“No, thanks,” Mark said, seeing through the sales pitch for the fruity drink with the stupid name. “But tell you what, bring us a round of shots. Make them doubles.”
Andy looked up, a wide grin in place. “Right. Now you’re talking. I’ll have a Bushmills, sweetheart.”
“I’ll stick with the Guinness,” Shawn said, shaking his head.
“And you sir?” the waitress said, her chest pressed against Mark’s arm. “What you want to drink? Something special?”
“Yeah,” Mark said and smiled. “Tequila.”
Chapter Twenty five
He didn’t hear the first set of knocks. The second set—three quick taps delivered a bit harder than the first set—blended into his half-awake, half-asleep dream. The third set of three shook the door casing and rattled the framed room-rate chart on the wall.
“Go away,” Mark said, at the same time pulling the pillow tight against his head. He heard the door open, heard the disgusted sigh, and flinched when the door swung shut with a bang.
“Did you get it?” Mark asked, his words muffled by the sweat-soaked pillow.
“Yeah, I got it,” Robin said, throwing the plastic bag onto his bed. He listened as she plopped down on the room’s matching twin bed, the headboard rapping against the wall.
“That’s what that was,” Mark said, moving the pillow off his head. He was sprawled, face down, on the small bed, his feet hanging off the end. His shirt was balled up on the dresser but he still had on the khakis he had worn to meet Shawn at the Bay View Hotel.
“That was what?” Robin said, not masking the disappointment in her voice.
“The headboard hitting the wall. That’s what I heard all night.”
“Ugh. You had some girl in this room?”
Mark tried to shake his head but it lost something lying down. “No,” he said. “Next door. All night long.”
“Well at least someone in this hotel had a good time.” Robin folded over a thin pillow, wedged it behind her back and leaned against the headboard. “I take it you enjoyed yourself.”
Mark considered the statement. They had stayed at the Woodpecker Lounge for a few more drinks, then hired a cab to take them to the places that Andy or Shawn knew. Langkawi was in Malaysia; and unlike tolerant, open-minded, Buddhist Thailand, Malaysia was a Muslim country. But that just meant the strip clubs were harder to find. Shawn kept them supplied with low-denomination Malaysian ringgits, and while he and Andy slipped into backrooms with giggling strippers, Mark sat at the bar, catching up on his drinking. Ten years ago it would have been an epic night out. Now, with a thousand nights just like it under his belt, it had already blended into his collective drunken memory. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt. It bred boredom.
“You get it?” he asked, his hand feeling around the bed near his knees.
“I told you I did,” Robin said as his fingers found the plastic bag. He took a deep breath and slowly, slowly, slowly sat up.
“They didn’t have any Sinutab, but the pharmacist gave me some pills, prescription stuff. They’re not as tight about that shit here as they are in the US.”
Mark took a small one-inch square baggie that held two white, horse-sized pills and a warm can of soda from the bag.
“I couldn’t find any Mountain Dew. You’ll have to get by with Zam Zam.”
Eyes closed, Mark popped the top on the soft drink and washed down the pills. It had a strong cola taste and the sugar made his teeth tingle. He took a second swig and leaned back on the mound of pillows he had created. He knew it was only psychological, that it would take twenty minutes for the pills to take effect and for the caffeine to kick in, but he felt better already. “Did you get the tickets?”
“Yes, I got the tickets. I thought I was running late since the office didn’t open till ten and they took their sweet time waiting on me, but I see that your morning hasn’t even started yet.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his brain back into his skull. “Any problems?”
“I told you I got them, didn’t I?” She paused and thought for a moment. “There was this kid though, weasel-faced, kind of creepy. I saw him watching me through the window of the shipping office.”
“Think he was following you?”
Robin shrugged. “Probably not. He’d have a hard time keeping up with me. He had this handicapped leg…it’s just that he looked at me funny, that’s all.”
“I thought beautiful women got used to guys staring at them.”
“Don’t start with me, Mark, okay?” She leaned her head back to rest it against the wall. “We need to be at the dock by four. You think you’ll be ready?”
Mark squinted at the red numbers on the alarm clock on the dresser. “Plenty of time. You tell the others?”
“That’s your job.”
For a long time they said nothing, Robin watching the ceiling fan, Mark looking at the far wall of the room, thinking about what lay ahead. Down the hall a door closed and in the silence the sounds of the traffic drifted up and through the open window in the bathroom. They sat like this—Robin on one bed, Mark on the other, both leaning back, their knees up—long enough for Mark to feel the sinus pressure fade along with the headache.
“Why hasn’t he come to see me?” Robin said, her voice no louder than the hum of the fan. “I come looking for him, thousands of miles, all the way from Ohio. He can’t even come down the beach to see me. He can go out all night drinking, but can’t even fucking call the hotel to say hello?” She let the silence fill the room again before saying, “Why hasn’t he come?”
Mark knew he couldn’t tell her what he knew. And he knew that anything else he’d tell her would sound like the lie it would have to be. But he knew what brothers were like. He had a sister in Utah, at least that’s where he thought she was, but they hadn’t talked in fifteen years. Given the choice of spending an evening alone with a family member or out at some seedy dive with a girl paid to be friendly, he knew which he’d pick. “I don’t know,” he said.
It was well past noon but the unfurled rattan blinds gave the room an early morning feel, the colors washed out and dim. In the other bed he could hear her sniff back tears, hear the heavy swallows, her breath coming in short sobs that she struggled to control. Someone else might have gotten up, laid beside her and held her as she cried, stroked her head and whispered, told her to let it all out or that everything would be fine. But he knew he wasn’t that kind of guy. And he knew that there were times when you had to cry alone.
***
Thirty minutes and an ice cold shower after Robin had left, Mark knocked on Pim’s hotel room door and asked if they’d be ready to go in an hour.
“Yes. But we will not be going with you.”
It was not the answer he had expected.
She stepped back from the door, allowing him to enter. On one of the two single beds, remote in hand, Ngern sped through the twenty satellite TV channels, flicking between Asian MTV and two episodes of Pokemon. The grandfather—Kiao? Kayto?—arms intertwined behind his back like an apprentice contortionist, stood by the window, watching the midday traffic jam. Mark took a seat at the end of the second bed and patted a space beside him. Pim hesitated a moment, then sat down. Mark said nothing and waited for her to sort out her thoughts.
“We are a burden on Miss Robin,” she finally said. “She has taken us very far and we have done nothing to help. Before, in Thailand, I could help, but here I am a stranger.”
“That’s all right, Pim,” Mark said. “You helped us out a lot. You don’t owe us anything.” He watched as she chewed on her lip. She seemed to grow smaller the longer she sat next to him.
“Mister Mark, you must know this. I did not always tell you the truth.”
Mark smiled but she did not notice, busy watching her feet sway an inch above the pol
ished hardwood floor. “Well, I guess we weren’t always completely truthful with you, either.”
“I did not know where to find Shawn. I heard him talk about Krabi before and told you he was there, but I did not know for sure.” She paused and turned to him. “I lied to you.”
The way she looked up at him—those soft brown eyes, those pouty lips—he knew he’d have to tell her. He took a breath and looked into her eyes. “I’ve seen your husband. I’ve seen Shawn.”
She shrugged. “I know. The cook at the Lanta Merry Huts said you were talking to a man late at night. He described him and then I knew. And yesterday, the man here at the front desk told me you received a message to go to the Bay View Hotel. The man has a cousin who works there. He called his cousin and told him what you look like. His cousin said you were sitting with two men. He described both men and I knew that one was Shawn.”
Mark felt his shoulders sag.
“I had hoped that my husband would come for me, but it has not happened.”
“He’s been busy,” Mark heard himself saying. “He’s involved in…several things. I’m sure he’ll explain it all soon.”
“Yes, I am sure that is it,” she said without conviction. “But it has been a long time, and I have come so far. Now it is time for my family to go home.”
“Why? We’re close to the end now.”
“He does not say it, but my grandfather is nervous. He has never left Thailand before.” She leaned forward and looked past Mark to her grandfather, leaning back before the old man noticed. When she spoke again her voice was a whisper. “He is not happy with Shawn. He thinks that Shawn has shown our family a great disrespect. He thinks Shawn should have returned after the tsunami and supported his family. That is his obligation,” she said, struggling with the word. “He thinks I should have married a Thai man, someone who shares our ways.”
“He said this to you?”
Pim looked surprised. “No. He has said nothing. But I can tell.”
On the other bed, his expression as animated as the anime hero’s, Ngern watched a mutant yellow cat battle a spinning blue turtle. Mark reached over and covered both of Pim’s hands with one of his. “We’ll be leaving today, all of us. No one gets left behind. We’ll be getting on a boat. Shawn will meet us on the boat, later. I’m sure he’ll explain where he has been and why he couldn’t come to see you.”
“Perhaps,” she said, not believing it would happen.
Mark looked around the room. The few extra clothes they had, washed the night before in the hotel sink, were air-drying on the backs of chairs. “You need to pack. We’ll be leaving for the dock in an hour.”
She nodded. “Where are we going?”
“We’ll be going to Phuket Town,” he said, leaving off all things that were to happen before they arrived.
“Phuket Town,” she said, looking back down to the floor. “Then Jarin will come for me and take me away again; and he will kill my grandfather for what he did to that man in the hut, and he will kill Ngern, too.”
“Look at me, Pim,” Mark said, raising her chin with his finger till their eyes met. “No one will harm you. I promise.”
He heard Pim swallow hard, but her deep, brown eyes were dry. “You can not make such a promise, Mister Mark. That is for fate to decide.”
Chapter Twenty six
They rode to the dock in two cabs, Robin and Mark in one, Pim, Ngern and Kiao in the other. There was no security checkpoint at the port, no passport control to clear, just angry-eyed guards in military-style uniforms and shoulder-slung AK-47s, bored enough to be dangerous.
The cab dropped them off in front of a warehouse—high windowless walls of gray-white aluminum with the words To Ship stenciled in black paint under a droopy spray-painted arrow. They followed the arrow around the corner of the building to a fenced-in walkway that led through the loading area and to the waiting ship. Late-night movies and Louis L’Amour paperbacks had left vivid memories of Far East ports in his mind, but nothing looked familiar. There were no wooden crates marked This End Up or soft-sided bundles held fast with burlap and netting, no sweaty stevedores in coolie hats and wife-beater tee shirts, no banana-eating monkeys or talking parrots, no spice-soaked smells, no oriental flowers with porcelain skin and jet-black spit-curls riding past in open cars and rickshaws, the high band collars of their fiery-red kimonos hidden behind paper fans. Instead there were rows of shipping containers stacked five high and men in light blue jumpsuits and hard hats, scanning barcodes and punching numbers into handheld computers, directing giant rolling cranes to the right coordinates, the loudest sound the high-pitched beep of a forklift in reverse.
Ten stories tall and longer than a football field, the former Morning Star loomed above the concrete pier. The hull was painted in thick coats of black marine paint, a dull red stripe running the length of the ship, just below the deck. The ship’s superstructure was crowded onto the stern, boxy and industrial, like a factory outbuilding or a French museum. It was painted white but the late afternoon sun gave the whole ship a pink tint. Shawn had said that it was an old ship, already overdue for the breakers, yet from where he stood it looked seaworthy enough. But what did he know about ships? Mark smiled as he remembered the ditty that had kept his grandfather’s used car lot in business. A little putty and a little paint, makes it look like what it ain’t.
Leaning against the chain-link fence that enclosed the gangplank, a man in a blue jumpsuit and two dark-skinned sailors chatted with a uniformed guard. The guard sat on a wooden barstool, his weapon laying on its side across his lap, the barrel pointing down the walkway. They watched as Mark and Robin approached, the others following a step or two behind. Without turning his head, the guard said something that made the others laugh, and the way they kept their eyes on Robin, Mark could guess what was said. The guard held out his hand, and Mark handed him the envelope Robin had received from the shipping office. The guard unfolded the bottom three copies of a form, peeling off the top pink copy and handing it to the man in the jumpsuit. Mark wondered if any of them—or all of them—were with the imposter pirate crew. The two sailors bent in to read over his shoulder as the man studied the form, the guard keeping his eyes on Mark. Two minutes later, the man handed the pink copy back to the guard, saying something official sounding while the sailors nodded in agreement, pointing up to the ship. Mark put the envelope in his pocket and started up the gangplank. Behind him, the four men turned to watch Robin walk past.
The air was heavy with petrochemicals—diesel exhaust, oil-based paints, the cloyingly noxious fumes that had to be the low-grade bunker fuel. Mark could feel a headache building with every breath. The guards were on post for hours at a stretch, inhaling the same kind of chemicals that rotted the brains of glue sniffers and paint huffers. He wondered about the long-term health affects the guards faced, and he wondered about the wisdom of giving them machine guns.
At the top of the gangplank, two men leaned against the ship’s railing, European, about forty years old. One was heavy-set and doughy, with wavy steel-gray hair, the other was short and thin and wore a baseball cap on his shaved head. They had on matching short-sleeved white shirts, and there were four gold bars stitched on to the epaulets of the big man’s shirt. Captain’s rank. Mark stepped aboard the ship and the smaller man turned and smiled.
“Welcome aboard,” he said. It was an eastern European accent, maybe Russian, maybe Polish, maybe Ukrainian. “You are passengers sailing to India?”
Mark nodded, remembering what Shawn had said about the boat’s alleged destination, how the crew wouldn’t jeopardize the deal by keeping innocent people off the ship. “That’s right. All of us,” he said, thankful some shipboard clatter kept Robin from hearing them speak. Mark held out the forms but the man waved them off, pulling a small walkie-talkie from his pants pocket.
“Singh to the gangway, please,” the man said, the
n pointed to a passageway with the radio’s stubby antenna. “Through there, to your right. Mr. Singh will meet you. He will show you to your quarters.”
Mark thanked him and led the others through the doorway, glancing back at the two men before he turned. Before Oklahoma City, before 9/11, it would have been hard for him to picture two middle-aged men as terrorists. Now it was too easy. But these men were pirates, not terrorists, and their motive was profits, not prophets. Not that that mattered to those they killed. Ahead, a slight Indian in black slacks and a Miami Heat tee shirt came down a spiral staircase. He took the forms from Mark without saying a word and read them as he turned and walked away, assuming that they would follow him down the corridor. He led them up three flights of stairs and down a short hallway lined with doors. It reminded Mark of the dorm-style barracks he had seen in the Corps, only not as well maintained, no gunny sergeant there to ensure that the brass fixtures were shiny enough to shave in.
“Here. And here,” Singh said, pointing to two rooms on opposite sides of the hallway. He opened one of the rooms and motioned for Mark to follow. The room was larger than he expected, the size of a one-car garage, but he could reach up and touch the ceiling without straightening his arm. Other than a bunk bed and a single folding chair, the room was empty. There was no window. The mattresses were rolled up at the foot of the beds with the sheets and blankets folded on top. The man pulled the door half shut and tapped a finger on a column of typed papers taped to the back of the door.
“These are rules. You must read. You are lifeboat number two. No smoking.” He waited for Mark to acknowledge that he understood, nodded once, then went across to the second room, pointed at the typed list and delivered the same message, this time in Thai.
“I like to be on top,” Robin said, brushing close past Mark to claim the upper berth. She turned back and winked seductively before she burst out laughing, cutting through the tension that had been building all afternoon. It was good to see her smile again, and Mark found he was smiling too. “Can you believe this? It’s like a frickin’ prison cell,” she said.
Noble Lies Page 18
