Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  “It says the man’s here every Wednesday between ten-thirty and one. Like clockwork. It says Somporn is like a German when it comes to time.”

  “Then what’s this punk rapper doing giving a foot of tongue to Somporn’s minor wife?”

  Tracer shrugged. “Man, I’m just the paid help. But I got a feeling he don’t know, you know what I mean?” A wide smile broke across his face.

  “You’d better phone Waters and let him deal with Casey,” said Jarrett. “Tell him what’s happened. Let him figure out what to do.” They decided to wait another hour, watching, making sure that the boy toy didn’t slip away only to be replaced by Somporn. That would be embarrassing. Neither Tracer nor Jarrett thought that would happen. It was one of the oldest stories from the field: the men on the ground had been dished up E. coli when they thought they’d been dining on the best that money could buy. After a few minutes of cooling down, they became resigned to the fact that they’d ended up with the military’s answer to a bad oyster.

  “I’ll let him know,” said Tracer, shaking his head. He raised the binoculars and had another good look at the couple on the balcony. The Thai man, aged about thirty, had his shirt unbuttoned and his arms wrapped around Somporn’s Miss Special. The way their tongues were working, some fire deep in the belly must have been heating up, making them crazy.

  Tracer observed the French-kissing through his binoculars one last time. “Whoa, boy.”

  “Where’s Somporn?”

  “She’s a beautiful creature, and from the look of things I’d say she’s pretty confident Somporn’s not coming around.” He stopped talking, held out the binoculars for Jarrett. “Have a look.”

  Jarrett got up from the table and used the second pair of binoculars to focus in on the lovebirds doing their ritual shifting and sliding.

  He saw a couple dancing on the balcony. The young Thai was swinging her around like they were on a dance floor. She followed each step, really dancing a jitterbug, smiling and laughing. They looked to be without a care in the world. Three-nine Zapper was a disco stage, and no one was going to die that day.

  After they’d packed up and locked the condo, they sat in the back of a taxi headed to the Madrid Bar in Patpong. They didn’t say much during the ride, looking out the window, thinking about what hadn’t happened and what it meant. They were like a team taking the bus back after losing the game.

  As far as Jarrett was concerned, until they established contact with Waters and worked out the next step there was little to do, say, or think about. Given the circumstances, he left his mind free to find some other object. It didn’t take long until he’d shifted to the ying he’d left that morning. The beekeeper’s daughter. Tracer had gone and talked about honey not knowing she was on his mind with memories of her face, story, and body.

  “Bees are dying all over America, Europe, and Asia. No one knows why.”

  “That’s a hell’va thing, Jarrett.”

  “I get the feeling most people have moved on. Too many other things to worry about. Bees? It’s hard to get worked up over something that’s going sting your ass and die anyway.”

  “Human nature. If you can’t figure out why something is the way it is, then block it out. No point hitting your head against the wall.”

  They got out of the taxi opposite CP Tower, crossed Silom, and walked along Patpong Soi 1 until they reached the Madrid. They sat in a corner booth, an old habit, so they could watch who came in the door. The specials were chalked on a blackboard.

  “Changed my mind,” said Jarrett. “I want a pizza. One of the large specials that’s got everything the cook can find in the fridge on it.”

  Tracer looked up from the menu, saw the waitress standing in front of the table, and said, “Don’t suppose you’d have catfish and hush puppies?”

  FOURTEEN

  MCPHAIL SWAGGERED LIKE A PRIZEFIGHTER as he came through the door of the Lonesome Hawk Bar. A broad grin was plastered on his mug as he passed under the head of the Cape water buffalo mounted on the wall. It had been a gift from a friend of Old George, but the buffalo head had cost him a huge import duty and the years never dimmed the pain of that layout of cash for a noble head given in friendship.

  “What the hell you so happy about?” asked Old George.

  Before McPhail could answer, another farang pushed past him, giving him a shove without saying he was sorry. That was Casey’s style.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” asked McPhail.

  “Someone you don’t want to fuck with. That’s who I am.”

  McPhail sized him up and decided this wasn’t the way he wanted to start his lunch. Pretending Casey wasn’t worth the effort, he turned to the side and sat down opposite Old George. There were a couple of ways to handle a guy like Casey, and for McPhail both of them promised a kind of humiliation. Casey correctly read McPhail’s gesture of boredom as a signal of surrender. Experience had taught Casey a few things about reading a man’s intentions. When Casey interrogated suspects, there was a flicker of something in their eyes that would signal surrender. Interrogation techniques were designed to lead a suspect to that point, when he knows that no one is coming to rescue him, and that there’s only a long drop into nothingness if he continues to resist.

  McPhail had also read Casey right. He’d walked into the Lonesome Hawk like a man spoiling for a fight. Fists balled up, hanging by his sides, he walked straight back to the last booth where Calvino sat reading through paperwork on a case. Even with all the noise in the bar, compared to the chorus of crying babies in the office, the background chatter in the Lonesome Hawk was still more like what you’d hear in a library. Casey had phoned Calvino’s office only to be told he wasn’t in, but that he could be found in Washington Square at the Lonesome Hawk.

  Casey ordered a vodka and tonic from Baby Bear. The waitress got her nickname from an Australian customer who said she reminded him of a baby koala bear. Casey slid into the booth across from Calvino.

  “Casey, what’s your problem?”

  In the Land of Smiles, when the word “problem” is used, the speaker isn’t talking about algebra. He’s referring to the kind of miscalculation that can get a man killed.

  “No, you’ve got the problem,” he replied, clenching his jaw peppered with a three-day beard, the black flecked with little white moons.

  Calvino leaned back, staring at him for a long beat. “Maybe you ought to explain.”

  Casey lowered his voice to a near whisper. “I’ll make it simple so you don’t get confused. Your report said Somporn had a session with his mia noi every Wednesday. You could set your watch by his arrivals and departures. Ten-thirty to two o’clock. That’s what you wrote.” He pulled out a copy of the report and slapped it down on the table.

  Calvino had been called a lot of names, been the object of many curses and damnations, and had had his fair share of threats. But Casey was in a class all by himself when it came to summing up his position with a blast of pure anger. They say extreme anger turned a good man into a bad one and a bad man, once his anger was stoked up, had the capacity to inflict a load of evil that spread out far beyond his personal horizon. Here was a man accustomed to being in full control of the situation, of extracting what he wanted and discarding the source after he’d finished.

  “I followed her for a month, and she established a pattern,” said Calvino.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the other guy?”

  Calvino frowned. “What other guy?”

  “See, you fucked up. You didn’t know there was another guy. You overlooked it. This isn’t some small thing. Some other guy banging Somporn’s ying. Where were you? Eating donuts like a fucking traffic cop?”

  “You paid me to follow his mia noi. I followed her. You gave me no instructions to follow anyone else. Now you’re talking like I missed something. Casey, I didn’t miss a thing.”

  Casey’s vodka and tonic arrived and he grabbed it from Baby Bear, who wore a tight T-shirt and low-rider jeans tha
t exposed her belly. He drank it straight down. “Bring me another,” he said, handing Baby Bear the empty glass. She gave him a hot lipstick smile, winking at him, as if Casey might just calm down and buy her a drink. Then she looked over at Calvino, who hadn’t broken eye contact with Casey.

  “And give him the bill,” Casey continued.

  Calvino had been straight with Casey from day one, letting him know that he wasn’t going to get involved in any revenge killing of his son. Casey had told him that he only wanted to smear Somporn’s reputation, and that had been good enough to convince Calvino to take the money. His reason seemed good enough to take on the case. Though Calvino did wonder whether most people in Thailand would care about Somporn keeping another woman. In some circles it would even burnish his reputation.

  Casey told Calvino about how the mia noi had another guy, a younger guy she was fooling around with during the morning she was supposed to be fooling around with Somporn. The main thing that came through from Casey’s rambling half-coherent rant was that she was dancing on the balcony half-naked with a guy her own age. What a thought: a woman who might be attracted to a man her own age.

  “She’s screwing this guy, and I didn’t know she had another guy. It should have been in your report. The one I paid for. What kind of half-assed job did you do, Calvino?”

  The second vodka and tonic arrived, and Calvino waited until Casey had drunk it.

  “I tailed the target you gave me, and like I told you, Somporn showed up at her condo every Wednesday. I never gave any guarantee that he wouldn’t miss a Wednesday. He might be sick, or maybe he had an appointment, or he blew her off and the new guy is giving her comfort. How do I know? Three or four months is a long time in short-time affairs. People change, Casey.”

  Human nature being what it is, every man thought failure and betrayal only happened to others. The belief ensured work for private investigators and lawyers. Calvino wondered when men would learn that with women the general rule did cover them; that the exception to the rule, like a lottery win, always went to someone else. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that there were yings who knew every trick of the game. They viewed the right man as a safe platform to stay put on so long as the money continued, but when there was the possibility of making even more money, they jumped with a predator’s speed. If money could be made from two platforms, or three, why not juggle the schedules? The penalty for getting caught just meant turning one John over and finding a replacement. For such yings, romance and relationships were scheduling issues. But finding the right time to talk reason to someone like Casey, who was in the midst of an emotional firestorm, was another scheduling challenge. Yings made a good living understanding better than most that the timing of the message was just as important as the content.

  “I relied on what you wrote.”

  Calvino smiled. Casey had got it wrong. He’d relied on a snapshot in time as if things never changed.

  “I’m not a fortune teller. I can neither predict the future nor can I stake out two people at the same time. I observed and reported a pattern of a women’s behavior. I never said anything about that pattern lasting forever. You got what you paid for. That’s all you could reasonably expect. Anyone who promises you any different is selling you a bridge to Brooklyn.”

  Calvino watched Casey think his situation through. “Tell me, Casey, why do you care so much if she’s cheating on Somporn?”

  “What’s it to me? That’s what you’re asking?”

  Calvino nodded, seeing that Casey hadn’t thought this through.

  “Are you afraid that she’s breaking up Somporn’s happy home?”

  “I want you to keep tabs on her and report back on who she’s seeing.”

  “Starting when?”

  “From now would be about right.” Casey pulled out his wallet and counted out a thousand dollars in ten Ben Franklins with watermarks so fresh they looked like they’d smudge if you rubbed them the wrong way. “Give me a full report this time. Don’t leave out anything. I want to know where she goes, who her lover is, and whether she’s still seeing Somporn. And anything else you find out about her. Put it all in. This time, I don’t want any loose ends.”

  “It’s back to tracking the mia noi, and Somporn is just one more guy in her life, is that how you want to play it?” asked Calvino.

  Casey sucked in his teeth, his eyes bulged, and he swallowed hard, hands wrapped tightly around his glass. “I’m not forgetting him. Believe me.”

  Calvino believed him. What he had trouble coming to terms with was how downright certain Casey was in his belief that every loose end could be tied up. The reality was that each time someone pulled out one string, three more spun out somewhere else. No one could ever completely tie them up in a perfect ball; the best any private investigator could promise to do was to observe the patterns, to explore the knots, and to tease, tuck, and pull until a plausible scenario emerged, but never could he find every last stray strand. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Don’t fuck up this time,” said Casey as he swallowed hard, leaving Calvino to bite deeply into the allegation that his work on the Somporn case hadn’t been professional. A smile crossed Casey’s face. “I heard you were out of town.”

  “Yeah, where’d you hear that?”

  “From your secretary. Who else would I hear it from?”

  “Did she tell you where I’d gone?”

  “No. Was she supposed to?”

  Calvino watched Baby Bear come with a drink. She rested her arm against his shoulder. “You too serious today. Not smile. Not happy.” She pulled an exaggerated frown, put her hands on her hips. That usually made him smile, but not today.

  “Later, Baby Bear.” She nodded, looked at him, and then stuck her tongue out at Casey and stormed off.

  Casey pushed the notes across the table. “That should cover baby formula for a couple of months and leave you enough to feed the bear,” he said.

  A grand was enough to provide baby formula in Bangkok until the kid was six. “I want to know if she’s still Somporn’s minor wife. Was it a one-off thing? Or maybe they’ve changed the day or the time they meet? I want that level of detail.”

  “To the tattoo on her right hip,” said Calvino.

  “You saw that?”

  “Just checking the detail level.”

  Casey turned stone-cold silent. “Don’t fuck this up.”

  At the bar, McPhail was in the middle of a serious conversation with Henry, a Lonesome Hawk regular with major health problems. Henry weighed four hundred, maybe four hundred and fifty pounds. He was one of those people who didn’t stop eating when he was full. Henry kept on eating until he was so tired he keeled over asleep on his plate. He had an appointment soon to have his stomach reduced to the size of an apple. At the moment, he was on his third special of the day, galloping through the food on final countdown, one last binge before submitting to a life sentence of one small spoon of this, and one little taste of that.

  After the door had closed behind Casey, Old George bellowed from his perch: “Next time I’m going to eighty-six that asshole. I don’t like him.”

  “You can’t do business only with your friends and make any money,” said Henry from the bar.

  “I’d rather go broke giving enemas to house lizards than make money from customers like him.” Old George made a fist and thrust it toward the water buffalo mounted on the wall above his head. “I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need. And I don’t need any more friends.”

  McPhail shook his head, repeating the word “enema” as he walked over to Calvino’s booth and slid onto the bench opposite. “That guy, I’ve seen him before. Didn’t he used to work at the embassy?”

  “I don’t wanna hear about embassies.” He thought about the Benz he’d clipped that morning. “I hate diplomatic plates.”

  “I get the picture,” said McPhail. “Did you see the way he hooked his ankles?”

  “You think I had my head under the table looking at
his feet?”

  McPhail laughed. “I could see him from the bar.”

  “You watched the way he hooked his ankles? McPhail, cut down on the alcohol before noon.”

  McPhail lit a cigarette, took a long drag, let the smoke roll out of his nostrils, and leaned back. “Some things like this matter. If you’ve studied long enough, you can make a profile from the way a man sits.”

  “You’re crazy. Casey’s crazy. Ratana’s kid is making me crazy. Is there anyone sane left?”

  McPhail looked around the bar and shook his head. “Not in this bar. Not in this part of Bangkok. Everyone’s nuts.”

  Calvino leaned forward, eyes focused on his friend. “How did Casey hook his ankles that gave you the slightest idea about him?”

  McPhail smiled. He took a drag from his cigarette and a gulp from his vodka tonic. “I’ve got more than two hundred photos of the way people cross their legs, hook their ankles, and how they sit with their knees touching or wide open. There are hundreds of variations. And I can tell the personality type from the way that person deals with his legs and feet when he’s sitting—or she’s sitting.”

  “Enough, McPhail. What did Casey’s hooked ankles tell you?”

  “He’s a killer.”

  “I want to know what’s going on inside his head,” said Calvino. “He’s after something he’s avoided talking about.”

  “You know what I’m saying? The man’s a natural-born killer. You can see it in his eyes.”

  “I thought it was the way he hooked his ankles.”

  “Are you fucking with me, Vinny?”

  Let it ride, Calvino thought. McPhail smoked his cigarette and nodded his head to the music coming from the boom box. Casey hadn’t been happy when he came in and he wasn’t any happier when he left. Without a baseline to go by, it was difficult to know if this was a permanent state. Calvino pulled one of the hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and gave it to McPhail. “Follow Casey. I want to know where he goes and who he sees.”

  McPhail rolled his eyes, “Man, he’s been gone five minutes. And do you know how hot it is outside? I’ll get third-degree sunburn. Then I’m in the hospital with tubes feeding me. What good is a hundred fucking dollars gonna do me?”