Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  After the last coup, a client had told Calvino to wind up his clock to see if it still kept time; if it failed to do so, who was the timekeeper? The military junta that had been running the latest show had withdrawn into the shadows—setting up camp, waiting to see if they could live with the next round of elected civilians. People closed in around family, friends, and colleagues. With an election coming up, the military was doing whatever it could to retain its influence in the post-election era, and that meant backing the right-thinking people. Somporn thought of himself as being among those who thought and acted right. The difference between victory and defeat, all the players understood, wouldn’t emerge only through an election; it would arise once the ever-shifting power connections had made a new deal everyone could live with.

  In small, isolated pockets of Bangkok like this one, it didn’t much matter who pulled the strings. Casey hadn’t mentioned that Somporn was running for public office. But why would he? Calvino couldn’t vote for him. An old woman rode past on a bicycle, giving him a betel-nut grin. You didn’t see many faces like that on election posters. It was reassuring, he thought, that there was still one part of Bangkok where people rode bicycles as their main means of transportation—people who frequented mom-and-pop shops and massage parlors with rusty grills and green splashes of algae colonizing the outer walls. How much money is Somporn paying voters? he asked himself. From the look of the neighborhood, he could bag a lot of votes with a five-hundred-baht note.

  With the sun overhead, Calvino kept his eyes on Cat’s Camry. He stayed far enough behind to avoid her attention, but he was still close enough to see the back of her head. He would have thought Somporn’s mia noi would at least glance at the campaign posters. But as far as he could see, she never gave them any notice. If anyone could know the bullshit of a politician inside and out, it would be his minor wife.

  He watched her park and wrote a note in his logbook. She popped the trunk from the inside and then got out of the car. Lifting the trunk lid, she pulled out a black carry-on case, the kind flight staff wheel through airports. She crossed the street, pulling the case behind her. A couple of motorcycles shot past in a blur. The humidity and heat had bred two competing organisms: a black fungus and a green algae that fought over the right to the half-melted caulking in the window. The street could have passed as a petri-dish experiment in a nineteenth-century science lab. An ice cream vendor slumped over his cart in the shade, quietly enough that bacteria could have been culturing on the side of his sleeping face.

  She turned into a beauty salon with faded posters of Thai movie stars on the walls. A couple of old ladies with their poodles and baskets of snacks talked over moaning hair dryers while getting a wash and set. Two Thai women in their late twenties dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts were snipping, cutting, separating strands of wet hair.

  Calvino parked a short distance away. He walked over and looked through the window long enough to confirm his target was inside. Then he turned and spotted an open-air restaurant across the street. He pulled up a metal folding chair, sat down, and ordered a coffee. Opening the Bangkok Post, Calvino pretended to read. Then he actually started to read one of the news stories about the election. He scanned the article about the major players in the upcoming election, but there was nothing about Somporn. He folded the newspaper and looked across the street, then at his watch.

  Cat had led him to a place in Bangkok from which no news ever filtered out to the English language press. He tried to remember if he’d ever read something about Somporn’s election campaign in the newspaper. He drew a blank. He sipped his coffee before adding another spoon of Coffee-mate. Behind cover of the newspaper, he took out his digital camera and snapped several shots of the beauty salon and the gray Camry, making certain to zoom in on the registration plate.

  Finishing his second cup of coffee, he looked over at the row of buildings across the street. There were hundreds of beauty salons closer to where Cat lived. Yet she had driven her new Camry all the way to the boondocks to sit in a rundown place that looked like its business plan had imploded long ago. But the hair-cutting yings who worked inside and their customers had kept the business alive. The shops and the people inside existed in an archway, figuratively speaking, with the old ways on one side and, on the other, the modern world that was looking to displace them. It was a transition zone between two ways of life. If they wanted to see the future, they could go on the rooftops of their shop-houses for a glimpse of the big city sliding like an avalanche toward them.

  Cat was inside for nearly an hour before the beauty-salon door opened and one of the beauticians followed her to the Camry. Cat was no longer pulling the small suitcase she had taken inside the salon. The two talked for a few minutes, Cat seated in the driver’s seat, the air-conditioning turned on, and the beautician standing in the sun. Calvino couldn’t hear what they were saying, but that didn’t much matter. He waited until Cat had pulled away before he folded his newspaper and paid his bill.

  Calvino flashed a smile at his waitress. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Dam,” she said. That was the Thai nickname that meant black. It was a traditional out-of-fashion nickname, light-years away from the trendy Bangkok nicknames of Seven, Benz, or Starbuck. The waitress’s skin didn’t look black or even coffee-colored, but that wasn’t important. Her father must have thought her black enough at birth to pull the name out of the air. But then there were also color nicknames that depended only on the days of the week: Yellow for Monday, Orange for Thursday. Or if you were born on Sunday, you might get stuck being called Red for the rest of your life.

  “Dam, do you see that beauty salon across the street?”

  Always start with a simple, easy question. Assuming she wasn’t blind, of course, she could see the salon. Dam nodded.

  “Do you know the name of the woman who came out with the customer a moment ago?”

  Then give them a simple test. Names are easy for most people. The salon was across the street. Dam would know the names of every person inside. But it was better to go slow and easy, keeping the questions light and friendly.

  “That was Fah,” Dam said.

  “She must have been born on a Friday,” said Calvino, leaving a hundred-baht tip. That was big enough, he thought, to make him a big spender in this version of Bangkok. Then he remembered there was an election and everyone was laying down money on the table, looking to buy votes. She picked up the hundred-baht note and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Dam smiled, “You are very good.”

  “Is Fah good? Can I get a good haircut?”

  “She cuts my hair.”

  “You think she’d cut mine?”

  “I think no problem,” she said with a large grin. “Tell her Dam sent you.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks. Oh, by the way, all these election posters on the street. Who are you going to vote for?”

  A pensive look replaced the smile. “Person who will help the ordinary people.”

  “That should be a challenge,” said Calvino. “What about Khun Somporn? I see his posters up and down the street. Does he help the ordinary people?”

  “He helps Meow,” she said with a sigh.

  “Meow doesn’t look all that ordinary to me.”

  As he walked into the beauty salon, all eyes turned his way and stared. The two yings working to shape the hair on ancient heads stopped, their scissors frozen in midair. Four old women sat around a polished teak table playing mah-jongg, slapping the tiles. But the game had stopped too. The players looked up, a pile of bank notes on the table beside each one. There is an element of violence and spite inherent in that old Chinese game that seemed to perfectly fit the atmosphere of the place.

  “Can I help you?” asked one of the yings.

  “I’d like a haircut. And I’d like Khun Fah to cut my hair. That is, if she’s available.” He sat down in the barber’s chair and smiled.

  “I am Fah,” said the ying with a T-shirt tha
t read on the front SAME SAME and on the back BUT DIFFERENT. “How you know my shop? How you know my name?”

  The ladies waited for Calvino to answer. The women’s interrogation was more like a job interview than a haircut.

  “Khun Dam across the road said you cut her hair. And there was another person who said you did good work.” He closed his eyes as if concentrating and then slowly reopened them. “Cat. I mean, Khun Meow, tells me that you cut her hair too. With those recommendations, I’d say you’re good.” He finished with a broad smile

  “How do you know Meow?” asked Fah. The other yings in the back strained to hear his answer.

  Calvino raised an eyebrow. “We go way back in time. We both like the music scene.”

  “She was just here,” said Fah.

  Calvino raised an eyebrow. “Sorry I missed her.”

  “You’ll have to wait,” Fah said. “And I don’t have air-conditioning.”

  For someone without a lot of customers, you should try to be a bit more positive, he thought. Normally the Thais were friendly, happy, and playful. This group looked at him as if he had some intention of robbing the place. He hadn’t worn his leather shoulder holster, so it wasn’t because of any mysterious bulge under his jacket.

  The beautician came back with a glass of water for Calvino. Twenty minutes later, after he’d flipped through several women’s magazines—all in Thai, so he had just looked at the pictures like a three year old—Fah tied the apron around Calvino’s neck. He’d settled in long enough that the ladies had gotten used to his presence and stopped staring at him. Slowly they resumed their gossip about neighbors, the price of chicken, the local Mafia, and the daughter of a friend who had married a rich farang who had delivered ten grand worth of gold for his mother-in-law’s birthday. One of the old women threw a glance at Calvino after the story about the gold, wondering about him in the way Thais wondered about farangs. Was he married? Was he rich? She licked her old, parched lips before thinking of the possibilities represented by so much gold. It was tied in with some demand made by the Mafia and a three-year-old gambling debt.

  “How would you like it?” Fah asked him, looking at Calvino in the mirror.

  Through the mirror he looked at her, standing behind him with the scissors. “A light trim. Very light.”

  She pulled the comb through his hair and, after reaching over to a side table for a plastic sprayer bottle, wet his hair down. The salon had a closed-in musty smell cut with cheap perfume and cat mange.

  “Meow could go to any salon. But she comes here,” he said, watching her face in the mirror.

  “She’s very loyal to her friends,” said Fah.

  Calvino thought about Cat going around Somporn’s back with the Birdman. There was loyalty to men and then there was loyalty to the salon. The two would never be confused in the mind of a ying, he thought. The mah-jongg players pretended not to listen. He noted that Cat’s suitcase rested beside one of the women at the table. On one corner of the mah-jongg table were several stacks of small campaign cards with the faces of Somporn and two other candidates. Next to the cards were a stapler and a box of staples.

  “She’s been coming here a long time,” said Calvino.

  One of the old ladies whispered loud enough for everyone to hear that she was increasing her wager on the game. She then discarded a tile.

  “Even after her sister died, she didn’t forget us.”

  Calvino raised an eyebrow. “When did that happen?”

  “Two, three years ago,” said Fah.

  One of the old ladies piped up. “She died three years ago last month. I remember the funeral. Her two young boys cried their eyes out. They had no father around to hold them.” The gambling hadn’t kept any of them from absorbing the gossip flying around the salon like mah-jongg tiles.

  “How old was the sister?”

  “Jeab was twenty-four,” said another old lady.

  “No, she wasn’t. She was at least twenty-five,” said the first one.

  “She wasn’t quite twenty-five,” said Fah. That seemed to satisfy the two old women, as there was no clear winner in the age sweepstakes.

  The subject had opened up the collective wisdom of the salon, and Calvino pushed ahead with his questions. “That’s young to die.” He considered the possibility that the husband had passed along a dose of AIDS before he turned into a coil of smoke going up the temple chimney.

  “Jeab worked here for two years before she died.”

  “She was the best,” said one of the old ladies. “I still miss the way she cut my hair.”

  Watching her face in the mirror, Calvino saw the remark had annoyed Fah. “What happened to the kids?”

  “With no father, Meow supported them.”

  Resting against the elbow of one of the ladies was a stack of thousand-baht notes with campaign cards stapled to each one.

  “Saved their lives is more like it,” said the other hairstylist.

  “Gave them hope,” said one old lady. She slipped the stack of banknotes off the table and out of sight.

  “She put them in an international school, a school that is only for the very rich. But she pays for it.”

  It turned out to be the old story of the husband running off with a younger woman. Jeab had it in her head that she’d been thrown overboard because she had a number-three nose, the kind of nose outside of Asia that takes a lot of punching before it gets that flat. And if she had a more beautiful nose, she thought, then she could reel her husband back in, or if that failed, she’d find another man who would appreciate her new beauty. A friend had recommended a clinic. The price was cheap and the doctor was, well, a doctor, and he had done a lot of nose jobs. Jeab had gone into the clinic at ten in the morning and lain back on the cot where the doctor administered the anesthesia. But he somehow used too much, or she just had a reaction. No one ever knew the reason for sure, but Jeab’s heart stopped, and by the time they got her to the hospital, her brain had swelled up, and the emergency room doctors had to punch holes in her skull to relieve the pressure.

  She’d lingered a while in ICU, hooked up to machines to keep her breathing. When her heart stopped again, no one attempted to revive her. Cat took in her nephews, something that had made it easier to accept Somporn’s offer at the car show. Old-fashioned capitalism, supply and demand, had worked for both of them. In three years the two boys had prospered at the international school. Cat kept a rented house near the school with a full-time live-in maid. Twice a week she visited her nephews, and they adored her as if she were their mother.

  “She goes to all the boys’ school functions,” said one of the old ladies. “That’s a fact.”

  Cat the saint, thought Calvino. He also thought of Marisa and wondered what it was about women that made them rescue children while the men walked on past.

  “Meow must be rich,” said Calvino.

  Fah held the scissors an inch away from his cheek, finding his eyes in the mirror. “She has a rich husband.”

  “Yeah? She married?”

  “I thought you said she was your friend?”

  “I’ve never met her husband.”

  “She’s a mia noi,” said one of the mahjong ladies. “But what is the harm in that? A man with that much money should spread it around with more than one wife. I’ve always said that.”

  Another old woman shook her head. “Not always. Only since your husband died have you said that.”

  “People change,” said the old woman, who had the kind of permanent smile that plastic surgery leaves. “And Meow has got herself a good man. He takes care of her.”

  “And she takes care of him,” said her friend, winking. “If he’s elected, it’s because of her. But elections cost a lot of money. That is, if a candidate wants to get elected.”

  They saw him looking at the money. “Friends help friends,” said one of the women at the table.

  Calvino nodded, turned back, and looked in the mirror. He gave Cat full credit and an extra star to Sompo
rn, who had found a way to get his money into the hands of the voters while staying far away from the money trail himself. Using the game of mah-jongg as a cover was a particularly nice touch.

  Calvino scratched his head, sitting in the barber’s chair and looking at the cash and the women at the table. “I thought Meow was single,” he said. “I saw her hanging out with a jazz musician. He plays with a band at Saxophone.”

  “That’s Nop,” said Fah. “That’s not her husband. Ball teaches the boys guitar once a week. He works for Meow.”

  “Everyone calls him Ball. He’s a celebrity, you know. A lot of people work for Meow. Some of them are quite famous,” said one of the women at the table.

  Not everyone, thought Calvino, who had grown accustomed to thinking of him as Birdman.

  Fah held a mirror behind Calvino’s head. He had a look at her work and nodded. “Ball’s good on the guitar,” said Calvino as he started to rise.

  “But I’m not finished,” said the beautician, clicking the scissors as if she had a nervous habit. Calvino removed the apron around his neck and handed it to her.

  “Just a trim was all I wanted,” he said.

  “I only did the back.”

  “That’s where it grows the fastest.” He pulled out his wallet and gave her a five-hundred-baht note.

  “It’s one-hundred baht. Do you have anything smaller?” asked Fah.

  “Keep it,” he said. “Make certain you vote for Somporn.”

  “Oh, we will,” said one of the mah-jongg players, slapping down a tile.

  As he walked to the door, Calvino stopped and looked back at the women.

  “I forgot something,” he said.

  The women looked at him and then at each other, waiting to find out what he’d left behind. Only he hadn’t left anything like keys, glasses, a wallet, or the other things geezers forget. “Meow had a friend. Her name was Nongluck. Did Meow ever talk about her?”