UNKNOWABLE (Murder on the Mekong, Book 2)

by Rivers, Hart;

  No wonder that as soon as he mentioned using it on most guys, it was all over. They were more than ready to blab and blab about what they had done, what everyone else had done or taken, or who was even talking about cheating The Mouse.

  This guy tied up in front of him, for example.

  “Confession is good for the soul,” Mouse intoned over Morrison wailing about a funeral pyre. “And now, my child, go in peace.”

  And one piece of Willie Pete the size of a communion wafer, delivered with a pair of tongs onto the wayward sinner’s left thigh, ignited the fabric of his pants and smoked its way past skin and nerves, and ate into his leg bone while he bucked and writhed in agony, shrieking with his wide-open mouth.

  Then he shrieked louder. He had to know what was coming, with his eyes bugged out and screaming as loud as anyone can with their mouth wired open, as Mouse approached with another piece, held by a dental appliance.

  He paused to make the delivery, wanting to time it with the last record the colonel had requested, and pointed at the men reporting to him. “You see this poor fuck? He tried to build himself up into somebody important, somebody who don’t play by the rules. He’s not lookin’ so important now, is he? Anybody else here with any big ideas about going independent will talk with Willie Pete, same as him. Got it? Pass the word.”

  As the needle connected with the vinyl and “Viva Las Vegas” wound up the show, Mouse thought of the priest who had liked him too much. Maybe some extra communion was in order. So was wrapping the ornamental sash around the mouth, billowing out white phosphorous smoke.

  But even with all the theatrics, Mouse didn’t feel like he was finishing with quite the same splash as his little demo with the Fish, and it didn’t help that KRZY was trying to break in early. Janis was competing with Elvis in his head. Hopefully the rumor Missy had passed along about a couple of traveling shrinks trying to infiltrate the system by cozying up to users would help compensate for any disappointment Colonel Vo might feel about his performance. Especially if he didn’t appreciate the wit it took to wind the final lyrics up with: “Viva Las Laos! Viva Las Laos! Viva, Viva, Las Laos!!!”

  Later that night, Mouse nursed the beer Missy had brought him. He appreciated how she would touch his shoulder, disappear for a while to arrange a few more things in their little bungalow or mess around in the kitchen, then return with another beer, no questions. He was okay now, but it had taken longer than usual to feel right in his head again once the show was over and the RVN colonel was gone.

  Finally, he patted his lap and said, “Missy, have a seat.”

  It seemed like she hesitated a moment, but the next thing he knew she was on his lap, her arms around his neck. And just like his Aunt Rosa after Uncle Jimmy got home from a long day or night from working for Uncle Louie, she simply said, “You had long day. Everything okay?”

  “I think so, but…I’m not sure, Missy.”

  “No? Somebody mean to you? I poke his eyes out!” She tapped the hollows just under his own eyes and he snickered. She was funny but, even better, she was grateful for everything, and with Tony gone, at least he had one person around here he could trust.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he confessed, “but something don’t smell right. Tony told me to keep the books clean, the guys straight, do my job and all that. Just stay away from The Man at the top of the food chain here and deal with whoever he sends down. This Colonel Vo—”

  “Good, you say his name right, very important. And you bow like I show you?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Think I got points for that. But anyways, the last thing this Vo says to me is, ‘Against strong positions, play safely.’ Then he bows, like he just gave me some special, secret handshake ’cause he likes me, then gets in his chopper and takes off. You got any idea what that was about? Maybe some goo…uh, Asian thing I should know about?”

  Missy ducked her head and was quiet in that nice way she had when she was thinking, and then looked up with a smile. She cupped his cheeks, just like his Aunt Rosa did before she pinched the shit out of them and showed her affection by telling him to eat, eat!

  “It is important rule for game of Go,” Missy explained. “I teach you. But first…” She bounded off his lap, and before he could grab her back she was already making her way to the kitchen. “You eat.”

  “What’s for dinner?” Mouse called after her. “Besides another beer.”

  Missy poked her too-pretty head around the corner and grinned. “Your favorite. Bun Tit Nuong.”

  Mouse’s stomach rumbled in anticipation of one of his favorite dishes. He still couldn’t pronounce it, but he was salivating already for the caramelized BBQ pork, the vermicelli noodles, the spices. Like everything else here the combinations were exotic and wonderful.

  He just wished he didn’t have this hunch that something wasn’t right. Even worse was this awful sense of dread that if Missy found out about KRZY she might leave him—along with Tony and everybody else, too—and if that happened, God help them all.

  Chapter 15

  Kate was sick. She had been sick for at least a week; how long exactly was impossible to tell. She only knew that she faded in and out of agony, kept scratching as if she had hives, and had such horrific stomach cramps she ended up with a drip for dehydration.

  Today, though, the IV had come out and Phillip was smiling, saying, “Good girl, that’s my Katherine,” when she managed to eat the soup he fed her and not throw it back up.

  He was sitting at her bedside now, reading, unaware she had awakened from her latest nap. Perhaps today they would talk. He had said he would explain everything once she was up to it, but until then a serious conversation could wait.

  She had a lot of experience at the waiting game with Phillip Jordan. Ever since he had pulled up beside her on a street in France, calling to her, “Catherine!” It was a case of mistaken identity as he believed her to be a young starlet by the last name of Deneuve who had made a splash in a movie called The Twilight Girls. Despite a slight difference in age and citizenship, she being several years older and recently arrived from UCLA for a semester abroad, and the different spelling of her name, the resemblance was so remarkable that it wasn’t the first time she had been stopped this way.

  It was, however, the first time a chauffeur-driven car with flags attached had offered her a ride.

  What if she had just said “no”? That one fateful decision was the beginning of the ride of a lifetime, with more twists than The Giant Dipper in Belmont Park; and even knowing that decision had ultimately landed her in a strange room in God knows where with all the symptoms of opiate withdrawal, she could never regret that the man who became her first lover was with her now. God, she was so grateful to have Phillip this near—close enough to touch his arm.

  The book was immediately put beside a waiting tray with more soup. And flowers.

  Kate buried her nose into the warmth of his neck and inhaled the scent she associated with Phillip, and Phillip alone. No one wore Guerlain Vetiver quite like him, or Savile Row like him, or thought like him, or had a worldview that blew out the borders of her mind like him. His finely chiseled face and body, made for polo matches on kingly estates, remained so ageless there had to be another portrait of Dorian Gray aging somewhere on his behalf. Perhaps the pale, cadaver-like thing that had said she was his guest had made a bad trade with the devil while Phillip shrewdly negotiated another kind of deal.

  While Phillip stroked her hair and whispered, “That’s my Kate…” she took comfort in knowing that nothing could touch her or hurt her as long as he was here. Her head was still not completely clear, but at least she could feel him body and bone and knew he was real and not a delusion.

  She also knew it was time for them to talk. Really talk.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “We can wait another day. Here, let’s feed you some more soup—”

  “It’s not like you to avoid the inevitable, Phillip. And that makes me nervous.” Kate pulled away to meet him eye t
o eye. She had always likened his to a shade between steel and stormy weather, gray with a hint of blue. They were softer than usual, more like warm flannel to wrap up in while outside raged a monsoon. “Should I be?”

  His hesitation confirmed as much, but he said, “It’s complicated. And all that matters right now is that you are safe.”

  “Where?” She gestured to the opulent surroundings, with a filmy mosquito net surrounding the plush bed, a ceiling fan turning slowly above her. The fountain, the wind chimes, so familiar now, and the scent of sweet jasmine outside the open French doors. It made her wonder if she had dreamed or hallucinated the earlier room without windows, and what seemed a thousand lit candles surrounding her on the floor. If so she could have also imagined the pale creature who reminded her of Gollum.

  “We are the guests of a certain associate that you may or may not recall meeting.”

  “Oh.” Apparently he had been real. “He’s a friend of yours?”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that, but our families have known each other for some time. He comes from a long line of Corsicans with a great deal of influence on the international landscape, with quite a bit of it here in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, Paulu inherited some rare skin disorder with an equally unfortunate tendency to be abrasive. On the positive side, he’s always been eager to provide some assistance that may be rewarded down the line.”

  “Paulu.”

  “Yes, Paulu Salvatore Luna, his given name. But everyone knows him as The Pale Man—for obvious reasons.”

  Kate wished she hadn’t thought of him as a creature, something less than human. Especially when Phillip added, “Of course, I can never completely repay him for what he did on my behalf when I was halfway across the globe and learned you were missing. Paulu used his considerable resources—some less than savory, I must admit, but thank God he has them—to locate those responsible for your disappearance from the boat. He worked very quickly, Kate, and called in favors beyond even mine to grant. He took care of the kidnapper’s ransom, then took care of those holding you hostage; and then he took care of you until I could get here. You were under a doctor’s care. I understand you were not yourself much of the time.”

  She thought she remembered hearing that before. There was a place on her arm she started to scratch but Phillip caught her hand.

  A scab. How did she get a scab there? So many jumbled pieces that didn’t want to fit in a memory that had too many gaps. Surely Phillip could help fill some in.

  “How did you find out I was missing? Who contacted you?”

  Phillip was suddenly busy flipping over the book he had been reading. The Magus. John Fowles. She recalled it being one of Phillip’s favorites—a dark and twisted look at head games on an island where what was real and what was not became increasingly sinister and blurred.

  “JD,” he said. “Of course.”

  “Of course!” she repeated, though not flatly the way Phillip had said it. “Where is he? Why isn’t JD here?”

  “Because he’s looking for you.”

  “What? You didn’t tell him…didn’t…Phillip, he must be worried sick. I’m sure you must have your means and…”

  As Phillip stared at her, his expression inscrutable, she tried to make sense of what made no sense at all: JD had contacted Phillip. Phillip had contacted The Pale Man—Paulu. Paulu had found her. Phillip was now here. And JD was still looking for her.

  “What’s going on, Phillip?”

  He took her hands in his and held them as one does when delivering the kind of news that drops the unsuspecting to their knees.

  “You will know soon enough. But first, tell me, Kate, how long have you known JD?”

  “That’s a ridiculous question. You introduced us. This May it will be a year.” Even as she said it, there was an edge to her tone that snuck in without permission, like a twelve-year-old so longing to be a teenager that when asked her age it wasn’t twelve, it was “I’ll be thirteen in a few months.”

  “Yes, of course. Let me rephrase that: how much do you know about JD, Kate?”

  “Enough.”

  “Very well. Then I presume you know he is slightly younger than you, having just turned thirty-two.”

  She had not known that, but what did it matter?

  “And I’m sure you must also know he was born on Valentine’s Day. February 14, 1938 to be exact. I would say that JD being born on a holiday symbolic of love and romance is ironic, but then again…perhaps it is fitting.” Phillip raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Considering.”

  Kate touched the silver bracelet on her wrist, a reminder that JD had singled her out as the one he wanted to be with, no matter how many had come before her.

  “Stop it, Phillip. I know what you’re doing.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. You’re trying to plant all these little seeds of doubt about JD in my mind so you can…Honestly, I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do this time. Are you jealous?”

  “Jealous?” he repeated. “Of what, might I ask? If you recall, one of the reasons I sent you all the way from California to Nha Trang was to make sure JD fell for your considerable charms—which he did. Enough to instigate an introduction to his elusive brother. Well done, Katherine.” He clapped, softly. “Brava. Well done.”

  Phillip’s show of approval didn’t have its usual effect. Typically his approval was something she craved, and the job she had accepted—to get close to J. D. Mikel—was a very big step up the ladder in Phillip’s world. She just hadn’t expected it to backfire like this. If he was torturing JD with payback for their relationship by keeping her safety a secret, she had to stop it immediately.

  “I care about him, Phillip. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did. Maybe I haven’t known him nearly as long as I’ve known you, but for the first time in my life, I know what’s true in my heart. I love JD and he loves me. He said so, and I believe him.” She took a breath, then said in a rush, “I want to remove myself from all of this. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m feeling like I could have a different kind of life now.”

  And there it was, the resignation she never thought she would give when she had begged Phillip to let her work for him right after college. Which he hadn’t. Then begging him again after nursing school, when even a surgical room seemed predictable and ordinary after glimpsing the inner circles Phillip had grown up in and gone on to orchestrate with the natural ability of a gifted virtuoso. No one played people better than Phillip. Even the people in Phillip’s world who reminded her of the nobility that commanded an elegant court of manners and intrigue, like that of Gatsby and King Arthur and Napoleon all rolled into one deliciously rich, intoxicating game of power and prestige—and where Phillip was king in the fiefdom he had assembled to rule.

  She had wanted in. Desperately. And when he asked her to get close to JD, without any real explanation—because Phillip never felt a need to explain himself to those who were all too happy to do his bidding—including her—she had reasoned that J. D. Mikel was some sort of proving ground. He didn’t come with papers or intel about his past. She just knew he was some sort of untouchable who worked with Phillip in an unnamed capacity. If she could insinuate herself into this particular man’s impenetrable interior, then Phillip would be assured of what a powerful weapon he had in Katherine Lynn Morningside.

  Not only could she break the glass ceiling, she could break the men who made them.

  Phillip pushed her hair behind her ears, the way he liked to do when he was assuming his “I know what’s best for you, darling, trust me” persona, and she usually did exactly that because rarely was he wrong. Or so she had thought. They had never been on an even playing field. Early on he had established that he did not like having his hair played with or his ears touched. They were off limits. It was a little idiosyncrasy that had never bothered her before, but now it seemed a prime example of the imbalance of power between them.

  Kate pulled away, refusing him access to those body part
s she enjoyed having touched, even if he didn’t. “Don’t, Phillip.”

  He cleared his throat. “I am so sorry, Kate. I’m…I’m not even sure how to begin this. How to say…I’m so sorry. This was all my fault, and I am truly, terribly sorry.”

  It was like getting thrown from a horse she didn’t realize she was riding, hearing Phillip talk like this. With his changes of mood he could quickly swing from calling her Kate to calling her Katherine, but it wasn’t like him to apologize, even when he should, much less be at a loss for words, or fumble for the right way to manipulate someone to his advantage.

  Kate felt something cold and clammy at the base of her neck. The first prickling of uncertainty? No. It must have something to do with this raging urge for more of whatever drug she was being weaned from.

  “What is your fault?” she made herself ask.

  He studied her palm with a furrowed brow, as if divining his sins of the past and the crossroad lines he had put there. “You know how you’ve helped me now and again over the years, when I’ve needed the ear, or the preoccupation, of certain men?”

  Kate nodded. They were always men. Always powerful. Always easily convinced to spend time with her, to listen, to talk more than they should over however much wine or liquor it took to drop their guard. She had slept with a few of them, but only because she wanted to. Phillip hadn’t liked that much. He could be possessive. This whole thing with JD had to be driving him crazy, so now he was trying to separate what he was responsible for putting together. That must be what this whole conversation was about. And now he was going to tell her it was his fault for—

  “JD has served the same purpose. With women. And men.”

  She opened her mouth to say something. Nothing emerged.