by Alisa Smith
“Just get out of here,” he said. “Mend your ways, boys.”
After a startled pause, they stared at each other and jumped into action. They threw down their plank and ran onto their boat. As they yanked back their escape route, the Quarlo rocked gently. How could their evil presence have been so light? They fired up their motor, deafening, and it spewed black smoke as they departed northward.
I tugged against the ropes around my wrists.
“Stay still, Lena. I’ll get you.”
Frederick laid his gun down on the lifejacket box and pulled a small knife from a sheath around his calf. That must be how he had got loose. When I thought he had given in to despair about his boat, he had reached down for the knife when he sagged against the mast. He had cut his ropes when the bandits were distracted by counting our money. He had been prepared, and I needed to be more like that.
By the time the boat disappeared around the point, Frederick had freed my hands. Swaying a little, I leaned forward and a drop of blood fell onto the deck. Then another.
“Hang on to the mast. Just one more minute.” He whipped off his shirt. “Now press this tight on your neck,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
I laughed. I sounded a little hysterical, I thought. But I couldn’t see my neck—how could I see how bad it looked?
The boat started spinning around me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JANUARY 11, 1946
BILL, WARNER, AND I were ensconced in the back corner table of the Oriental dining room, away from prying eyes and ears. The small talk was going well. I felt good about myself, since I was the one who had made this meeting happen. If a business deal came out of it, I’d have proved my worth to Bill. I wouldn’t feel like I was sponging off him at the palazzo any longer.
Warner looked dapper in a white linen suit jacket and he already had a tan, which was set off nicely against the white. I was still pale as a fish’s belly since I tried to stay out of the sun. Otherwise I just burned and got a red face that made me look like a drunk. Bill matched Warner linen suit for linen suit, but he was in a dove grey jacket. Like a gangster on holiday, I thought. Pretty much what he was.
“Your Burmese gems sound interesting,” Warner said.
A Siamese waiter set down a tray with a crystal decanter, three glasses, and a bucket of ice. Bill waved him off and served us out, tonging a single cube into each glass.
“I have something even better,” Bill said. “Guns. It’s a good business to get into right now. The world is more unsettled than ever.”
“I don’t know. Guns create a lot of hassles,” Warner said. “This is good bourbon.” He raised the glass to admire the golden tones as they glowed under the chandelier.
“The gems could be premature. They’re not cut yet. I brought in an appraiser from the States to see if they’re worth anything, but I don’t have his report yet. This guy Levitsky. I used him before and he knows his beans.”
“Levitsky?” Warner asked, still studying his drink, which was already nearly empty. “Is that a Jew?”
“Yeah, go figure, a gem guy who’s a Jew. Hazard of the business,” Bill said. “But I ain’t asking you to buy my gems. My main aim, forgive the pun, is to sell my guns to you.” He raised his thumb and finger to Warner, like he was firing at him. It didn’t feel like a joke somehow, and I poured another round for everyone, in case it would jolly things up.
Warner said nothing, but just looked around the restaurant, as though hoping that someone would come to his aid.
“I heard there’s a German in Burma who’s appraising,” Bill continued, staring intently at Warner’s face. “If that’s more to your liking.”
“No need,” Warner said. He stood up, downed his drink, and slammed the glass on the table. “Good night, gentlemen,” he said, and turned for the door.
“That really set him off,” I said. “What’s his problem?”
“His problems are increasing every day,” Bill said with satisfaction. His eyes followed the backs of two men who, just after Warner, left the room.
Bill topped up my glass, which I took as a signal to stay. About ten minutes later, he sidled out of the booth, and I followed him through the hotel gardens and back to the car. Despite the botched deal, Bill was in a grand mood. Other things were going well, apparently. There was a bumper crop of opium, he said, and he’d got it for a good price. As we drove over a pothole, Bill gripped the door handle as the car jolted.
“Watch it,” he growled at Dass, who was driving. Bill’s mood was changeable as always, and he seemed suddenly dour. Perhaps it was because he had downed much of a bottle of bourbon.
Dass gave him a grim look in the rearview mirror. “It is not I who put these potholes in the road. Could you not ask your government friends to spend some money on the paving?”
The old Bill would have torn a strip off anyone who gave a saucy retort, if anybody even dared to try it. He’d as like throw you out of the car, back in the day. I was a little sorry to see that Dass would not be getting any such comeuppance. Bill was still the boss, after all.
“I can’t fucking believe they’re here,” he muttered. “Just like she said.”
“What are you talking about?”
He wiped his hands across his face. “Forget it. Some crazy old fortune teller. Just keep an eye on Warner. What a smug bastard.”
“I didn’t like him.”
Bill whacked me on the back, surprising me. “You’re a good man, By God.” His face was suddenly illuminated as another car approached and the headlights beamed through our window. His expression was serious. Another effect of the massive quantity of bourbon, I supposed.
“We’ve never talked about your cut in my new venture,” he said. “I won’t leave you hanging.” He pulled a pad of paper out of his suit pocket and scrawled something in pencil there. As another car passed us, lighting up the interior, I saw “25” writ there under the brief glare and I couldn’t help smiling. It was more than fair.
“What about him?” I asked quietly, jerking a thumb at Dass. I was partway sticking up for his interests, and partway just curious. I wasn’t sure which feeling was stronger. In any case, I had to perform the accounting of it, so I might as well find out.
“Ten,” Bill said, but there was no response from the front. “Hear that, you nosy bastard? You get ten percent.”
Dass still said nothing.
“What exactly does he do?” I couldn’t keep the bitter tone out of my voice. I was tired of competing with Bill’s never-ending string of new sidekicks. I reminded myself I had a bigger share. I deserved it, because I’d been with him longer.
“He does what he’s told,” Bill growled. “Don’t think that’s so easy. I demand loyalty to the bitter end. I need men who’d take a bullet for me. That applies to you too, By God.”
“You know I would.”
“You didn’t quite, that last time. In Washington. You ran for it.” But he was grinning at me, to show there were no hard feelings. Or at least that’s what I hoped his expression meant.
“I did get shot, remember?” I rolled up my sleeve to show the scar on my right forearm. There was a red dint in the centre with white raised around it, the size of a quarter. The same scar was mirrored on the front and back of my arm, because the bullet had exited clean. That was lucky, since it was not treated by a doctor but in a Chinese opium den. I wished the scars were more perfectly round so people might actually guess it was a bullet. They probably thought I burned myself cooking or got stabbed by falling onto a stick. Anyhow, I wore long sleeves.
“Well, I’d do that for you. One bullet anyhow. You can depend on it, or my name’s not—” He paused. “Shit. William Yardley.” He let out a half-crazed laugh. “You heard that, Dass? I’ll take a bullet for you, you do the same for me?”
“To the death,” Dass said.
“No need to go that far. Just take it to the leg or something.”
We were at the pier now and Dass pulled int
o the parking garage. It was quiet on the sidewalk except for a few late-night vendors crouched over their charcoal fires, waiting to roast slim skewers of meat when they found a purchaser. I knew the meat sat outside raw for hours, but I was suddenly hungry and bought a couple of skewers. I felt proud that I had understood the man say “chicken” in the Siamese tongue when I pointed at the meat I wanted. I had no gift for language but I was making progress. I was pleased also to help the white-bearded old man with some money because he looked poor, in dirty clothes and no shoes. He smiled with beatific happiness when I handed him my small coins. Shouldn’t I learn to be satisfied with less?
As we walked the last thirty feet to the dock, I bit into the skewer, but it was hard against my teeth. “What is this, anyways?” I said, staring at it in puzzlement.
“That is the leg, sahib.”
Bill burst out laughing again. “Enjoying your peasant’s gristle?”
Chickens in Siam were much different than the fat white ones at home. I’d seen them wandering the streets of Bangkok, small brown birds on tall lean legs. They were made to run, and I was eating nothing but the shin bones.
“It was only a nickel,” I said.
“Could be worse. Could’ve been the foot.”
Standing on the dock, Bill pulled out a flashlight to shine on the yellow flag as he waved it, so the boatman would see us from the other side. Where we were standing was otherwise dark. There were no streetlights, and only the occasional mansion along the river had lights burning.
I had not relished the two strings of meat I had wrestled off the leg with my teeth, so I threw the other skewer in the water. A moment later there was a surge where the skewer had landed, and a sheen, on eyes. Gigantic lizard eyes. “Oh Christ, it’s one of those water monitors.”
“Varanus salvator,” said Dass.
This one was the biggest I’d seen, about five feet long and its tail was as thick as my thigh. “Do they attack people?”
“I would not willingly swim with it,” said Dass. “They have a venomous bite and attack other creatures. I have not heard of them eating a man, but they do eat corpses.”
“I’ll try not to be a corpse,” I said.
Our longtail boat cut smoothly through the water and the driver turned it sideways to the dock where it bumped gently, twice. He threw a rope to Dass, who held the boat steady while Bill and I climbed on board and settled on the seats in the centre. Dass jumped on, sitting on the seat across from us near the gunwales, closer to the water, as the driver pulled away.
“If Lena ever comes,” I said, “what do you want me to say?”
Bill turned his face away, suddenly interested in the black water. “You can explain how you’ve seen me and I’ve changed. You can swear to it I’m clean. I think it’s best to set her up elsewhere until she’s ready to see me. She might need to adjust.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” I said, and this was the truth. It might take her a very, very long time to adjust. As long as eternity, perhaps. In any case, I was glad the moment of her arrival was reserved for me alone. For old time’s sake. I would hear about her life from her own mouth and for once I would know more than Bill did.
He was always one step ahead of me. I had discovered Warner, but Bill seemed to know things about him that he would not tell. Yet he hadn’t ruled out working with the man. What kind of queer fish was he? There must be plenty of other people who would be interested in our products. I would talk to Bill about it when the time seemed right. For now, I would keep a close eye on Warner. I did not trust him.
* * *
AT THE TRAIN station, I waited an extra hour past the time Bill said, my eyes darting from the tracks to my wristwatch to the giant clock above the doors. Had Bill got it wrong? No, of course not, I thought, as the train from Sattahip finally arrived with a slow gasp. It was the train that was off schedule. As the dirty crowds streamed off, I felt a pang that Lena would have had to endure such lowness. Why did she have to be on a third-class train? What a shabby introduction to the country. Men and women alike spit foul red betel juice onto the platform, making a mess. I had asked Bill to explain the allure of this habit that left the teeth black. It did not even stop the women, though it spoiled their beauty before age thirty. “It’s addictive, of course. Narcotic and stimulant. Ride the roller coaster,” he said, and his eyes blazed up for a moment. “But it’s unrefined and weak. Too cheap for my interest.”
I stood on the platform a long while after the last person came off the Sattahip train, to make sure I had not missed Lena somehow. I could not fail Bill in this. The station was quiet now, and idly I watched a woman sitting cross-legged in front of a low table where she brushed white paste onto a small square of shiny leaf. She added a pinch of chopped betel nut, and folded it up into a tiny packet. She did a brisk business in small coins.
Lena was not coming.
Maybe she felt Bill’s presence here, somehow, and it was keeping her away like a magnet’s pole reversed. Or had Bill’s mysterious sources been stringing him along, telling him what he wanted to hear? If so, I hoped Shively would pay for this infamy. I walked out the main doors and threw my arm across my eyes to shield them from the sudden glare. The one cab driver malingering outside jumped to life at the sight of me, no doubt dreaming of the American dollars in my pocket. He approached me expecting to carry my luggage, but I showed him my empty hands and he opened the door for me.
“Pier thirteen,” I said, and thought for the first time of its unluckiness. Strange that I hadn’t before. I hung my head out the window, hoping to catch a cool breeze across my face. Like a dog, I thought. I realized how these sensitive creatures must feel as the smell of the city assaulted my nose: rotten fruit, ox dung, and the general tragedy of dead things. My eardrums were also under trial. When the Siamese people were not utterly silent they were capable of astonishing shouting, especially when organizing crowds. I could relate to such differences between the personal and the public performance.
When I finally got back to the palazzo—the boatman did not jump to his duty so promptly when I was not with Bill—I walked into the airy sitting room on the ground floor. It had an echoey feel. Bill’s furniture was top quality, but there was not enough of it to fill the large space. The old owners had to clear out in a rush in their disgrace, but they took all their favourite things. It made the place feel sad and incomplete.
“Bill?” I called out. He would not be happy with my report.
“Sahib?”
I was startled to find Dass suddenly at my elbow. “Jesus, man, you’re like a cat,” I said.
“He’s at the warehouse. He wants you to meet him there.”
“He could’ve told the boatman,” I grumbled. “Now I’ve got to cross the river again.”
Dass smiled and shrugged. “He has his ways.”
I trudged down to the boat again. At least the breeze over the river was fresher than elsewhere, though it was just a few minutes of reprieve. There were no cabs at the pier when I got there, so I took a rickshaw. I always felt guilty relaxing while some poor fellow peddled away under the tropical sun. At least I was not a heavy load, and he seemed glad to get my handful of coins. Such is life, I reflected, as I stood at the warehouse door, waiting for my knock to be answered. I could not fix the driver’s misfortune by not riding in his rickshaw—it would require fixing the whole society.
The door swung open and I moved quickly to lock it behind me, pulling the heavy iron bar into place. It was blessedly cool in the dimness. My eyes took a moment to adjust and I made out Bill approaching. Wooden chests were stacked along the walls. I whistled. “That’s some haul.”
“Yes,” he said, distractedly. “Any news?”
I paused a moment, thinking how to soften it, but I could not. “She wasn’t there.”
“Damn it, what went wrong?”
He ran his hands through his hair and drifted over to the opium boxes. I followed him to where he stared down at his fortune, forlorn. “This is
top grade, but what’s the point of it all?”
“Riches?” I said.
“True enough, but it made the general and the chief greedy. They took a larger cut.”
“How much?”
“Ten percent each, off the top. But they have me over a barrel. They control the mountain passes through Burma and northern Siam. To protect me from bandits—which is mainly themselves.”
“How much did you get to keep?”
“About seven hundred pounds.” He shifted aside a box to make a chair. “A fortune is always a comfortable place to rest your dogs,” he said, patting the space beside him.
I sat down, though I did not find it so comfortable as he suggested. A pile of hay would be softer and have a less bitter smell. Actually, after a moment I felt a bit nauseous. It was hard to imagine the attraction of this stuff now that I was up close to it.
“So she wasn’t there,” he said. “I don’t understand. He said it would be today.”
“Who said?”
“A little birdie.”
“Did your birdie tell you anything about her life now?”
“She’s wrapped up in military things.” He waved his hand as though her doings were some kind of magic.
“Still? The war’s over.”
“You think the War Department is going to roll over and die? They’re finding new projects. For one thing, Uncle Sam sent that money to Chief Phao. He’s building his army with it.”
“But the chief’s insane. Remember the story where he drowned a man with his bare hands? He seemed to enjoy the whole thing too much.”
“He can keep order, and that’s worth something to a lot of people. He helped me out, after all.” He patted his opium box fondly. “Want to grab a drink and celebrate my haul?”
His haul—as though he had no partners in it. That was the Bill I remembered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TO FORGIVE A THIEF
I WOKE UP lying across the kitchen bench of the Quarlo.
