Comfort Zone

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Dan Bryant,” Fred Harris finally said. “From Akron, Ohio.”

  Calvino didn’t blink. There were clerks and secretaries running back and forth. One brought Harris a mug of cold water.

  “Vincent Demato, Brooklyn. I’m opening a bar in Saigon. How about you?”

  “I am in the investment business.”

  “Yeah? The business of America is business. Isn’t that what they say? Besides, I’m an investor myself. You got a brochure or card?”

  “Sorry, but I’m fresh out,” said Fred Harris.

  One of the secretaries, who had overhead Calvino’s request, left and reappeared a moment later with an impressive brochure. “Mr. Bryant not have. But we have. You take this,” said the

  secretary, handing it to Calvino.

  “Thank you, you are very helpful,” he said, as she turned and went back to her desk. “The Vietnam Emerging Market Fund,” said Calvino, reading the front of the brochure. He opened the brochure. Inside were a list of names, and he found the name of Daniel Bryant, financial consultant.

  “Financial consultant for a Vietnamese mutual fund?” asked Calvino.

  “Yes,” said Fred Harris, lying through his teeth.

  Harris was a Vietnam war veteran having served two tours in the army. Harry Markle knew him vaguely and said that Harris had been in that oxymoron called Military Intelligence, if Calvino remembered correctly.

  “So you spend a lot of time in Vietnam,” said Calvino, enjoying the sight of Harris squirming on the expensively upholstered Winchell & Holly sofa.

  “Enough to do my job,” he said, curtly.

  “We all have a job to do, and what is sufficient time to do a job? I ask myself. And I say to myself, ‘That is always a difficult question.’ It must be the same in your line of work. A new mutual fund must be complicated to pull off. You spend a lot of time with lawyers, bankers, underwriters, accountants. God, just about everyone who is important in the commercial sector. Being a financial consultant must be just about a full-time job. Or do you have other clients?”

  Harris pulled the newspaper up, covering his face, as if he were reading rather than figuring out some way to get Calvino off his case.

  At the Fourth of July picnic, Harris had been cheering on the Marines in the tug-of-war contest with AT&T. That was insight into how the government worked, a CIA guy would never doubt that his allegiance was to the Marines first. Companies could be taken over, liquidated, or go broke, but the Marines would always be ready to pick up their end of the rope and pull on command.

  Calvino nodded to himself, looking at the brochure and thinking how guys like Fred Harris looked like they were born to work for the government. Anyone in the private sector had an edgy, nervous, pushing aggression, that showed their ass was on the line, they had to perform or else they were in the street. Fred Harris who was balding and sprouting jowls had a civil servant’s attitude, I’m in control, I can fuck with you, but you can’t fuck with me. I have the power on my side, so I can relax, cross my legs, and calmly read a newspaper in the Saigon law offices of an American law firm which had just lost a lawyer to a grenade attack.

  Douglas Webb suddenly appeared.

  “Mr. Demato, how are you doing?”

  Calvino didn’t reply, he reached down for his duty-free bag, got up and followed Webb into the conference room. He pulled back a chair and sat down before Webb had said anything. Mai came in with two cups of coffee. She didn’t look at Calvino, and he tried not to look at her. Webb noticed all the non-looking that was going on between the two of them, and made a mental note to ask Mai about why she had become so cool, detached with the new client she had flirted with the day before. He had probably made a pass and she knew that she had made a mistake, thought Webb.

  “I’m sorry I am late with the coffee, Mr. Demato. But the maid forgot to boil the water until just a few minutes ago.” She left as quickly as she had arrived, softly closing the door behind her. Calvino exploded, hitting the conference table with his fist.

  “What the fuck are you pulling?” he shouted at Webb.

  The outburst caught Webb off guard. At first he wasn’t sure whether it was a joke or if Calvino was seriously upset. As he lowered himself down into the seat at the head of the table, Douglas Webb saw a flash of anger cross Calvino’s face.

  “What’s the problem, Vincent?”

  “That guy sitting out in reception. He smells of government. I come to your office with two hundred grand, and what do I find sitting opposite me? Some guy who looks like he works for the Internal Revenue Service. I don’t need this shit. I want to know what that guy is doing here.”

  Douglas We bb sat back in his chair, his fingertips pressed against the surface of the table. He looked satisfied and a smile broke over his face.

  “How do you know he works for the Internal Revenue Service?” “I’m from Brooklyn, and anyone with that kind of haircut

  and cheap suit works for the fucking government. And I wanna know if you’ve done some deal behind my back with that asshole brother of mine in New York. Because if you have, then...”

  Webb raised one of his manicured hands from the table.

  “No threats, Mr. Demato. I am not working for your brother. I have no relationship with the Internal Revenue Service other than filing an annual return.”

  “So who is that guy in reception?”

  Douglas Webb took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled.

  “Mr. Bryant works for an important client. We have had a number of visitors from the US government since Mr. Markle’s death. Some have said up front they were from the government. Others have, well, shall we say, some creative stories. But we have known Mr. Bryant for sometime. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Of course I’m worried. You phone back to Brooklyn, checking up on me. You’ve got an army of Vietnamese thugs in uniform carrying AK47s and CIA types in the reception. All I want is something real simple. A lawyer to do my legal work for a bar. And not only am I worried, I have to pay three hundred bucks an hour to tell you that I’m worried.”

  “Relax. It’s my job to tell you when to be worried. And as your lawyer, I’m telling you to relax,” he said, and paused.

  “If you aren’t happy, then I will see that a secretary brings in the five thousand dollars you left with us yesterday.”

  “Five grand? All of it?”

  “All of it,” said Webb, smiling.

  “Okay, tell me one thing. What is the law?”

  Calvino sometimes had clients who asked stupid questions like that. It was a lawyer’s test of patience, and his ability not to start laughing was immediately subjected to the most severe test of all.

  “Good question,” said Webb.

  He was a real pro, thought Calvino.

  “Forget about law as you know it in New Yo rk. Here it is Confucian morality. Think of a government made up of wise elders who decide who can do what to whom and when. Who gets to run a bar, a shop, a hotel. Rules would be an insult. Because wise elders should be able to do what they want, what is right. Instead of rules, you have the wise elder’s personal virtue to protect you. In the West, we have lost our belief in personal virtue—maybe any kind of virtue—and in its place we plug the gap with thousands of laws. In the East, there is no belief much beyond virtue and when the virtue falls, then there is only a void. Not laws. Just a void which can suck you in, clean you out, and spit you back all the way to New York.”

  Calvino nodded. “And you get three hundred bucks an hour watching people go into the void?”

  “What I’m saying is there is a problem with the law.”

  “What you’re saying is there is a problem because there is no law.”

  “That’s going too far. Think of Vietnam more like Sicily a hundred years ago. Elders, godfathers, whatever you want to call them, call the shots.”

  “I like you, Douglas. I never heard a lawyer talk straight before.” He took the duty-free bag off a chair and put it on the table.
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br />   He pulled out the two boxes of Johnny Walker Black Label. “Premium whisky is the only way to go,” said Calvino. He opened the box and pulled out a bundle of one hundred dollar bills.

  Webb took out a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and began to write out a receipt for the cash. “I am writing a receipt, Mr. Wang,” he said.

  “You mean, Demato.”

  Webb stopped writing and looked up with a mixture of fear and dread.

  “What did I say?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But it wasn’t Demato. It sounded like a Chinese name, one of those names they put on computers,” said Calvino. “Like Wang.”

  “Yes, it was Wang. I had him on my mind. He was one of our Chinese clients. I am sorry. That’s the problem when you try to do two things at the same time.” He finished writing the receipt, held it up, blew on the ink, then passed it across the table to Calvino. It read: “I, Douglas Webb, have this day received from Mr. Vincent Demato, American citizen, resident of New York, New York, the sum of US$200,000. I shall hold this sum according to the instructions of Mr. Demato and dispose of such sum as he so instructs.” It was signed by Douglas Webb.

  “It doesn’t say anything about Winchell & Holly,” said Calvino, looking up from the receipt.

  “Nor can it. I am doing this as a personal favor, Vincent. There is no way that Winchell & Holly could officially do this. It would violate a half dozen laws. But, for a client doing business in a place like Saigon, I can understand this makes business sense. Sometimes laws aren’t written by people with business sense or experience.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Calvino slid the duty-free bag with the two Johnny Walker Black Label boxes to Webb’s end of the table. “Aren’t you gonna count it?”

  “I think we can trust each other.”

  “I was thinking about checking out the Q-Bar tonight. Come around and I’ll buy you a drink. What do you say?” asked Calvino. “Let’s say the usual time. About ten. Now I had better attend to Mr. Bryant. He does look government, doesn’t he?”

  As they stood in the door of the conference room, Webb shook hands with Calvino. The plastic bag was in Webb’s other hand.

  “There is something familiar about you, Mr. Demato. I am sure I’ve met you before. Maybe in New York.”

  “Maybe in Little Italy. I had an uncle who ran a restaurant there. I used to wait tables going through college,” said Calvino. “My ex-wife said that I look like a lot of people in New York. That was another way she had of saying that I was no one special. Once I get this bar, I mean, club, off the ground in Saigon, they won’t be saying that Vincent Demato isn’t special, will they?”

  He stood in front of the elevator, waiting for it to come up from the ground floor. Mai walked toward him, then she caught sight of Webb watching Calvino through the glass window, and kept on walking without saying a word. She had wanted to say that she loved him. But there was no time. Inside the lift alone, he felt a thaw setting in; the ice was melting and he was finding for the first time what was inside a man who loved and lived free of the Zone.

  CHAPTER 8

  DEAD ZONE

  TWO THINGS STRUCK Calvino as he left the offices of Winchell & Holly. The first thing was a long distance kiss. He saw Mai in the window on the third floor, looking down. She was smiling and threw him a kiss. He thought how happy she looked. Pratt had said that Manee hadn’t liked him the first time they met. Well, Calvino told himself that he was just that much more lucky than Pratt. Then Mai abruptly left the window and, a moment later, he saw We bb framed where Mai had been standing throwing a kiss. That’s when the second thing struck Calvino—a long distance in time, one legal case, years before in New York City.

  Webb had been right about his gut instinct—he had met Calvino before in New York. At the time, Webb worked as a first- year associate for Winchell & Holly and had been assigned a divorce case. None of the white-shoe partners at Winchell & Holly would ever stoop to personally handle a divorce case; they might get their hands dirty, but it was a deeper fear of becoming caught in the emotional chaos where people killed each other over who got the TV or blender. Calvino had represented the husband, Gentleman James, they called him, an English conman, who had made a very good living marrying many different women on both sides of the Atlantic. His wives were always rich, well-educated, and a hallmark of a James wife—she was always slightly older, say five to ten years older that James. Like many conmen, James was extremely good-looking, well-spoken, and people thought he had attended a public school like Eton or Harrow which, of course, he had not. About six months into the marriage the problem started. James started to have a minor accident—he pissed in the bed. He apologized to his wife, saying that it had never happened before. Before long, Gentleman James was pissing the bed every night, buckets of warm piss, soaking into the sheets, mattress, smelling. He pissed like a horse. The bedroom smelled like a medieval hospital. He had asked Calvino to represent him in the divorce action launched by his wife. His wife was amicable throughout the proceedings so there had been no shouting or recrimination. She actually adored him and, like Gentleman James’s other wives, this one was sorry to see him go. But a lifetime of wet beds, well, that was beyond the rail which fenced in love. Janet, that was Gentleman James’s wife, the one Webb had been given the duty of seeing through the bedwetting divorce. Calvino had met Webb once in midtown New York to look over some documents, the meeting couldn’t have lasted for more than thirty minutes; just long enough to burn a small impression into the back room of a lawyer ’s memory. With Calvino appearing out of context, in another role, with another name, the door of the memory had opened a crack. Webb was smart, thought Calvino, someone who would find time to tease apart a memory puzzle; it would bother him that he couldn’t place Calvino’s face. And getting into the back of a taxi, Calvino started to think that he didn’t have much time to find out who killed Drew Markle.

  Fucking Harris, he thought. He filed a mental note to ask Pratt exactly what Harris had said at the Fourth of July picnic. He glanced through the Vietnam Emerging Market Fund brochure, even Calvino recognized the names of two Americans: an ex- general and a high-ranking government official from the Vietnam War era. They were coming back to Saigon as businessmen on the twentieth anniversary of the failure of their earlier venture, he thought. Post-Fourth of July, the Fund was being launched at the Continental Hotel. Perfect timing. One revolution had succeeded; another had failed.

  ******

  THE metered taxicab cut across District One, honking at every cyclo and bicycle, moving in and out of the traffic without ever slowing down. Like Saigon, the driver was in a hurry. Calvino climbed out at the curb and beyond were a series of riverside restaurants. Behind him was a bronze statue of Tran Hung Dao, an ancient warrior in full battle gear, a lifeless witness from the past who would have been looking down on Drew Markle as he took the last couple of steps from this life and entered the next with Tran Hung Dao. Jackie Ky had been waiting at the same restaurant for Drew Markle the night that he was killed. The restaurant was on a converted ship and a gangplank led up to the main deck. This time she was waiting for Calvino, fingering her watch as he walked in and sat down at the table. She looked worried and started to cry before he could ask her what was wrong. “I don’t know if I can stay here. It’s too painful,” she said.

  Her hands were shaking as she lit a cigarette, she looked pale, listless; someone wanting to break and run.

  He looked out at a barge going down the Saigon River. Beyond the barge, in the distance, a ferry loaded with peasants crossed from District One to the slums and shacks barely visible on the opposite side of the river. Calvino waited until a waiter arrived and then ordered a whisky and coke. He took his time before saying anything, whatever emotion was going through her head, he thought, it was better to let it play out before he got down to business. He looked over at Jackie.

  “You want a cola or something?”

  He looked directly at her
, direct, hard, the way he had seen district attorneys look at the accused in the witness box. It fixed them, made them edgy, looking for something or someone to hang onto.

  “A Bloody Mary,” she said. “A double Bloody Mary.”

  The waiter took the order and left them alone at their table beside the river. She had started to calm down like someone who was breaking free of a panic attack, floating back to solid ground. She sat with her back toward the spot where Markle had died. He looked at the grass. There was nothing to mark where Markle had fallen. Her slender, long neck turned and followed his eyes, then turned back around quickly. So far he had come up with nothing. Webb might have killed Markle for money. Jackie Ky, his girlfriend, might have had her reasons. And with guys like Fred Harris snooping around Saigon under an assumed name, the list of suspects kept growing. Marcus Nguyen was on the emotional side, that was what Harry had said. Emotions killed people—all you had to do was switch on the TV or read a newspaper to see that; strong emotions were required to squeeze the gun trigger and pull the grenade pin. Unless the job was sub-contracted out to a professional. Had Markle seen the man—or the woman— who killed him? Would he have recognized the person? Reading the mind of the deceased was a waste of time, there was no mind left to read; instead of tapping into the world of the dead, the world of the living was where all the answers were waiting to be discovered. The world was filled with people like Gentleman James, Douglas Webb, Jackie Ky, Fred Harris, and Marcus Nguyen. Living somewhere between the range of a con and decency, not knowing when they had crossed the line from one side to the other. The more he let those faces confront the full run of possibilities inside his mind, the more futile it became. Why not pack in the job? Why not go back to the hotel and phone Harry Markle and tell him that he was taking himself off the case? He had done it before on other assignments. Something held him back, something called the wise elder, a voice which made him pause, listen, and believe there was a through line if only he had the wisdom to see it. What had Webb said about the virtue of the wise elder being the glue that held things together? That was it, he thought. Calvino sat up in his chair, a smile crossing his face. Markle must have committed the ultimate cross-cultural sin in Southeast Asia, he had tried to rein in a wise elder with his faith and belief, a religious-like commitment, in the American notion of law. Not law standing alone but the rule of law. His bred-in-the bone connection to the law was what had got Markle killed. Yes, thought Calvino. Markle had been trained to think like a lawyer in a part of the world where lawyer-thinking was hazardous.