“Sometimes it’s good to stay in the background and watch and wait. But there are other times when I’ve had great success drawing attention to myself and seeing what I can shake loose.”
Teddy took his feet off the desk and looked through the drawers for anything that might help direct his next move. Since Billy Barnett was a Centurion Studios employee, his idea was to tour the areas where Peter and Ben had been filming, with the excuse that he had just arrived from America and was getting caught up on the details. But he wasn’t sure where they had been filming or what sets had been attacked. Dale Gai was no help, either.
“I helped them at the resort with their film festival business and security. My responsibilities did not extend outside the casino,” Dale said.
There wasn’t much left in the office, none of the filming logs that should have been kept, so Teddy was left to improvise. Luckily Teddy was an expert at improvisation.
The only thing of consequence Teddy found in the production office was a dirty business card written in Chinese characters that looked like it had been printed in the back of a moving truck. He handed it over to Dale to read.
Dale looked down at the card, smiled, and handed it back to Teddy.
“I’m not going to like this, am I?” he asked.
“It’s for a man named Kwok Lin. He’s the head of security for Moonlit Sonata Films.”
“That sounds good,” Teddy said.
“It would be good if Kwok Lin wasn’t so stupid.”
21
The camera on Bingo’s drone was destroyed when the Americans shot it, but Bingo was able to hack into the municipal camera system and track the Americans as they sped away toward a waterfront warehouse. Once he saw agents pick up pieces of the drone and load them into their vehicles, he knew they would eventually trace them and come up with the programming code he’d used with Sonny Ma’s digital fingerprints all over it.
His work was done, so he headed back to the casino to check in with Ziggy Peng. And to see if Dale Gai had managed to get herself into any more trouble.
Nobody paid attention to Dale Gai except Bingo. Well, nobody paid attention to anything other than Dale Gai’s looks except Bingo. Bingo was not interested in romantic entanglements, but Dale Gai intrigued him. She was smarter than the other security assistants who had worked with Ziggy Peng, though Ziggy didn’t seem to realize it.
Dale Gai had only been working at the casino for a month the first time Bingo encountered her. At first, he suspected she was a spy. Then he wondered if she was looking for revenge against someone in the organization. Eventually, though, he figured out that she was none of those things. She appeared to be playing a long game, more focused on Arrow Donaldson than any of the people involved in the day-to-day operations of the casino. No one else was smart enough to figure this out, and Bingo wasn’t going to let on what he knew, so he continued to watch to see if one day Dale Gai would do something he could benefit from.
One thing he knew they shared in common was a love of gambling. Baccarat was the most popular game at the casino and was very popular among his friends and family because they believed in fate, and baccarat was as pure a game of chance as you could get in a casino. But Bingo, and Dale Gai from what he’d seen, preferred blackjack. It was also popular with the casino crowd, and if you knew what you were doing, you could make some decent money once in a while. He sat down at one of the tables when he returned to the casino, but after a couple of bad hands, he left the table and went to the security suite to find Ziggy Peng.
Ziggy was not in his office and Dale Gai didn’t seem to be around, either. Bingo knew better than to ask anyone in the tight-lipped security office if they knew where either of them were, so he let himself unassumingly into Ziggy office. Maybe the man had left a clue as to where he might be or what he might be up to.
He noticed immediately that Ziggy’s office chair was pulled up close to the security monitors in the far corner of his office. Bingo had a program on his phone that he used to monitor activity on Ziggy’s computer, and it didn’t take long to figure out Ziggy had been watching Dale Gai and the American they’d called Stone Barrington. The last bit of video Ziggy had watched was of Dale and Stone entering one of the casino’s hotel rooms. Bingo wrote down the number and headed to the room.
22
The head of security for Moonlit SONATA Films did not have a desk at the production office. He did business in a karaoke club favored by local gangsters.
Kwok Lin was waiting for them when Teddy and Dale arrived. He acted like the booth was his private reserved office, but the booth’s location was terrible and did not speak highly of Kwok Lin. Teddy suspected he was probably related to someone who owned the club. Teddy also suspected he was related to someone at the film company and that most of what Kwok Lin considered as his career was just being related to the right people.
“We’re here about Centurion Studios and the movie they were making with your film company,” Teddy said.
Kwok Lin looked at Dale the entire time.
“It wasn’t a movie. It was pieces of a movie. No whole.”
“Why not a whole movie?”
“The crew was no good. We don’t do movies here and now we know why.”
“What about the triads?” Teddy asked. “Do they harass the film crews in Macau? Blackmail? Protection?”
“There are no film crews in Macau.”
“Ever?”
“Macau is for gambling. Golf. Other relaxation. Movies are made in Hong Kong or...”
He gestured broadly in the direction of mainland China.
“Then why would Peter and Ben try to make a movie over here?” Teddy asked.
“The film festival,” Dale said.
Kwon Lin nodded in agreement.
“Outreach,” he said. “Many people come to watch movies in Macau and many young people study how to make movies in Macau. But nobody works making movies in Macau.”
“They all leave?” Teddy asked.
Kwok gave a sigh and a nod. Apparently done with the conversation he said, “I would like to sing a song. Karaoke,” Kwok said.
“I don’t want any part of that,” Teddy said as he got up to leave. He handed the man a wad of bills of indeterminate value and left with Dale.
“It sounds like your business partners were trying to do good and someone wants to take advantage of them,” Dale said on the bus back to the office.
“You believed him?”
“Everything he said is true. Filmmakers keep trying to make an industry happen here.”
“I guess that’s good if the triads aren’t involved. Organized crime is never ideal to mess with.”
“Kwok Lin is barely a criminal and he is certainly not organized.”
“Do you know anything about anyone else in this film company?”
“I fear I have let you down by leading you to believe I know all in Macau,” Dale said.
“I have that problem as well,” Teddy said.
“People expect movie producers to know much about everything in America?”
“About as much as they expect security assistants at casinos to know.”
They were back at the film office. Teddy said he was going to work from the office for a while and invited Dale to stay and work with him.
“I have many responsibilities but thank you. I need to get back to the casino.”
“Won’t they be looking for you when they find the body in your room?”
“I will be fine. I am not Kwok Lin. I am not stupid.”
23