Big Mango (9786167611037) (25 page)

Or perhaps he was just imagining it all.
Maybe the teenagers were whispering about their boyfriends. Maybe
the old man looked at everyone like that. Maybe the tailor was just
hoping for a customer. It was impossible to tell. Eddie understood
well enough that Caucasians were useless in Asia. They were too
big, too white, too awkward, and too hairy. A round-eye could walk
Silom Road for the rest of his life and never know for sure if an
Asian was watching him.

Eddie felt like he might as well have been
wearing a helmet with a red light on top, like the fire chief’s hat
with the flashing red beacon that he had given Michael for his
fourth birthday. The damned thing had nearly driven Jennifer crazy
until the battery finally ran down and the beacon stopped working.
She told the kid that the light had died and gone to heaven.

Jeez, what would Jennifer tell Mike now
if
my
light went out?

Eddie pushed the thought into the back of his
mind and walked on. Being chased by guys with guns had left him
ravenous and he looked around for a place to get something to east.
An unassuming sign on the other side of the street caught his eye
because he liked the straightforward message outlined there in red
and green neon: THE KITCHEN.

That sounded just about right to him so Eddie
bolted across Silom Road without taking any more time to think
about it. Dodging a minivan that was doing its best to occupy two
lanes at once, Eddie reversed direction briefly. As he did, he
caught a flash out of the corner of his eye of something that
shouldn’t have been there.

Although it was nearly midnight, the
temperature was still well over ninety and the humidity was
reminiscent of a particularly efficient steam bath. A
farang
wearing a tan suit was just behind him. A
suit
?

Eddie stopped on the sidewalk and stood for a
minute studying the display in the window of a leather shop. Tan
Suit stopped further up Silom, appearing equally absorbed in the
window of a tailor shop. Eddie figured it had to be the same guy
Bar had spotted a couple of nights earlier watching them from
outside Popeye’s.

***

WHEN
Tan Suit decided it was
safe to risk a quick glance up the street, he discovered Eddie had
somehow disappeared while he was studying the window of the tailor
shop. He began to walk quickly toward the spot where Eddie had last
been, scanning up and down both sides of Silom Road. Tan Suit knew
he was rapidly approaching the entrance to Patpong and he started
to worry. If Eddie had made him and had somehow gotten into the
thick crowds there, he would have no chance at all of picking him
up again.

Another fifty paces and Tan Suit was standing
under the big archway at the entrance to Patpong. He shook his
head. The little bastard had given him the slip, although whether
by accident or by design he wasn’t absolutely certain. Anyway, he
guessed it amounted to the same thing. He dreaded having to explain
how it had happened.

Tan Suit felt a gentle nudge against his arm
and he moved aside for a thin Thai boy who was apparently blind
judging by his dark glasses and metal stick. The boy limped by,
pushing a cart with clattering wheels, and a very old man, also
blind, tagged along behind him. The old man was holding onto the
boy’s belt with one hand and carrying a small accordion in the
other.

“Pretty much says it all about this city,
doesn’t it?” Eddie said, strolling up next to Tan Suit as the two
blind men led each other away.

Tan Suit hated doing surveillance on
smart-asses like this. They always thought they were so clever when
they made you, and you could never convince them that you didn’t
give a flying fuck.

“I’m here for your protection, Mr. Dare.” Tan
Suit shaped his features into a disinterested, dead-eyed stare.
“You should be grateful.”

“Grateful to who, or should it be ‘to
whom?’”

This one was a real beauty all right.

Tan Suit pulled an identification wallet from
his jacket and flipped it open just enough for Eddie to get a quick
glimpse.

“I’m Agent Morris,” he said. “United States
Secret Service liaison officer at the American Embassy.”

Morris put his identification wallet away
with more care than was really needed and Eddie assumed he was
using the time to compose an explanation for his presence that
would fall somewhere between the entirely unenlightening and a
total non sequitur.

“My instructions were to keep you under close
surveillance after you left the embassy in order to prevent anyone
from harming you.”

Yeah, that was useless enough to meet even
the toughest test.

“Look, I’m just doing my job here, Mr. Dare.
Go on as you were and don’t worry about me.”

“Who are you supposed to be protecting me
from?”

“Patience, Mr. Dare. Everything comes in good
time. That’s something Asia will teach you.”

Eddie looked at Morris, shook his head, and
turned away.
What an asshole,
he thought.
What an
incredible asshole.

“You won’t see me again unless I’m needed,”
Morris called after him.

“I will unless you get a lot better at
following people,” Eddie called back.

Still shaking his head, Eddie continued down
Silom Road to The Kitchen. He pushed through a metal door and found
himself on a concrete staircase that smelled faintly of urine.
Climbing up one flight, he walked into a dining room that looked
exactly as he would imagine the best restaurant in Sioux Falls must
have looked in 1975: dark-paneled walls, straight wooden chairs
with plastic seats, red tablecloths, candles stuck in wax-covered
bottles, neon beer signs over the long bar, and elderly waiters in
short, white jackets with large, starched napkins draped over their
arms.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Eddie
selected a table near the door and looked around the nearly empty
restaurant. There was a young
farang
couple near the back;
four Japanese girls at a big, round table; and several men sitting
separately at the bar. What really caught his eye, however, were
the two people who had come in right behind him. For a moment he
told himself he had to be mistaken, but of course he knew he
wasn’t.

The two Secret Service agents who had come to
his office in San Francisco, Reidy and the woman with the amazing
headlights, were standing in the restaurant’s entrance watching him
with expressionless faces.

Holy shit, Eddie thought. What next?

Reidy and the woman walked over to Eddie’s
table, pulled out chairs, and sat down without a word. Eddie didn’t
say anything either. He just folded his arms and glanced from Reidy
to Headlights and back again. He tried to remember the woman’s
name, but couldn’t come up with it. He wondered for a moment if
referring to a federal agent by the size of her front porch was a
criminal offense.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said to Headlights, “but
I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Does it matter?”

“Trust me,” he said. “It would be better if
you reminded me.”

Reidy and the woman exchanged looks while
Eddie waited.

“Sanchez,” she finally snapped at Eddie.
“Agent Valerie Sanchez.”

When Eddie didn’t say anything, Sanchez
glanced at Reidy again. He nodded, and she lifted a black briefcase
with gold clasps and balanced it on her lap. She unsnapped the
locks and removed a large, brown envelope, then closed the case and
put it the floor. Reidy took the envelope from her and laid it on
the table in front of Eddie.

“We brought you a present,” he said.

“All the way from San Francisco?”

“No, it’s a little something we picked up not
far from here.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We shouldn’t have.”

Eddie picked up the envelope, ripped open the
flap, and pulled out the contents. He was mildly surprised to find
himself holding a small stack of 8 x 10 glossies and he looked up
at Reidy with a quizzical expression. Reidy just pointed back to
the pictures, so Eddie twisted the stack around until he could see
the first photograph. When it registered that he was looking at a
nice shot of the general wearing a lovely little black dress, Eddie
struggled to keep a straight face.

Reidy and Sanchez watched him without
expression as he shuffled through the rest of the photographs.

There was the general on a horse dressed like
a cowboy; the general wearing a police uniform; the general sitting
at a large desk in a business suit with a crowd of Chinese men
around him; the general in a baseball uniform looking strangely
like a slim Tommy Lasorda; and then back to the general in the
dress, a slinky black number with an amazing bust-line. Eddie’s
eyes flicked involuntarily toward Agent Sanchez.

Eddie tossed the stack of pictures on the
table. “Okay, so he likes to dress up. What’s that supposed to
mean?”

“It means he’s dressing up like a general,
too, Eddie.”

Eddie must have looked confused, which would
have been easy since he was, so Sanchez jumped in helpfully.

“The man’s an actor, Eddie, not a general.
He’s a Dutchman who has lived in Hong Kong for the last fifteen
years. He makes his living doing bit parts in Asian movies as the
token European, male or female.”

Reidy wiggled his eyebrows up and down a
couple of times when Sanchez finished talking. It was such a stupid
gesture that Eddie almost laughed out loud. Instead, he reached out
for the pictures and flicked slowly through them again, just to
have something to do while he was trying to think.

“You haven’t even heard the best part yet,
Eddie,” Reidy went on.

“Better than the general in a dress?”

“Oh yeah. A lot better.”

“Cut the crap, Reidy. What are you trying to
tell me?”

“The guy’s nothing but a broken-down actor,”
Reidy said. “He isn’t the one who hired you to track down Harry
Austin’s stash.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me now who
did.”

Reidy smiled very slowly, and the way he did
left Eddie knowing he wasn’t going to like what he heard next.

“He’s fronting for Vietnamese intelligence.
Now that Austin’s dead, they’re pinning their hopes of finding out
what he did with the money entirely on you.”

“Really?” Eddie said after a moment of
silence, mostly just to be saying something.

Reidy leaned close to him. “Yeah, Eddie,
really.”

“I get the feeling you still haven’t gotten
to the real bottom line here.”

Now Sanchez leaned close to Eddie, which he
found far more interesting than when Reidy had done the same
thing.

“Good guess, Eddie,” she said. “You want to
hear it now?”

“Yeah, sure. Now would be good.”

“Then here’s the deal,” Reidy said, taking
over again.

It looked to Eddie like they thought the
tag-team routine gave them some kind of an advantage over him.
Actually they were welcome to any advantage they would like to
have, he thought, if only they would get to the point.

“We have a better offer for you,” Reidy said.
“Better than the Vietnamese.”

Eddie was about to ask Reidy how he knew that
the general had offered him anything, let alone what it was, but
Reidy kept going before he could raise the point.

“We want you to locate the money from
Operation Voltaire, just like they asked you to, and then turn it
over to us.”

“That’s not a better offer.”

Reidy mimed disappointment, shaking his head
slowly.

“You mean patriotism really
is
dead,
Eddie?”

Eddie waited Reidy out.

“Okay, then here’s the rest of it,” Reidy
said after a few moments had passed in silence. “In return for your
cooperation, you will get one percent of whatever is recovered.
That could be as much as $4,000,000 the way we figure it, a hell of
a lot more than the lousy mil the gooks offered you.”

Eddie thought he saw Sanchez flinch slightly
at Reidy’s choice of words, but if she did, she covered it
quickly.

“And then there’s the bonus that comes with
our offer,” Reidy added.

“Bonus?”

“Yeah. We won’t kill you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Eddie. Don’t be a jerk. You don’t
really think you’re just going to turn that money over to the
Vietnamese and then wait while they type you up a check for
$1,000,000, do you? Get serious. You’ll never see anything from
them. They’ll just shoot you when this is all over.”

“But of course I can trust you absolutely,
huh?”

“Hey, man,” Reidy said, flinging his arms
open with a grin so wide it threatened permanent damage to his
face. “We’re your government. If you can’t trust your government,
who can you trust?”

And then he winked.

Eddie winked back, but he didn’t waste it on
Reidy. He aimed it straight at Sanchez, and then he smiled as her
upper lip curled in disdain.

“I already told you,” Eddie said. “I can’t
help you. And this part is none of your business, but I’ll tell you
anyway. I told the general exactly the same thing.”

“I think you know a lot more than you’re
letting on here,” Reidy said.

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Harry Austin liked you. He would have cut
you in on whatever he did. You took a bullet for him and he never
forgot it.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“A lot of people know about it.”

“Oh, yeah? Do they know it wasn’t a VC
bullet? Do they know it came from a little .22 some bargirl had
stuck in her bra and that she was just drunk and pissed off that
Harry wouldn’t buy her out for the night?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Do they know I caught the bullet in my ass
scrambling to get the hell out of her way so she could get a clean
shot at him?”

“Cut the bullshit, Eddie. Harry Austin always
thought you saved his life. The two of you were friends and he
trusted you. We think you know what he did with the money.” Reidy
shrugged. “It’s that simple.”