No Going Back

by Sheena Kamal

  “Is Acosta here now?”

  “No, he’s in Europe. Dao watches the compound.”

  “Shut up by himself for months at a time,” I say.

  Brazuca nods. “The guys that work in the security business, they’re part of a world we have no idea about, not really. They’ve seen things we can’t ever imagine. They live off moments of pure adrenaline. When they come down, they come down hard.”

  “You’re talking about drugs?” Lam asks.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, that only makes it better. I hope he’s a junkie.” Lam is unable to disguise his disgust. Or unwilling, maybe. You’d think a man who lost a loved one to an overdose would be more sympathetic. Maybe junkies he’s not in love with don’t count. “Brazuca, can you make contact?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Tell him you’re representing a party who wants to contract his services. If his loyalty is for sale, I’ll be the one to buy it.”

  “What about me?” I ask. “It’s personal between us. He won’t let this go.”

  “That’s why we have this,” Lam says. He pulls up a news report on his tablet. It’s been translated into English and covers an incident at Acosta’s Lombok mine, where an unidentified employee was caught using physical force against a protester. There are photos of a man slamming said protester against a wall and pressing a lit cigarette into his neck.

  You can only see the attacker from behind and a brief side profile but the man in the photos, from what I remember, is Dao’s approximate height and build.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask.

  “Just came up on a local media source. Not big enough to make international news, but I have some news contacts I can use to stir this up.”

  “I’m not sure that blackmail is going to work on Dao,” Brazuca says.

  “That’s just leverage. I’ll offer money first,” says Lam. “Do you know how easy it is to buy people? A man like Dao has been around extreme wealth for years, but he’s never had it himself. I’m giving him the opportunity to have some of mine for a price. The price is information that will lead to shutting down those drug labs for good. And you, Nora. You’re part of my price. I take care of my people. Jon can tell you.”

  Brazuca excuses himself and leaves the patio, exiting through the back gate. He says something to Ivan on his way out, but I don’t hear what.

  “What’s his problem?” Lam says.

  “Probably the heat. Are you worried?”

  “About Jon? Never. He’ll do his part. When we set up the meeting, Nora, you will of course be there but out of sight, please.”

  “It’s your show,” I say. “But Brazuca will have to be in the room. And we’ll have to figure out a way for me to listen in.”

  “Of course,” Lam says. “We both have a stake in this.”

  I leave before Lam has the urge to shake on it or play a few rounds of golf to seal the deal—whatever it is that high rollers like him do. The ones with enough money to buy people off. To think that no matter what, their vast stores of cash can get them whatever they want. People’s loyalty. Their knowledge. Along with their love and their hate.

  But you can’t buy hate as strong as what Dao has for me.

  I’ll play along with Lam for now—it seems I have to. What I want is some dirt that will put Dao away for life. I’ll have to look into that report, see if there’s something to be done with those photos to build a case against him. Somebody’s got to care about him bullying local protesters, right?

  It doesn’t seem like enough, even to me, but maybe it’s a place to start. There could be a pattern of this kind of behavior, one that might put him behind bars.

  On the way out, I say good-bye to Ivan, who’s standing guard by the back gate, near a statue of a mermaid. It looks like he wants to say something to me but stops himself before he forms the words. That’s okay. I don’t need to hear them. I understand a warning, even an unspoken one. It’s what he’s warning me about that concerns me. It occurs to me that I should tell him I have no plans to put his boss in danger, but what does it matter what I say? Besides, Lam is putting himself in trouble just fine without my help.

  Maybe that’s why Ivan looks so upset—or would, if he was capable of showing any emotion at all.

  I take the path leading from the suite to the beach. It’s not a private beach; it only seems that way. Leo doesn’t answer the phone when I call, so I try Stevie Warsame and ask him if there are people still watching the office.

  “Not that I’ve found,” he says. It’s very early in the morning there, and I wonder what he’s doing up. But I don’t ask. “Krushnik thinks he’s spotted someone. Even called the cops about it, but these guys are good. They don’t stay long. I would spend more time on it, but I got two cases I’m dealing with.”

  “Leo isn’t helping out?”

  “No, and I gotta talk to him about that. Brazuca up and disappeared, too. What the fuck is going on here? I didn’t sign up to run this company.”

  He sounds so aggravated I don’t point out that he is a partner at the firm. I wouldn’t want to run a PI outfit, either, but no one has ever made me a partner of anything.

  “You coming back anytime soon?” he asks. “I could use the help. Did you ever get your PI license? I knew you were working on it before you left us.”

  “No,” I say. “I’d like to, but you can’t count on me right now.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he snaps.

  I sit on a lounge chair by the beach for a long time afterward. A man who resembles Brazuca walks up from the beach and into the hotel, but at this distance I can’t be sure it’s him. Maybe it’s the sound of the water or the cool, salty breeze coming off it, but I have no desire to leave this lounge chair. I doze on and off while lovers whisper to each other from nearby lounges and Bob Marley seeps from speakers nearby. Even though we’re nowhere near Jamaica, there’s nothing like a beach and Bob Marley. That’s what people think, anyway.

  Maybe for some the reggae is enough to ignore the hotel security doing sweeps of the beach and hotel grounds. A little “One Love” and people forget that love sometimes isn’t enough to ignore that the locals are struggling, frightened, and that this island is no stranger to unrest and disaster. Could be they’re like Lam, who has never learned to be scared. Has been taught he is the largest predator in the world. An idle man with time and money. Who tells me he can buy grudges from a deadly, military-trained operative who sits in his employer’s villa obsessing over women from his past.

  38

  The suite Lam booked for us has two separate bedrooms that can be accessed by a shared living room. The bathroom is large but also shared. As I step into the suite, part of me hopes now that we’ve found Dao, Brazuca will no longer feel the need to keep up the ruse of being mismatched lovers. But such is not my luck.

  He’s waiting for me in the living room. He has something he wants to say but doesn’t know how to broach the topic. So he sulks into his hibiscus tea until it occurs to him that I might want a cup, too. He makes me one without asking. Hands it over, somewhat grudgingly.

  Now we’re both sulking.

  Our addictive personalities have led us here. Together again, wishing we were drinking something stronger.

  I want to say something, too. Rather, ask. Why he takes these hits from Lam, the jabs about him being bought and paid for. But I can’t seem to get there. “How are you going to make contact with Dao?” I settle for instead. He’d been quick to respond when Lam asked.

  “He eats at a restaurant near that villa he stays in. Every day at breakfast and for dinner in the evening.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Today before we met up for the debrief.”

  It takes me a moment to absorb this. Suddenly it seems real, the fact that I am finally this close to the man who put a hit on me in Detroit. Who threatened my daughter. There’s something else I’m missing, but I can’t remember what it is.

  I stare into my t
ea. “How did you get this intel?”

  “My buddy at the bar. The owner. I’ve been playing the rejected lover. They feel sorry for me, so we’ve been chatting. They really hate him, Dao. He keeps his distance. I asked them about buying property in a gated community, somewhere nice and safe. Didn’t take me long to figure out where Acosta’s house is. There’s a village nearby where he must get supplies. Then I sat around a café with a paper and watched a strip of restaurants. It was easy.”

  “So you know what he looks like.”

  “Let me show you.” He pulls out his phone and scrolls through a series of videos that show a tall Chinese man with a shaved head entering and exiting a small restaurant.

  “I never guessed he was born in Vietnam.”

  “He’s not Chinese enough for the Chinese—even the Zhangs, who he was loyal to until the end, called him by a Vietnamese name that isn’t even his—but he’s too Chinese for the locals.”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” I say.

  He laughs quietly to himself and then turns off the AC. He opens a window, letting the fresh sea breeze in. There’s something easy about him standing there. Comfortable, even.

  “Back at that chalet in the mountain,” he begins, bringing up the subject we have avoided for this long.

  “Do you really want to go there?”

  “I could be up for it, Nora. Do you?”

  I feel like one of those people who only cheat on their spouses when they go away on business trips. Maybe it’s because I’m out of my comfort zone and in this lovely hotel room. Remembering the last time.

  Away from home, no one has to know. “I could be up for it, too.” As soon as I say it, I realize it’s true. This is a night full of surprises.

  He looks at me for a long moment. “Can I tie you up this time?”

  I hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Come on then.”

  We go into his room where he ties my hands to the bedposts, but not my legs. Then he disappears for a moment and comes back with a cold bottle of beer from the mini fridge in the living room. I meet his eyes.

  This is repayment for what I did to him.

  Two years ago, I tied him up, straddled his chest, opened little bottles of liquor, poured them into his mouth to fuck up his sobriety.

  Because he’d lied to me and I felt angry and betrayed. But now those lies don’t seem to matter.

  This is what has been building between us since I slapped him at that jungle bar.

  Part of me wants him to pop the top off the bottle. A very big part, one that used to consume every part of my life. He knows this. Smiles and straddles my hips. He puts the cold bottle against my neck, gets lost at the sight of it there. I can feel the condensation pooling on my throat. He takes the bottle away, but the chill stays. I think he’s going to open it. Want that badly.

  Instead, he touches his lips to mine and whispers, “I would never do that to you.”

  There’s a moment of relief and frustration. Part of me wanted him to, badly. That little demon in my head that’s always there, begging for a drink. “You think you’re better than me?”

  He laughs, settles on top of me, and pulls my legs up. Hooks them around his waist. “I know I am.”

  Then we stop talking. Thankfully. He brings that easiness about him I was admiring from the window here, too. It’s so easy between us, this. Easier than it should be.

  “I wanted to walk away so badly,” he says much later. “When Lam showed up at the office, I wanted no part of this, whatever it is.”

  “I know.”

  “So why can’t I?”

  He doesn’t expect an answer. Doesn’t get one, either.

  “I almost had a drink today. Before the beer just now,” I say, thinking of that godawful heat cut only by the ocean breeze. What could one fruity cocktail hurt? Unless, of course, it becomes two, then four, then a couple of vodka shots after that.

  “Me, too.”

  It takes me a minute to work up to what I say next. “When I heard we were waiting for someone on that plane, right before we left Vancouver, I hoped it was you.”

  “I don’t trust Lam. That’s why I came here.”

  “Neither do I.”

  There are no blues songs in the aftermath; there is only the sweet silence of the night broken intermittently by the sound of our breathing. One of us is lightly snoring, but I can’t figure out who it is before I fall asleep.

  39

  Early yesterday morning, just as dawn broke, I put on a black one-piece bathing suit I bought at the hotel gift store, charged to Lam’s room, went down to the beach, and waded chest deep into the ocean. Then began to swim. I didn’t stop for a long, long time. I swam until my limbs got so heavy I almost didn’t make it back onto the sand. When I did, I lay flat on my back, taking in big gulps of air. One of the resort waiters offered me a fresh coconut out of sheer pity.

  This ocean is different from what I’m used to. It’s either the Bali Sea or the Lombok Strait, but I can’t remember which. It should be similar to the views I’ve seen from Vancouver. Sand. Ocean. Mountains. Fishing boats. But there’s nothing familiar about this. The water is warm and clear. The boats are painted canoes with brightly colored wooden legs creeping out from the center, like cheerful spiders that sit atop the sea. Even the mountains look different. Lush and inviting in the blinding sunlight.

  Like something out of a picture book.

  As I sat and looked out at this pretty picture it struck me that there was an emptiness in me that should have been filled with fear. I almost drowned once. I shouldn’t have felt so free out on the water. But all my senses were alive. I could feel the sand underneath me. Taste the salt on my lips. Feel the cool coconut water going down my parched throat. Hear the surf gurgling toward me. Watch the sea move in the sunlight, so clear and pure.

  About twenty feet away a woman I recognized as a waitress at the resort restaurant waded into the water. She let the waves lick her thighs for a few minutes, splashed water on her arms to the shoulder, then waded out again. She proceeded to scrub sand over her arms and legs in brisk circular motions and returned to the sea to rinse it off. When she emerged again, her skin was pink and clean. I watched her meander away down the beach, around a bend and out of sight. Then, inexplicably, she returned this way almost immediately, her movements quick. As soon as she was within sight of the resort she slowed again. There’s something about this stretch of beach we were both on that felt safe. Who knows what lurks beyond the bend?

  A kind of peace settled over me as the sun rose, brought on by the simplicity of a woman’s early-morning ablutions. There was a certainty building inside, growing out of the emptiness. What has happened since we filled in the blanks with Dao hasn’t changed it.

  Which is why, as I get out of bed the next day, I feel no guilt, no regret.

  I take the small bag I packed earlier and leave Brazuca behind without looking back.

  Almost twenty-four hours after my swim in the ocean, the dawn breaks gently over the horizon as I get on my gray Honda scooter and drive away.

  Money and blackmail, of course, Lam said. This wasn’t his first lie to me, but it was his big one. There’s a reason he wants to keep me away from the meeting. My presence here is the little worm you stick on the end of a hook.

  To Bernard Lam, I’m nothing but bait.

  40

  Acosta’s estate is on a street full of other estates. It’s an enclave of wealth and power on a poor island, so of course it’s a gated community. The locals trickle in from the nearby town to work at the villas beyond the security checkpoint, but I’d never pass for one of them. In Vancouver I’m taken to be the help on a regular basis. But that’s not going to work here.

  I’m on the side of the road, just before the entrance to Acosta’s street, where Dao lives. Beyond the gates there seems to be damage to some of the houses, but I can’t see a way in to take a closer look. So I turn my scooter around and head into the town.

  The town is eer
ily quiet, and about half of the buildings are flattened. This must be the effect of the recent earthquake. The damage is worse here than I’ve seen anywhere else.

  I take a seat at the café across from the restaurant that Dao was photographed going into. It’s possible this is the exact spot Brazuca sat when he took the pictures. I order a Balinese coffee and scroll through the news while I wait. The local journalist who took the photos of Dao and the protester has done profiles of mining issues across Indonesia. There’s a lot of information here, but nothing more on Dao. Maybe I can get some better photos than Brazuca did. Hopefully one or two that would identify him as the man who hurt the protester.

  Hours pass, but he doesn’t show up. I’m starting to get some curious glances from the café workers, so I pay my bill and leave.

  Turning my scooter around, I head back to the hotel.

  In the hall outside the room I share with Brazuca, I take a deep breath before entering. Steeling myself for something. Preparing my excuses for abandoning him after good, even great, sex. Sex that was uncomplicated in a way it has never been before. At least not for a very, very long time.

  When I open the door, the breath I’ve been holding releases on a tiny exhale of air and sound.

  The room is empty. Brazuca’s things are gone.

  The front desk has no idea where he went. “Miss, the room is paid for. We can do no refunds,” says the concierge. He muffles the receiver on the phone, and I can hear people talking in the background but not what they’re saying. When he comes back his voice is urgent. “Miss, please stay in your room. Don’t open the door for anybody.”

  He hangs up before I can ask why.

  The grounds outside are deserted, but there are a few fishing boats out on the water in the distance. If I squint, I can see the fishermen pointing to an area of the shoreline that’s beyond my view, around the bend I’d seen that waitress hurry away from. The one who’d been rubbing sand into her skin and washing it off in the sea.

  In the room, there’s no good-bye note to be found. That’s to be expected, because I hadn’t left him one, either.