Cold Hit

by Christopher G. Moore

  Calvino knelt down in front of Naylor. “You all right?”

  A crowd of shoppers gathered around.

  “Who was that sonofabitch?” asked Naylor, gasping to catch his breath.

  “He doesn’t look Chinese to me,” said Calvino. “What I am saying he’s not part of Kitti’s family. These people don’t hire farangs to whack farangs.”

  “I had a gut feeling that coming here was a mistake,” said Naylor.

  Jess helped Naylor to his feet. “Here’s your hat.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Calvino. The crowd swelled as the farang started to move his head on the floor.

  “I’ve never seen anyone hit someone so fast and so hard,” Naylor said as he took the hat. “Where’d you learn that fancy shit?”

  Jess had won the kick-boxing championship of LA county at age fourteen. He had learned the art by the time he was twelve. His dad had built shelves to proudly display all of Jess’s trophies. But none of this mattered at that moment.

  “You don’t know this guy?” asked Jess, deflecting the “fancy shit” comment.

  “Never seen him before. He must have confused me with someone else.”

  “He went straight for you,” said Calvino. “It didn’t look much like a mistake.”

  Naylor fingered his hat, looking for damage, smoothing it out and then carefully putting it on, he smiled, using his hand to work his jaw from side to side. He stepped forward and kicked the farang in the groin. A huff sound like air going out of a tire came out of the man’s mouth. When it looked like Naylor might have one more shot, Calvino took his arm and pulled him back.

  “Enough already.” The farang was coiled up on the polished marble floor in front of the ATM machine. He looked like he had passed out or was sleeping.

  “The bastard tried to mug me,” said Naylor. “Just one more little kick.”

  This time Jess came alongside with Calvino and together they ushered him away from the unconscious farang. Calvino knew this was not a stalker, a mugger, a crazy, no, this was a deliberate planned assault and, like the truck on the expressway, the intent was to intimidate, throw them off-balance, lead them to make conclusions that others wanted them to make.

  Calvino waited until they were clearing away until he said anything to Jess. “You’re good.”

  “I don’t think we should be here, Vincent. Someone doesn’t come swinging at Naylor without a reason. You know how that farang knew we would be here now?” Jess held out a small device that looked like a remote control. “He was picking up the GHz from this.” He held out his own anti-transmitting device. “They were tracking us the whole time.”

  “The road from Damascus to Tel Aviv also goes from Tel Aviv to Damascus,” said Calvino.

  “Are you guys protecting me or holding a committee meeting?” asked Naylor.

  They walked past the imported designer shops: tall walls of glass and inside the robes and gowns for the priestesses of fashion. As they entered the fashion hall, McPhail spotted them and shouted Calvino’s name. “Vinee, over here, man.”

  “That’s my guy. We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  McPhail stood next to a ying who was dressed to kill: black tight-fitting slacks, high heels and a halter top, bare smooth shoulders showing. She looked like an entertainer backstage, distracted, smoking a cigarette, looking at her watch. Long red fingernails set off her hands. She looked like she could be a singer or a model with her fresh, shiny black long hair touching half way down her back. In the advertising business such yings were called “Pretties,” the good-looking yings who were hired for car shows, conferences, conventions. Pretties attracted crowds, and crowds wanted to be around beautiful yings and the things Pretties were selling. Calvino recognized Noi from Gabe Holerstone’s photo. Calvino hit the dial button as he approached. The phone was ringing and Gabe picked up the phone on the third ring, answering with a slow, husky voice dulled by sleep.

  “It’s one in the fucking morning, who are you, asshole?”

  “Vincent Calvino. I have Noi here and she wants to talk to you.”

  “Noi? Where did you say you are?” He sounded like he was drugged.

  “In Bangkok.”

  “I know in Bangkok, but where?”

  “I am at a shopping mall,” said Calvino. “So talk to her. That was our deal. Find the girl, put her on the phone. That was the assignment. Now the case is closed.”

  Calvino held out the phone and she stared at it and then at Calvino, slowly sucking in a long hit from her cigarette, one arm folded around her waist, her elbow resting on her folded forearm. Smoke coiled out of each nostril like she was the Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

  “It’s Gabe, he’s in LA and he wants to talk to you.”

  “What’s he want from me? I don’t work for Gabe anymore.” A bored look crossed Noi’s face like a late afternoon shadow. As if a group of fans had hassled her an autograph. Her voice broke slightly as she uttered the word “me”; the amount of gravity attached to that simple two letter word was enough to pluck the moon from the night sky. She said it in a way that seemed to indicate there was no room for anyone else in the world but her.

  “Ask him yourself.” He stood beside her, his arm outstretched but she made no effort to reach for the phone.

  “See what I mean,” said McPhail. “This is one awkward fucking ying.”

  Calvino put the phone to his ear. “She wants to know what you want from her?”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  Calvino stared directly at her. “He says that he wants to talk to you.”

  “If the ying doesn’t want to talk, she doesn’t want to talk,” said Naylor.

  “Who is this asshole?” asked McPhail.

  “His fucking boss. What fucking rock do you live under?”

  The situation was becoming complicated beyond Calvino’s wildest expectations. McPhail and Naylor had taken an instant dislike to one another. Calvino swiftly moved between Noi and McPhail as if he were back in New York on a Sunday afternoon and happened upon a pick-up baseball game and people were choosing sides.

  “Your friend is right,” said Noi. “I don’t have to talk to anyone.”

  Gabe screamed in Calvino’s ear, “Put that goddamn Vine Street bitch on the phone.”

  “That approach isn’t working, Gabe. Maybe you ought to come up with a reason to talk to her,” said Calvino. “What’s the message?”

  “I want her to come back to LA. I’ll give her a raise. Tell her that.”

  Calvino watched Noi light another cigarette from the one she was just finishing. A flicker of recognition appeared to pass between Noi and Naylor. It was also the look of two pros sizing each other up. Calvino’s Law: The line between who a ying knew and who she wanted to know was as blurred as a cross from a double-cross in back of a dark alley. “He wants you back in LA and you get a raise.”

  She thought about this. “How much of a raise?”

  Gabe heard her response and shouted in the phone at Calvino. “Two-hundred and fifty a week.”

  “Two fifty a week,” repeated Calvino.

  Calvino edged in with the phone until a moment later it was against her ear and she was talking to Gabe. McPhail rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, she’s entering into collective bargaining on your dime. Can you believe it?”

  “Three hundred,” said Noi. “Otherwise I am on the plane to hong Kong. I can make more than three hundred a day in hong Kong.”

  “You heard that?” asked Calvino.

  Of course he had heard it. “Noi, okay, just come back to LA, honey.”

  Calvino motioned for her to hand back his mobile phone. She pretended to ignore him. “There was nothing in my deal with Gabe for you to carry on a long distance salary negotiation. Phone him back collect.”

  “I’m almost finished,” she said.

  “Good bye, Gabe,” said McPhail, taking a swipe at the phone, but he missed as Noi stepped to one side.

  “I don’t like the way y
ou treated me.” She spoke into the phone.

  McPhail rolled his eyes. “How are you going to make that kind of money in Bangkok?”

  “It’s finished. We can go now,” said Calvino. “Let’s get back to the car.”

  Naylor was watching yings in short skirts ride the escalator.

  “You were buying us a beer,” said Naylor, looking away from the two yings riding the escalator. “Forget the beer, let’s go back to the Brandy.”

  Meaning that he wanted to check on Jep. He was still on compassion alert, and telling himself that technically he hadn’t really breached the yings, as he had administered care. There had been no sex.

  This suited Calvino fine and he nodded, turned to Noi, gesturing for his phone, as a loud boom echoed through the second floor. An explosion that shattered glass. Calvino immediately pushed Naylor down. The force of the blast sucked a massive volume of dust and debris through the main shaft of the atrium. The explosion knocked out the electrical supply and the emergency lights came on, flickered, and then cut out as well. The air was dirty and the light like near dusk; darkness had descended inside the mall.

  “What the fuck was that?” asked Naylor.

  “That was no fucking electrical transformer exploding,” said Calvino. “That was a bomb.”

  “Let’s get Naylor out of here. Now,” said Jess, pulling Naylor by the arm.

  Calvino reached to take his phone from Noi. “I am not finished talking to him.”

  “Noi, time to go. Give me the phone. Don’t make a problem,” said Calvino. He grabbed at the phone but missed.

  McPhail laughed. “You’re right, that was no transformer. Someone has set off the heavy shit. Look at the shoppers run like rabbits. Where the fuck do they think they are going?” He shook his head, pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Noi. “Anything else you need, just give me a call. If you can get your phone back.” With a quick flick of his wrist, McPhail snatched the phone from Noi’s hand and tossed it to Calvino. “See you around.”

  As Calvino’s mobile phone spun in the air, Jess was already in a half run holding onto Naylor’s arm, directing him back to the emergency stairs next to the elevators. The elevators had already been shut down. As Calvino caught up they ran into a wall of customers and staff pushing and shoving to get down the stairs. Security guards tried to maintain order with the crowd; yings were crying and screaming, clutching children, and shop clerks were pushing against each other to get to the stairs. A strong herd mentality pushed the shoppers into a crowd—it was difficult to bring any order or provide direction to the people. They ignored orders from a whistle-blowing twenty-year-old security guard. The guard waved his hands, trying to control the flow of people, and they ran around him. The smell of Bakelite, dust, of stuff burning—plastic, upholstery, electrical wiring—filled the air in the staircase. People choked on the debris they inhaled; coughing, they staggered forward, their eyes and throats burning from the smoke.

  “There has been an explosion,” said a voice over a loudspeaker system. The disembodied voice echoed up and down the five floors of the shopping mall.

  “The second bomb this week,” said Calvino. He had followed the recent history of bombings: an explosion at Democracy Monument, another inside a police station, someone had bombed a bar. No one knew exactly what combination of dark forces were setting off the bombs, how they were selecting their targets, their demands, or what concession would be required to stop the terror. The motive for the attack remained murky; any number of candidates might have had reason to plant a bomb to settle a power struggle. Calvino took some comfort from this history of bombings as strong evidence that the blast was unrelated to Wes Naylor and his business activities in Thailand.

  “Nothing personal,” Calvino said to Naylor. “We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “What about the detector Jess found on the guy at the elevator?”

  Jess had picked up the conversation off Calvino’s mic. “Naylor’s right, Vinee. That guy could have been one of the bombers.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Calvino.

  The crush of frightened people all pushing and shoving each other down the same narrow escape route made it nearly impossible to move. It seemed as if most of the fashion show audience had headed for the same exit. Timing was everything. And now was the time to shift direction, find a different way back to the parking lot, thought Calvino. Jess wanted to believe Calvino’s assessment of the situation. Yet there was a Calvino’s law that said there were no coincidences when two unrelated events occurred at the same time. In Thailand there was always, underneath the surface, a thin coil connecting the events, an aggressive hard-wired connection that only the people directly involved understood. Reach back far enough or dig deep enough and original hatreds, jealousies, rivalries were embedded in the original DOS system of Thai government and society and all the modern updates had done nothing but patch the old flaws, and the old flaws were what made the system crash.

  It was Jess who had a bad feeling. Someone had set off the bomb to do a job. But had they finished what they set out to do?

  “I don’t think we should take any chances,” said Jess. “We need to get Naylor out of this crowd.”

  “I know a short-cut,” said Calvino.

  Naylor followed him, “Then let’s take the short-cut. I hate fucking crowds. Get me out of here.”

  Calvino ran ahead, taking two steps at a time climbing up the stalled escalator.

  “Christ, we want to go down, not up,” said Naylor following, choking on the dust. “Jesus, I can hardly breathe.”

  “You want to keep breathing? Then get your ass going now,” said Calvino. Like the universe, Naylor’s middle-aged body was expanding, and if he didn’t keep moving he would die.

  Jess followed right behind Naylor. He wasn’t so sure that going away from the crowd was the right thing. Sometimes it was easier to protect an asset in a crowd than in an empty place that one did not know. Calvino had already committed them and he had no other plan.

  By the time they reached the fifth floor, the fast food area was deserted—no shoppers, no clerks, no lighting except a dim shaft of dusty light from the atrium. The lights had likely been cut, thought Calvino. The distant sound of people screaming, crying, and yelling filtered up the atrium. Sounds of people running on the escalator, their feet hitting the cleated metal steps. Calvino stopped, knelt down, and Jess and Naylor knelt down, beside him. Naylor started to say something and Calvino put his hand over the big man’s mouth, and with his other hand, he pressed his index finger against his lips. Slowly he took his hand away from Naylor’s mouth, reached in under his sport’s jacket and pulled out his .38 police special. They took refuge in Burger King, moving quickly, passing through tables, and ducking behind the counter. Naylor reached up and grabbed a hamburger out of the bin, opened the wrapper and started to eat. “I guess it would be too much to ask for a beer,” he whispered to Calvino.

  “Yeah, it would,” replied Calvino. They stayed together, securing a position with the best view of the two escalators.

  A couple of moments later, the sound of male voices came from the direction of Diary Queen. Three men spoke Thai using short, clipped sentences. They stood near the escalator that led to the sixth floor and cinemas. One of them was making a command decision how to sweep the floor and who should go where next. The three men fanned out with automatic weapons. CAR-15s. The short version of the M-16 assault rifle, easy to sweep inside confined spaces, the barrels didn’t get snagged on weeds, branches, or on the electrical cords hooked to Coke and coffee dispensing machines.

  Jess looked around the corner of the counter, leaned back and showed Calvino and Naylor three fingers. Naylor kept chewing the burger. They had moved into the kitchen. Then Jess crooked his fingers into the shape of a weapon; he moved his hands up and down his chest, signaling they were wearing bullet-proof vests. They were armed, protected, and fanned out from the escalator. One w
ent left towards the elevators and restrooms, another member of the team swept through the tables in front of Burger King, while the third guy moved quickly to the right and down towards the Food Hall. Calvino was pretty sure that the hit squad must have followed them from the second level, taking the escalator, knowing they had gone exactly where they wanted them.

  “Farang, come out,” yelled one of the men in English. “We are Security. We take you down to safety.” Broken English, broken promises.

  Sure they will, thought Calvino.

  Calvino crouched low, leaning forward, and watched as one of the men knocked over one of the tables and stood only a couple feet away from Naylor. The next move belonged to Calvino. For the moment, they had the element of surprise on their side. The question was how to use surprise and to keep alive.

  Jess was thinking something along the same lines, only his was tailored by his LAPD training. Awareness. Balance. Self-control. Skill. Timing. The words went through Jess’s mind like a mantra. They were the core of his training on the force. Apply them and you live, forget them and you die. They must become part of you. The way you think and feel. You must dream them. You must live them every moment of every day. His instructor at the Academy said the elements were New Age nonsense. Jess had told the instructor they had come from an ancient age.

  Mindfulness is what Buddhism teaches.

  Naylor had stopped chewing and he wasn’t showing his Chinese Triad tattoos now. He curled up into a ball, holding onto his fifteen-baht gold chain.

  “You will not be harmed,” said the same Thai voice.

  Forget just one element, leave it out of your consciousness, and discover how unforgiving life can be. Being forgetful of one’s training was not forgiven, thought Jess. The guy coming in their direction was only a couple of feet away, standing erect, confident, holding his weapon against his side, slowly observing an arc of 180 degrees as he walked ahead. He was walking into the kitchen. Calvino reached over and grabbed a coffee mug and dipped it into the vat of oil. Two wire baskets holding raw French fries were balanced above the oil. He waited until the member of the squad was next to him. He stopped, turned, and appeared to leave. Jess followed Calvino’s eyes and he nodded. Calvino crawled forward. Slowly he edged himself around the end of the counter, holding his breath, watching the Thai. The man seemed to have had second thoughts and doubled back through the kitchen and walked straight at Calvino without seeing him. The Thai male wore khaki trousers and a bulky vest under his brown shirt. Then he turned to his left, and Calvino threw the hot oil in the man’s face. The man instinctively dropped his weapon, his hands covering his face. Off balance, he fell to his knees. Calvino had never seen anyone move as fast as Jess as he crawled out the other side of the counter with a kitchen knife, which he plunged deep in the fallen guy’s throat. He pinned the guy down with his knees and waited until he was dead. Five, six seconds. Except in the movies, no one ever dies in an instant. Five seconds is enough time to kill another man. Jess never gave him that chance. He rolled off the inert body and behind a set of cupboards. Jess grabbed the dead man’s CAR-15 from the floor.