A Haunting Smile

by Christopher G. Moore

  “You could make him a legend, Harry,” said Tuttle.

  His black eyes sparkled as if they had been painted on with black lip-gloss. “Next time I download another computer virus hosting ghosts.”

  “You still haven’t said where you’re off to next,” said Tuttle.

  “First Manila. Then to the Straits of Hormuz to transact a little Balkan business. The Balkans have been a family cash cow for centuries.”

  Harry Purcell was scheduled after the Philippines to continue on to the Middle East where a ship waited for him in the Strait of Hormuz. The ship, crammed with state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment, was anchored off Banda Rabbas. Once on board, he would finish the last minute details of an arms deal with a general who was an old family friend and inaccessible enough to make a newsroom of Snows into a legend if they could tell his story. The general’s order was for tanks. Lots of tanks. Tanks were profitable, efficient killing machines.

  “Before I left, I wanted to give you something,” said Purcell. “Maybe you better sit down first.”

  Tuttle knew before Purcell could say another word. He had asked Harry Purcell for a personal favor; Daeng was listed as one of the missing, and he asked Purcell to use his influence with the military to find out if she was being held.

  “She’s dead, Robert. Don’t ask me how I know or who told me. It doesn’t matter. How can you live in that house with all those women and not know what happened to her.”

  “Where, how…?”

  Purcell raised his hand. “It’s enough to know.”

  “How can you deal with this kind of person, Harry? Someone like you. No one forces you to do it. Why, Harry, why get their dirt, other people’s blood on your hands?”

  “I once asked my father the same questions.”

  “And?” asked Tuttle.

  “He said, ‘You either sit across from them at their table or you put your neck under their boot.’ There’s always been a moral vacuum at the center of power and wealth. When that vacuum fills with morality, the power is lost. Then the morality bleeds away, and a new vacuum arises, more generals, new weapons, more killings. We live in a world where fear and terror are the rule, and the smart killers never count their dead. Hope is necessary. As are most illusions. They allow us to live by what we believe rather than according to what we actually see happening. It is our survival instinct to have this hope. Without it the generals would have no way of inspiring fear. The threat to hope is their ultimate weapon. Their ace up the sleeve of their uniform. Now you have my answer and my father’s. And the answer about your young Daeng.”

  Purcell climbed down from the veranda and went down to the pond. At first Tuttle watched him, then followed his path, drawn by the smell of smoke. As he approached the pond, he saw a small fire. Burned pieces of paper circled around the base of the palm trees, and a large half-burned page landed at his feet. He reached down and picked it up. On the page was the word “headhunter” near the blackened edge. Then he saw the title page—Cortez’s Temple.

  “What are you burning, Harry?”

  “Rubbish.”

  Tuttle walked around the fire, kicking dirt onto the pyre. But it was too late. The fire smoldered, thin columns of smoke rose from the papers and left a melted down clump of plastic computer diskettes—including the ones with the Battle of Stalingrad. He shook his head, as the dirt and smoke blew back into his face. The fire had gone out. But everything had been consumed; nothing—no paper, notebook, diskette—looked remotely salvageable.

  “Why did you do this?” He was angry.

  “Why shouldn’t I do this?”

  Harry sat beside the pond, putting his bare feet into the water and kicking them up and down, splashing like a child.

  “Why not?” repeated Harry.

  “I deserve a better explanation.”

  Harry wasn’t certain if Tuttle had any such right. Friendship carried obligations but rarely rights. He looked up from his splashing. “Did I tell you that the Presence had gone, vanished, left? The Purcells appear to be ghost-free for the first time since 1519. Whose ghost? Montezuma? Da Vinci? Cortez? All three of them in some unholy trinity? Who can ever know? But during the killings in Bangkok an old family ghost was banished. I can go back to the family trade without looking over my shoulder for the ugly, disgusting green mist. You know, Kleist took Stalingrad. Four nights in a row he led German tanks into the streets of Stalingrad. He buried his own ghosts. Not one of my simulated Commando Stingray tank turrets blew up. He was even better on the Leopard-I’s. On average his victory saved more than half a million lives. Not small change in the life-saving department.”

  “What did it achieve? They did die. You can’t reverse history by refighting old battles.”

  “You know what Kleist said?”

  Tuttle shook his head, he really had no idea what Kleist could have come up with which would have sent Harry Purcell off the deep end to destroy his family chronicle.

  “You never finish burying your dead until you honor them and their suffering. And that can only be done with a victory. Even a simulated one,” said Purcell.

  “He’s crazy,” said Tuttle.

  “Crazier than the people who put 136,000 skulls in the Aztec temple?”

  Tuttle sat on the grass. He watched the goldfish swimming in the pond. He felt the heat from the fire. He felt tears swelling in his eyes, as he understood that Daeng would not be found, and that no matter how many stairs he climbed to the end of the universe he would never understand where, by whom or why.

  He wanted to blame Harry Purcell; his body pumped with rage, his heart thumping in his chest. He knew the killers. He even defended them, sold them weapons. Purcell crossed his feet at the water’s edge, watching the fish swim closer for a nibble at his toes.

  “ ‘Harry, you’re sacred. Like God.’ That’s what Kleist said. A tree worshipper, as Snow calls the Germans,” said Purcell in a near whisper.

  “You only have white hair like God, Harry.”

  “And I don’t walk on water,” whispered Purcell. “Keep out of the temples,” he continued after a pause. “That’s what I think Cortez said moments before he died. And on my death bed, if I’m so lucky to have one, I would whisper pull down and destroy the temples. There is no ‘sacred.’ The sacred is the junk bond of the spiritual world. It promises great leverage but in a bankrupt scheme. Others have tried to sound the alarm to bring forth this message before. They failed because the audience doesn’t want to listen to the real story, the true story. But I thought that Harry Purcell would show them a thing or two. Where my ancestors had failed, I would prove the root of evil led straight from that temple door. Then something happened, Robert. The entire weight of the book collapsed on itself when old Kleist said, ‘Harry, you are sacred.’ The temple, the temple. It’s not just a building or a shrine. It’s the power to strike fear which is sacred. With it you make others bring you any number of skulls.”

  Later, as the evening wore on and a bottle of wine was finished, Harry Purcell finished packing a single carry-on case. Everything else he threw onto the fire, the flames reflecting off the pond. Robert Tuttle did nothing to stop him. It was as if Harry knew he wasn’t coming back. He was travelling light and dressed in pure black silk. On the last trip down the wooden stairs, Harry handed Robert Tuttle an ancient silver object shaped like a cigarette pack.

  “A parting gift,” said Harry Purcell. “Besides, it won’t burn. Or make its way through the airport metal detector.”

  Tuttle opened the box and looked inside. “What is it?”

  “An ivory bead carved in the likeness of General Xue,” said Harry Purcell, lighting a cigar. “My mother said that it was sacred. It passed from mother to son for almost three hundred years. Keep it for Daeng’s daughter. Have her wear it around her neck. A gift of face. We Purcells aren’t in the gift business. So it’s time to dispose of some old relics.”

  Harry Purcell thumbed the tip of his cigar. The lines around his eyes wrinkled
as he smiled; as if he were thinking about another time, another place—a joke retold passing through his head. As he sucked his cigar, he sat on the edge of the veranda and stared at the heap of ashes below.

  12

  IT WAS SNOW’S last night in Bangkok before heading back to California, his half-interest in the Winnebago, and his relationship with Jennifer. He checked into HQ around midnight, and found Crosby with two girls huddled behind a stack of T-shirts and well into his third Kloster beer. The TV played to a small audience of girls along the far wall. The jukebox blared with number 139—Like a Prayer. The waiter everyone called the Old New Kid brought Snow a large cola with ice.

  “Purcell’s left. Selling Hawks to mullahs. Tuttle is changing nappies…”

  “Diapers,” interrupted Snow.

  “And now Snow’s flying to the arms of an old white woman who refuses to cook him pancakes.”

  “The world’s going to hell in a hand basket,” said Snow.

  “Have you seen Tuttle’s new old lady?”

  “The butch-looking engineer who uses ‘fuck’ as a noun?”

  “Yeah, that’s her,” said Snow. He liked it that someone other than himself was taking heat on choice of female partners. “You don’t really think that he does it with her?”

  “Hey, man, we can’t all charm nice girls like these two.” Snow looked between the two hardcore hookers seated like temple lions on either side of Crosby.

  “These are my sales staff,” said Crosby a little defensively.

  “Is that Kleist over there?” asked Snow, looking toward the bar. “What the fuck’s he got on his head?”

  “It’s a wig,” said Crosby. “I suspect some Nazi-hunter must be in town, checking around for the usual suspects.”

  Ross came over in the middle of the conversation, cleared his throat, his hands folded around an Old Granddad and soda. He sat next to Snow. He stared at one of his fingernails, then sighed.

  “Mr. Snow, during your time in HQ have you ever seen or heard of anyone who has been restrained by age or decency, or from doing anything they really set their mind on doing or could pay someone else to do for them? If it’s in their interest, it gets done. Even if it means buying new hair. If it’s not new hair, then maybe it’s murder. Either you have the power to make something happen or make someone disappear or you don’t. That’s what the massacre was about. You can write that for one of your newspapers, and quote me as a usually reliable source.”

  “How about if I attribute that wisdom to Old Granddad?” asked Snow.

  “That’s really hardcore what you just said.” Ross belched and waved for another drink.

  Crosby pulled a fresh, new T-shirt from the pile and unfolded it on the table. On the front was printed: The Target is the Bullet; and on the back: The Bullet is the Target. A black and white image of a young woman demonstrator’s face with a target around it was on both the front and back. It was Daeng’s face, a scanner had been used to attach a black pro-democracy headband to cover her forehead.

  “Purcell paid for this lot,” said Crosby. “I’ve got another two thousand in my godown.”

  “You never paid off the first loan from Harry,” said Snow.

  “This is the payment.”

  Snow arched an eyebrow. “He said that?”

  Crosby nodded. “Take one. One hundred baht. Take another for your high-miler. The money goes for a fund for the families of the missing.”

  “Tuttle got to him,” said Snow with conviction.

  But he was wrong.

  “Dow pitched the idea to Harry,” said Crosby.

  “God, Tuttle’s sleeping with a political activist. He’ll have dog heads thrown over the wall of his compound,” said Snow.

  “Funny thing,” said Crosby. “Tuttle didn’t know about the T-shirts until after Harry Purcell gave him one. I would have loved to see the expression on his face.”

  “And Tuttle’s living with a woman’s libber,” said Snow.

  Ross had waited long enough and shouted across the room.

  “Bring me an Old Granddad and soda or I’m taking hostages.”

  A moment later the Old New Kid brought him the drink.

  “Dow’s hardcore like Tuttle,” said Snow.

  “You’ll be back, Snow,” said Ross.

  “So will Purcell,” said Crosby. “And Tuttle. The hardcore never can change. They just rest for a while and then come back to HQ. Like war, Snow. They have no other place in the universe. HQ will always be here, and so will we.”

  “Hardcore evolution has produced one Crosby. Could there be others as insane as this Crosby?”

  13

  MONTEZUMA STARED BLEARY-EYED into the lens; it had been a short, yet emotional killing time. “We wish to welcome our Thai audience to the show tonight. We are pleased to have General Hernan Cortez as our special guest on tonight’s show. He is here with us to speak about his new-old book Liberation—the True Story, the Real Story. What he likes to call the ring within the ring story of history.”

  Cortez smiled as the applause sign went on. None of the Thais clapped their hands. They booed. But a Sound Wave Machine wiped the boos and replaced them with the sound of clapping.

  “Thank you for your warm welcome. Some nights I’m co-host. Some nights I’m the guest. Some nights the victim; other nights the hero. Monty and I go back a very long way. And we have a secret.”

  “One that Cortez hasn’t told you,” said Montezuma, looking out at his first audience of Thais since 1976.

  “What he means is—how long does a night last?” asked Cortez.

  “What I mean is, Cortez has told me he has a surprise. Can you believe this loser who hasn’t surprised himself once since 1519 has something to tell us we don’t already know?” asked Montezuma.

  “How many worthless souls must be saved before Cortez is released? What is the number?”

  “Give or take, a quarter of a million,” said Montezuma, yawning.

  “Give or take,” said Cortez, throwing his head back in laughter.

  “We wish to introduce some of our special guests, Lek, Noi, and Weird Bob. In his last life Weird Bob won an electric fan for being the tallest man in Bangkok,” said Montezuma. “And we ended up taking him even though it was not our job.”

  “What Monty means is that this white guy took the prize off the short locals.”

  “Who was the woman I was supposed to save?” asked Cortez.

  “Ten bonus points for the right answer,” added Montezuma.

  The red neon applause sign flashed.

  “You there in the back row. The girl with the half-moon- shaped scar.”

  The girl stood under the intense beam of a spotlight.

  “Chun,” a thin, unsure voice rang out. Everyone else among the dead looked at her and couldn’t believe what they saw.

  “In English!” said Montezuma who had never spoken a word of English until a stone bashed his head.

  “Okay, me,” said Daeng. “I got shot.”

  “So you are dead. Officially not rescued,” said a smug Montezuma, arms folded over his chest.

  “But my daughter, Oon. She’s ten months now,” said Daeng “She got rescued. She’s not dead, thank God.”

  “Safe!” roared Montezuma, flames shooting from his ears. “Your worthless whore’s daughter was saved? By whose authority? So this explains why all my channels have been blocked.”

  “I signed the betting form just before the window closed,” said Cortez. “I laid down a double or nothing bet. I went for the jackpot. A game of chance. What were the chances of Daeng’s daughter surviving the junkyard? How in a million years would she ever be rescued? I bet the whole half a million. I won. The partnership is over, Monty.”

  Cortez was gone. His chair was empty. The audience looked at the Aztec who played for time, fumbled with some papers, afraid to look up at the TV camera.

  “Lucky bet,” said Montezuma, gloomily.

  “I’m sorry if I did something wrong,” said Daen
g.

  Montezuma was still sulking when he called her onto the stage.

  “You know anything about show business?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Well, neither did Cortez. After four hundred fifty years he finally got rid of the curse. You want to try? It’s up to you.”

  “What do I do?” asked Daeng.

  Montezuma put a hand on her knee and a charge of electrical energy nearly knocked him off the stage.

  “Why did he win?” asked Daeng.

  “He bet on hope. A fool’s bet at best.”

  “But he won,” she said.

  “Stick with me, kid. You won’t see that dark horse winning for a few more aeons.”

  She thought about this proposition. She looked back at the crowd which suddenly had a greenish steam rising from lifeless forms spilling out of the chairs. “And if I don’t want to stick with you?”

  He had no choice but to tell her the truth.

  “Then it is back to 1519 for me and it starts all over again, because I’ve learned nothing. I get my skull cracked again, and try to fill it with some meaning one more time. But you wouldn’t want that. Would you? Please, pretty please.”

  When she smiled, the smile of hope, the half-moon scar straightened on the side of her face, and a second later Montezuma had vanished. And when she saw her father walk toward her she knew whatever curse had been cast was now forever lifted.

  Books by Christopher G. Moore

  Novels in the Vincent Calvino P.I. series

  Spirit House

  Asia Hand

  Zero Hour in Phnom Penh

  Comfort Zone

  The Big Weird

  Cold Hit

  Minor Wife

  Pattaya 24/7

  The Risk of Infidelity Index

  Paying Back Jack