Comfort Zone

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Good dresser,” said Calvino. “Nice ring.”

  Pratt walked over to the dresser and held up two passports.

  “He had a Hong Kong passport and a Canadian passport,” he said.

  Calvino turned and glanced at the two passports.

  “There is an old Chinese saying that a smart rabbit always keeps three holes for his escape,” said Pratt.

  “I only see two holes, and this guy has both of them in his chest.”

  “You have a point, Vincent.”

  He walked back to the door and looked at the sitting room of the suite. The dead man was definitely not a backpacker. Wang had booked into a five-star hotel, executive suite. There were vases of orchids and bowls of fruit, sofa and chairs in a sitting room, and thick, plush carpet, a large bedroom. A TV with an enormous screen was tuned to CNN. The sound was off, leaving only a flow of pictures cut as fast as a professional gambler shuffling a new deck of cards.

  “Pricey room,” said Calvino, looking back into the bedroom. “The rack rate on the suite is ten thousand baht a night,” said Pratt.

  “That’s double my monthly rent,” said Calvino.

  “There is a cost difference between poverty and luxury,” said Pratt.

  “Between being dead and alive,” said Calvino. “How is Harry Markle?”

  The question came out of the blue. He’s looking at a dead guy on the bed and suddenly Pratt’s asking him about Harry Markle. “He’s going to Saigon to make arrangements for his brother.

  As soon as I get a visa from the Vietnamese Embassy, I’ll go in and have a look around,” said Calvino.

  Pratt smiled, figuring that Calvino was holding back.

  “It’s because of the cologne. Right? You sent the boys to pull me out of bed at three because I fouled up the new car?”

  Calvino turned and started for the door, shaking his head. He hated looking at murder victims at four in the morning. Going back to sleep after such a visitation was never quite the same as a good night of uninterrupted sleep. He was thinking how he would stop at the Thermae and order steak and eggs, drink a beer, and then go back to bed. He was almost out the door when Pratt cleared his throat.

  “The cologne was bad. But this is worse, Vincent. Mr. Wang arrived from Saigon on the afternoon of the 4th of July,” said Pratt.

  “You’ve got my attention,” said Calvino, spinning around. Pratt pulled a name card out of his pocket.

  “Have a look at this.”

  Calvino walked back and took the name card and read the name first. “Drew Markle, Esq.” and underneath “Attorney-at-Law.” And below the name and title was the name of the law firm, Winchell & Holly. It was a name that took Calvino back in time, he remembered Winchell & Holly as a highly specialized, powerful New York law firm.

  “Harry’s little brother,” said Calvino, slowly sitting down in a stuffed chair.

  “His little brother has something in common with Mr. Wang,” said Pratt.

  “Yeah, they are both dead,” said Calvino. “And maybe the same killer,” said Pratt.

  “Sorry about the crack about the cologne.”

  “Forget it.”

  Calvino already had as he continued to stare at the name card. In the days when Vincent Calvino had an “Esquire” following his name on name cards and stationery, he had a couple of small- time cases with Winchell & Holly on the other side. One had been a divorce case and the other a broken apartment lease. Each time, Winchell & Holly were doing the legal work as a favor to keep some senior executive of a large company happy. Partners did what was necessary to service an important corporate client, to keep them satisfied, to make certain they stayed within the fold. The actual grunt legal work was given to the most junior associate who was made responsible for throwaway personal cases once he had finished his real legal work for the day. Such work was beneath the partners in such a law firm, and any lawyer who appeared on the other side of such cases was treated like an intelligent primate at the Central Park Zoo. Calvino kept staring at the card, thinking about such a case, the offices of Winchell & Holly, and how he was as cut off from those years as he was from a past life. He recalled the part of his dream where Drew had cut off the head of the ex-Vietnamese Marine Colonel. The image of Mr. Marcus Nguyen’s head falling under the weight of the sharp sword had seemed so real that when he had sat up in bed and found the Thai police at his door, he thought they had come through the fog of the same battle, straight from his own nightmare.

  “Mr. Wang had the card in his possession,” Pratt finally said.

  “He looks like a Winchell & Holly client.”

  “One of the officers found it behind the desk in the sitting room. It had fallen off. There were no other business cards in the room. Just this one, Vincent. And that is rather strange, don’t you think?”

  A fully loaded top end Compaq notebook was open on a desk. On the color screen a screensaver was a mermaid with bare breasts who was swimming across the length of the screen. The only witness to the murder was a cartoon character trying to save the screen.

  “You check the computer?”

  “The hard disk has been wiped clean of all files. We’ll take it into the lab, run tests, and try to recover what was lost, but our computer guy says it has a virus and we probably will come up with nothing but the mermaid.”

  “Did you find any floppy diskettes?”

  “Zero floppies,” said Pratt.

  “And no one saw or heard anything,” said Calvino.

  “That’s right. Mr. Wang let someone into his room. We make the time of his death between nine and ten. We’ll know more after the forensic people open the body.”

  “And about the same time in Saigon Drew Markle is killed by a grenade.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Pratt. Calvino handed back the name card.

  “So what happened to you at the picnic? One moment you are eating a hot dog and the next moment you disappear into the corner with Harris,” said Calvino.

  Pratt gestured for the removal of the body. He took in a long breath and held it for a moment, watching as Wang’s body was moved onto a stretcher and then covered. The corridor and elevator would have been secured. No one wanted foreigners watching gunshot victims being carried out of hotels at four in the morning.

  “Harris, yes. The American Embassy man. Next week in Phuket, a conference is scheduled. Influential investors from America and Asia will be in Thailand. Harris was worried about security. Seems Mark Wang was on the list of people to attend the conference. I had told Harris this wasn’t America. Of course, we would provide security, but these investors were far safer in Bangkok than in New York City. Famous last words.”

  “You ever been to Saigon?” asked Calvino.

  “No, but I will be booking a trip to Ho Chi Minh City.”

  The battle over the name of the city in Vietnam had started. v

  THE next morning Harry Markle came around to Calvino’s office. His face was the color of a peeled onion, white and lined with rings that looked as if they coiled in layers all the way to his skull. The previous twenty-four hours of grief, guilt, and alcohol had rubbed away the shell which had taken twenty-five years to build over that experience called “Vietnam” and now it had broken and he was trying to deal with all the stuff that was spilling out. He had aged about ten years since the Fourth of July picnic. And this was a guy who had seen enough combat in Vietnam to have been beyond grief or guilt. Ratana, Calvino’s secretary, had given him a mug of black coffee but his hands were so shaky that the coffee spilled on the floor.

  “You burn yourself, Mr. Markle?” she asked.

  He sipped the coffee, spilling some more which settled in the crease lines of his knuckles.

  “Tastes great.”

  She backed away and went around to her desk. Calvino was late. And by the time he had arrived in the office, Harry Markle had some of the color back in his face. He sat there reading the Bangkok Post.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,
but I didn’t get to bed until six. I stopped at the Thermae for steak and eggs. It’s closing soon, making way for a condo.”

  Harry Markle glanced at his watch—it was a quarter to ten.

  “The end of an era. So are you gonna tell me who she was?”

  asked Harry Markle, lighting a cigarette. “There wasn’t a she,” said Calvino.

  “You must be the only farang in Bangkok who goes to HQ for the food.”

  “Come in the office and we’ll talk about it.”

  Ratana came in a moment later with Calvino’s coffee and newspaper and a couple of messages. Calvino sat back in his chair, thinking that, in the old days, three and a half hours sleep was enough. He had gone through law school on that amount of sleep.

  He sipped his coffee, thinking to himself that he was starting to feel old. On the top of the messages and newspapers was a birthday card. Fifth of July. That was his birthday and, as far as he could see, all he had to justify rolling over another year—and this birthday, what was his present? Steak and eggs at the Thermae and two murders. A lawyer named Drew Markle in Saigon and his Hong Kong client Mark Wang in Bangkok with a one-week layover until going down to Phuket for a big shots’ conference on Southeast Asia investment opportunities. What separated the two men? One hour and five minutes flight time and one name card, two countries, two cities.

  He looked up from the birthday card and stared hard at Harry. “Is there something else Drew might have told you? Maybe about a client. A Chinese client? I need to know if there’s something you’re not telling me about your brother.”

  “What’s this about, Vinee?”

  “He say anything about a client named Mark Wang? A Chinese guy from Hong Kong and Vancouver?”

  “No.”

  “You sure, Harry? Because it’s real important that I know what’s going on.”

  Seeing someone you’ve known for years, drunk with, hung out with, told stories to inside their office, can create an awkward silence, especially when you have hammered them with questions and drawn into contention their veracity. It is as if some big idea comes rushing home. Markle understood something he had known but had not really felt before. This man Calvino had a real job. This was what he did. This was where he went every day to make money. He was a professional in a nonprofessional occupation and he was going to come straight at you if he thought for a single instant you were pulling the Bangkok bullshit number. They drank their coffee and looked at each other like a couple of boxers between rounds sitting on stools, waiting for the bell to ring. Calvino made no effort to make Harry feel comfortable sitting in the chair just opposite his desk. After all, it was Harry Markle and his dead brother that had brought him a dual nightmare and robbed him of a night’s sleep on the day of his birthday. Had robbed him of a dinner with his Thai teacher who had come to the lesson dressed for all five tones.

  “I am flying in for the body tomorrow. The Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok has got its shit together. I pick up the visa this afternoon,” said Harry.

  “I was surprised. I thought it was going to be a bigger problem,” he said.

  Calvino looked at him. The blood was drained from his face, and his fingers, all discolored that ghoulish yellow from chain smoking, were moving like butterfly wings. Markle’s eyes were moist and then some tears spurted out and he wiped them away.

  “The sonofabitch got himself dead, Vinee,” said Harry.

  “So did one of his clients last night in Bangkok,” said Calvino. “Do what you think is right. Don’t forget to look up Marcus Nguyen.”

  “I had a dream about him last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Actually it was a nightmare.”

  “He’s a tough motherfucker,” said Harry.

  “Then why do you need me?” asked Calvino, sipping his coffee. “Marcus is too emotional. He gets too close to things sometimes. Everything is very personal for him. I need someone more objective.”

  “He’s fucked up. That’s what you’re saying,” said Calvino.

  “Basically, yes.”

  Harry Markle pulled out a stack of greenbacks and laid them on Calvino’s desk. He licked his thumb as he counted them out, his lips moving as the hundreds fanned out.

  “I make that one thousand five hundred,” Harry Markle said. “Enough for expenses and fees for a week.”

  Calvino looked at the hundred-dollar bills. This was as close as he was going to come to a birthday present this year. It was up to him. If he had any sense, he would tell Harry Markle to find someone else, deal with the police in Saigon, deal with just about anyone but him. Markle could feel the apprehension. Calvino was having some second thoughts about going to Saigon and Markle decided to play it straight with him, give him a way out.

  “I’m not your commanding officer, Vinee. This isn’t an order or a command. If you don’t want to take the job, then just say, ‘fuck it.’ This is strictly for volunteers. Some shit is going down in Saigon. What it is, I don’ t know. Fifteen hundred bucks is likely not sufficient compensation if you decide to go. And if you throw my ass out, I won’t hold it against you.” Then he paused, his lips on the coffee mug. He swallowed hard.

  “I never got a chance to know him. You know what I mean? The Thais are real tight with family. We have lost something along the way, Vinee. Something called family.” There couldn’t have been a better speech about the sacred idea of family for one expat to give another, people who lived a life devoid of original family members. Each in their own fashion had lost the frequency on which people in a family communicated until, one day, all that came out was some distant static and a stranger ’s voice. Markle was right in saying that was something that the Thais found difficult to do. Not taking Harry Markle’s case was saying that family didn’t matter, and to say that was to admit you had become a Zone-head, lost, absorbed, beyond redemption and Calvino wasn’t prepared to believe that about himself. Calvino had just had his birthday and he wasn’t about to turn Harry Markle out of his office and say his brother ’s life hadn’t meant anything. He couldn’t do that. So he scooped up the money and folded it in half.

  “I can’t promise anything, Harry.”

  “Just do what you can.”

  “When will you come back from the States?” asked Calvino. “We airlift the body out in forty-eight hours.” His eyes rolled up into his head. “I will be back in Bangkok in ten days.”

  He got up from his chair and walked out of Calvino’s office. Ratana came in and sat down.

  “Well, who was she?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t Nah.” He knew she was dying to know if he had stayed up all night with his Thai teacher, and she looked disappointed.

  “Then who?”

  “Colonel Pratt invited me to visit him in a hotel.”

  She pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side.

  “You go to hotel?”

  Calvino nodded.

  “He’s not cheating on his wife?” Calvino shook his head.

  “Nothing that serious. It was just the murder of a foreigner.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE HANOI GIRL

  THE THAI POLICE were warlords of the Comfort Zone, their kingdom, their domain and all that ice honey spread over a very large piece of toast. Calvino’s law of warlords said there was never enough evidence in the universe to convict the powerful who lived on a mountain overlooking the valley where physical evidence never broke through the cloud level, protecting those who lived for generations on the mountain. Weather report: All is sunny and bright from one end of the ice flow to the other, nothing but honey and milk. They might be killed but they would never be convicted of murder. He thought about Mark Wang in the first few hours as the body cooled down and how his family had set the warlord forces of power in motion, a wave of influence washing over Bangkok. A Hong Kong to Bangkok fifty-foot breaker waiting to crash onto someone’s head and everyone was scrambling to get out of the way.

  Each local warlord had been raised on a steady diet
of suspicion and jealousy served by his rivals and neighbors, those who coveted his women, money, power and connections. In Southeast Asia, a lot of time and energy was spent plotting how to get the sonofabitch before he whacked you, and across international boundaries the distrust and tension geared up into overdrive because more was at stake, the odds were higher. Hatred lay just below the surface like in a bad marriage ready to ignite at the first crooked smile. Why was Calvino thinking of warlords? Because Wang’s family were Hong Kong warlords. The British colony had been built, run, managed, and finally sold out by warlords. Wang’s clan controlled an Asian media empire ranging from magazines, newspapers, to TV and radio stations. Mark Wang’s primo godfather quietly let an influential Thai minister, with Chinese blood running in his veins, know that unless the Thais delivered a suspect within a week, the Hong Kong Chinese would assume that some rogue faction in the Thai police had killed him. They would send correspondents deep into the Zone, expose and deliver newspaper articles and TV footage on the kingdom of ice, reveal places, names, money arrangements. They would retaliate with massive, in-your-face coverage.

  These threats would never make the TV news or the newspapers. But those who mattered knew and those were the only people who counted. Such coverage would inflict great damage. The minister who had received the phone call from Hong Kong contacted the Ministry of Interior and from there the ball of fear and rage bounced down the edges of the chain of command until Lt.Col. Pratt received a call. He got the ball.

  After that meeting at police headquarters, Lt.Col. Pratt looked pale. When he told Calvino the story as they sat in the garden at Pratt’s house, he had turned pale again. A long silence filled the evening and was broken when Lt. Col. Pratt quoted Shakespeare, “ ‘I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you; but I caught it, found it, or came by it, what stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn.’ ”