family honour force Mendez to return?
“Michael?” Lu called. He didn’t have the answer to these questions. His head was throbbing. He would have his beautiful lover massage his temples for him. They would go to bed together, and in the morning he would awaken to find that stage one of his revenge had been accomplished.
Early morning telephone calls are something that I have never, ever gotten used to. Something I guess most of us dread. When the phone wrenched me from my deep, bone-weary sleep at 04:30 on Sunday morning, I knew in my gut that this was going to be bad. It was Sami.
“Daniel, Simone is dead!”
“What?”
“Simone is dead,” Sami repeated, his voice little more than a whisper.
“How?” My head was spinning. If I hadn’t been lying down I would have fallen. Total shock hit me like a meteorite.
“She apparently slipped, fell over the railing and down the void space in her apartment building late yesterday afternoon. She was dead when she was found. I found out when I landed.”
“Oh!” I whispered. Being killed in a car crash I had always thought was a stupid way to die. This was almost as bad. But the end result was that beautiful, bountiful Simone was dead, stupid accident or not!
“Tuk Tuk’s funeral is tomorrow morning. I’ll fly back