The hotel was a nice one, not like the rundown places we had been to already today. A doorman held the door open for us as we walked in. Alan continued listing off countries to Phil, asking if they were still friends there. I rolled my eyes at his child-like endeavors.
"Alan, I already told you. It was the heat of the moment. Also, I'm sure Hailey wouldn't have really kill you." Phil explained. Alan had been avoiding eye contact with me since the street argument. Part of me felt bad, like when you yell at a child out of frustration, but then I remembered Alan wasn't a child… well kind of. "We're still friends. Alright? All of us, all over the world." Phil said trying to stay calm with the man.
"Even Great Britain?" Alan asked.
"Yeah. Mm-mm." Phil muttered looking at his watch. We really had no idea what we were doing here. We looked around for anything that looked or felt familiar.
"What about you Stu? Hailey?" he asked.
"We'll see." Stu and I said at the same time, as a man approached us from behind.
"Gentleman, lady. Follow me." The man said and walked in front of us. We all looked at each other with curiosity and followed the man to an elevator. We stood in awkward silence as we went up to the floor the man chose. When the doors opened, the man walked out of the elevator and over to some stairs that lead to the next sub level. This level appeared to be the restaurant portion of the hotel. We continued to follow the man as he walked us over to a man devouring some noodles.
"Here you go." the man said as he stepped aside. The man eating the noodles looked up to us.
"Well," he said sitting back in his chair as we fanned out around the opposite side of the table. "It's about time. Sit down. Come on, sit, sit, sit, sit." Phil Stu and I sat down in the chairs opposite of the man at the table. Alan opting to sit next to him.
"Wow you guys look like shit." he said as he looked all of us over.
"Uh, do we know you?" Phil asked.
"Hey." the man said to Alan. "Take off your fucking hat, You're in a restaurant for chrissake." Alan took off the hat as Phil took off his glasses not to get a talking to from the man.
"Okay, listen. Uh, we have no clue of what's going on here." Phil said as politely as possible.
"You know, they sell a plum whiskey here. It's fucking unreal. Seriously, it will absolutely fuck you up." the man said ignoring Phil's questions and laughed. "Oh I'm sorry you guys already got fucked up didn't you?"
"Uh, listen. I'm a little confused. How did you-" Phil began before he was interrupted.
"Yeah, you know what? I'm a little fucking confused." the man said all humor aside. "Where's Chow?"
"What?" I asked, again with Chow, of course this had a link to Chow. It was similar to the situation with Chow in Vegas, at least there wasn't a car accident to get our attention.
"Where is Chow with the fucking account code and the fucking password?!" the man yelled making me jump a little at the sudden outburst. Alan was holding his fingers in his ears to block out some of the noise. Everyone in the restaurant had their eyes on us.
"We don't know anything about any codes. We're just trying to find our friend." Stu stated calmly.
"Teddy." the man said.
"Yes, Teddy." Stu said eagerly, we all leaned into the table. "Have you seen him?" The man laughed again and snapped his fingers. The guy who escorted us from before handed him a file.
"Hmm. Let's see. Oh." the man said as he flipped through papers handing them over to us. "There's Teddy." Stu, Phil and I looked at the papers, they were pictures of us.
"These are from last night." Phil said as we flipped through the pictures.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"I am a businessman and I have invested a large chunk of capital to your friend, Chow." the man said.
"He's hardly our friend." I said to the man, he looked to me challengingly.
"And in return-" he began not taking his eyes off mine. "He was supposed to transfer our profits electronically about five fucking minutes ago." He looked at his watch to confirm the time.
Fuck. Chow is dead he can't do shit. I thought still looking at the man.
"So last night, we took Teddy as insurance." the man said. The blood drained from my face and panic began to override.
"Oh, my God. Is he okay?" Stu asked voicing his panic.
"Oh, my God. I wasn't done talking." the man mocked Stu. "You tell Chow that we are having breakfast on the roof of this hotel tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. Now if he makes the transfer, you will get Teddy. If not, well then, hey, you know? It's Bangkok." We stared at the man in disbelief. "That's your cue to get the fuck out of here."
We all got up from our chairs not knowing what else to do. This man had Teddy, a 16 year old boy. Who knows what he had done to him, let alone what he was going to do to him. Stu and I walked back down to the main level of the lobby. How the fuck were we going to get out of this?
We stood in the elevator. Phil against one of the walls, his hand resting on his forehead, Stu next to him looking solemnly at the ground, myself next to Stu looking around at all of them and Alan next to me.
"Were fucked. Chow's dead. What do we do now?" Stu stated the obvious.
"I have no idea." I said running my hand through my hair, a gentle reminder that it was now short.
"The guy doesn't give a shit about Chow. This whole thing is about a bank account." Phil said with a sigh. "Let's just go back to the hotel and search Chow's body. Hopefully the password is in his wallet or something."
"Oh jesus christ." I muttered, Phil looked over to me. "Really search his body? Fuck, why can't we have one normal vacation? How did you even know Chow was here?"
"We kept in touch." Alan said, I let out a frustrated groan.
"And what if it isn't? What if he doesn't have the password? I mean, they're gonna kill Teddy." Stu pointed out.
"Just relax. We have until 8am tomorrow to figure this out." Phil said turning to Stu.
"Relax? This isn't Vegas Phil. This isn't something where we can go gamble and get the money back. Someone's life is on the line. A KID!" I said looking at him, the look he gave me told me he knew I was right. He looked to the ground putting his head in his hand.
"First the monkey, now my hat." lLan said completely unfazed by the situation. "How much worse can this day get?" All of us looked at Alan in disbelief but none of us said anything. We all held our tongues as the elevator dinged signaling we were at the lobby.
"Jesus christ." Phil said as he walked off the elevator and we all followed.