Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Unless you’ve lost someone through violence, you don’t know how important the anniversary of a death is for the family,” Marisa had said.

  Calvino flipped through Casey’s file. He had gone underground two days before the anniversary of his son’s death. Something Marisa had said that evening had stayed with him: “Either you remember or you let the memory die. Such a thing can fall so deep inside you that it bounces around in places where you can lose yourself. You may think what happened is gone, finished, buried in the past … but of course that’s impossible. It will always be there, waiting for you. That’s why every twentieth of August, Bakhita and I have dinner. We light a candle and we say a prayer.”

  He turned off the recorder, leaned back in his chair, and rotated around to face the window. He dumped the contents of the thug’s wallet on his desk. Three crisp one-thousand baht notes; the man’s fee made Calvino reflect on how little it cost to have someone beaten-up or killed. He read the Thai ID card, looking at the picture of the man who’d attacked him. He stuffed the cash and the ID card back into the wallet and switched off his office lights. He looked out onto the soi. The neon light reflected off the windows across the way. Red, green, blue, and yellow, as the hand moved through the clapping-itself gesture.

  In the mean streets people from another world moved through the night. Daytime people rarely saw them; if they did, they would know what it was these people did at night. Calvino considered whether he would have helped Fon if she hadn’t been with Marisa, or if he hadn’t bumped into Marisa at the Skytrain. The world moved that way, in a series of small interconnected gestures, events, and strivings that merged together. He wanted to think he would have helped the kid if Marisa hadn’t been part of the package. But he wasn’t all that sure about it. He’d been on Cowboy before and had likely walked right past Fon without seeing her. That was foresight looking in the mirror of hindsight, and neither one standing aside. He didn’t know at that moment if a man could ever know who he really was. Except maybe Casey, who was too sure, someone who had an ego gorged with self-importance until it had swollen like a tick’s belly bloated with the blood. Like most shallow men, Casey thought most people could be handled, broken, kicked into submission. Calvino asked himself if any truth could be pulled out of such a wreckage of man who lived in a world where truth was associated with primal screams of pain.

  THIRTY

  CALVINO HAD BEEN PUTTING on his shoes at the door of Marisa’s condo, Juan Carlos holding it open, when Fon had walked out of the bedroom holding Wan’s hand. She had heard him at the door and wanted to say goodbye. The side of the kid’s face had creases from the pillow. She’d been sleeping but she no longer looked tired. Fon wasn’t wearing her dress and makeup. She had changed into a fake Manchester City T-shirt and red shorts she’d borrowed from Wan. Shirt and shorts were both two sizes too large. The effect was to make her look even younger. She had wanted to tell him that she was sorry that she had been frightened earlier.

  Fon blinked and rubbed her sad, empty eyes. Juan Carlos saw a flash of fear in there, as if that emotion had been repeated enough that in the end it had hollowed out and dumped some basic innocence into a streetside bin.

  “My sister says that you speak Thai. Is that true?” he asked her.

  She laughed and rattled off a sentence in Burmese, switched to Thai, finished that sentence in Shan dialect, and in English asked if he had ever bought flowers from kids on Soi Cowboy. Her performance impressed Juan Carlos. He applauded.

  “You have a talent for words.”

  She hung her head. “Thais say, ‘I am khaya sangkom.’”

  “I am certain that’s very good,” said Juan Carlos. It was the kind of street slang he didn’t know.

  Wan shuddered at hearing the phrase, her smile fading. “It’s very bad. It means society’s garbage. Like drug addicts, small-time dealers, kids selling stuff at streetlights. Or women who work in bars.”

  “Don’t buy into that, kid,” said Calvino, looking at Wan and then at Fon. From their expressions Calvino saw that the sting of the phrase cut deep. It was a widespread attitude that made it next to impossible for them not to feel rejected by everyone except for the handful of people who exploited them.

  He looked at Marisa’s wounded reaction as a simple question about language had turned into a dark, nasty cultural corner. “Do you know whom to call?” he asked.

  She nodded, grateful that he’d broken the silence. “I can handle it.”

  Wan, who had recovered her smile, put a hand on Fon’s shoulder, giving her a gentle squeeze. “I speak the language of bees.” That made Fon giggle and squirm as if a bee had landed on her shoulder. Wan smiled at Juan Carlos, who returned her smile.

  Hands open at his sides and looking highly amused, Juan Carlos asked, “And what language do bees speak?”

  She moved her head to the side. It was her way of thinking through a question. She almost never answered straight out, a quality that her mother had criticized. “It’s not a word language like ours. For bees, it’s more like a dance. They dance to tell each other stories. They understand each movement the way we understand words,” she said.

  Juan Carlos was oblivious to his sister, and Calvino was intrigued. “Bees dance to make language?” he asked Wan.

  “To tell other bees, they dance to show where flowers are blooming and they dance to point other bees toward home.”

  Juan Carlos nodded. He liked the idea of a dance that was an arrow pointing to home. He knew the word for home in many languages, but here was a language he hadn’t learned, one he’d never thought about. “When I danced in the bar,” she said, watching his eyes as she revealed her occupation, “I always tried to face toward home.”

  Juan Carlos had snapped a series of digital photos of Fon that night after Calvino had gone out the door. They showed her in Wan’s baggy clothes, sitting on the red velvet sofa. He tossed and turned through the night, excited over the outpouring of sympathy that would naturally arise once he showed Kalya the photograph. The following morning he was up early and out the door.

  But her reaction wasn’t what he had expected.

  “We need to help this child. Her father works at one of your father’s factories on the Burmese border. Or if he doesn’t own it, he knows who does and can help.”

  Her response was indignation and anger. “Why are you doing this, Juan?”

  What kind of question was she asking him? It was perfectly obvious what needed to be done. Wasn’t his English sufficient to express the urgency, the emotion, the danger, and his promise to help a child find her family? He changed tactics. “I’m doing this for my sister. She witnessed a terrible murder years ago.”

  “I’m sorry, but what’s that got to do with the child?”

  “The anniversary is coming soon.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Kalya.

  “After the murder, she changed. Who wouldn’t? It could have destroyed her. But it made her stronger, wanting to help people who suffer. That’s why she does the kind of work she does. She would never say to you what I am saying. But I know her. To rescue a child is everything for her. It is her way of making—what is the right word?—atonement. But it’s nothing to do with religion. Marisa saw how invaluable a life is. How easily a life can be ended. And to save one life says I refuse to get knocked down and accept the world as a place that’s ugly, selfish and hostile. I will make a stand for life. That’s her way of retrieving some part of herself she lost that day.”

  For all of his gifts of language, he hadn’t found the right words to convey how important it was for Marisa to make amends for the damage caused that day on the beach. Fon had been adopted for his sister’s annual recovery program.

  Kalya looked at the digital image on Juan Carlos’s cell phone. “You must be careful that by helping someone you don’t cause more damage to others.”

  That afternoon, they went to see Somporn in his office the size of an airplane hangar. He smiled as he star
ed at Fon’s photographs. “She’s a beautiful child.”

  “The gang that held her has found a buyer for her virginity.”

  Somporn cleared his throat as if to dislodge a small fish bone. He rose and walked around his desk and stood in the window looking out at the skyline of Bangkok. Thousands of high-rises as far as the eye could see. He turned back and looked at Juan Carlos. “Of course, that is regrettable. But the best solution is for the authorities to handle the child.”

  “They won’t help. That’s the point. But if she could return to her father, that would solve the problem. You could rescue her. That would help you win votes. You would become the man who fights for the rights of children. Helping Fon will help your campaign.”

  Somporn thought about the implications for several minutes, looking down at the paperwork on his desk. He sighed and shook his head. “I would be seen as interfering with the authorities. Grandstanding, I think the Americans call it. Something like this could backfire. To be seen helping the Burmese could be very bad for the campaign. In Thailand, they are our historic enemy, like Catalonia is in Spain.”

  “According to you, her father sent her to Bangkok,” said Kalya.

  Juan Carlos had expected more support from her. He swallowed his disappointment, telling himself it was a minor point that could be overcome. “He certainly didn’t sell her to become a prostitute.”

  “You don’t know how Shan people think, Juan Carlos,” said Somporn. “Some of them have been known to sell their daughters. It is sad. I do not like it any more than you. Now I must return to work. You will excuse me.” He showed them out the door.

  In the corridor, Kalya, upset and near tears, turned away from Juan Carlos. He put his arm around her but she pushed it away. “You made my father very unhappy. You were unfair to him.”

  “How was I unfair?”

  “Using your relationship with me to put him in an impossible situation. I can’t believe you did that.” She pulled away and walked down the hall without waiting for him.

  Juan Carlos wasn’t one to give up, and his last resort was Kalya’s mother. When he left Somporn’s office, he made no mention to Kalya that he intended to see her mother. Kalya had been less than helpful with her father, and he saw no reason to believe that her support would be forthcoming with her mother. He drove out to the riding school where she was putting one of her prized horses through his paces. When she saw him, she smiled and waved. A few minutes later she rode over to him and dismounted.

  “What a pleasant surprise to see you, Juan Carlos.”

  While they walked together, he showed her the digital photos of Fon and explained her situation. “I know that you can help. One phone call and her father will be on his way to pick up his daughter.”

  “What I like about you, Juan Carlos, is your absolute passion. You breathe passion like a kind of fire. It suits you. It makes you attractive to men and women. But there is a downside to all great passions. That fire burns the reason away and leaves pure emotion. That can lead to reckless behavior. But, then, you are Spanish, and this is your nature.”

  “Why can’t we help her? I don’t understand.”

  It was a challenge, and she was accustomed to being deferred to by everyone. “A reason is what you wish to hear? Here’s one. I find a loose thread on your jacket. It seems that the right thing is to pull it out. If I do that, how do I know the whole jacket won’t unravel and fall apart? The girl isn’t alone in the world. You don’t know and can’t know who is behind her and what they are capable of doing. Being the knight in shining armor riding in on your handsome steed is all right for the movies. In real life, knights are easily slaughtered, their horses taken, their families brutalized and murdered. The people in this line of business guard their assets. To them you aren’t a savior; you are a robber.”

  “The girl’s father may be working at one of your toy factories.”

  The argument didn’t move her. “The girl’s father could be brushing down my horse in the stables. That doesn’t matter, Juan Carlos. I know from Kalya that you wish to help your sister, and that is a tribute to your loyalty and love of family. I told Kalya not to be too upset with you, that you were to be congratulated for this display of honor. It is rare among men these days. As much as I admire what you are doing, your honor is misplaced in this case. You will need to find another way to give back to your sister what she wishes to recover.”

  Kalya had phoned her mother with the entire story of what had happened in her father’s office. He should have expected as much, and he felt foolish for not realizing the earlier conversation would have immediately reached the mother’s ears.

  Juan Carlos searched his mind for the right word. “If you won’t help a child, then who will you help?”

  She gave him a hard, calculated stare. “That’s simple to answer, Juan Carlos. My family. And you are about to become part of that family.”

  “By helping Fon, you will help my sister, who is my family.”

  Her smile reminded him of one Kalya used when she wanted to express her disapproval. “I feel you are not listening when I say this can cause danger.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  MCPHAIL WAS WALKING into Washington Square with his arm bandaged and in a sling. The sound of a distant ocean tide rang in his ears. He stopped and slowly turned. The roar of the Sukhumvit Road traffic had fooled him into thinking for a moment that he was at the beach. The attack in Cowboy had left him bloodied and disoriented. His head hadn’t stopped ringing like a phone lost inside a house, with no way to find it, no way to turn it off. Mistaking traffic noise for the pounding sea worried him. He sighed and adjusted his arm inside the sling. Below the elbow, his arm was the color of a day-old burrito. He backtracked a couple of steps and squatted down on his haunches to look at a five-baht coin. He turned it over between the finger and thumb of his good hand and then, slipping it into his pocket, slowly rose to his feet.

  “This is going to be my lucky day,” he said. Then he reminded himself that yesterday was supposed to have been his lucky day too, according his horoscope. Some days were luckier than others.

  He remembered what Calvino had once told him, “The future used to be Bangkok, until it moved on to some other place that was luckier.”

  McPhail had been thinking about the attack. If his arm had been a few inches lower, the blade would have severed a major blood vessel and he’d be dead. If he’d held the curtain a few inches higher, the knife would have missed his arm altogether. The nineteen stitches were a compromise decision marking the boundary between certain death and a clean getaway. He was satisfied with the hand he’d been dealt. It could have been a lot worse.

  He walked past Mambo—an old cinema that had been converted into a katoey theater mainly for Chinese tourists—and a half-dozen motorcycle-taxi drivers who lounged on the stairs like lizards sunning themselves on a tropical morning. They wore orange vests that looked like those emergency vests stored under the seat of a budget airline. They smoked, slept, read newspapers, and watched people coming and going in the soi. The cops used them as eyes and ears, though they understood that sometimes the drivers saw things that weren’t there, heard things that weren’t said. Tensions were rising as the election campaign was coming to a close. People were at each other’s throats, and the police wanted to know who was planning trouble. The love affair with surveillance cameras had sidestepped Washington Square, so the taxi boys still played their old role.

  They clocked McPhail, a regular they recognized, and immediately noticed his sling. A farang with a busted-up arm, head, or leg gave them a certain pleasure. They laughed and nodded, as if it was about the funniest thing they’d seen all morning. McPhail had lived in Thailand long enough to know they didn’t mean anything bad by it. If one of their own fell off his bike and broke his leg, they’d all be roaring with laughter.

  “No, I didn’t fall off a motorcycle. No, my girlfriend didn’t get jealous. No, a giant lizard wearing an orange vest didn’t attack me. A fore
st dwarf jumped me.”

  The drivers shrugged, grinned, and whispered to each other. They hadn’t understood a thing he’d said in English. For McPhail that was the whole point. They would never understand how a man like McPhail had come to live among them and how some men of their background had cut him with a knife. He wondered how many of the drivers leaning back on the steps were armed, and what it would take to have one of them plunge a knife into someone’s body. He continued past them, thinking how it was less a language problem than a comprehension issue. Why, they wondered, would any man want to leave his homeland? Seeing a farang bruised or cut-up, from their point of view, seemed like a fit punishment for having abandoned his family.

  In the Lonesome Hawk, heads twisted around as McPhail walked in. Stories about his fight had circulated around the Square since early morning. The fact that McPhail had been the source of the stories wasn’t something anyone talked about. He waved and smiled before pushing his stomach against the bar. “Honey buns, bring me a large vodka and tonic with two slices of lime. I need to take a pill.” He looked pale as his hand shoved deep into his pocket and emerged with a screw-top container filled with painkillers. He popped two into his mouth as the bartender slipped the vodka and tonic into his hand. He drank from the glass and then threw his head back and swallowed.

  By the time Calvino entered the bar, McPhail had mellowed out. “You should have stayed in the hospital,” said Calvino. “You look terrible.”

  “Vinny, you don’t exactly look like Brad Pitt yourself.” He raised his glass in a mock toast. “To a couple of beat-up old guys. But we won. Tell George that we won.”