Paying Back Jack (33 page)

She tipped the wine glass back, finishing the wine. “Juan Carlos is marrying next month.”

“Congratulations,” said Calvino, extending his hand. He thought for a moment that Juan Carlos was going to kiss his cheeks.

“My sister is trying very hard to accept that her little brother will have a wife,” he said, shaking Calvino's hand again.

“That's not true,” said Marisa.

Calvino sat in the middle. He wanted his sports jacket. He wanted his gun and his socks and a taxi back to Sukhumvit Road. Marisa reached over and squeezed his hand.

“The father of the bride is running for parliament. I'd never heard of his political party. But I understand he stands a very good chance of getting elected. He has big plans for Juan Carlos; he'll work in the family corporate empire and play an advisory role in the political empire. What I'm finding hard to accept isn't that Juan Carlos is getting married but that he's being absorbed into an enterprise that will own him. Somporn's his name.”

“Somporn?” asked Calvino, his head resting back on the sofa.

“You've heard of him?” asked Marisa. “I'd never even seen his name. You're the first foreigner I've ever met who knows him.”

“That's not fair,” said Juan Carlos, the smile reappearing on his face.

“Why isn't it fair?” she asked.

Calvino experienced the back and forth of a verbal tennis match.

“Because foreigners don't vote. He doesn't care if foreigners don't know his name. It makes no difference.”

“But he wants to be foreign minister. Shouldn't some foreigners know him?” asked Marisa.

“What do you think, Vinny?” asked Juan Carlos

Calvino saw the situation was heating up between brother and sister, but couldn't figure out the context of what was fueling it. He'd been in a beauty salon where a game of mah-jongg was used as cover for a voter bribing operation. He'd been trailing Somporn's mistress, who happened to be involved with a guitar player some called Nop, others called Ball, and whom he called Birdman. Birdman had been in the hotel where a ying named Nongluck had tumbled off a balcony. He'd already heard more than he'd ever wanted to hear about Somporn.

“Politics gives me heartburn.” He looked at Marisa and nodded at the bedroom. “I find politicians boring. Don't you?”

Calvino saw a red dot appear on Juan Carlos's forehead. Instinctively, he pushed him off his chair. He crashed hard onto the floor. In the confusion, Fon appeared at the far end of the room. In her hand was one of her laser pens. “What's going on?” asked Marisa.

Calvino looked back at the child. “Nothing, I saw a red dot of light on your brother's forehead, but it's just from a child's toy,” said Calvino. He motioned for Fon to come closer. She quietly walked from the bedroom door and stood a foot away. “Show me what's in your hand,” he said.

Fon opened her hand and a laser pen rested on her palm. “It's for you,” she said. It was all that she had to give. She stretched out her hand toward Calvino. He looked at the laser pen and smiled as he took it. He pointed it toward the wall and turned it on. A single red dot appeared. He moved across the wall until the red dot settled on the bottle of single-malt whiskey on the dry bar.

“Good for ordering drinks,” he said.

“It keep me safe,” said Fon.

Calvino tilted his head to the side. “How does it keep you safe?”

“If I have problem, I flash and someone come to protect me.”

“You don't need it now.”

She hesitated, looking at Marisa and then back at Calvino. “Maybe not.”

Marisa leaned forward, hugged her, kissed her on the forehead, and led her back to the bedroom. Calvino looked at the laser pen. He shone the red laser dot on the bottle again. “I could use another scotch. But I'll pass. You okay, Juan?”

Juan Carlos nodded, smiled. “Okay.”

As Marisa came back into the room, Calvino rose from the sofa, knocked back the rest of the scotch, and walked into Marisa's bedroom. After strapping on his holster and putting on his jacket, he walked back out. Brother and sister remained seated, caught off-guard by his abrupt departure.

It was the line that Calvino knew from experience would get him out the door: “I have some work I need to finish, so I'll be on my way.”

He was showered with goodbyes in languages he didn't understand. Calvino assumed the message was goodbye, but given the evening, it could have been “Watch your step. It's a long way to the bottom.”

CASEY FOLDED UP THE SUBPOENA and slipped it back into his pocket. It had been on his desk when he arrived for work. Each time he read his name on the subpoena, he balled up his fists in a flare of anger and paced his office. He phoned the company headquarters. He was told not to worry. It was a formality. Showing up in a suit and tie at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., before a subcommittee of the military intelligence committee seemed no formality. The committee was holding hearings on the role of private contractors in the secret-prison system, and they were out for blood. His boss told Casey that at the company level, Casey had their full support. They promised him that he'd have at his side one of the best lawyers around.

Casey knew the game. They were telling him what he wanted to hear because they wanted his cooperation. What burned him was the company's using classic interrogation techniques, the same ones he'd used on insurgents before taking them down, inflicting pain, getting to the truth of what they knew. What Casey had wanted to hear was he didn't have to testify, just keep doing your job.

Instead, he had less than a week until he boarded the plane for Washington and the committee room. LRAS was preparing to cut him loose. He felt it like a man who sensed a subtle change in his wife's attitude as she put in place her plan to leave him.

Logistic Risk Assessment Services had been as cold-blooded as any private interrogator; what they were doing was nothing personal, but
someone at the operational level had to be isolated and set up to take blowback. The handwriting was on the wall when the CFO at LRAS gave him the details of his legal representation: a twenty-six-year-old lawyer two years out of law school whose only job had been as a White House intern. His political connections would help them offer up Casey in a deal. Waters had told him that this was in the pipeline. “Be prepared, act first,” Waters had said. Waters had tipped him several months earlier that an investigation was likely and warned him to cover his ass. That was something Casey had a lot of experience with doing. He had zero intention of showing up in a committee room in Washington and testifying about activities in Baghdad and Bangkok. He'd tie up some loose ends and then disappear, something he knew how to do. He'd been trained to make independent decisions in the field—whatever was needed to accomplish the mission.

Casey never forgot his training. He had already bought his outbound ticket. But it wasn't to Washington, D.C.

Casey walked into Calvino's office wearing his interrogator's smile and a floppy-eared dog hand puppet. He stood erect before Ratana's desk and barked, the puppet hidden behind his back slowly emerging. Ratana brushed back her hair to one side, ignoring his intrusion but keeping an eye on him to see what he would do next. “Say hello to Ross,” he said, bringing the puppet within a couple of inches of her face.

“Ross?”

“The name of someone who works in my company,” he said. Ross was the company's CEO. “Ross and Mr. Casey would like to see Mr. Calvino.”

He stripped the puppet off his hand and laid it on her desk. “Or I could just surprise him. I think that would be better,” he said with a broad grin.

Casey breezed past her like she didn't exist and walked straight into Calvino's office. Calvino had told Casey on the phone that he had a report on Cat and he wanted to deliver it personally. Calvino had expected to find Casey hardwired with his usual default settings: belligerent, self-confident, with a talent for discovering the weakness in the defense and destroying it. It had troubled Calvino that Casey had been gathering information about Colonel Pratt. He wanted to hand over the file and get Casey out of his life.

The blinds on the window were open far enough for them to watch the neon One Hand Clapping sign. It looked like a dead hand in the daytime. Casey glanced in that direction but quickly looked away. What was outside didn't interest him.

“You know personal details about Colonel Pratt. It's not too much of a jump to say you know a great deal about Cat,” said Calvino. “But you do a good job of pretending you don't. A good job pretending that you need me to get information that you already have. Maybe you can explain why you've gone to all of this trouble?”

Casey raised his hand as if to interrupt what was coming next. Calvino waited as his client paced up and down the wall, looking at the paintings. His training as a professional interrogator meant he looked for the breaking point, and when he found it, Casey had no trouble doing what was required at that point. Throw him off-balance, humiliate him, make his head spin.

“In the intelligence business all information needs to be crosschecked, Calvino. Sure, I know about her. What does that matter?” He moved along the wall, turned around, narrowing his eyes and talking through his teeth. “What does matter is you. Who is Vincent Calvino? That's a good question. I look at the wall. But I don't see any degree in criminal justice. A real PI has it framed because it shows he's had the training for the job. Also no license. Do you have something to show that you've met some minimal requirement or passed some test? Not likely. I don't even see a framed certificate from some tin-pot association saying you've paid your dues. From the look of it, I'd say you fly by the seat of your pants. You take the money and do your best. But I heard about your police connections. In this place, forget about a degree or a license; it's the guy who's connected at the street level who delivers. That's why I hired you. Beyond that, I don't give a shit who you are.”

Calvino leaned forward on his desk, his .38 police service revolver inside his shoulder holster. His jacket hung loosely from a coat rack to the side of his desk. He stared across his desk at Casey, trying to imagine him in an interrogation room with someone tied up, bloodied, yapping out of control, admitting anything to stop the pain.

“I've heard that you're in the pain business. I don't like doing work for that kind of man.”

Casey rolled his neck and a small cracking noise echoed from the bones inside. “If you worked only for people you liked, you wouldn't cover your rent.” He smiled as if the exercise had eased up some stiffness. “That's why I've thrown some business your way. I was never much into judging a man by what he has on paper. It's what he can do in the field that matters. And if you play this right, I can throw you a lot more, if you're interested.”

Calvino had come across his fair share of con men, grifters, and boiler-room operators in Bangkok, men who were always just around the corner from starring in the biggest role of their life, and inviting you into their movie as the second lead. Suckers fell for the performance more times than Calvino cared to count. Behind Casey's mask, beneath all the bluster, something about the man told Calvino that he had known Somporn wouldn't show up for his usual appointment with Cat. Otherwise, Casey would have thrown him off the case. Why would he have bothered to shell out more to an investigator if he believed he was no good at his job?

“What did you find out about Cat that you can't tell me over the phone?”

“She's looking after a couple of her sister's boys, putting them through international school.”

“Her sister's out of the picture, right?”

Calvino wanted to reach across the desk and grab Casey by the neck and shake him until he was blue in the face. “Her sister's dead.”

“Sisters, brothers, dead or alive. I don't care. All I want to know is her connection with Somporn and whether she's showing up on a regular basis.”

What was it that had wormed into Casey's heart at an early age and turned it to stone? thought Calvino. An abusive father, an indifferent mother, an uncle or neighbor who beat him and made him eat dirt for some minor infraction of a silly rule? With a guy like Casey, it could have been anything, including the possibility that he'd been born without a heart. Or was that just another part of his act?

He'd been thinking about the women in the beauty parlor, gabbing over their mah-jongg tiles and stacks of money, letting him know Cat knew about Nongluck. He looked hard at Casey, and he wondered if Casey knew about the love triangle as well. “Cat knew Nongluck was seeing Somporn. Convenient for her that Nongluck
died in Pattaya. Someone pushed her off a hotel balcony. It makes you think, what if?”

A slight twitch of Casey's upper lip threatened to turn into a sneer for only a flash and then he regained his control. “What if what? I don't see the connection.”

“Somporn is an active man. There's Cat, and then there was Nongluck. Women are natural-born monopolists. They hate competition.”

“You're moving away from the assignment, what I paid you to do. I'm interested in Cat and when she meets up with Somporn.”

“I'd have thought Nongluck's death would have interested you. If your endgame is to get Somporn, why not link him to a murder? It would make life messy for him.”

Casey smiled. “I like that possibility. It's good, Calvino. Real good.”

Calvino got the impression that the compliment was false and that Casey was toying with him. Calvino rose from his chair and walked across the room. He opened a filing cabinet and removed a folder. He walked back to his desk and opened it. Inside were newspaper clippings about Nongluck's death and more clippings about the murder of Casey's son, Joel. One of the photographs was of Joel. He pulled out the clipping of the fresh-faced man, half as handsome as his father, and laid it on his desk. “Personally, I don't think you have any intention of framing Somporn. You plan to kill him.”