“Dinner?”
“Dinner. And it is a very good Bordeaux.”
“You’ve got a deal. And I’ll pick up another bottle. God’s been good to me.”
“He must have time on his hands if he has been good to you, Vincent Calvino.”
The good father liked drinking wine and breaking bread with a Jew whose father was a Roman Catholic.
CALVINO killed the ignition and turned off the headlights. He got out of his car, slammed the door, and stood in the darkness for a moment, looking at the outline of the old slaughterhouse in the distance. More cars than usual were parked in the lot between large flatbed trucks. The place had been quiet ever since the municipal authorities had closed it down. The flood water had gone down. A couple of wooden planks provided a bridge to the main slum. He crossed through a maze of small walkways that ran between the shanty houses built of wood, structures without glass or screens on the windows. Inside, old people and small children watched TV. The sixteen to thirty-five age group didn’t register on the radar screen. Gone. Vanished until the early hours of the morning. Laundry hung on lines to dry. Dogs sniffed around the edges of the walkway scavenging for food. He passed a shop selling the basics—rice, candy, soda, water—displayed on a couple of shelves, and, for those who knew the vendor well, a selection of drugs under the counter. Calvino knew the way to Father Andrew’s house, walking along the narrow alleyways built of wood. The slum was built on stilts over swampy ground. Most of Bangkok had been built on swamp land. The water was always deeper in the slums after the rain, an evil deep black. Half-submerged bottles, cans, shoes, paper not so much floated on the top but looked like the trash dropped on long strips of tar. Mosquitoes bounced off neon lights. After a few minutes, Calvino stopped in front of Father Andrew’s wooden house. The lights were out and it was very quiet. He didn’t like the feel of the stillness. No radios, shouting, talking, or laughter, or the sound of people cooking or rattling around tin-roofed houses. The slum was a rough and tumble place that no one looking for peace and quiet would want to be in for five minutes. Funny, what was in his head was how Father Andrew had been talking with foreign journalists about the injustices the cops and officials had caused in the slums. Had someone been sent to silence him? Calvino looked for someone to ask if they had seen Father Andrew but the gangway was empty. Nothing was moving. Calvino slowly reached for his .38 police special and just as he was about to kick down the door, the lights came on inside. Someone was blowing a horn. And everyone was singing Happy Birthday. Father Andrew stepped outside and put his arm around Calvino.
“We were going to wait until you walked inside. But someone said, ‘He’s pulled his gun.’ So I thought it best to move things up a little. Vincent, you can put that thing away for now,” said Father Andrew. “Some bad people are selling drugs about a hundred meters from here. What if I pay you five hundred baht and take you and your gun over there. Just wave it around to scare them away. There will be another time. Happy Birthday.”
Calvino holstered his handgun, removed his shoes and entered into the kitchen. Grouped inside Father Andrew’s small shanty were many familiar faces. He locked eyes with Father Andrew, then smiled at Ratana, who looked away. No doubt, he thought, she had played a major role in organizing the surprise party. Pratt and his wife, Manee. McPhail, Black Hawk, Fat Ralph, Ricky, and a few other old hands, long-term farangs from Washington Square, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, an office on Silom Road, business people. McPhail stood beside Ewok, the top of her head reaching the middle of McPhail’s ribcage. This crew was what substituted for family, thought Calvino. They had driven out to Father Andrew’s Klong Toey slum dwelling not knowing if it was going to rain and flood again to say happy birthday. He spotted Jess standing slightly behind Pratt and Manee.
“Your fourth cycle, Vincent,” said Pratt. In New York City two cycles earlier, when Pratt had still been a student, he had explained how every twelve years from the date of birth was a separate cycle, and how the Thais and Chinese and other Asians put great significance by the passage of one cycle and the entry into a new one.
“Where did the last two cycles go?” asked Calvino.
“Stolen by the khamoy, “ Father Andrew used the Thai word for thief, never passing up the chance for a pun.
Ewok ran up and gave Calvino a red rose. “McPhail pay bar. Say we go to a party. Happy Birthday Khun Vinee.”
McPhail shook his head. “I told Ewok not to say I paid the bar in front of Father Andrew.”
“I know. I forgot, okay?” said Ewok.
“It’s okay,” said Father Andrew. “I’m certain Edward’s motives are pure.”
Jess had been near the window and saw Calvino draw his .38.
“You missed an important clue,” said Jess. “What wasn’t outside.”
“And what would that have been?” asked Calvino.
“Shoes. There were no shoes. There are always shoes outside a Thai house,” said Jess, smiling like he was happy with himself. “Father Andrew had us keep our shoes inside.”
“Vincent might tell you that my guests always take their shoes inside. Otherwise their shoes might disappear,” said Father Andrew. “Most of people in the slum are very poor. Not your middle class Bangkok or LA crowd. But there are millionaires living here as well. They mainly operate the drug cartels. People steal shoes to pay their runner for drugs.”
“Good thinking,” said Jess, swallowing hard, looking away like he had lost some major face.
“I missed enough other clues,” said Calvino quickly. “I have been sleepwalking all day.”
The surprise birthday was starting to register. Calvino was holding onto his forties like a drunken chef holding onto the wrong end of a greasy spoon. Friends were gathering around to watch him let go. His face bruised, the stitches still fresh, pale and tired, he suddenly looked miserable. What he had missed was Father Andrew’s timing. “Wait an hour,” Father Andrew had said on the phone. He missed the definite tip-off. And, of course, there were the extra cars in the parking lot. Cars that didn’t belong there.
Across the room, he watched as Ratana and Ewok, who stood on her tiptoes, leaned over a table and lit the candles. The others joined in. Everyone seemed to have a lighter or match; taking their turn to lean over and light a candle. Soon the horror of all those tiny flames ignited on the cakes on Father Andrew’s kitchen table began to sink in. For a brief moment no one said anything, looking at all of the lit candles. One candle on each of the forty-eight small cakes. And there was a large cake with forty-eight more candles. McPhail started singing “Happy Birthday” and Fat Ralph joined in and then the others. Someone turned out the lights and the only illumination in Father Andrew’s sitting room came from the candles on Calvino’s birthday cakes. Calvino listened to them singing, thinking that this was the passage of another year, the beginning of the fifth cycle; a new period of twelve years. Jess was right. He had missed something. Like an entire cycle of his life. This cycle he promised himself to be more observant, not to let the years slip away and next thing he would be sixty. There were no sixty-year-old private eyes. In the next twelve years he had to get it right or it would never be right.
“Make a wish and blow out the candles,” Manee said. “If you can.”
He made the wish to get it right. The way his nose was stitched up, trying to blow out the candles was not all that easy.
He leaned forward and blew out one candle, then another, and another; his friends joined in until there was one candle left burning. He moved forward and looked at the solitary candle on the big cake. Calvino smiled, leaned forward, puffed up his lips and blew it out. And for a long moment, everyone stood silently in the darkness. When Father Andrew switched on the light, the door was open and outside dozens of children crowded around; they lived in the surrounding shacks. Dressed in T-shirts and shorts, they pushed forward for a cake.
“Khun Vinee, now you can make merit,” said Ratana.
This was her way of ensuring that he
would be around for the fifth cycle. And as a way of making merit, he had to admit it was better than releasing sparrows from small wooden cages at a wat into polluted air or turtles into a dirty klong .
Calvino held a small cake in each hand. He squatted down in the doorway and passed out the small cakes to the first two children. Ratana handed him two more, and he held them out to the next set of children, and five minutes later all of the cakes had gone out the door and most of the children had disappeared into the darkness. Forty-eight cakes in five minutes. Not all that different than the passage of the years themselves, he thought, rising to his feet.
Father Andrew gave Calvino a glass of red wine.
“Like I promised, we are going to drink some fine wine.”
Calvino took the glass and raised it to Father Andrew, then Pratt, Manee, Ratana, his friends, and then turned and touched the rim of Father Andrew’s glass to make a toast.
“In my line of work, I’ve been set up a lot of times. Most of the time it means I get a trip to the hospital. This time something good came out of it. I don’t really know what else to say. I mean, I didn’t have time to write anything down or think I was going to have to say anything. What I am trying to say is that the fact that you came to Father Andrew’s house after the flooding yesterday means something. It means a lot. No one would have blamed you for staying home. You didn’t. You came around to make a point. Friendship counts for something.”
“We came because Father Andrew threatened us with hell if we didn’t,” said someone in the back. Everyone laughed.
“My birthday wish is that Father Andrew gets his school finished this year.” Because that would make things right in the world. And it would be a chance to square accounts with Father Andrew.
“You’re not supposed to tell your wish or it won’t come true,” said Jess.
“I’ll take my chances, Jess.”
Father Andrew refilled Calvino’s glass. It was a good wine, Calvino thought. As Father Andrew poured, he recognized one of the children who had taken one of the small cakes. She looked about eight years old; large, watchful, questioning eyes with huge black pupils, looking down at the cake that Calvino had handed to her. She had moved in next to Calvino.
“Something wrong with the cake?” he asked.
She nodded her head.
“This is Dew,” said Father Andrew. “She showed up last night with her two brothers. Younger brothers. Since Dew’s parents are both dead, she’s now head of the household.”
Dew stared down at the small cake cupped in her tiny hands.
“Mee nong chai song kon. Mee khnom cake nueng chin.” Two younger brothers. But only one cake. What should she do?
Calvino looked at her, then over his shoulder at the dining room table. He walked over, picked up the large cake with Happy Birthday Vincent Calvino in pink icing with the forty-eight candles still smoking. He handed it to her. “Give them this,” said Calvino. Like a shadow, the large cake in her hands, she left without another word.
Thank you was not a word used in the slum. There wasn’t much time for politeness; the more urgent necessities of living intervened, like hunger and fear.
Jess said, “There is more to you than I thought.”
He handed him a present wrapped in green paper with a red bow.
Calvino shrugged, taking the gift. “Now you’re missing something. I hate cake. I would have thrown it to the dogs. So giving it to the kid is no big deal. Getting all sentimental is the worst thing you can do in Bangkok. All the years I’ve been coming out, there is almost never a happy ending. You can guarantee what you hear is nothing remotely touching reality. The kid was probably lying. The odds are five to eight she’s on some corner selling the cake. She’ll use the money to buy drugs for herself and her brothers. So do you still think there is more to me than you thought?”
“Open it,” said Jess.
Calvino tore off the paper and held up an official LAPD T-shirt.
“Thought you might like,” continued Jess.
“Nice. Is it bullet-proof?” Calvino asked.
“What a practical man you’ve become, Mr. Calvino,” said Father Andrew.
“Impractical men aren’t around to celebrate four cycles,” he said.
“That they aren’t,” said Father Andrew. “Not in Bangkok.”
“Why did you come here?” asked Calvino, turning to face Jess.
“Pratt thought I would learn something about you, seeing you here.” He had started to call him Pratt, thought Calvino.
Calvino could see that play. Pratt giving Jess a talk about seeing Calvino in Klong Toey would tell him about his partner on this assignment. A slum was a better place to judge the cut of a man working in Bangkok than the junk food court of the Emporium. Anyone could look good, walk tall in the Emporium; but in the walkways over the swamp land of Klong Toey, there were no designers or gunmen, but just a lot of poor people trying to make it to the next day with food in their belly.
Also Jess had his own reasons for coming, which he left right to the end.
“I spoke with Wes Naylor. He’s had another death threat. A more serious one. Someone shot up his car and left a message: Go to Bangkok and you end up like your car. Full of holes.”
“He cancelled?” asked Calvino, feeling the four grand slipping out of his pocket.
Jess shook his head. “I told him to stay in LA. Getting shot over a hotel deal is stupid. Is the hotel deal worth dying for?”
It was the way Jess said this that made it clear Naylor hadn’t listened to him.
“Meaning we’re on schedule. We pick him up at Don Muang tomorrow,” said Calvino.
“Right.” He walked off as Father Andrew drained the last of the wine into Calvino’s glass.
Another wine bottle was opened, and the glasses refilled. And before long the friends began to drift out of Father Andrew’s zinc corrugated house, with kids from the slums guiding them with flashlights along the narrow walkway into the night. After everyone had left, Father Andrew and Calvino sat at the dining room table and talked about the problems the priest was having getting the school built. Afterwards, Father Andrew walked with Calvino back to his car. A few feet from the parking lot, Calvino saw the girl with the large birthday cake and stopped.
“That’s the girl you gave the big cake to,” said Father Andrew.
“Dew. Her name’s Dew. She’s part of the new breed of eight-year-old single mothers.”
“You were listening,” said Father Andrew.
“I bet Jess she would sell the cake.”
“You lost the bet.”
“Maybe I won.” He smiled and leaned down to look at the brother in the beam of the flashlight. Two little boys squatted on the gravel. Lit candles illuminated their faces. They were maybe four, five years old. They didn’t have plates or forks or spoons. All they had were outstretched hands as their sister cut the cake with a pocket-knife. She handed one piece to the first brother, then cut a second piece for the other brother. They ate like kids who had not eaten all day. Dogs watched motionless from the shadows. Some other kids hovered nearby, saying nothing as they watched her cut the cake. As they walked on Dew looked up.
“Khob khun ka,” she said. Thank you, sir.
He turned, walked back, reached into his pocket and gave her a five-hundred baht note. She looked at the note, then at Father Andrew, her eyes filled with a combination of suspicion and surprise.
“It’s okay,” said Father Andrew. “You can keep the money.”
“I always pay my bets, Father Andrew. And I am certain Jess would like to see the money go to a good cause.”
Father Andrew took some liberties with the translation into perfect Isan, saying that Calvino wanted her to use this money to buy food for her brothers and herself over the next few weeks, and she was to keep it hidden and not show it to any of the bigger kids or adults, and if anyone tried to steal the money she should tell them the farang named Calvino would come back and give them a really big p
roblem.
They reached his car, and Calvino offered his hand.
“What happens to her next?”
“What happens to most street kids like her? They don’t make it. But I have a strange feeling this kid just might beat the odds. Something strange has happened in the slums. The family has disappeared. Fathers and mothers living under the same roof taking care of their kids. Most of that is gone. Mothers sell drugs, sell their bodies. There’s no time or interest in raising kids. Now kids raise kids. So they turn to speed. If you can’t have love, or comfort, or a mother or a father. Then what do you do, Vincent? There is only one way out of the slum. Swallow a pill that makes you feel good. That destroys the pain. There isn’t a household that doesn’t have someone taking or selling drugs.”
“She didn’t sell the cake.”
“No, she showed something we all could relearn now and again. It’s called a lesson in humanity. Being your brother’s keeper. There’s one eight-year-old slum kid doing that right now in Klong Toey. You see anyone else doing that lately?”
Under the starlit night, Calvino shook his head and figured he got the only birthday wish he had ever wanted. The one, he thought, if he were a better man, he would have wished for before blowing out the candles.
It was called “hope.”
SIX
COLONEL PRATT WORE his uniform to the airport. And he looked impressive in a uniform as well. He was the first person to greet Wes Naylor as he walked down the long, wide corridor towards Immigration. Unshaved, his eyes far too close together, squinting as Pratt approached him. The front of Naylor’s shirt hung over his wrinkled trousers and his suit coat had the look of being slept in. On the lapel was a crescent-shaped blue pin—like a Turkish military officer or a Shriner might wear. A white Panama hat was pushed forward, touching his eyebrows; he carried a carry-on bag and a briefcase. Pratt’s first impression was that Naylor could have passed for a homeless burnt out man who ate at the City Mission and slept on park benches with the LA Times covering his face. He didn’t look remotely like an LA lawyer—or what Pratt thought an LA lawyer ought to look like. Naylor instead looked like a mid-forties Truman Capote, risen from the grave, soft around the midsection, thick lips forming a rubbery mouth; a strangely hopeless and disoriented man, blinking as if his light blue eyes hurt under the glare of the interior airport lights.
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