Cold Hit

by Christopher G. Moore

  “New York City,” Calvino said. He wanted the monk to go away and increased his speed, shooting ahead of the monk.

  The monk, who must have trained running across Isan rice fields, caught up immediately and stayed right at his shoulder. There was no losing him.

  “New York Yankees are a great baseball team,” said the monk. His English had a strange accent but otherwise he could make himself understood.

  “Who taught you English?”

  The monk smiled. “My friend from Finland.”

  Finns had occupied the ground floor of Calvino’s building. After the real estate market went bust, they left. Calvino wondered what had happened to them. Could they have set up an English language school? Calvino rounded a corner, thinking he might be lost.

  “Did you get caught in that rainstorm?” asked the monk. He rambled on like a lonely person who had been kept in a cellar and this was his first day above ground in about five years. “The government puts salt in the clouds. They send planes up with salt. There is no water in the north. The farmers are angry. Their rice crop is dying. Rain this time of year? It never happens.”

  Calvino let the monk rabbit on about the relation of rain and rural poverty and, at the first pause in his monologue, Calvino stopped and looked around.

  “You mind if I take some pictures?”

  “I will be your guide.”

  “How long have you been living in this wat?”

  “Four months.” The monk grinned; he had won a small victory, he felt. The foreigner had not told him to “hit the fucking road” like the one other foreigner who he had tried to strike up a conversation with the first day he arrived. This defeat was like a scar that hadn’t healed. Calvino was going to put this right for him.

  “Not many farangs come here,” said Calvino.

  “Father Andrew from the slum. But you can’t say he’s really a farang.”

  “Only one other farang?”

  The monk stopped smiling. He was thinking, wondering whether he should mention the farangs who used the bad words. Maybe this farang would think he was the kind of Thai who didn’t like farangs. The monk had taken a vow not to lie. There was that to consider. And there was the farang who came half an hour earlier. Rough and mean, a farang who had arrived with Thai nak leng tough guys. Not the kind of people this tourist farang would be interested in. So there was that to consider as well. The monk hadn’t bothered to approach and speak English with this other farang; he could sense this would be pointless. These men and that farang had come to the wat on business. Tourists were his hope, his prayer.

  Calvino stopped and looked at the monk.

  “Today you didn’t happen to see another farang?”

  The monk nodded, gathered his robes and began to walk. “Maybe your friend?” He sounded disappointed, hoping that this could not be the case.

  “He came earlier with some other men. Thai men. They went to the crematorium. Am I too late for the cremation?” Calvino took another photograph of the monk.

  “Not too late,” said the monk. “Why didn’t you say before?”

  The monk turned and pointed. They had been going in the wrong direction.

  “How many men did you see?”

  “I didn’t count,” said the monk. “But not so many. Like before. Three or four with a farang. Twice a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Always to cremate a body.”

  “Strange. This wat cremates farangs two or three times a month,” said Calvino.

  “That’s nothing. They bring the body in a wooden coffin. Cheap for burning. Then they put the ashes in a fancy metal coffin. Farangs are strange. Thai people don’t put ashes in such a big coffin. There is no need.”

  “You saw these coffins?” asked Calvino.

  “Big, metal coffins. Beautiful. Thai people are not rich. Can’t pay so much for dying.”

  “Let me get this straight. These men come to the wat with two coffins. One is wooden with a dead farang inside. They burn the wooden one. And they put the ashes in the nice metal one and drive away.” He wanted the monk to confirm what he suspected to be true.

  He got what he wanted. “One hundred percent,” said the monk. “Today we have several cremations. The past couple of days have been a good time for dying. So they are waiting their turn.”

  Bangkok traffic jams didn’t stop even at the crematorium door.

  “The same men that come every month?” asked Calvino, thinking the delay had bought them some time.

  “You don’t ask questions like a tourist,” said the monk. He cocked his head to the side; he looked discouraged.

  “You never talked to a tourist from New York before. You see any weapons? M-16s, handguns, shotguns? In New York we’re always interested in guns. And the Yankees of course.”

  It had been such a strange day. The freak rain. Another novice knocking over a broom into the abbot’s lap. One of the senior monks said that was a bad omen. A pickup truck with men in military-like clothing riding in the back with two coffins. One of the junior monks said this event was the worst omen. One empty; one with a body inside. Now this New Yorker strolling around the grounds in circles, obviously lost, asking about whether he had seen any guns.

  “Buddhism forbids killing,” said the monk. That seemed like a safe answer.

  “I’m glad to hear that. What about guns? Not that these guy would want to kill anyone.”

  “I saw something.”

  “A gun?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “It wasn’t a baseball bat?”

  This made the monk laugh. “No, it wasn’t that for sure.”

  They walked between a row of motorcycles, then a car with a broken wheel, then an empty taxi. Further down on the right was a Toyota pickup. “They came in that pickup,” said the monk, nodding at the Toyota. The pickup was an old, beat-up Toyota. The back bumper was bashed in. It had one of those homemade sheet metal cabs mounted on the back with two small metal doors that swung out and which had been padlocked with a fat Yale lock.

  “Your English is very good. I need a favor. Do you think that you could help me?”

  The monk came alive with hope of doing some good. “What?”

  “Go back to the parking lot and tell my guide exactly what you just told me.”

  “You have a guide? Why isn’t he with you? What should I tell him?” He looked confused.

  “Just let him know about the men who come a couple of times a month, the two coffins, the military outfits, and the guns you’re not sure they were carrying. Now, please excuse me, I want to take some pictures.”

  Calvino watched the monk disappear around the corner, and then he walked over to the Toyota and picked the padlock. It took him a couple of minutes before the lock snapped open and he swung back the rear doors. The pickup was parked behind a Benz. Seated behind the steering wheel of the Benz, a driver slumped with his head flopped to one side, his eyes closed, his mouth open, his chest rising up and down slowly. Dreamland. He wasn’t going to be taking any notice of the break-in, thought Calvino.

  Kowit had problems in Los Angeles, but in Bangkok everything had been under tight control, thought Calvino as he looked inside the pickup. Panya and Kowit had powerful enough friends. So why get too concerned? Go on, leave the pickup unattended. Let the guy in the Benz continue with his nap, sabai, sabai. Who was going to fuck with the boys? Whoever had driven the pickup was standing in some queue waiting for their turn at the furnace door. Calvino walked around to the Toyota, snapping photos of the registration plate and more shots through the open doors, he snapped more photos of an expensive American-style metal coffin resting on wooden pallets. The same kind of pallets he remembered seeing at the back of Panya’s house. Calvino leaned inside the cab. It was dark but there was enough light that he could see his own reflection in the highly buffed surface of the metal.

  Then Calvino climbed into the back and squatted down in the low light like he was hovering over an Asian-style shitter. Immediately the sweat poured
out of him. It must have been 120 degrees inside. He was thinking they had just about enough heat to roast Danny but probably short of what was needed to cremate him. He ran his hand down the rim of the coffin until he found a latch. Coffins were built on the same principle as suitcases. He slowly raised the coffin lid; but it wouldn’t open the whole way. The outer edge hit the interior of the roof. With the lid half raised, he could sort of see inside. It looked empty, unused, and had that fresh new car smell. He reached inside and felt around. Cool satin-like fabric neatly puckered to give it a textured look. It reminded him of a bathrobe his mother wore when he was four years old. He was half inside the coffin, keeping his balance by shoving one foot against the inside of the sheet metal cab. At what he decided must have been the head of the coffin—it could have been the bottom since there was no indication in which position the head went and to which end the feet pointed—a small rectangular wire frame holder had been fastened by bolts to the floor of the coffin. It was tall enough and wide enough to hold a live chicken. But Calvino figured whoever had gone to all this trouble wasn’t smuggling fighting cocks back to LA for Noi’s half-witted brother. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to pull off a professional job. An urn holding five pounds of ground-up ashes would slide nicely into the holder and along the side were buckles like on ski boots to snap the urn in place so as to keep it from rattling around inside like one of those ball-bearings from the Claymore in the morgue drawer. These guys had thought of everything.

  Calvino edged back out of the coffin. He was drenched with sweat; it was dripping off his chin, staining the satin inside the coffin. He looked around until he found a tire jack and then crawled back into the coffin, hitting his head on the coffin lid. Fuck, he said. He rubbed his head with his free hand before he used the tire jack to slit the satin finished fabric; he peeled it back revealing plywood panels along the side of the coffin. Someone had used expensive upholstery, he thought as he tore back the fabric. The fabric had been stapled to these sheets of plywood. Calvino searched for a seam in the plywood panel, it was dark and he relied on touch, and when he found a crack, he stuck in the jack and ripped back a piece of the plywood. It broke off and dropped onto the floor of the coffin without any sound; he stuck his arm in as far as he could, feeling around behind where the panel had been and his finger felt cool plastic. He got a firm grip and pulled, dragging a ziploc bag packed with something that had some heft out of the coffin and into the back of the cab. He sat back and looked at the bag, put it to the side and dived back in, pulling out bag after bag. He was out of breath, sitting there in sweaty clothes, feeling a cold damp go up the back of his spine. Each ziploc bag looked exactly the same, contained the same amount of white powder, as if filled by a pharmacist working off a prescription.

  He hoisted the Ziploc bag in his right hand, shifted it to his left hand, guessing the weight to be about one pound. His mind ran through some rough numbers. He was holding onto what translated at street level to one large hunk of cash. Maybe he was dripping sweat on a hundred grand bag. He smiled, thinking how they had them by the balls now. That is if he didn’t get his own balls shot off in the next ten minutes or ten days. It was like tracking down the nest where that bitch monster in Aliens had laid her eggs. The smugglers had created coffins that had every conceivable feature that money could buy. All that was missing were racing stripes. Tiny containers tailor-made to ship a big load of drugs and few pounds of ashes. It was brilliant: make up for the rest of the body weight with heroin. That would let them send out seventy-five kilo shipments. These guys would have been generating enough revenue to buy a personal army. He thought of the three men with the CAR-15s in the Emporium. And they had almost no risk or downside. Some guy in customs opens the coffin, sees the ashes in the holder. He doesn’t even ask for a bribe. Besides, no one is really looking for contraband inside a coffin which is accompanied by all those US Embassy papers. Who wants a whiff of some unrefrigerated dead body being shipped out of the tropics. They would be happy enough to see that the US Embassy papers were in order. Leave it to the Embassy to deal with its own dead people. Fuck this, Calvino could hear even the most corrupt customs officer say to himself. And at the LA end, same, same, thought Calvino. Who at LAX would be heartless enough to question, let alone deny, an American his birthright of being shipped home in style? Anyone coming home in a two-grand metal coffin would deserve some respect. The smugglers had used the Embassy to aid and abet their operation. They had gone into business with Uncle Sam.

  “Hey, asshole, what are you doing?” boomed a farang with an unmistakable American accent.

  Calvino stuffed one of the Ziploc bags under his jacket and turned around. He thought he recognized this voice but couldn’t quite put a face to it.

  A young farang stepped forward; he was wearing a Chicago Bulls T-shirt that showed off a muscular chest. New designer tennis shoes, too, thought Calvino. The man came straight at Calvino. The guy didn’t say another thing as he jumped onto the back gate of the pickup. He grabbed hold of Calvino’s jacket and in one smooth, clean jerk, pulled him out of the pickup. Calvino hit the ground hard. Looking up at the assailant, he remembered that voice. Calvino sat dazed for a moment, one arm of his second-hand jacket had been torn and sagged down to his elbow.

  “Not you again, you fucking asshole.” TJ threw a hard right, missing, as Calvino got to his feet. The severed sleeve hung by a couple of threads. He shook his arm and the sleeve fell onto the ground along with the Ziploc bag full of heroin. TJ looked at the bag, then at Calvino. TJ had a way with words. Not a good way with words, but a way that let anyone know that what he lacked in formal education he made up with intentional violence and a twisted, distorted passion to inflict harm.

  “I broke your fucking nose. That should have told you to stay away from this,” said TJ. He was pointing at the bag.

  “What’s your name, again?” asked Calvino.

  This took him back for a moment. “TJ and it’s the last new name you’re gonna hear in this world.” He came slowly at Calvino, who was keeping the bag of heroin between TJ and himself on the theory that this would make TJ more cautious.

  “Tell me something, TJ. Did you know I was going to deliver that birthday card?”

  “You are a stupid fuck. Of course, I knew you were coming. My job was to hurt you, to take you out.”

  “You didn’t do a very good job, did you?”

  “You got real lucky. But your luck has fucking run out. And I am going to finish what I started,” said TJ, pulling out a knife.

  Calvino, hands out, slowly backed away keeping the bag of heroin between TJ and himself. “Careful, TJ you are going to bust open the bag and then you will be in the shit.” He really didn’t want to shoot TJ unless he had no other option. Even killing someone as worthless as TJ inside a wat was bound to bring on one very huge amount of bad karma. Coming back as a limping soi dog would be a great revenge if Calvino shot TJ. This had to be one of the most stupid guys on the planet. How could he forget that Calvino was carrying a gun?

  TJ circled around the back of the pickup, jabbing at Calvino with a six-inch blade that caught flashes of bright sun, bouncing light over the grounds. That was some fucking knife, thought Calvino. The dope on the ground was making TJ watch his own feet as well as Calvino, who was dancing around the bag. Calvino was going over the birthday card delivery incident as he watched the knife play. Frank Hogan had hired him. Could Hogan have been the serial killer? Or had Hogan been working with the dopers and lent them a hand? That would have accounted for Hogan’s role in having Calvino’s face smashed up enough to put him out of action so when the LAPD came around asking him to take on a bodyguard assignment he would have to decline. None of it was adding up, the small numbers, the negative numbers, the new math of deceit and betrayal that was played on the abacus of Bangkok’s underworld.

  TJ started shouting a Thai nickname, “Lek, Lek, Lek.”

  It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds before a chubby Thai ca
me running, huffing and puffing, his eyes crazy from the heat of the crematorium, his fat hands clutched into hamhock fists as he pulled to a stop, standing next to TJ. This was, Calvino could see from the slack shape of the jaw, the crooked hairline, and the plum-shaped earlobes, one of Panya’s sons. All that was missing was the golfer’s tie. Lek didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. TJ looked at Lek. “Take him out,” TJ said.

  Lek stepped forward and made a couple of kickboxing moves, grunting heavily after each kick. Calvino ducked the kicks, slow, torpid shots that looked more like modern dance than kickboxing. Lek gave every indication of being incapable of hitting a stationary target let alone one that had any slight movement attached. This performance totally pissed off TJ.

  “Kick his fucking head in,” shouted TJ, little white gobs of spittle resting in the corners of his mouth. It wouldn’t be long until his mouth had a real froth flowing.

  “Lek, my main man. Your dad Khun Panya and your older brother Khun Chaiwat are gonna be sorry you helped this farang,” said Calvino.

  Lek stood with both feet firmly planted on the ground. He saw the bag of heroin on the ground for the first time. His jaw dropped and he said, “Oh, shit, look what the farang dropped on the wat grounds.” He looked up at Calvino, squinting as he looked into the sun.

  “How do you know my dad?”

  Another perfect American accent, thought Calvino.

  “Your dad’s here. So is Chaiwat. They’re in the parking lot waiting. I don’t think he would be all that happy if he thought you were getting the family into trouble, more fucking trouble than it is in already. Unless, of course, you really think your good friend TJ is worth going to prison for life. Up to you, Lek.”

  “Shut the fuck up, asshole.” TJ lunged forward and made a real effort to cut him. The blade sliced the remaining sleeve of Calvino’s jacket, putting a three-inch gash just above the cuff line. Calvino looked at the damage. “What are you, a tailor on speed?” Calvino turned out of the way as the blade thrust at him again. As the knife missed, Calvino lost his balance and went down on the ground. He reached inside his jacket—what remained of his jacket—for his .38 police special.