Paying Back Jack (47 page)

Jarrett caught Tracer's eye. A glint of resignation passed between them.

“Then I'm glad it worked out the way it did,” said Jarrett.

“That would have been a shame. Hitting the wrong person,” said Tracer.

“We never should've been sent to do this job,” said Jarrett.

Calvino looked at the two men. “You know what? I want to believe you.”

Two weeks later, Calvino received a plain envelope with a clipping from a New Jersey newspaper inside. No return address appeared on the envelope; it was postmarked from Newark. Waters's body had been found by police, curled up inside the trunk of a car outside Port
Elizabeth, New Jersey. He had been shot at close range, execution-style, into the back of his head. The killers had mutilated the body, removing the male package and placing it in a ziplock bag next to the body. The New Jersey authorities had no suspects or leads, and the murder was a professional hit. Calvino had to decide whether to pass the clipping on to Colonel Pratt. His friend had been patient, as well as distracted, as the election campaign had come to an end. Everyone in the department had been holding their breath, reading tea leaves to find evidence of their future under the new government. Somporn had been elected and was rumored to be in consideration for a cabinet position.

Calvino had had some news of his own. Wan had gone home. Fon's father hadn't wanted her, so Wan had taken the kid with her. Juan Carlos had spent the money set aside for
sinsor,
the bride price, and cut a deal with Auntie, who was happy to count the money and hand over the girl. The Taiwanese customer wasn't willing to match the one-million-baht price that Juan Carlos had offered. Juan Carlos and Wan had taken Fon upcountry, buying new hives and bees. He still hadn't come back to Bangkok. Marisa had said, “He's helping her with the bees.”

Calvino understood and backed off.

Marisa laughed. “Of course, you should go see Juan Carlos. But I'm returning to Spain. It's where I belong. Not in this place.”

The shock wore off as he recalled no one from the outside belonged in this place. The fortunate ones discovered that early enough to cut their losses.

“When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You weren't going to tell me?”

“I think you knew,” she said. “This is your world, Vinny. These people are you and you are them. I know you tell everyone that you're from New York. But that isn't true anymore. You're from here. I can never be from this place.”

“Thailand, home? I'm a New Yorker.”

She grinned. “It doesn't matter, does it? One day you must come and visit, and then we can talk about it,” she said. “We need some time.”

“You might find me on your doorstep.” His crooked smile drew a smile from her as well.

Her answer had been vague, open-ended, as their relationship had been. She'd chosen to be polite and he had chosen to let her slender thread of dignity and hope stretch to beyond the horizon.

YOU CAN'T KILL PEOPLE without being haunted by them. Words to that effect crept into the conversation Jarrett had with his father. Harry Jarrett sat forward on the deck chair, slapping sunblock onto his neck. His son opened a beer and drank straight from the bottle. Behind them was the outline of Hua Hin, a fishing village that had become a small city hugging the shoreline. Casey had been dead for more than a week when Harry flew into Thailand. His son waited at the airport with a hired car and they'd driven to Hua Hin.

“Looks different,” said Alan, nodding at the city.

Harry rubbed sunblock on his arm, smoothing it forward toward his wrist. “We look different, too. So does the world once you let enough years accumulate.” He rubbed his hands together, stretched them back behind his head. “That feels better.”

“You think it was a mistake to let MacDonald go?” he asked his father. It had been his idea at the time.

“You said he was as much a victim as Jack. I thought at the time that that was a pretty good argument. After we'd saved his ass. I thought that a man's not gonna forget that fact anytime soon.”

The boat rocked softly as they sat together, watching for some movement of their fishing poles. The last couple of hours, Harry had been talking about a lot of people, places, incidents, but MacDonald had been one of the people who'd most interested Alan.

Harry had classified clearance. But better than access to secret files, he had work experience with and personal knowledge of both
Waters and Casey. But it came as a surprise to Harry that these two would betray everything they'd stood for. He phoned his son back on a secure line once and they talked about the possibilities. Included on Harry's short-list were the Colombians, a Bosnian, and an Australian businessman. They all had their reasons and sufficient funds for such an operation. But the Bosnian general was appealing a war-crimes conviction and that made it unlikely he'd risk getting involved in something that might prejudice his case. That left the clan running drugs out of Cali and the crooked businessman from Perth.

He had done some deep soul-searching and following-up with people he'd not been in contact with for many years before he was confident about why things had happened the way they had in Bangkok.

Harry reeled in the line, checked the bait before making a perfect overhead cast. The hook, line, and sinker broke the surface with a splash. “I've got a few ideas, but you've got to understand that a lot of what I'm saying is conjecture.”

Jarrett stared at the empty sea, feeling the movement of the boat.

“What's your take?”

“Casey was under pressure. Things went sideways on his last tour at a secret prison in Baghdad. I know the guy who got him the assignment in Bangkok and fixed his problems in Baghdad. A report got passed down the line along with a death certificate or two, stapled to a medical affidavit that the men had died of natural causes.”

Jarrett looked at his father, who'd stopped to take a sip of beer. The old man was still in pretty good shape, he thought. It had been Harry's idea to hire the boat in Hua Hin.

“What was the deal he had with Waters?”

Harry showed his teeth, pulled his baseball hat forward over his forehead. “Damn, I forget how hot it gets here.”

“Waters,” said Jarrett.

“Casey had accumulated a lot of chits, knowing one day he might need them. It seems one of his major debtors was Waters. You already know they were buddies in the marines. Waters first met Casey in Beirut. Terrorists had blown up a building, killing a lot of our men. Waters should have been in that building, but he wasn't. Casey had insisted he stay behind and help him close the bar late. So Casey had saved his life. A few years later, Casey was best man at Waters's wedding. Waters and Casey stayed in touch. After the first Gulf War,
Waters joined Logistic Risk Assessment Services as a private contractor. I always liked that name; it could have been an insurance company. They sent him to Iraq. I'd known Waters for a long time. It seemed kind of natural he'd continue helping out as he had in the past. He was good at finding the right men for a freelance job. He'd done a payback job before, and I'd briefed him on the background. Maybe I talked a little to much about Jack Malone and what happened to him.” Harry Jarrett sighed like a man with a regret rising to the surface.

“You're saying Waters and Casey worked on special ops before?” asked Jarrett. He finished the beer and threw the bottle in a long arc, watching as it skittered over the surface and then sunk.

“We're not gonna catch any fish if you keep doing that.” Harry wrinkled his nose, feeling the sunburn tightening the skin.

“We're just pretending to fish.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Harry, tugging on his line.

He told his son about how Casey and Waters had had an annual reunion, one that coincided with Waters's wedding anniversary. It didn't matter where they were stationed or living, they always met outside MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. There was a seafood restaurant there that Casey loved. During the most recent reunion, they'd cracked crab legs there and drunk beer as they caught up with each other's lives. Only it hadn't been all that happy of a meeting. The secret prison in Thailand had been blown; a military lawyer had cautioned Casey to cooperate in the investigation, to tell the truth. There had been videotapes of the torture but they'd been destroyed, the lawyer told Casey. After a lifetime of doing his duty for his country, it looked like his country was going to reward him with a prison cell. Casey knew how the system worked; it was just a matter of time before he was reeled in and put through an inquisition.

Harry stood up, stretched his legs, walked over to the bait bucket, looked inside, and spit over the side. “Now comes the conjecture part.”

Jarrett nodded, opening another beer, sweat pouring down his neck. He touched the cold beer bottle against his cheek and waited until Harry sat down. He came back with a chunk of tuna and slipped the hook into the center of the flesh before casting the line back. Harry wasn't the kind of man who rushed into judgment. “It
could've happened like this. Casey and Waters met and discussed life over a few drinks. Let's say they met in a bar near the base, a classy place—not the usual place they drank, but Waters was paying the bill. Casey had been uneasy, looking over his shoulder. The upscale nature of the place made him feel uncomfortable. Waters got him to relax with a couple of accents and jokes. Then Waters said something about how the government hadn't really given a shit about looking after veterans, how their company was no better than the government, and the real men of honor were being fucked around. I suspect that would've scored points with Casey, who'd thought he'd been lucky to not get busted in Baghdad and to get an assignment in Bangkok. His luck ran out when he got an appointment to testify before Congress. They discussed the unfinished business of his son's death. During dinner, they considered how to put things right, including avenging the death of Casey's son. When Waters came to me, using me as a sounding board, I told him frankly that I had reservations. But I let him talk me into it.”

“How'd he do that?”

His father looked at him for a full half-minute. “He said, what if that had been your son? I am afraid he got to me.”

“Where'd they get the money?”

Harry smiled and said, “Offer a man a million dollars and he'll become indignant; offer him a couple of million and his point of view shifts from north to south on the moral compass.” Harry had a nibble on his line and picked up the pole and started reeling in the line, but was getting resistance. He definitely had something on the other end. Jarrett helped him with the pole, and reached down with a net and brought on deck a thirty-pound grouper, gills heaving in and out, body and tail flopping around on deck. The huge mouth gasped for air. Conscious and half-paralyzed, the fish struggled until Harry lifted the club, stopped, looked at it.

“You ever wonder why they call one of these a ‘priest'?” he asked.

“Because it's used for last rites?”

Harry rewarded his son with a smile as he brought down the club on the grouper's head. The body went still, and Harry dropped the club on the deck, knelt down beside the large fish and examined it. Death stalked them in the Gulf of Thailand. Neither man said
anything as Jarrett gutted the fish, drawing in the seagulls as he flung the guts into the sea.

“As I was saying, someone threw a sizeable amount of money at Casey,” he said. “I did a little checking, and found money had gone into an offshore account in Casey's name. It's not apparent who had transferred the money or why. These guys were pros, and catching them wasn't an easy thing.”

“How much money?”

“Two million,” said Harry.

“That's enough.”

“Seems so,” said Harry, looking over at the cleaned fish. “Looks like we caught supper.”

“You caught it.”

“I figure Casey and Waters hammered out a deal. They'd bring Tracer and you in and make a forty-thousand-dollar contribution to the Jack Malone Foundation. They had me on their side. It looked pretty solid in their eyes. Casey had the perfect cover for a paying-back-Jack mission; his son had been murdered in Thailand, the police force didn't have a reputation for solving crimes without the perp making a confession and reenacting the crime in front of TV cameras and the press. Casey was someone both of us had known in the past. Waters had vouched for him. There was nothing to raise a suspicion.”

“Tracer kept talking about how Casey's money had a funny smell. Like it'd been buried.”

“We don't know that all of the money paid went into that account. There was probably cash. When you're talking about criminal activity, you're talkin' billions of dollars a year. One of these days, the government's gonna find there's more money buried in the ground than stuffed in bank vaults. Most of it illegal.”

Harry didn't bother baiting his line. He left the pole on the deck.

“You wanna go back, dad?”

“Not a bad idea. The sun's getting to me. And we got what we came for.”

Jarrett moved to start up the engine, then turned, bent down on the deck, facing his father. “If we'd have killed Somporn, and Casey had killed us, the Thai police would have been left with an unsolved crime, a mystery with no clues. He made it appear that he'd left the country.”

“I think Casey gave his ticket to Waters, who used it to board the flight to London. Gate security had been shown a phony passport in Casey's name, along with the boarding card.”

“Conjecture. But seems reasonable.”

“Who paid them the money?”

“That's where it gets real complicated,” said Harry, seeing his son had no intention of returning to shore without a few more answers. “I've been thinking about the newspaper from Hua Hin he put in the condo, and the pool table. So I did some checking. It could be that Casey was making it appear that your death was connected to Cleary who was still running scam deals out of Perth.”