Paying Back Jack (39 page)

Jarrett walked back to the table, sat behind the sniper rifle, and looked down the barrel and silencer. He had a clear view of the balcony where Somporn would appear.

“Are you saying we pack it in?” asked Jarrett.

“I ain't there yet.”

Tracer rose from the sofa, using his binoculars to scan the horizon. He looked back over his shoulder at Jarrett who stood at the table, running his hand over the blue felt. Tracer knew he was thinking about that night years before in Hua Hin when Jack Malone had been a no-show. But the man had a good reason. He was dead.

“You think your darling is on her way to the beehives in Surin? She was looking at that private investigator like she might be more interested in him than in bees.”

Jarrett smiled, relieved for a moment to be thinking about the ying holding her backpack. “Her family lost all of their hives. That was how they'd made their living. I figure she's on her way back home.”

Tracer laughed, watching Jarrett leaning over the pool table, stroking it as if under the surface he'd find an answer to some larger question of loss. “Man, you are such a dreamer. That girl ain't ever gonna stay put and raise bees. It's not the nature of life.”

THE DAY BEFORE Casey had vanished, McPhail had followed him to an eye clinic in Soi Thong Lo. The following morning, Calvino had retraced Casey's trail. Located in a rich section of Sukhumvit Road, the district had more than its share of inhabitants with bad eyes, and Chinese merchants seized the chance to make fast money by opening dozens of eye clinics. They competed for business in the collision of residential and commercial buildings, beauty parlors, fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, offices, nightclubs, taverns, and car dealerships. Casey had chosen a clinic set back from the main drag, meaning that the business didn't depend on foot traffic. They had a higher class of clientele, the kind of people who would learn of it by word-of-mouth and then go to the trouble of finding it inside a high-rise. The first shop these clients would find there wasn't an eye clinic but a flower shop for the well-heeled—girlfriends and hot dates, with weddings and funerals more of a sideline. A person would need a major head cold to visit the ground floor without noticing the scent of roses, geranium, and evergreens, with a whiff of
tom yam gung
from the staff's leftover lunch. A woman might get a little heady from the fragrance; a man might think he'd stumbled into the women's restroom by mistake.

Above the commercial level rose a residential high-rise: floor after floor of ultra-modern serviced apartments and offices, devoted to the comfort of the well-off who wanted a barrier between themselves and ordinary Thais. It had been built for foreigners—European
kitchen, American sitting room, Chinese ancestor-worship room. Teeming with different nationalities, the building was a beehive with all kinds of species living side by side. It was every place and no place. Arches and pillars and fountains and high ceilings combined Gothic, Delphic, and Victorian flourishes—touches randomly plucked from design magazines to carry the branded prestige associated with farang elites. The interiors could've been borrowed from the blueprints of a high-class whorehouse multiplied by twenty-nine floors.

Following McPhail's directions, Calvino had passed many high-rise buildings. One of them had been grand and elegant, with a uniformed security guard stationed at the front door. He'd recognized it. Cat's condo was on the ninth floor. He remembered it from his stakeout. Her building, like the other luxury buildings in Thong Lo, was a universe away from the seedy beauty salon with the old crones playing mah-jongg and stapling bribes to Somporn campaign cards. He wondered if the sister who had worked in that dump had ever seen Cat's place. This was more than just an average upgrade from the sea-level of a beauty salon stuck amid lower-middle-class shop-houses. Cat had come a long way; he gave her that much.

He figured the sister would have been impressed. Living in such a building guaranteed a face so large that the occupant would have to turn sideways to get in and out of doors. But could Cat hold on to what she had? That was always the question with a mia noi. Lack of job security made a mia noi a little crazy except on a really hot day, when she might accelerate from mildly paranoid to barking-dog mad.

Calvino headed inside to look for the eye clinic. The two buildings were on the same side of the road. What was Casey doing in Cat's neighborhood? Why hire him to follow a woman whom he already knew where to find? He couldn't have expected McPhail to have the answers; Calvino was still working through the possibilities arising from the proximity of the eye clinic to Cat's condo.

Calvino entered the heavily scented main lobby. Shops lined one wall. Elevators to the upper floors were on the other. A uniformed security guard sitting behind the reception desk was gazing into a compact mirror, pulling hairs out of his chin and occasionally looking up to check out someone walking to the elevators.

A blast of cold air hit Calvino the way those icy fronts from Canada blow through New York, giving Upper East Side poodles
and their matronly owners a shiver that cuts deep inside. Calvino stopped outside the eye clinic and looked through the window. Behind the counter was a ying in her early thirties in a nurselike uniform and cap. She looked all right if a man liked the doctor-and-nurse game. The presentation of the clinic fell between a hospital and a boutique spa. He picked up a brochure on the counter and opened it.

“Do you have an appointment?” The nurse, receptionist, or whatever she called herself looked up from a game of solitaire on her computer screen. She looked bored, her eyes heavy, the line of her mouth dipping into the depression zone.

Calvino shook his head. She stared at his eyes as if to determine the nature of his problem. “My friend Mr. Casey said this was a good place to have my eyes checked.”

“Fill out the form, please.” She slid a piece of paper across the counter.

“Do you remember Mr. Casey?”

It was clear from her expression that she did not. He took out a photograph of Casey and handed it to her. “That's Casey.”

She slipped on her glasses and looked.

She nodded. “Yes, I remember him. We fitted him with contact lenses.”

Now he was getting somewhere. They had established a mutual acquaintance and that always made a woman relax. The life came back into her face and she managed a smile. The fact they both knew Casey had washed away the utter strangeness of an unknown farang coming in off the street. “Has he picked them up?”

She checked her records. “Yesterday he came down to get them.”

“Right, he lives upstairs.”

She seemed happy that he knew about Casey. “Yes, he lives upstairs.”

He slipped Casey's record around. He had given his address as being on the ninth floor. “When was the last time you saw him?”

She thought for a minute, growing suspicious of Calvino. “I don't remember.”

That was good enough for Vincent Calvino. He'd gone as far as he could with her, then the cold front had once again rolled across her face, freezing him out.

“You can see the doctor now,” she said.

He glanced at his watch. “Let me think about it. I need lunch. I wouldn't do an eye test without eating. I can't see right without food.”

The food-injection argument nearly always won over the Thais. The common greeting, “Have you eaten rice yet?” came from this abiding, deep concern that hunger might overcome a person at any moment. No one ever would think of interfering with someone's need to eat immediately. And that's how it worked. The Thais didn't work up an appetite; something happened in their gut that triggered a starvation reaction. Calvino saw what might just pass as sympathy in her eyes as he repeated his need to eat.

“You'll come back?”

“After I eat a bowl of noodles,” he said, taking a namecard from the plastic box on the counter. He hadn't filled in the form. He hadn't really done anything that people coming into a clinic were supposed to do—nothing at all, really, except ask a bunch of questions. As he left, he knew she would remember him. She might phone Casey and tell him that someone had been looking for him. A farang who'd come into the clinic shivering from the air conditioning, a man hungry to dive into a bowl of noodles. But he hadn't let his hunger get in the way of asking a lot of awkward personal questions. She was in awe that the questions in this farang's head had assumed priority over the immediate demands of his stomach; that was one thing a Thai rarely witnessed.

He stopped in the door, turned around. “You like jazz?”

She smiled.

“Ever hear of a guitar player named Ball?”

Her head tilted down, as if trying to recall a memory. “Is he Thai?”

“He was last night when my friend and I had a talk with him.”

COLONEL PRATT AND CALVINO waited until Ball got out of his red sports car. He'd parked it in the same spot as before, in front of Saxophone. When Ball spotted Colonel Pratt, he fumbled with his keys, trying to get back into his car, but his reaction came too late. Calvino grabbed the keys and slammed Ball against the car.

“You're going to let a farang do that to a Thai?” Ball asked, his eyes filled with rage, his lower lip quivering.

Colonel Pratt's expression remained calm. “We have some unfinished business.”

“I have nothing more to say,” said Ball, folding his arms around his chest. “I want to call my lawyer.”

The request was fallout from too much American TV. Americans were cowed by lawyers. Thais had no fear of them. There were forces more powerful than the law, and lawyers who went against those forces disappeared. Fear resided elsewhere, and Ball was staring straight in the face of his worst nightmare. Calvino touched the tip of the car key against the side of the car. “A car like this, people remember. You have to be careful or it can get scratched. Of course, you could sue me.” He ran the key against the side, leaving a sluglike trail across the front door.

“Nothing to say? Never mind, I've just got started.” Calvino touched the key on the hood. He might as well have driven a fist between Ball's legs.

Ball went wild, grabbing Calvino's arm. “Wait! Don't do that!”

Calvino pushed him against the car. “Don't fuck with me, Ball.”

“Let's have a talk,” said Colonel Pratt.

Ball looked at Calvino. “Can I have my key?”

“After we have a little talk,” said Calvino.

“It won't take long,” said Colonel Pratt.

Calvino moved back, standing level with Pratt. Ball looked from one man to the other, trying to figure out his best play—who was going to cut him the best deal. He went with the standard default: trust the Thai to help you.

“Our band is on soon,” he said. His plea was intended to appeal to the musician in Colonel Pratt. “If I'm not inside, they'll start looking for me.”

“We aren't going anywhere,” said Colonel Pratt. “A few minutes, Ball. You can do that, can't you?”

Ball nodded. Sighing and head-down, he followed Colonel Pratt to a Volvo parked a few feet away. Ball climbed into the back and Colonel Pratt followed. Calvino got in the front and turned on the ignition. Cool air circulated as Ball sat against the far door, crunched up like a child waiting for punishment. Calvino had suggested the idea of a private interrogation, and Colonel Pratt had decided that going back to Saxophone and inviting Ball to have a talk wouldn't be a problem.

Just then a ying walked past the Volvo. She stopped when she saw Calvino sitting behind the wheel. Smiling, she knocked on the window. It was Amy, the ying who'd ordered a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black for her friends and then ignored him. She was coming back for another tap on the money machine.

He rolled down the window and said, “See you inside.”

She looked at the men in the backseat. “Hi, Ball,” she said, smiling. “You playing tonight?”

“Yeah, I'm playing. See you inside,” Ball said, flashing her a big smile.

She looked at the three men. Calvino remembered that she'd given her phone number to Ball on a coaster. None of them said anything.

“I guess I'll see you inside later.”

Calvino rolled up the window, and after a few seconds she turned and walked into the club. He leaned over the seat and stared hard
at Ball. He was suddenly alone with two men he definitely hadn't wanted to see again. Ball shrank against the door, his shoulder folding like an umbrella. He looked like a bat that had dropped off a cave ceiling, blinking, nervous, and scared.

Colonel Pratt laid the trap. “Casey's dropped the dime on you, Ball. He says you killed Nongluck in Pattaya. It could go bad for you.”

“Casey says it was your idea. You wanted to help Cat,” said Calvino.

“If you want us to help you, then you better tell us what happened.”

Ball's face showed nothing other than fear. He was wondering to himself if the cop and his farang friend were setting him up. Ball might not have known the game called prisoner's dilemma, but he didn't have to know the game to know the rules. Do you rat out your accomplice before he rats you out, or do you both stick to your mutual pact to stay silent, no matter what the police say? When the police insist that the other guy dropped the dime on you, the correct response is to call their bluff. But fear and doubt tend to knock intellectual game rules apart.

“I don't know anyone named Casey,” said Ball.

“That's a lie,” said Calvino. “The manager at the club has seen you talking to him.”

“I talk to a lot of people. That doesn't mean I know their names,” said Ball.

“This farang is ex-military. Tough, wiry, strong, wears aviator glasses. After the sun sets, he keeps his sunglasses on. You get the picture. He's someone you'd remember,” said Colonel Pratt. He'd half turned in the seat, facing Ball.