NaNoWriMo Day 2
*To read the whole story start with "NaNoWriMo Day 1" and move backward from there (duh).
Total Word Count: 5,040
Before heading to Mr. Brandt’s former room to see what we could find, I decide we should have lunch at the hotel. Molly has a salad and I have the roast duck with spicy orange curry and a delicious lamb vindaloo. It’s all on the company dime, I figure might as well enjoy myself. I smile and remember the grim look in Cleaver’s eyes when he handed me over the corporate Amex card before I got on the plane, it was like he was giving me his first born. If I am expected to be wildly irresponsible with it, then who am I to disappoint?
We have a new limo driver when we pile in to make the trek across town to the condominiums where Brandt was staying. Thankfully, this guy seems calmer and a little more hip to the local traffic laws. I take in more of the nice parts of the city as we drive. Everything seems so orderly and efficient here, those hardline military regimes really know how to run things smoothly. Before too long we are through the gates of the quiet little condo community where Freidrich Brandt stayed and did his work.
The manager of the place is a little old Asian woman who mutters under her breath constantly at seemingly nothing in particular. She leads Molly and I up three floors to Brandt’s nondescript little unit. After opening the door and giving the place a slow once-over, the manager grunts and shuffles back to the office. It looks like Brandt had either just moved in or was just about to move out. There are boxes everywhere, some taped closed, some half full, some piled in the corner yet to be filled. There is a good deal of stuff around the place that wasn’t packed up at all, at least enough to go about one’s daily routine. Molly gives me a “where do we begin?” look, so I roll up my sleeves and start pawing through the closest box, prompting her to follow suit. After about fifteen minutes of randomly poking around in various boxes, Molly meekly asks exactly what it is we are looking for. I pause before I answered her because I hadn’t really thought of that myself. Journals maybe? Plane tickets? Big maps with push pins stuck in certain places and lines drawn on it? I’m an auditor, not a private investigator. Molly seems satisfied with my suggestions so we continue digging indiscriminately.
Molly breaks the silence again some time later with a small little “hmm.” I pick my way around boxes and clutter to see what she found. It is a book of traveler’s checks, and the register is nicely and neatly filled in. Good job, Molly. Most of the entries in the register are individual names, we will have to track all of those down somehow. The most interesting entry is the last, a sizeable payment to a company called R.J. Patel Customization and Removal. Sounds like an auto shop, but was Brandt customizing or removing? It seems like as good a place as any to start with after we finished combing the condo. Two more hours of searching proves mostly fruitless, save an address book that matches up some of the names in the check register, and a set of small keys that don’t fit into anything we could find around the place.
Molly wants to check in with home base before we go anywhere, so we head back to the hotel to use the landline. There is a weird anomaly in the city proper that pretty much renders cell phones useless. I take the opportunity to knock back a quick drink at the bar to focus my heretofore undeveloped detective skills. Molly is taking a bit longer than I expected, so one drink becomes three and I am nicely buzzed and ready to rock by the time she comes down from her room. The driver knows where this Patel place is, so we hop in our fancy ride and off we go once more.
R.J. Patel’s Customization and Removal is basically a glorified scrap heap on the outskirts of the industrial zone solely operated by a short bald Indian fellow with greasy overalls and cracked glasses. There are more chickens milling about than there are cars in the yard. Raj, that’s what the R. stands for, speaks decent English so we inquire as to the whereabouts of our missing colleague, Mr. Brandt. Raj squints his eyes into the afternoon sun for a few moments in concentration, then lights up with gleeful recollection. Ah yes, he remembers. Mr. Brandt paid him a good bit of money to haul away a nice new pickup truck from the parking lot of the condominium. I ask is the truck is still here but sadly, he sold it just last week to an American like us who said he was on his way into Russo-China and paid in cash. Well shit, so much for that lead. Nanodyne has a lot of clout, but no way were our company badges getting us into Russo-China. Not that yours truly would ever go there willingly, of course.
Disappointed with the exciting lead that turned out to be a big bust, we thank Raj and sit in the limo for a while, telling the driver to drive wherever until we figure out our next move. I want to check out some of these names in the address book but Molly warns me that it is nearly dinner time for most folks around here and to interrupt a meal is considered incredibly rude in these parts. I figure we might as well eat too and I ask the driver to take us someplace nice. He pulls a quick U and not two minutes later we are at a very promising looking restaurant that looks like a Mongolian steak house.
The smell of charred beef gets my stomach grumbling in anticipation as soon as we walk in the door. There are a lot of corporate types lined up along the near end of the communal counter, knocking back martinis with reckless abandon and cheering along with the chefs behind the counter as they do amazing things with fire and meat. I want to sit right next to the wild suits and join the party but Molly makes a beeline halfway across the restaurant, so I grudgingly follow. We take a seat by ourselves at the far end of the counter and a smiling chef greets us with a bow. Molly consults the menu briefly and starts to order another salad but I chide her probably a bit too loudly that we are in a steak house and it would be rude just to get a salad. Molly crumbles meekly and orders the teriyaki beef. Feeling invincible, I order the works. I want at least one of every type of beef they have stashed away in this place. The chef seems quite pleased with my order and he retires to the kitchen to gather up the veritable Noah’s Ark of meats that await the flames churning away in the grill before us.
Three beers, two shots, some fruity girl drink that was the result of my constant harassment of Molly to have one with me, and a whole hell of a lot of food, leave me drunk, full, and happy as a pig in shit. I am sad when it’s time to leave, but I promise our chef, who’s name I keep forgetting, that we will be sure to return before our trip is over. The limo driver gives me a smile and a wink when I approach the car singing happily, followed by mortified Molly. He knows I am a man who knows what I like and that is why he recommended this place to me. I thank him and agree that yes, I am a man who knows what he likes. Somehow it is ten-thirty at night and I am in no condition to conduct interviews with the locals so we call it a night, much to Molly’s visible relief.
As I’m fumbling to stick the key card into the slot on the door to my room, I look over at prim little Molly doing the same and suddenly feel bad that she doesn’t seem to be having as much fun on this trip as I am. So as not to sound like a drunken lout with ill intentions, I straighten my clothes, take a deep breath, clear my throat, and ask politely if she would like to watch some tv with me in my room. Because I catch her just as she is stepping into her room, she hovers there like she is stuck in a web between the room and the hallway. When she turns around, her eyes are horrified and her mouth keeps opening and closing because she can’t force anything to come out. I hold up my hand and promise, scout’s honor, that I will behave myself, and she quietly agrees and creeps across the hall toward my room, clutching her bag tightly to her chest.
Molly sits on the furthest armchair from the bed, upon which I am splayed comfortably. I ask if she wants anything from the mini bar and she surprises me by requesting red wine. I hop up and pour two glasses, hand one to her, and we clink a toast awkwardly. Molly starts drinking immediately, her eyes darting back to the television. I flip around the channels, it looks like they were able to nab an Iranian satellite feed, but the only thing in English is CNN. Before I can check the pay per view channels, there is a knock at the door that makes us both jump. When I open it, the Indian host from the lobby, who is apparently also the hotel manager, greets me with a brief smile before asking in hushed tones if he can come in. Molly stands when he enters the room and he pauses for a moment before apologizing for interrupting. I assure him that he most definitely isn’t interrupting a thing, to which Molly agrees vigorously. The manager pull me aside and in whispers informs me that some gentlemen from the military dropped by while we were out today and conducted a search of our rooms by authority of the government. I am more surprised than angry, but I am kind of glad that we hadn’t left the possessions we took from Brandt’s place in the room. Nothing seemed to be missing or out of place in my room, and Molly confirmed the same after checking hers, so I tell him it is no big deal. We expected a little suspicion from the get go, they were just making sure we weren’t here to cause any trouble. Struck by sudden curiosity, I ask the manager why he was willing to risk what I assumed to be severe punishment for telling us this. He casts his eyes to the floor and then back up into mine, and I know without his even saying a word exactly why he informed us about the search. I pull out my wallet, give him one hundred dollars U.S., and tell him there is another hundred in it if he sees anything else that might need to be brought to our attention. He thanks me profusely and backs through the door, bowing. I turn and wink at Molly, pretty confident that I am starting to get the hang of all of this. We settle back into our prior television watching situations and I assume Molly sneaks out as soon as I pass out on the bed snoring loudly.
A bloody mary begins to work on my mild hangover while Molly watches me wolf down a massive plate of steak and eggs with some evident disgust on her face. I forsake modesty for satiety and besides, her stuck up attitude is starting to wear on my nerves. Breakfast in the hotel restaurant isn’t crowded in the slightest, in fact the only people here besides us is an older Arabic man and what I assume to be his two wives flanking him on either side hidden inside their dark robes. The waiter brings the check when we finish and Molly signs the slip, thanking the man in Hindi.
First up on today’s agenda is a man named Quong who, according to the new limo driver for the day, lives distressingly close to the slums that we passed through when we first arrived. On the driver’s advice, which seems pretty damn sensible to me, we switch to a vehicle that is much less flashy than the long, black limo. So much less flashy, in fact, that Molly and I end up fairly crammed into the back seat of a beat up looking junker from god knows what country. The driver beeps and weaves his way through the increasing foot traffic while we roll ever closer to the slums. Mercifully, we arrive at Quong’s before we delve too far back into the throng of dirty humanity.
Quong lives in a partially dilapidated two-story shack along with his wife and four daughters. Four daughters in this part of the country is not a good thing to have, and I can see by the weariness on Quong’s face that he has lived that fact and lived it hard. The girls range in age from young teen to young adult, and they all excuse themselves quickly when we enter. Molly starts in with the Chinese immediately, and Quong replies in a bemused but cautious manner. Molly asks him about the payment in the check registry, and he nods and motions for us to follow him to the back of his hovel. We follow him and I try not to notice that there is a horrible smell that is only getting stronger the closer we get to wherever we are heading. We round the corner and bingo, there’s the smell. It seems the good Mr. Quong keeps an amateur crematorium in his backyard to dispose of any flu-infected fowl that crop up in the village, as well as anything else that someone is willing to pay to have destroyed. And of course, that is exactly why Mr. Brandt was here. Quong is quick to explain that he asks no questions, he only burns what he is given. Whatever it was that Brandt needed taken care of was wrapped in a sack and about as big as a large person, or possibly two people, and that’s all he knows. We thank him, well Molly thanks while I spit and cuss, and give him a couple of bucks for his trouble. Molly asks him to send for us if he happens to remember anything else and we roll out in our crappy car, once again disappointed and no closer to finding Brandt
Total Word Count: 5,040
Before heading to Mr. Brandt’s former room to see what we could find, I decide we should have lunch at the hotel. Molly has a salad and I have the roast duck with spicy orange curry and a delicious lamb vindaloo. It’s all on the company dime, I figure might as well enjoy myself. I smile and remember the grim look in Cleaver’s eyes when he handed me over the corporate Amex card before I got on the plane, it was like he was giving me his first born. If I am expected to be wildly irresponsible with it, then who am I to disappoint?
We have a new limo driver when we pile in to make the trek across town to the condominiums where Brandt was staying. Thankfully, this guy seems calmer and a little more hip to the local traffic laws. I take in more of the nice parts of the city as we drive. Everything seems so orderly and efficient here, those hardline military regimes really know how to run things smoothly. Before too long we are through the gates of the quiet little condo community where Freidrich Brandt stayed and did his work.
The manager of the place is a little old Asian woman who mutters under her breath constantly at seemingly nothing in particular. She leads Molly and I up three floors to Brandt’s nondescript little unit. After opening the door and giving the place a slow once-over, the manager grunts and shuffles back to the office. It looks like Brandt had either just moved in or was just about to move out. There are boxes everywhere, some taped closed, some half full, some piled in the corner yet to be filled. There is a good deal of stuff around the place that wasn’t packed up at all, at least enough to go about one’s daily routine. Molly gives me a “where do we begin?” look, so I roll up my sleeves and start pawing through the closest box, prompting her to follow suit. After about fifteen minutes of randomly poking around in various boxes, Molly meekly asks exactly what it is we are looking for. I pause before I answered her because I hadn’t really thought of that myself. Journals maybe? Plane tickets? Big maps with push pins stuck in certain places and lines drawn on it? I’m an auditor, not a private investigator. Molly seems satisfied with my suggestions so we continue digging indiscriminately.
Molly breaks the silence again some time later with a small little “hmm.” I pick my way around boxes and clutter to see what she found. It is a book of traveler’s checks, and the register is nicely and neatly filled in. Good job, Molly. Most of the entries in the register are individual names, we will have to track all of those down somehow. The most interesting entry is the last, a sizeable payment to a company called R.J. Patel Customization and Removal. Sounds like an auto shop, but was Brandt customizing or removing? It seems like as good a place as any to start with after we finished combing the condo. Two more hours of searching proves mostly fruitless, save an address book that matches up some of the names in the check register, and a set of small keys that don’t fit into anything we could find around the place.
Molly wants to check in with home base before we go anywhere, so we head back to the hotel to use the landline. There is a weird anomaly in the city proper that pretty much renders cell phones useless. I take the opportunity to knock back a quick drink at the bar to focus my heretofore undeveloped detective skills. Molly is taking a bit longer than I expected, so one drink becomes three and I am nicely buzzed and ready to rock by the time she comes down from her room. The driver knows where this Patel place is, so we hop in our fancy ride and off we go once more.
R.J. Patel’s Customization and Removal is basically a glorified scrap heap on the outskirts of the industrial zone solely operated by a short bald Indian fellow with greasy overalls and cracked glasses. There are more chickens milling about than there are cars in the yard. Raj, that’s what the R. stands for, speaks decent English so we inquire as to the whereabouts of our missing colleague, Mr. Brandt. Raj squints his eyes into the afternoon sun for a few moments in concentration, then lights up with gleeful recollection. Ah yes, he remembers. Mr. Brandt paid him a good bit of money to haul away a nice new pickup truck from the parking lot of the condominium. I ask is the truck is still here but sadly, he sold it just last week to an American like us who said he was on his way into Russo-China and paid in cash. Well shit, so much for that lead. Nanodyne has a lot of clout, but no way were our company badges getting us into Russo-China. Not that yours truly would ever go there willingly, of course.
Disappointed with the exciting lead that turned out to be a big bust, we thank Raj and sit in the limo for a while, telling the driver to drive wherever until we figure out our next move. I want to check out some of these names in the address book but Molly warns me that it is nearly dinner time for most folks around here and to interrupt a meal is considered incredibly rude in these parts. I figure we might as well eat too and I ask the driver to take us someplace nice. He pulls a quick U and not two minutes later we are at a very promising looking restaurant that looks like a Mongolian steak house.
The smell of charred beef gets my stomach grumbling in anticipation as soon as we walk in the door. There are a lot of corporate types lined up along the near end of the communal counter, knocking back martinis with reckless abandon and cheering along with the chefs behind the counter as they do amazing things with fire and meat. I want to sit right next to the wild suits and join the party but Molly makes a beeline halfway across the restaurant, so I grudgingly follow. We take a seat by ourselves at the far end of the counter and a smiling chef greets us with a bow. Molly consults the menu briefly and starts to order another salad but I chide her probably a bit too loudly that we are in a steak house and it would be rude just to get a salad. Molly crumbles meekly and orders the teriyaki beef. Feeling invincible, I order the works. I want at least one of every type of beef they have stashed away in this place. The chef seems quite pleased with my order and he retires to the kitchen to gather up the veritable Noah’s Ark of meats that await the flames churning away in the grill before us.
Three beers, two shots, some fruity girl drink that was the result of my constant harassment of Molly to have one with me, and a whole hell of a lot of food, leave me drunk, full, and happy as a pig in shit. I am sad when it’s time to leave, but I promise our chef, who’s name I keep forgetting, that we will be sure to return before our trip is over. The limo driver gives me a smile and a wink when I approach the car singing happily, followed by mortified Molly. He knows I am a man who knows what I like and that is why he recommended this place to me. I thank him and agree that yes, I am a man who knows what he likes. Somehow it is ten-thirty at night and I am in no condition to conduct interviews with the locals so we call it a night, much to Molly’s visible relief.
As I’m fumbling to stick the key card into the slot on the door to my room, I look over at prim little Molly doing the same and suddenly feel bad that she doesn’t seem to be having as much fun on this trip as I am. So as not to sound like a drunken lout with ill intentions, I straighten my clothes, take a deep breath, clear my throat, and ask politely if she would like to watch some tv with me in my room. Because I catch her just as she is stepping into her room, she hovers there like she is stuck in a web between the room and the hallway. When she turns around, her eyes are horrified and her mouth keeps opening and closing because she can’t force anything to come out. I hold up my hand and promise, scout’s honor, that I will behave myself, and she quietly agrees and creeps across the hall toward my room, clutching her bag tightly to her chest.
Molly sits on the furthest armchair from the bed, upon which I am splayed comfortably. I ask if she wants anything from the mini bar and she surprises me by requesting red wine. I hop up and pour two glasses, hand one to her, and we clink a toast awkwardly. Molly starts drinking immediately, her eyes darting back to the television. I flip around the channels, it looks like they were able to nab an Iranian satellite feed, but the only thing in English is CNN. Before I can check the pay per view channels, there is a knock at the door that makes us both jump. When I open it, the Indian host from the lobby, who is apparently also the hotel manager, greets me with a brief smile before asking in hushed tones if he can come in. Molly stands when he enters the room and he pauses for a moment before apologizing for interrupting. I assure him that he most definitely isn’t interrupting a thing, to which Molly agrees vigorously. The manager pull me aside and in whispers informs me that some gentlemen from the military dropped by while we were out today and conducted a search of our rooms by authority of the government. I am more surprised than angry, but I am kind of glad that we hadn’t left the possessions we took from Brandt’s place in the room. Nothing seemed to be missing or out of place in my room, and Molly confirmed the same after checking hers, so I tell him it is no big deal. We expected a little suspicion from the get go, they were just making sure we weren’t here to cause any trouble. Struck by sudden curiosity, I ask the manager why he was willing to risk what I assumed to be severe punishment for telling us this. He casts his eyes to the floor and then back up into mine, and I know without his even saying a word exactly why he informed us about the search. I pull out my wallet, give him one hundred dollars U.S., and tell him there is another hundred in it if he sees anything else that might need to be brought to our attention. He thanks me profusely and backs through the door, bowing. I turn and wink at Molly, pretty confident that I am starting to get the hang of all of this. We settle back into our prior television watching situations and I assume Molly sneaks out as soon as I pass out on the bed snoring loudly.
A bloody mary begins to work on my mild hangover while Molly watches me wolf down a massive plate of steak and eggs with some evident disgust on her face. I forsake modesty for satiety and besides, her stuck up attitude is starting to wear on my nerves. Breakfast in the hotel restaurant isn’t crowded in the slightest, in fact the only people here besides us is an older Arabic man and what I assume to be his two wives flanking him on either side hidden inside their dark robes. The waiter brings the check when we finish and Molly signs the slip, thanking the man in Hindi.
First up on today’s agenda is a man named Quong who, according to the new limo driver for the day, lives distressingly close to the slums that we passed through when we first arrived. On the driver’s advice, which seems pretty damn sensible to me, we switch to a vehicle that is much less flashy than the long, black limo. So much less flashy, in fact, that Molly and I end up fairly crammed into the back seat of a beat up looking junker from god knows what country. The driver beeps and weaves his way through the increasing foot traffic while we roll ever closer to the slums. Mercifully, we arrive at Quong’s before we delve too far back into the throng of dirty humanity.
Quong lives in a partially dilapidated two-story shack along with his wife and four daughters. Four daughters in this part of the country is not a good thing to have, and I can see by the weariness on Quong’s face that he has lived that fact and lived it hard. The girls range in age from young teen to young adult, and they all excuse themselves quickly when we enter. Molly starts in with the Chinese immediately, and Quong replies in a bemused but cautious manner. Molly asks him about the payment in the check registry, and he nods and motions for us to follow him to the back of his hovel. We follow him and I try not to notice that there is a horrible smell that is only getting stronger the closer we get to wherever we are heading. We round the corner and bingo, there’s the smell. It seems the good Mr. Quong keeps an amateur crematorium in his backyard to dispose of any flu-infected fowl that crop up in the village, as well as anything else that someone is willing to pay to have destroyed. And of course, that is exactly why Mr. Brandt was here. Quong is quick to explain that he asks no questions, he only burns what he is given. Whatever it was that Brandt needed taken care of was wrapped in a sack and about as big as a large person, or possibly two people, and that’s all he knows. We thank him, well Molly thanks while I spit and cuss, and give him a couple of bucks for his trouble. Molly asks him to send for us if he happens to remember anything else and we roll out in our crappy car, once again disappointed and no closer to finding Brandt
Labels: NaNoWriMo
posted by B at Friday, November 02, 2007
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