Calvino waited until she finished her first set, then paid a waiter to hand her a note. He nursed his bottle of Carlsberg as he watched the note being delivered. Her lips moved as she read the note, balancing the mike between the palms of her hands. He had written: “Kowit pleaded guilty. Your brother walks in six months. Jess got him a deal.” He also asked her for a song.
“This song is for Khun Vinee. Someone I would call my friend,” she said.
A spotlight picked out Calvino on the side as two thousand Thais stared at the one solitary farang. Then she launched into the song. It was a great song. Halfway through, he lifted off the stool, he was watching her on stage. She flashed him a big smile. “Someone I would call my friend,” he repeated to himself. The start of a very good pitch, he thought.
Sometimes just enough truth leaks through the cracks of the shell a person hides under to make them a human being. Noi had started to come out of that shell. She was doing okay now. She had come home.
There she was on stage singing, Hello, Hello, Hia, la ka? Tammai mai phoot?”
ABOUT one week later Calvino turned up at the “Office” on Sukhumvit Road; not his office, no, this was another place that turned over tables three or four times a night. The eleven to one crowd. After they left—stragglers always stayed behind for the next shift—the big kick in trade happened after two in the morning. By 4 a.m. no one could move. Smoky, noisy, crowded. The six in the morning shift at the “Office” had freelancers going around whispering, “four hundred baht.” That wasn’t for taking out the trash or buying donuts for the secretarial pool. That was the last round, the last price for a short-time as the sun appeared over Sukhumvit Road and anyone who wanted some action before sleeping through the heat of the day would at last pick a ying and take her back to his hotel. The Office was the epicenter of the Causeway; the heart and soul of the Comfort Zone. The yings freelancing out of that basement used the term “Office” when telling their parents, husband, or boyfriend where they were heading at night. The legitimacy in that word made their departure that much easier. And the yings used the “Office” amongst themselves as an in-joke. “See you at the Office.” Or “Did you see Jack at the Office last night?”
The old place, Thermae, had been called “Headquarters” or just “HQ”; but, as a sign of the times, proof that globalization had seeped into every crevice of planet earth, the new Thermae opened fifty meters away was now the “Office.” Metaphors, like the yings, were always changing, always following the money. The era of Vietnam had at last given way to peacetime, where the full-time preoccupation was making money. Swords into plows. The Berlin Wall had fallen. Vietnamese vets were grandfathers. The members of the Cause were looking not for adventure but to make a killing in the stock market. The Office was where they went to deal, to talk about CNBC stock analysis, to swap information about the currency markets.
Calvino arrived during the first shift. He had had a rotten day—a stake-out in Thonburi had blown a twelve-hour hole in his day trying to find a client’s secretary who had gone into hiding. She had made a five-grand error—dollar mistake—on a purchase order and he had called her into his office to show her the mistake. He told her that she could learn by the mistake. She never came back to the office after lunch. It was possible to teach by example; but it was nearly impossible to teach by illustrating the consequences of a mistake. Mistakes were taboo. They were not to be mentioned. They certainly weren’t the subject of any learning exercise. Pointing out a mistake was inflicting a wound, and Calvino knew the meaning of that. Wounds, however inflicted, had to be avenged.
When he found her, she said, “I cannot go back. My health is no good. I must rest now.” He passed that along to his client. “She’s quit. Health reasons.”
As a result of the long day, he hadn’t returned any of his phone calls; he hadn’t even had time to read the newspaper. At the table towards the back were a number of regulars he recognized. Guys who had been living on the Causeway before there had been a Cause or anyone had heard of the Internet. The table was divided into conversational factions. There was a small balding guy who smoked cigars and everyone called Cuba because he had gone to Havana nine times. He shouted at Calvino.
“Come over and look at this,” Cuba said.
He sat on a wooden stool behind one of the long bar counters. Next to Cuba a woman, her hair tied in pig-tails with pink ribbon, concentrated on the keys of a laptop as if she were picking apples out of a bin.
Calvino walked over to the counter. Cuba was holding out a piece of paper.
“Nueng’s making fewer mistakes,” said Cuba. He waved the paper around and then put it back on the counter.
Calvino assumed he meant her typing, but he might have meant the strange men Nueng attracted in the Office for short-time assignments. Cuba was one of those My Fair Lady men who had faith in their ability to turn a flower girl into a lady, or in Nueng’s case a butterfly into a larva, reversing the usual course of nature. He had phoned Calvino a month ago and asked if he might hire Nueng.
Calvino looked down at the paper. “How many mistakes?”
“Only eighteen,” said Cuba.
One of Nueng’s friends in a micro-dress with pudgy legs and scarred knees leaned forward, pulled on Cuba’s sleeve. “Nueng shouldn’t quit her night job. She very good at night work in this Office.”
Cuba tried to ignore Nueng’s friend, focusing on Calvino. “But there’s hope,” said Cuba. He nodded towards Nueng, who sat in the dim flickering light from the laptop screen typing about one word a minute, using her two index fingers.
“There’s always hope. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
Calvino pushed off and went to his usual table in the back. A number of people he knew were drinking together, talking and laughing. He sat down, catching the end of a conversation.
A mid-forties expat named Elroy shouted, “Another fucking wando theory.” He stopped as he saw Calvino. “Why don’t you give Nueng a fucking break? Give her a job. So she types fellatio with only one fucking ‘l,’ big deal.” Elroy had had too much to drink and slurred his words but this did not stop him from sounding belligerent, mean, spoiling for a fight. “Buy me a beer,” he said to Calvino. “Come on, Calvino, you are fucking loaded. Buy me a goddamn beer.” The table went quiet, then Elroy smiled. “After I take a piss, of course.”
Elroy staggered as he rose from his chair, almost knocking it over. After he disappeared up the stairs to the washroom, George Snow started in on how maybe Elroy ought to be added to the “List.” George’s List was of the long-term expats who ought to be dead. Most of the time it was someone who was so violent, obnoxious, or suicidal that no one could understand how he had managed to piss off so many dangerous people and still remain alive. There would be some poor asshole on a holiday that got killed on a motorcycle or was hijacked from the airport and murdered. Guys who knew nothing, knew no one, but ended up dead.
“Of course he hates you, Vinee. He’s been in Thailand twenty years, dreaming of becoming somebody. Only it didn’t work out that way. Elroy’s given it his best shot but he never made it to the Show. It eats him, man.” Snow liked baseball metaphors. “Minor league assholes just stay assholes; but major league assholes, they at least get respect.” What Snow meant was the major league player got a shot at immortality—the ultimate home run.
But Calvino didn’t catch this at first; he wondered what they were talking about—first Elroy’s comment that he was loaded and then Snow’s suggestion that he had been called up to the major league. He had been called a lot of things in his time but having money was not a slur anyone had ever hurled at him. “George, what are you talking about? And what was Elroy talking about me being loaded?”
George pursed his lips and rocked his head back and forth, staring at Calvino like the man was having him on and it was fifty-fifty whether George was going to add Calvino to the List. “You’re playing coy, right? The old Sam Spade cool and laid back in his moment of glory.”
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br /> “Coy about what?” He wasn’t really paying attention to George. Across from the table a long-bodied ying in a black tank top and mini-skirt leaned against a table, her legs pumping to the music.
“Yeah, yeah. Cool. Play it out. You just gave Father Andrew twenty grand to finish the school in Klong Toey, and that is US dollars kind of grand, and you can’t buy Elroy a beer? Elroy hates you. Christ, you’re lucky I don’t hate you.”
Calvino’s attention was drawn to the ying’s shoes—white eight-inch platforms—billboard size advertising space—newsprint and headlines had been printed in newspaper columns on the shoes. The ying turned, displaying each foot. One shoe was themed for the Kennedys; a black and white photo of JFK Jr. stenciled on the back. The other shoe had an image of Lady Di.
“Who told you I gave Father Andrew twenty grand?”
“He did, man. I just got back from interviewing him this afternoon. I don’t know what you get out of this. Sainthood? Your name over the entrance? First dibs on the babes in each year’s graduating class? But I am certain you have it figured out.”
As the ying turned around, he saw the silhouette of a small plane on one shoe and on the other a Benz. The toy plane and Benz were made to scale. The plane had tiny flashing landing lights on the wings. The headlights of the tiny Benz flashed. Instruments of luxury and wealth and death and loss.
Calvino glanced down at his mobile phone and saw Father Andrew had phoned; his number was left like a footprint on the tiny digital screen, but he hadn’t phoned back. Now he knew why Father Andrew had wanted to speak to him. To thank him for a gift that he hadn’t made.
“You see the Bangkok Post article about how the police say Ramsey was the serial killer,” said another regular at the Office.
Calvino’s head dropped and he let out a long sigh. “Daniel Ramsey.”
“That wando who got killed at the Emporium,” said Snow. “Who would have thunk it?” George liked to say “thunk” for “thought” especially around the Office girls, hoping they would pick up these words and use them to confuse the tourists.
Calvino put down a five-hundred-baht note. “See that Elroy doesn’t go without what he needs.”
“You’re not going, man?” said George Snow. “You just got here. Did you see that the police figured out Ramsey was the serial killer? Great story. What do you think, Vinee, you were there? Did Ramsey off those five guys?”
What Calvino thought was that the money to Father Andrew and the newspaper story had a special message for him. He was being bought off. They knew how to get to him.
Calvino glanced at his watch. “Got to go and count my money.”
He walked over to girl with the bad-news shoes. The flashing lights from the toy plane and Benz danced off the chrome of the jukebox. She had seen him staring at her.
“You wanna spend the night?”
The answer was always a given: yes, of course, I want to spend the night.
He hadn’t asked her name. Not that it mattered. She stepped out with the Benz leading the way, followed by the plane, one step after another. They left the Office together and Calvino was thinking he had taken all the bad news with him.
BY the time Calvino had managed to get Jess on the phone, he had dialed three times, and then had been put on hold for ten minutes. He sat in the dark. The flashing lights on the Benz and plane were like fireflies. The ying sat legs crossed, naked on the edge of his desk. She kept her shoes on. He had asked her not to take them off. Only the street lights outside his office cast enough illumination for him to see the dim outline of the Bangkok Post on his desk. The five farangs who police have theorized were killed by Daniel Ramsey of Los Angeles, said the article. He didn’t want to see such lies in the light. In the dark they didn’t look any better.
Finally Jess came onto the phone. “Hey, Jess, how you doin’? I got a couple of questions about twenty grand getting into Father Andrew’s bank account and the word going out that I am the donor. We know that ain’t the way it happened. There’s something else we know didn’t happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know who the serial killer was?” Calvino asked him.
The ying was flicking her tongue in his ear.
“Danny Ramsey.” Jess’s voice was distinct and firm.
“Wrong. It wasn’t Ramsey. That’s what is printed in the newspaper. But we know they got some bad information. Chaiwat is the serial killer. You know he majored in computer science at the University of San Francisco. After you returned to LA, Pratt and I went back to their house and I checked out his computer. I even know the nickname Chaiwat used with other members of the Cause. Moondance. One word.”
“Good name.”
She was moaning slowly, unbuttoning his shirt.
“He had built a massive data base of the Cause-members. He also knew what Ramsey and Kowit were doing. He helped himself to the supply of heroin and ran the five bodies of the men he murdered into San Francisco. Check it out. A funeral parlor run by a Chinese family on Russian Hill handled the arrangements. One of his own university buddies is a member of the Russian Hill family. You want me to go on?”
“Pratt already told me what you found in the computer. It seems the hard disk crashed so all the information got lost.”
Calvino’s voice was cracking up. She had his shirt off and threw it across the office. He saw a dim blur of JFK Jr.’s face on the back of her shoe.
“You are saying that the information got lost, is that it? But I read the information. So did Pratt. Our hard disks didn’t crash. So why are you quoted in the Bangkok Post as saying Danny Ramsey was the serial killer? Why did you let the bullshit story go out?”
“Because that is the deal we made. Chaiwat, his two brothers, and his father have gone into the federal witness protection program. They are going to put Kowit and about six other bad guys in prison. We have destroyed a major smuggling operation. And one more thing. You were right. There was someone in the Embassy. A local hire who had an extra twenty million baht in his wife’s bank account that he couldn’t explain.”
Anyone could have put the money in the account to frame him.
“Remember that movie where they framed the cop with the transfers into his account?” asked Calvino. “Are you sure it wasn’t Morgan?”
“All the evidence points to a local staff at the Embassy. But this has been a major embarrassment for Morgan. I mean the guy did work for him.”
“So that’s it. Morgan is clean and the local guy gets collared and everyone has agreed to Plan A. We’re saving face and saving ass, big time. And no Thai image is tarnished if the farang was the killer, right? And no American image is hurt if a Thai who worked at the US Embassy takes the fall. A trade-off, right, Jess?” He couldn’t help but feel bitter.
“Sometimes to do a higher right, you have to compromise with some smaller wrongs. If we go after Chaiwat no jury is going to believe any member of that family’s testimony. We lose, Vincent. And we can’t lose this case. We must shut these people down. No matter how we play it, nothing is going to bring back the five dead guys. Chaiwat will pay for what he’s done. The Embassy will make certain nothing like this happens again. What’s the point of ruining careers and reputations?”
She was unbuttoning Calvino’s trousers.
“Next life is when all of this comes right.”
“There is that.”
Calvino didn’t say anything as he put down the phone. He pulled the ying up and sat her on the desk. She seemed startled.
“It’s okay. I want to read your shoes.”
He lifted her right foot and read—gossip, scandal, stock exchange numbers, and cartoons. Calvino translated her shoes to her in Thai and she started to laugh. She had no idea the shoes had any meaning. She laughed so hard she had to pee. Calvino gave her directions and she staggered down the corridor to the restroom.
Calvino sat alone, thinking about Jess, the all-American hero, who had become very Thai on the phone. He told Calvino si
nce returning to Los Angeles he had learned a lot, and that his life had changed a great deal but that along the way he had both lost and found something. What he found was that life was like a professional wrestling match, all show, posture, growls, no real punches or kicks thrown that are intended to land. What he had lost was the reality of what had happened. That Calvino had paid out the four grand from his own pocket because he thought this was going to be the only way to get him out of the country alive. He had also made himself lose the memory of the dead bodies in the Emporium; the men they had killed. That had not been professional wrestling; that had been the real, lethal thing. Or the men in Calvino’s car who had been killed by the bomb. He had thought how to make this equation of what had been found equal, what had been lost. Jess wired Father Andrew the money. He would like to believe it had nothing to do with the compromise over the destruction of the evidence showing Chaiwat had been the killer. The money had another purpose—an atonement for allowing evil to compromise good. Somehow in a world where things were at strange angles, this had put things level. Jess had tried to put things right. But could this kind of atonement ever really make things right?
He reached for the phone to call Pratt. His hand lay on the receiver for a couple of minutes. He didn’t make the call. He would wait and let Pratt phone him in his own time, and, in his own way, explain that when one dances in the shadows of a big city, truth is eclipsed daily. In this theatre of darkness the expectation is to try and do right without stumbling in the process. Because those who fell hit the ground hard. He pulled open his desk drawer and took out the baby powder and sprinkled it all around his office. He would sleep in the office tonight. He wanted to track the ying’s movements in the morning. He wanted to know where those bad-news shoes had gone during the night.
He threw down a mat in front of the desk and, after they made love, he let her remove her shoes. By the time Calvino had drifted off to sleep he was back in that village . . . and stood passively by as he watched one more time the stranger in black being thrown into the flames.
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