Noble Lies (10 page)

They were almost to the end of the block when the two men came out of the bar. Ahead, on the other side of the street, he could make out four men leaning against a dark gray wall, looking their way. If it was six, then no way.

Coming up on his right, a black alley led back to the night market. Mark rubbed his palms dry on his shirt, not listening as Pim explained what one of the one-eyed men had to say. He took her by the elbow and made a quick turn down the alley. When the man stepped out in front of him, Mark knew it would only be three and he knew he had to work fast.

Holding tight to Pim's arm, he moved up the alley, Pim's sandals scuffing along the dirty concrete as she tried to keep pace. It was not what the man had expected, the ferang coming up on him so quickly, his friends just now rounding the corner, the whole plan falling apart. The man held up both his hands, palms open, smiling, letting Mark know he didn't mean any trouble, glancing out toward the street, watching his friends running down the alley, glancing back at Mark in time to see a fist arching around at his head, too late to do a damn thing about it. Mark stepped in with the punch and the man stumbled back, falling over empty cardboard boxes and busted cinder blocks, his forehead clipping the steel doorframe before he went down.

Shoving Pim behind him, Mark turned to face the others.

One was tall and thin, the other short but with a stocky fighter's build. They had seen what he had done to their man, stopping just out of Mark's reach, too proud to back off but too scared to move in, both men cocking their arms, fists loose, leaning their weight back on one leg, the other coiled, ready to strike, self-taught Bruce Lees waiting for their opening.

Mark made it easy for them.

He dropped his hands to his side and stepped up. As if on cue, the tall man lunged forward, snapping a kick at Mark's crotch, not realizing that Mark had given him the target for a reason. The man was in mid-air when Mark angled his hips, the kick catching his thigh. Mark snatched hold of the man's leg, raising it up over his head as he stepped forward, his heel coming down hard on the side of the man's knee, picking the man up before he collapsed and throwing him against the dumpster with an echoing thump. The second man hit him from behind, both arms up around his neck, twisting, trying to pull Mark down as he pounded his knee into Mark's back. Mark reached up and grabbed the man by the hair, bending his legs then diving forward, tucking his head down as far as he could, his body folding, the weight of the other man flipping around, Mark coming down on top, his shoulder driving into the man's chest, Mark jabbing an elbow down under the man's ribs. The man let go, his arms flailing as he fought to catch his breath. Mark rolled to the side and jumped up. “Let's go,” he said. Wrapping an arm around Pim's waist, he pulled her down the alley.

As she ran, Pim turned away from Mark to look back over her shoulder. In the darkness, she smiled.

 

Chapter Sixteen

   

“I don't know why I waste my time,” Robin said, flicking off the hotel's blow-dryer with her thumb, her other hand pulling a comb through her hair. “I'm going to be sweating so much I'm just going to look like hell anyway.”

Stretched out on the bed, Mark could see her as she stood topless in front of the large mirror that hung above the dressing table, a hotel towel wrapped around her waist. He thought it was strange her feeling that comfortable with a man she hardly knew, but he wasn't about to complain. There was a white scar on the side of her knee and an unfinished chain tattoo around her left ankle, but those were the only flaws he could spot. Her curves were smooth and even, and if he ran a hand up the back of her thigh or across her flat stomach he knew it would be firm and warm. And she had been right, despite her blond hair—her natural color, revealed when she had adjusted the towel, the mirror lower than she thought—she tanned a golden bronze. His back was stiff, his ears were still ringing from the tinny speakers in the last bar, he had a finger-shaped bump on the side of his head where he had been hit with a bamboo pole, and there was a fist-sized knot welling up where he'd been kicked, but it could have been worse. And besides, with her standing there like that, he hardly noticed.

“So you and the dragon lady last night, huh?” Balanced on the balls of her feet, Robin leaned into the mirror as she applied her mascara. For a moment Mark considered telling Robin how Pim felt, telling her, too, what he thought about the way she treated the others, but the moment passed as he watched her cross the room to get her bikini top off the balcony railing. “Thank you for not bringing her back here.”

Mark let it slide. “After the tsunami, your brother spent some time here in Krabi.”

“How do you know?” she said, ducking behind the bathroom door with a pair of shorts and a black thong.

“A couple people recognized his picture, knew his name. They knew he had been living on Phi Phi Island. One guy even knew about his run-in with Jarin.”

“That guy from Phuket? Interesting.”

“Apparently he made some enemies here, too,” he said as Robin, now dressed, sat down in the center of her bed, crossing her legs and leaning back on her arms. “Everybody knew about that but nobody would talk.”

“Where is he now? Any idea?”

Mark shrugged. “Somewhere south. They know he went to Koh Lanta—it's a big island about three hours south of here.”

“Ugh. Three hours?”

“Not in a long-tail. There's ferry service between Krabi and Koh Lanta—a regular boat.”

“Thank God. So did they tell you where to look on this island?”

“They might have.” Mark pulled himself up, leaning against the headboard. The frame of the bed creaked with every movement, the joints worn weak from years of hard riding. “I'll ask Pim what they said.”

Robin rocked forward, crossing her arms, her elbows coming down on her knees. “You didn't talk to these people?”

“I don't speak Thai, remember?”

“So this is just stuff that she told you, you didn't hear it yourself?”

“I heard it,” Mark said, trying not to smile. “I just didn't understand it.”

With a loud and dramatic sigh, Robin fell sideways, burying her face in one of the fat pillows.

Mark turned back the covers and swung his legs out of the groaning bed. A red and purple bruise as big as his palm peeked out from under his boxers. He grit his teeth as he stood, bracing for the pain he knew he would feel, his hip throbbing already, a four Advil morning. He'd stretch it out in the shower, the hot water not helping the swelling but it would feel good anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, shaved and dressed, his baggy shorts covering the mark, he came out of the bathroom to find that Robin hadn't moved, her face still buried, her legs still crossed.

“There's a restaurant next door, the sign out front says they serve American breakfasts.” He stood at the edge of the bed and waited till she rolled her head and looked up at him. “The ferry doesn't leave until after lunch. I'll find somebody who speaks English, confirm what she told me.”

“And if you can't,” Robin said, the words muffled by the pillow, “we leave them here.”

 

***

 

The people in Krabi? They weren't like the people in Phuket.

They didn't stare when he walked down the road and none of the kids he passed pointed or fell in behind him, faking a limp, swinging their leg out with every step. And the people on the bus? They were helpful, telling him that it was an easy walk to the pier from where the bus would drop them off; and they had seen him get on the bus, too, so they saw the way he walked, nobody telling him that he couldn't make it there on his own. He liked that.

Maybe it was because there were too many ferangs in Phuket, the Thais and the Chinese all trying to act all cool so the ferangs would buy stuff from them. But the ferangs, they never made fun of him. They were always polite, even the drunk ones. And some of the ferang women sometimes would smile at him, but he knew it wouldn't go anywhere, the women always going with the kind of guys who made fun of him the most. He could never understand that. They already had everything girls liked, why did they need to pick on him?

But in Krabi it seemed different. There were ferangs here, sure, they were everywhere, but there wasn't any beach nearby so it was a different kind of ferang, the kind with the cameras and the backpacks, the ones who seemed out of place in the bar-beers of Patong, not everybody looking to get drunk or get laid. The businesses were different here, only a few souvenir places and no dive shops, the clothing stores selling things Thais liked, not just tee shirts and baggy shorts. There were car part stores and furniture stores and hardware stores—things tourists never had to buy. And the temples he saw were crowded, all day long.

After the tsunami, people in Patong started praying more, buying garlands of white flowers for their Buddhas; and every morning he woke up to the heavy scent of incense, his neighbors burning joss sticks by the armful. Some of the old people said that the wave was sent to wash away the bad karma and he heard a few of the Christians say it was their god's punishment for all the sin, but that was stupid since everybody knew it was from an earthquake. He had been up at the country club that morning, hoping one of the ferangs would hire him as a caddie. It was almost four kilometers from the beach, up in the hills, but you could hear that something was happening. By the time he got down to Patong, the ocean had already pulled back, and there was everything, just pushed up on the streets, and buildings gone and people crying or walking around, not saying anything, and sand and mud everywhere.

He saw his first body near the Patong Beach Hotel, wedged up between a palm tree and the top half of a charter fishing boat, the hull ripped away, and he watched as bodies floated up from the underground parking garage of the Ocean Plaza shopping center. The more he looked around, the more bodies he saw. Thais, ferangs, some naked, the wave pulling off their clothes; others laying there by the road like they just fell asleep. The next day the bodies started to swell; and that week the tide brought some in from the bay, all of them bloated and black so you couldn't even tell what sex they were, just whether they were adults or children. He didn't have anybody to lose, but for weeks afterward he felt sad all the time. And now? A few people still had their altars, but when the tourists started returning, everything went back to the way it was before and he didn't feel as sad anymore.

He wiped the sleep from his eyes and took another sip of tea, shifting his weight on the low windowsill of the 7-Eleven that served as his seat. Across the street, at a table near the open window, the big American and his girlfriend were finishing their breakfast.

Yesterday he had watched them as they climbed out of the long-tail at Chao Fa Pier, these two, Jarin's whore Pim, an old man and a boy. It was already past sunset when they arrived and he tried to imagine spending so many hours on such an uncomfortable boat. He never liked the long-tails. They were loud and they rocked too much. Besides, it was so much faster to take the bus.

Back in Phuket, he had watched the American talking with the man at the hotel, the ferang with the stupid-looking dreadlocks. And when the American went up the stairs to the rooms, the hotel man had walked straight out and down to the beach, walking right by him like he wasn't there. He watched as the hotel man talked first to one long-tail captain, then another, then another. The hotel man talked to the last one for a long time, pointing up the beach and then bending over to draw something in the sand, the boat captain squatting down next to him, nodding.

When the hotel man left, he walked over to the long-tail and asked the boat captain if he had seen the kick-boxing match the other night, knowing he hadn't. It was four-hundred bhat to get in the door, more than the captain would make in two days. But it got them talking. They talked about fishing and football and how the tourists were finally returning before he brought up the hotel man, nervous that the captain would be suspicious. But no, the captain told him all about it, how he was going to be taking a couple of ferangs around Phuket that night, how the hotel man had wanted the captain to take them all the way to Krabi but there was no way he was going that far. He'd drop them off at a fishing village on the mainland, up near Laem Som probably, and from there they could get another boat to take them the rest of the way.

He had talked to the captain a while longer, then walked to the rooming house where he'd been staying to get his hidden stash of hashish and ya ba pills. He had it all sold before midnight. Five thousand bhat—almost one hundred and thirty American dollars. And the money? It was an investment, like buying a kilo of Thai weed. You paid up front, but you made more later. The next morning he took a bus to Krabi, a three-hour ride, and he had the seat to himself. That made him wonder why the American would want to go by long-tail with all those hours in the sun. But that afternoon, when he saw the whore get out of the boat with the American couple, he knew that something wasn't right. And he knew that somehow his investment would pay off.

 

Chapter Seventeen

   

As he walked up the sloping street, away from the small cafés that were clustered near the pier, Mark remembered what JJ had said about mornings making everything seem possible. Last night he hadn't thought it necessary to confirm the things Pim had said, but then Robin planted a seed. He still believed that Pim had told him the truth, but it was something he felt in his gut, not something he could guarantee. And his gut had been wrong before. When he told Robin he would ask around, confirm the things that Pim had said, it sounded easy enough, but that was an hour ago and, just as JJ had predicted, he was starting to wonder if he'd get anything done at all.

The people in the cafés had been friendly, sitting with him as he explained to those who spoke English how he was looking for a friend who might have passed through. Had they seen him? Yes, he had been by, nice man, very kind. When? Oh, a while ago. A week? A month? Yes, something like that. South? Yes, that sounds right. His name? Well, I am not good with names…enjoy your visit, have a nice day. The Noble Lie, served with a broad smile and cup of Chinese white tea on the side.

The street branched off at the top of the incline, one road circling back to the center of town and the intersection with strange statues mounted on marble pillars—cavemen carrying luggage?—the other road, narrow and in need of repaving, passed between a pair of cinderblock warehouses, leading to the backside of the night market and the late-night dives they had visited. He set off down the warehouse road, an hour to get a real answer before making up a Noble Lie of his own.

In the morning light, the area around the bars lost its menacing feel, the hookers and the street toughs replaced by small kids in school uniforms and even smaller old women toting plastic bags of fresh produce. The bars themselves seemed to disappear, the windowless fronts and nondescript doors blending in with the walls as if they were seldom-used side entrances to elaborate shops that opened on wider streets. In Patong the bars never seemed to close but on this stretch in Krabi they looked as if it had been years since they had been open. He jiggled the handles on a few of the doors but they were locked. Behind one, an argument in shouted Thai stopped suddenly when he knocked; behind another he could hear the heavy hum of machinery that hadn't been there the night before. He passed the opening twice before recognizing the alley.

The walls were cleaner than he remembered and there wasn't as much trash, but the bloodstain on the doorframe, brown and faded, and the larger one at the foot of the dumpster let him know that he'd been down this path before. He kicked some of the cardboard boxes out of the way, checking the ground for the weapon he was sure they had hidden but never got a chance to use, when the police cruiser started down the alley.

It moved toward him slowly, not as intimidating as a Crown Victoria but the banana-clip machine guns in the rack behind the two solemn-faced cops made up for the car's subcompact size. Mark turned and watched the car approach, smiling his best lost-tourist smile. He could see the driver speaking into the radio's handset, the springy black cord looping on the dashboard. The passenger stepped out of the car, adjusting his white belt, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles in his polyester uniform shirt. He ran a finger up the ridge of his nose to push his mirrored aviator glasses tight against his face. It was only when the cop gave a two-finger wave that Mark noticed a second police car pulling up behind him.

Mark widened his smile as he walked toward the policeman. “I'm glad to see you. Can you tell me how to get to the City Hotel from here? I seem to have—”

“Shut up,” the officer snapped. He strode up to Mark, his fists balanced on his hips, his thin arms and bony elbows sticking out like a set of wings. Mark was a foot taller and eighty pounds heavier, but they both knew that that meant nothing now. “Why are you here for?” the cop shouted.

“Like I said, I was walking around and got lost—”

The cop stretched up and slapped him hard across the face. “You lie.” Without thinking, Mark clenched his fists, an unseen cop behind him responding with a sharp jab in the back from the end of a nightstick, the cop in front of him stepping closer, daring him to do something. “Why you here?”

This time Mark said nothing, not even flinching when the cop slapped him a second time. There were two cops behind him now and they pulled his arms back, rapping the cuffs down hard on his wrists and ratcheting them tight. Mark did not resist but they shoved him down on the hood of the car anyway, kicking his legs out wide to pat him down. He let them push him into the backseat of the car and he didn't sit up until they had backed out of the alley.

It was hot and airless, with a thick taxi-style Plexiglas divider keeping the AC to the front of the car. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He had been in the back of enough police cars to know how to use his time. It would be a short ride and he needed to clear his mind. It could be nothing—a couple of corrupt cops shaking down a lone tourist, taking their frustrations out on someone twice their size. It could be everything—a clear link to a body found in a hillside shack on Phuket.

He focused on his breathing.

No matter what was waiting at the end of the ride, he knew he needed to be ready.

 

***

 

“Can I get you something cold to drink? A Pepsi, maybe? Or a Thai iced tea?” The police captain leaned back in his chair and pushed a button on the window-mounted air conditioning unit. It gave a shudder, the metallic hum stepping up an octave. Mark could feel the cool air blowing on his sweaty face. He would have liked to run a hand across his forehead, wipe the sweat away from his eyes, but the handcuffs kept his arms locked behind his back.

“I'm going to get you the iced tea,” the officer said, turning back to face his prisoner across his paper-strewn desk. “It's not like the iced tea you're used to, but you really should try it.” He picked up the phone on his desk and punched in three quick numbers. He smiled across at Mark as he waited, then spoke in Thai to the person at the other end. “Do you like your tea sweet?” he said, tilting the receiver away from his face. He raised his eyebrows, smiling warmly the full forty seconds it took Mark to respond.

“Not too sweet,” Mark said. His lip was swollen where one of the cops had elbowed him as he got out of the car, not hard enough to break the skin but enough to make his words sound fat and slurred.

“Good idea,” the captain said, “I'll tell them to make it two.”

The office was on the second floor of the police station, past a warren of cubicles, across from a dust-covered photocopier and far away from the row of small holding cells where Mark had sat for the last three hours. Other than a stained porcelain drain that served as an open toilet, the ten by ten foot cell had been empty. In the twin cell to his right, fifteen Thai men spent their time watching Mark as he sat on the concrete floor, asking him questions in Thai, laughing at jokes they knew he could not understand. They had fallen silent when the guards came down the row, stepping away from the bars, looking down at their own bare feet as the guards unlocked Mark's cell. Mark was trying to stand up when the guards entered, shoving him back on the ground then shouting for him to get up, hoping he'd give them a reason to pull out their nightsticks. But Mark had had time and he was ready. They could knock him down and make him stand all day. They'd get bored before he'd snap, a high tolerance for physical harassment and general bullshit one of the benefits of being a Marine. They let him stand on his thirty-third attempt, then walked him to the captain's office without a single shove.

The captain wore old-style army fatigues, dark brown, tailored to match his lean frame. The sleeves were rolled up high on his arms, tight against his biceps. He was no larger than the other cops, but stronger, the muscles in his forearms twisting like cables. A multi-colored patch showed his unit and twin bars on his collars denoted his rank, his name embroidered in black Thai script above his right chest pocket. His black hair was freshly trimmed and his face glowed from a close shave. He was handsome and his smile and bright eyes made it hard for Mark to guess his age or his intentions. The tea ordered, he leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. “So, Mr. Rohr…may I call you Mark? Great. My name is Jimmy—”

Mark felt himself smirk.

“Okay, it's not my real name, but it's easier for foreigners to say than Kanjorngiat Niratpattanasai. Hell, get a few Singhas in me and I can't say it right.” He chuckled, swiveling his chair from side to side. “So tell me, Mark, are you enjoying your visit to Krabi?”

Mark considered several answers before saying, “I haven't been here long enough to form an opinion.”

Jimmy nodded. “Sure, sure. Okay, first impressions then—what do you think?”

Mark ran his tongue along his swollen lip. “It seems like a nice place.”

“It is, isn't it? The people are generally honest…okay, most are, but if it weren't for the others I'd be out of a job, right?” He chuckled at his own joke. “It's not a big city, but then it's not some little village up in the hills. And—no offense—there's not as many tourists as, say, Patong or Koh Samui.” He paused a long beat. “Have you been to Patong Beach, Mark?”

It was Mark's turn to smile. The bigger the lie, the more truth you needed to support it. “That's where we came from yesterday.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Jimmy said. “You and your girlfriend.”

“And the Thai family—a girl named Pim, her nephew and her grandfather. They're with us, too. I'm sorry, I can't remember their names.” The officer continued to smile and nod, and Mark couldn't tell if he was confirming what the man already knew or surprising him with revelations that would mean trouble later.

The door to the office opened behind Mark and the cop who had slapped him walked to the desk carrying their drinks on a round plastic tray. He set one glass down on a coaster in front of the officer, the other he set in front of Mark.

“Ah, just in time,” Jimmy said, lifting his drink from the desk. “You're going to enjoy this.” He poked a straw in the drink, shifting the ice and mixing the light, frothy top with the creamy middle and dark liquid at the bottom of the glass. He took a long pull on his straw before he noticed that Mark hadn't moved. Laughing he said, “Go ahead, Mark, it's not poisoned.”

Mark raised his shoulders, tilting his body to show off the handcuffs.

“Oh, I forgot.” Jimmy snapped his fingers and said something to the street cop, who reached over and placed an unwrapped straw in Mark's glass before leaving the office. Mark looked across at Jimmy as he leaned forward and worked the straw into his mouth. It had a strong tea taste with hints of cinnamon and vanilla. But it was cold and wet and Mark drained a third of the glass before sitting back in the chair.

“It's better if you mix it up first,” Jimmy said, pumping his straw in his glass to illustrate what he meant. “Maybe next time.” He set his glass back on his coaster. “So Mark, tell me, what were you doing in that alley last night?”

“Which alley is that?”

Jimmy raised a finger. “Good point. We may not have as many alleys as, say, Canajoharie, but we have a few. No, the alley I mean is the one where you were jumped by those three guys. Ring a bell?”

“If you know about the alley,” Mark said, ignoring the casual reference to his hometown, “then you know I was just walking through and that they jumped me.”

“Hello? Isn't that what I said?” Jimmy shook his head as a show of disappointment. “Is that where you got the fat lip?”

The fat lip twitched as Mark smiled. “Actually, I got that from one of your men.”

“Ouch,” Jimmy said, bringing his hand up to rub his own lip in sympathy. “Well, they can be a bit rough. Not like in the States, huh? Yeah, I was a cop down in Maryland for a few years, the Gaithersburg area. Been there? You should check it out, very pretty. This was after the military. I was ninety-five B…Army talk for an MP. You're a jarhead, right?”

“Ex.”

Jimmy laughed. “No such thing as an ex-Marine, Mark, you know that. And a Gulf War vet, too. What did you do to get that Bronze Star?”

“I didn't do anything.”

Jimmy waved his hand, dismissing the question. “Sure, sure. They just give those things away.”

“Were you in the war?”

“Me? Hell no. I did my three years and got out. Ended up here when my father died and my family moved back. Started as a patrolman and bought my way on up. Pay's not as nice but when you add in the bribes it's been a good living.”

“Is that what this is about?” Mark said.

“Bribes? Come on, Mark, you're a tourist. How much money are you going to have on you? Enough to bribe a street cop, maybe even a sergeant, but I'm a captain. It takes more than you've got to buy me.” He was still smiling but the humor was fading from his voice. He glanced up at the clock that hung above the map of Krabi. “Look, Mark, I'm going to make this easy for you and fast for me. I've landed a position with a special maritime police unit based out of Phuket City—smuggling intervention, illegal immigration, piracy prevention, that sort of thing. It cost me a small fortune but the kickbacks and the potential for serious bribe money is enormous.”