by Alisa Smith
Shively could hustle despite a game leg, and he poked me in the ribs to hurry me off the ship. Wincing, I did my best to stare about me. The busy port was lined with warehouses with huge logs piled outside for loading, and elephants stood nearby. One picked up a log easily in its curled trunk, and I felt a boyish excitement that I was going to live in this real-life circus. The air was hot and sticky, and I caught a glimpse of palm trees beyond the warehouses. A man bicycled by, two dead chickens swinging from his handlebars. He rang his bell and I jumped out of the way. Barefoot children slurped tea from abandoned cups on outdoor tables and a shopkeeper shook his fist in rage. Women wrapped in bright fabric thronged the side streets, with heavy rows of silver baubles covering their chests, brightly embroidered purses slung across their shoulders, and large baskets carried with ease on their heads. One woman had a long neck ringed with brass. She must belong to some remote tribe. It was better than any picture book, but Shively did not slow his pace. Rather, he shoved me into a waiting automobile, twenty years out of date but with the chrome polished to a high shine.
“I’d like to get a look around,” I grumbled. The man hadn’t let me out of his sight during the entire two-week journey from Seattle, and I was tired of his bossiness. He hadn’t a shred of conversation in him, and he scarcely let me talk to anyone else. His only outburst had been a boast. His boss—he was always coy on this point, stating no name—lived like a king, he said. Yet Shively had booked us in second class. He happily admitted he wasn’t fit for the formal dining room, and if he couldn’t go, I couldn’t either. He planned to stick to me “like a limpet,” he said. This he certainly did. Really, we should have travelled steerage for him to fit in properly, but I was glad he hadn’t dragged us down that far. I pretended to myself that he was my servant and prayed he would keep his mouth shut so the other passengers wouldn’t hear him ordering me around instead.
“You’ll soon have plenty of time to stare about like an imbecile,” was all he said, climbing in beside me and slamming the door.
As the car inched through the crowds of dark men in sarongs, I wondered if this foreign place would ever feel like home. Once we left the docks, the nest of streets had no clear plan, weaving between thatch-roofed houses crammed tight together. Men stood at the corners with large, hand-cranked machines, festooned with bells that jangled faintly as the giant gears turned. I lowered the window and stuck my head out to get a better look at what they were doing, but it was clear from the general smell that there was no modern sewer system. I spun the handle up fast.
“Satisfied?” Shively said. “That’s Bangkok.”
He was a master of the obvious.
I was glad when the crazed warren of streets opened to a boulevard lined with stately stone buildings in a familiar European style. I could have imagined I was in Paris, if I ignored the occasional strange glimpse of a golden tower. The shine was such that I knew the gold had to be real, and I wondered at the wealth of this country.
“Weren’t they touched by the war?” I asked.
“Use your eyes,” Shively said in his usual informative way. After a pause he relented. “Collaborators,” he said. “Knew where their bread was buttered.”
“Do you think they’ll be punished in the peace treaties?”
He shrugged. “They did a switcheroo before the war ended.” As we pulled up in front of the station, Shively gave a sigh. “Here at last.”
The Hua Lamphong Railway Station was not what I had expected from the name. With the magisterial white columns out front, it looked Italian rather than Oriental, which led me to hope that Bill did not have a symbolic turn of mind. Italians had a long history of revenge, from the Inquisition to the mafia. My palms were sweaty, I realized. I unclenched my hands.
Bill was the one that wanted to see me, I reminded myself. If he had vengeance on his mind, why go to the bother and expense of dragging me around the world?
Because he is supposed to be dead in America and cannot show his face there, my doubting mind replied. Because no one knows I am here and my disappearance would not be remarked upon.
I told myself to buck up. I had been prepared to die that day in Washington with Bill when the cops, armed to the teeth, had us surrounded. Of course it wasn’t a purely noble sentiment. The only alternative to death was capture, and I would be sentenced to life in jail with the man I hated for what he did to Lena, the gutsiest beauty I had ever known. While my hate had burned a long time, my bravery was unfortunately of shorter duration and, when not used that day, had expired. I was just cowardly me again. Once I raced out the back door away from the cops, I was free of Bill and that was suddenly the best thing I could imagine. Plus, I was rather more attached to this life than I had realized. I suppose that must be a persistent impulse or we would all off ourselves when the loneliness lasted too long.
So why was I going back to Bill when once my strongest desire was to be free of him?
I had questioned myself closely on this point on the long voyage over, when I had nothing to do but stare out to sea. Bill would never be a saint, I knew that, but if he was off the drugs, his genius would return. He was the criminal equivalent of an Olympic athlete. Only Bill could defeat the hangman and set himself up as a kingpin in Siam like it was the most natural thing in the world. I wanted to be part of his adventures once more.
“You done your lollygagging?” Shively asked. “We got no time to waste. We ain’t there, he’ll leave, and it’ll be another month till we can come again.”
“You don’t know where he goes in the meantime?”
Shively didn’t answer. Smugly, I thought to myself that he did not know. I jumped out of the car to follow him as he weaved through the crowd, bobbing and limping. He hurried through the main hall where tickets were sold under a high curved roof, and we passed little shops with the strange curlicues of the Siamese language adorning everything. It hit me that I was totally dependent on Shively. And on Bill. This put me at a serious disadvantage. What if Bill was crazy?
True, he was always crazy. Could he be even crazier than when I last saw him?
Too late to worry now that I was seven thousand miles from home. I was in it up to the neck.
Before I could make sense of the chaos inside the station, Shively deposited me on the platform where the trains pulled in. There were some old steam engines on the tracks, hissing and sighing. The destination signs were in English, which was a relief, even though the place names didn’t mean a thing to me. We stopped beside a sign that said Chiang Mai and a clock intoned the twelve strokes of noon.
I found myself pulled into a fierce bear hug. I tensed up, waiting for my bones to be crushed.
“By God, you’re here at last,” Bill said.
Tears came to my eyes. Damn them. But he called me by the name I had not heard for thirteen years. By God. Like I was capable of surprising people with my actions. Byron Godfrey would never surprise anyone.
“A good chance to see the world on someone else’s dime,” I said, recovering myself. I smiled and stepped back to inspect him. He was tanned and wore a white linen suit like he’d stepped from a photograph of the British Raj. He had been ashen when I last saw him, dishevelled and undone. Now he was buttoned down too tight, maybe. But only he knew what he needed to do to hold himself together. It would have taken immense willpower to escape his fierce addiction, but willpower was something he had in spades.
“I look good, don’t I,” he grinned.
Already, I was remembering his flaws—Bill Bagley was not a humble man.
“I better tell you,” he said, “I go by William Yardley now. Think you can remember that?” He laughed so hard that he wiped the tears from his eyes. It was a ridiculous alias and I guess he knew it. “You can still call me Bill.”
“That’s good. I can’t imagine you any other way.” I wondered why on earth he bothered with such a flimsy ruse, but I guess some evasion on official documents was necessary. Bill Bagley was supposed to be dead, while no one had
such expectations of William Yardley.
“Let’s get out of this fishbowl and I’ll show you my place.” He took my elbow and I realized that Shively had melted away. Well good riddance, I thought, as we walked across the platform and back into the main hall.
“We’re not taking a train?”
“My place in Bangkok is more comfortable. You can get settled before we think of trips. We’ll make some plans together, just like old times.”
I wanted to ask him, was he not angry at me? But he seemed so far from it, I didn’t want to spoil things. I supposed he could still murder me when we got somewhere private, but he had a childlike delight on his face that made this seem impossible. Unless the thought of murder could delight him? No, don’t be a fool, Byron.
“I have a few questions,” I said cautiously. Like how the hell did he get out of prison? I mean, I knew from the papers he had escaped numerous times after I last saw him thirteen years ago, so I guess he had honed that skill. Still, you would think security on death row would be tighter. But Bill understood that the greatest weakness in every system was human weakness, and he always knew how to exploit that.
“We’ll have a drink and catch up. At my palazzo.” He looked at me sideways to judge my reaction to this news.
“You have a palazzo?”
“Yep.”
“What’s a palazzo?” I said, and he laughed.
* * *
IT WAS A mansion on the river. The Chao Phraya, he told me, acting the tour guide as we stepped onto a large boat that must have been his because there was nobody on it but us and the tillerman. All the other boats leaving the busy pier were packed. His boat was long and skinny and low, painted with gold patterns, and had an ornate wood roof that served as shelter from the sun. Mats of green plants floated downriver slowly, and a white bird with long legs perched on its patch. It was undisturbed as our boat passed nearby. It found peace in chaos, somehow. Bill pointed out a spot on the opposite bank just north from where we set off.
“Palazzo is an Italian word?” I hazarded as we moved smoothly through the brown water toward it, and he nodded. I had to admit I was impressed. The mansion had two curving staircases leading to immense front doors, and it overlooked the river with a commanding air. The grounds were large, and untamed trees mingled with severe shrubberies. “Was Siam an Italian colony?”
“No,” he said. I expected to be mocked for my mistake, but Bill carried on. He must have developed more sympathy for fools like me in his second life. “It was never colonized, which they’re proud of. The Japs let them choose a quiet takeover during the war in the spirit of Asian brotherhood. Burma was British and had the hell pounded out of it. It’s a mess. That’s why I take my rest here.”
“You’ve been in Burma, too?” I wished I’d paid it more mind. I had stared many hours at an atlas aboard the ship, but I had focused on Siam, the place I was headed, as though by tracing the country’s circuitous outline I could understand what might happen once I was inside it. I had not imagined this, so I supposed, as Shively had happily pointed out, I was wasting my time. All I had made out was the shape of an elephant’s head, with a long trunk hanging down. Burma crowded the elephant’s forehead and China kissed the top of it, while French Indo-China was under its ear. All those places sounded exotic to this Washington boy.
“That’s where my profit comes from. I’ll explain later.” We stepped off the boat at his dock, and native servants materialized to take our bags while he touched my elbow to guide me up the smooth gravel path. I marvelled at this new Bill, the genteel host. We sat down on rattan chairs under a shade umbrella, and a servant deposited a tray of cocktails onto a curiously carved table. After he bowed and departed, Bill passed me a martini and raised his glass to me.
“I’m about to start some new adventures, and I don’t want them to be lost,” Bill said. “So I’m glad to have my chronicler back.”
“What do you mean?” I stared at him wildly.
“All your scribblings. Very entertaining.”
Holy Jesus. The journal that I had lost after I ran away from our last heist—did he have it? The note where I said farewell and I love you to his own girl, Lena? And those loose-leaf pages where I declared I hated him? Where I said he was crazy after I witnessed him murder a helpless old man? Where I admitted I left a clue for the police to find us?
I dropped my glass onto the paving stones and ran.
I made it as far as the dock hanging over the murky brown river. I had torn off my blazer and kicked off my shoes, ready to jump in and swim away as fast as the current would take me, but I found myself in a cobra squeeze.
“Be still, sahib,” a man whispered in my ear.
I could not see him because he had grabbed me from behind. I kept kicking but ineffectually as a child. Well, this was humiliating. He was evidently very tall, enough so to hold me off the ground. Then he dropped me and wrenched one of my arms behind my back and I groaned with the pain. There was a singing of metal, dagger from scabbard, and with his free hand he held a blade at my throat. I stopped struggling.
“The river is full of cholera,” Bill said as he reached the dock at a saunter. “Dass is only thinking of your safety.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
Bill waved his hand and Dass put down the blade. I realized I had been holding my breath and exhaled. Dass busied himself tying my ankles with rope loose enough that I could walk—but not run again. Bill handed me another cocktail.
“Come on, let’s talk this out.” He laughed as we headed up the path from the river for the second time today. “No wonder you got away from the cops. You’re damn fast.”
“Did they follow me?”
“No. They were happy to get Bill Bagley.”
“Jesus, Bill, you can’t know how sorry I’ve been all these years.” I slumped down in the seat of the lawn chair.
“Water under the bridge.”
I swatted a biting insect on my ankle. Tsetse fly? I wondered. Everything tropical and deadly I had ever read about in National Geographic as a boy was coming back to haunt me.
“It wasn’t on account of you I got nabbed,” he said. “I talked to Detective Brooke a day and a night when he tried to get my confession, and I got his story too. He never found that note you left. He lost us before the cabin in Chilliwack. Was over a month till that old man was found. Not much was left of him. A bear got there first and there was no discovery of human harm.” Bill’s shoulders twitched and he looked away. “I shouldn’t have killed him. I wasn’t in my right mind and I don’t remember much from those days. I was disturbed when I first read it in your diary. I think this next part of my life won’t be so dark. But will you see it my way? I’ll have to wait and see. You’re a hard judge of a man.”
I pressed the cold glass against my forehead. He was really rubbing my nose in it, showing me he could sniff out any secret I had. That damn lawyer must have betrayed me. How else would Bill get the key to the safety deposit box where I kept my journal? It was only to be opened on my death and given to Lena. Then she would know she did right to leave Bill, when she read the evil he’d done. I guess he knew that now.
“I’ve changed too. I wasn’t objective back then.”
“For damn sure. You only had one objective in your eye. My Lena. But I know I fucked that up myself. I was high as a kite the whole time on death row. But tell me, who wants to look at the world straight when he’s just ticking down the clock till he gets a noose round his neck? Now that I made it out, I regret my state when Lena came.”
“She visited you?” I thrummed my fingers on the arms of the chair. What did she do that for? Surely she was through with Bill after he hit her that last time and she ran away. I supposed anybody would respond to a dying man’s request.
“Yes, By God.” He stared into the distance, not speaking for a minute. “I was not at my best. I’d like her to know me now. God, quitting was hard. But whenever I felt tempted by the drugs, I read again wha
t you wrote and it stayed my arm. I didn’t want to be out of control like that. I’ll kill a man who means to harm me, but someone who never hurt a fly—well, that’s not right. I’m clean for good.”
I finished my cocktail and placed it back on the table, and the fellow Dass who had trussed me up like a pig silently brought another pitcher and set it down as though our encounter had never happened. This was a strange country, I thought. I waited for Dass to retreat before I asked my next question, though I finally gave up as he lurked awaiting orders in the middle distance. If he could hear us, I guessed Bill must trust him, so I had no choice in the matter. Once you were in his circle he did not hold back. I was unnerved to think Dass might know everything about me, while I knew nothing of him. I was at a disadvantage, as usual.
“So if it wasn’t my note, how did we get found?” I asked.
“Those damn people at the café. Remember where we had our last coffee before the shootout? I’d thought they were okay. That’s another reason to stay clean—I lost my judgment. There was a reward and they called us in. That’s why the Whatcom County cops came instead of federal men. That really pissed off old Detective Brooke,” Bill smirked. “Him and his scientific methods. Those hicks made him look a fool.”
A wild throaty call came from the trees, and my eye fixed on a blue bird with a tail over a foot long sitting on a hooked branch above us, bobbing slightly. “What’s that?”
“Some drongo thingumabob.” He raised his voice. “Dass?”
The Indian walked up to us and looked where Bill pointed. “Greater Racket-Tailed Drongo.”
“You need any animal name or its habits and Dass is your man. He keeps me alive in the jungles. You want to try a monkey curry?”
“It’s made from actual monkey meat?”
“Yep.”
“No thanks.” I felt uneasy at the thought of wandering through jungles. Would there be tigers? I’d seen them at the Seattle zoo, and they had evil in their eyes when they stared at me, hypnotically, from behind the bars of their cage. They had no use for mercy. I would not want to meet one in the wild.
