Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  Getting out of the car, Calvino squatted down beside the Benz and examined the license plate. Diplomatic plates, he said to himself. He didn’t recognize the country from the first two digits. He shook his head, running his hand over the dent along the rear left-hand side. Calvino sucked in a deep breath and told himself it was time to find out which embassy personnel were either just leaving the Square or had just arrived.

  A Benz in front of Bourbon Street early in the morning looked out of place. Calvino rubbed his hands together thinking. The day before he had been in Pattaya—now a lifetime ago. Some flecks of scraped-off paint clung to his palms. He sighed, rubbed his hands on his trousers, and wished he were someplace else, like his own bed. This time of the morning was for the dead, not the living, he told himself. And he told himself no more playing around with customs and cultural beliefs that could come back to haunt him. He’d do the right thing; he’d go inside the restaurant, do his job, and when he was done he’d settle with the Benz owner. It was a rare morning in Washington Square that Calvino faced a dual threat of a punch up.

  As he walked in, he concentrated on his job: positioning himself and getting a couple of photographs of the client’s husband and his Thai girlfriend. He looked around the room. The pair—the reason for his being in the Square—were seated at a far table. The ying perfectly fit the wife’s description, pretty in a short dress, blinking eyelashes, and lipstick that matched the color of her fingernails. Like most women, this one seemed to possess the ability coordinate a large inventory of color, gesture, makeup, and dress; no man could match that level of skill. The bar was empty except for a couple of guys sitting side by side, one drinking coffee and the other orange juice. He figured one of them owned the Benz. It wasn’t the farang at the table in the corner; Calvino knew he was a stockbroker and not a diplomat.

  Neither one of the men paid him much attention. The one with intense green eyes and the hint of a knowing smile had looked at him for a moment and turned away. The guy who had the build of a professional athlete kept looking straight ahead. He’d tried to remember the last time he’d seen men so fit in the Square, and shrugged when he drew a blank. That they had ignored him was just the way Calvino liked it. Jarrett sat with an empty glass on the counter in front of him and Tracer cradled a cup of coffee with those hands that he could catch a football with in his sleep. Calvino was trying to decide if one of the men was an ambassador, or if they were a couple of third secretary types.

  The Doors’ “L.A. Woman” played in the background, and when it ended, Jeff Buckley’s “Mojo Pin” picked up the beat. Tracer tapped out the rhythm on the side of his coffee mug. The music was another reason Tracer had chosen Bourbon Street as a place to meet before going off to do their mission. It was one of the agreements Jarrett and Tracer had made early on; whoever got to the restaurant first would request that they play the blues. Music was like a slice of bread; it soaked up all the anxiety that settled in a man’s gut when time seemed to slow to a crawl. The blues entertained the first man to arrive, cooled him down until a little chill quivered up his spine. It was more than casual listening. The blues isn’t casual; it’s in your face, your heart, your groin. A good blues song has the power to sweep away stressful thoughts about things going wrong. Jarrett loved the blues. His favorite blues song was in the queue, and it was about the price people paid.

  “There’s a price to pay / always a price to pay / you don’t know how much until you break it.” He thought there was more than a little piece of God’s truth to shake out of those words. Hang those words out on the line to dry; watch them soak up the sun. Jarrett had been taught that most of the time what you broke fell into two pieces, and you could glue them back together; but other times it broke into a million pieces, and no amount of glue was going to put it back together again. Like death, some broken things just can’t be fixed.

  The farang at the far table had turned and was staring at Calvino. It was time to reverse order. Calvino needed a beard, and the owner of the Benz was the guy who’d supply it.

  “One of you guys own the Benz out front?” Calvino still hadn’t figured out the country code, and the appearance of the two men gave no real clue as to nationality.

  Tracer cocked his head to the side. “What’s the problem?”

  An American accent, thought Calvino. “From the plates, you’re with an embassy. Maybe a diplomat.” Each embassy plate had a distinctive number.

  Tracer liked that, the thought of being a diplomat, and his mother would have been proud, so he shot a smile. “And what are you selling?”

  “I’m not selling anything. But I hit the back of your car.”

  Tracer’s eyebrow rose up. He smiled. “You’re shitting me. You ran into my car?”

  “The damage is minor. I’ve got insurance.”

  “Minor? That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  Tracer put money on the counter and started to stand up. “If you will excuse us.”

  But Calvino blocked his path. Jarrett stopped a couple of inches away, looking straight at him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Jarrett. “If it’s broken, I’ll get it fixed.”

  Calvino made it clear that he insisted on dealing with the damage. “Give me a couple of seconds. Then I can deal with it.”

  The farang at the corner table had stopped looking over at the bar and scanning the room the way guilty men do. He felt he’d gotten away with his cake and now was the time to take a big bite. He held the girl’s hand, stroking it, playing with it, kissing her knuckles, his lips against the high-gloss pink fingernails. They were the kind of pink that shades the sky early on a Bangkok morning. Calvino decided this farang was a real piece of work. Seeing the man slobbering over his girlfriend’s hand early in the morning made Calvino wonder what kind of nightmare the man had escaped from under his own roof to push him into Washington Square that time of day. Anyway, that was his problem, and besides, his wife was paying the shipping and handling for photographs of his knuckle-licking antics. Calvino reached inside his jacket pocket for his small digital camera. As he removed his hand, Jarrett with the speed of a sand-trap spider grabbed his wrist, tightened his grip. There was no question about the muscles behind the vicelike embrace. They exchanged a long, hard look.

  “You’re the bodyguard?”

  His broad shoulders flexed. “Bring your hand out of your jacket real slow,” said Jarrett.

  Calvino showed him the black Nikon. “It’s a digital camera.”

  Jarrett released Calvino’s wrist. Calvino pointed the camera at the couple across the room, who weren’t paying them any attention. He snapped a series of photos, capturing one hand kiss, then another, until he had enough to show that the farang was more than a little interested in the ying sitting at the table. A couple of lovers caught stealing a few moments from the start of the day. Calvino slipped the camera back into his jacket.

  Neither Jarrett nor Tracer liked the idea of the camera. “What the fuck are you doing with the camera?” asked Jarrett.

  “I’m working.”

  “Are you a photographer?” asked Jarrett.

  “An investigator.” When a man slipped his leash in Bangkok, it never took long to pick up his trail; it was like tracking a furtive, not-too-smart burglar who dropped his driver’s license at the scene of the heist. Catching such a creature was almost guaranteed. It was a crappy, mind-numbing, soul-destroying way to make a living.

  “A private investigator.” Tracer pursed his lips, looking over at the farang and the Thai woman at the table.

  Calvino nodded.

  “We’re outta here,” said Jarrett. “The man’s got his work. We’ve got ours.”

  “I’ll call my insurance company,” said Calvino, pulling out his cell phone. “The company will send someone around.”

  Tracer shook head and held up his hand. “I’ll take a pass. But thanks.”

  “It’s no problem. I hit your car.”

  “You’re right, it’s no pro
blem. So let’s leave it at that,” said Tracer.

  “What my friend is saying is just let it ride,” said Jarrett.

  There wasn’t any humor about either man. Young and fit, quiet, arriving in a Benz, huddling over orange juice, wanting to forget the damage to the car, the elements added up to a couple of men with something important on their minds and wanting to avoid anyone getting in their way. Calvino turned, walked over to the door, and held it open. “At least have a look at your car.”

  Jarrett and Tracer took a leisurely walk around the Benz. The impact of the collision had broken a taillight and left a dent as if a giant had punched his fist against the rear end. Calvino’s car, an old Honda City, was parked beside the Benz. It had enough body damage to make it unclear exactly what part of the car had hit the Benz.

  “It was an accident,” said Calvino, handing a business card to Tracer.

  “Looks like it wasn’t your first accident,” said Jarrett looking over Calvino’s car.

  Tracer read the card, twisting his neck to the right and then the left, a neck-cracking exercise that was one of those defining mannerisms as individual as a fingerprint. When he felt a little too much stress, the kinks built up in his neck muscles, tightening them like a vice, making them bulge and throb, until the only way to get rid of the pressure was the quick left-right move. “You’re a good citizen to have reported what happened. A lesser man would have hit and run. If there is any problem, we have your card and will be in touch”—he looked down at the card—“Mr. Calvino.”

  Calvino leaned against his Honda and watched as the two men got into the Mercedes. Jarrett climbed behind the wheel and Tracer slid into the passenger’s seat and put on his seat-belt harness. Jarrett backed the Benz out in one sleek movement, changed gears, and headed toward the Soi 22 exit. Calvino stepped in the road and watched as Jarrett turned left, heading in the direction of Rama IV Road. He made a mental note of the license plate.

  Calvino climbed into his Honda and started the engine. Waiting until the air-conditioning came on and the temperature was bearable, he twisted around and looked both ways before pulling out of the parking place. He pegged the slender green-eyed guy as someone who looked vaguely Middle Eastern. The Honda was a wreck, not a car, more like the debris left from a terrorist attack. But it had a bonus. His car was theft-proof. He drove slowly and braked when he passed the couple from the restaurant as they walked, holding hands. Calvino held the camera against the window and clicked off a couple more shots of the lovebirds. He gave a final look, shaking his head. He couldn’t help thinking that some guys knew they were being followed, that they wanted to get caught, have it over.

  Reaching the exit, he turned right onto Soi 22, heading toward Sukhumvit Road and his office. Some husbands leave a trail to the den of soiled sheets that’s so obvious a bloodhound with a head cold could follow. He glanced at them in his rearview mirror. As they were on foot, clearly they had no intention to head for Rama IV; more likely they were on an automatic glide path to the nearby Hotel 27, a sanctuary creating the illusion of privacy that came with a short time room.

  At the traffic light at Sukhumvit Road, he waited, thinking about the last twenty-four hours. It already seemed like a much longer stretch of time. He’d come back to the city to get lost in his work. But all he had for his efforts was an early-morning raging headache. It hadn’t mattered to his temperament that he got the pictures of the husband on the make. He should have felt better. He told himself that he had every right to feel like part of the world had collapsed on him, and he was still digging himself out of the debris of a busted vacation, a ying falling out the sky, an evening with Mao and Noriega. He shuddered, feeling a sudden chill, as if the slipstream of evil had followed him out of the rubble.

  The light changed and Calvino turned right onto Sukhumvit Road. As he drove, he glanced at Washington Square on his right—the shabby entrance, broken pavement, rats scurrying over the garbage. It was quiet on the street. Like Bangkok, the Square was never just one kind of place; its character depended on the time of day. The Square attracted a different crowd in the morning. People pretending to be diplomats; people pretending to be in relationships that had some meaning other than sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. It was a place of randomness, of accidents, of inexplicable encounters. A place for rats and rogues and people with pasts that cast shadows long enough to touch their futures.

  TEN

  TRACER LOOKED OUT the car window and watched the street vendors setting up stalls to sell noodles, socks, shirts, and pirated DVDs. Early bird office workers, eager to return to the corporate hatchery, hurried along the pavement, breaking formation as they stepped into the canyon of high-rise buildings. Motorcycles threaded through the narrow passages between cars. A light at the intersection turned red. Three or four more cars shot through like explosive rounds. No one ever moved forward for the first couple of seconds of a green light.

  When Jarrett’s car had stopped as the light turned red, he’d nearly been rear-ended. The driver behind him hit the horn. In the rearview mirror he saw that the man had a murderous, hateful look. Everyone was on their way to work. Some had more important deadlines than others, but the default was speed, as if life and death depended on getting through the intersection.

  “Let’s run through the operation,” said Jarrett.

  It was one of their rituals, something Jarrett and Tracer had put to good use as they rotated between Kabul and Baghdad with stopovers in Fallujah. As a team, they went through the checklist until every angle, element and sequence became automatic. The procedure made them effective, tough, and reliable. They never cut corners in doing their homework. Tracer brushed his fingers against his mojo bag. He kept it low, out of sight, so Jarrett couldn’t see him stroking the soft leather. Despite all the preparation, a team still needed luck.

  They had checked out the condo two days before. Getting a feel for the location, locking it inside his head, kept Jarrett focused.

  “I made the distance three hundred and fifty meters.”

  “No obstructions. That’s what I like,” said Jarrett.

  The target would emerge from another high-rise as he stepped out onto the balcony sometime between 10:30 a.m. and noon.

  “After we finish the job, I’m going for a workout,” said Tracer.

  “I thought we’d planned on going for a massage. Get someone to work out those kinks in your neck.”

  “I can always go for a workout tomorrow.” Tracer gave a thumbs-up sign as he caught Jarrett’s eye. Tracer had a way of calming the situation, making Jarrett feel like everything was under control and it was just another mission. They’d been through the drill before, always coming out the other side, thinking, “Glad that’s over and done.”

  Jarrett slipped the Benz back into the sluggish stream of traffic. By the time they turned into Soi Thong Lo, Tracer had folded the newspaper and placed it on the seat. The car stereo played a bluesy rendition of “Summertime,” and neither man spoke.

  One day in Fallujah, Jarrett had killed an insurgent who’d been sitting with a rifle in a car. The insurgent had pointed it at a passing US military convoy. They’d been listening to “Summertime” then, too. Jarrett had three confirmed kills that day. “Ain’t nothing gonna harm you.” The world just had a whole lot of harm standing by, ready, canned, and waiting to be opened. Bangkok was an urban nightmare jammed with cars and swarming with people fighting for space to move. Like doomed salmon swimming upstream to breed and die. But compared with Baghdad or Fallujah, it looked more like a pond in a fish farm.

  Soi Thong Lo was an upscale farang ghetto in Sukhumvit, with enough high-rent Japanese residents to make a quorum at a Honda stockholders’ meeting. Soi Thong Lo had once been a sleepy out-of-the-way soi in Sukhumvit with middle-class Thai family compounds, but it had become a trendy area, drawing in the rich and powerful foreigners who bought the high-end condos, joined the members-only clubs, dined at the hundreds of restaurants, and cut away from the office
to one of the massage parlors.

  Casey had done the advance legwork, renting a unit two months earlier under “Melvin Taylor,” the name of a blues singer—a nod to Tracer, who liked Taylor’s music. He’d prepaid the rent and security deposit in cash and said it was for a wealthy investor from abroad who would use it infrequently. No one had asked him for an ID. Cash was the only ID required on Soi Thong Lo. Jarrett, whose Turkish-born mother had passed along the permanent tan look, and Tracer, a light-skinned black, could have been from Cairo or Damascus.

  Jarrett eased the Benz into the entrance of a twenty-five-story luxury condo building whose parking garage had all the personality of a high-security prison. He used a plastic card to activate the traffic-gate arm. As it slowly rose, on the opposite side a security guard took down their license registration number. The tinted windows prevented the guard from seeing who was inside. No guard making two hundred dollars a month with a family upcountry taking 30 percent of his take-home was going to ask someone in a Benz to roll down the window and show ID. He made do with a quick glance at Jarrett just as he powered up the window. Jarrett drove up the ramp to the fifth floor and parked next to the exit door and the elevators.

  Tracer got out of the car, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, whistling Peeping Tom’s “Mojo” as he stood beside the trunk. Jarrett sprang the trunk lock from inside the Benz and stepped out of the car to watch the perimeter as Tracer removed a large rectangular Pelican case. Slamming the truck lid shut, Jarrett lifted the case and walked toward the exit door. It was better to use the stairs. On the ninth floor, Jarrett pushed open the emergency exit door and Tracer stepped out first, checking the corridor. It was empty. Tracer signaled to Jarrett, who stepped into the corridor with the case. He walked quickly, the case growing heavy, and stopped at one of the units. Tracer unlocked the door and held it open. Jarrett went inside and Tracer, after glancing once again up and down the corridor, followed him inside. Once in the condo, Jarrett swallowed his breath, closed his eyes, and eased the Pelican case to the floor.