Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  “He’s a politician.”

  “And what are you?”

  Somporn had been clear with his friends—protect community values while promoting fairness abroad. His friends in the business community understood how to decode his message—support local cartels while demanding free trade in foreign markets. The message played the music that those contributing to his campaign wanted to hear.

  Saying goodbye, she could picture her brother standing before her, crying, as she held her hand above her eyes and stared at the halo with the shimmering rainbow colors.

  She dialed Calvino’s number.

  “I’m on a stakeout,” he said. “That would be difficult.”

  She thought he sounded distant, almost cold and calculated, as if she were just another caller. Her feelings were hurt.

  “I need to see you. It’s urgent.”

  Marisa was someone Calvino liked to think of as being in his debt. They’d been through the thunder and lightning in her bedroom. “I want to see you too.”

  That was what she’d wanted to hear.

  He gave her directions to a restaurant on Thong Lo, opposite the building with the eye clinic and Casey’s condo. Twenty minutes later, slightly shaken and stirred, her hair wind-blown, she climbed off the back of a motorcycle taxi, paid the driver, and entered the restaurant. She’d walked past Calvino without seeing him. A waitress brought her to his table. He sat at an out-of-the-way window table. It was easy to walk past; that was why he’d chosen it.

  Marisa sat facing Calvino with her back to the window. The halo around the sun, the conversation with her twin brother, the motorcycle ride, and her anguish over Fon made her appear rattled and suspicious. Her frustration increased as she sought eye contact with Calvino and failed. From where he sat with a pair of binoculars, he had a good view of the entrance to Casey’s building. When she tried again to find his eyes, he was looking straight past her.

  “You don’t seem very happy to see me,” she said.

  He smiled, thinking of the old Mae West line, delivered looking at the pistol in the man’s pocket: “… or are you just happy to see me?” But there was no humor in Marisa’s delivery. When a woman has slept with a man, she loses that mystery, a prize she holds back, and the first meeting afterwards she is looking for some sign of attachment, a recognition that the man is under her charm. Or had she slept with a man who felt no attachment after sex? She searched Calvino’s face, looking for evidence of the kind of man he was.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said. He lowered his binoculars, leaned forward, and kissed her on one cheek, then the other. He tilted his head to the side. In his family everyone greeted each other with an exchange of kisses on both cheeks. It was the same thing in Catalan culture. It was one of the comforting, common rituals that made people feel like they’d known each other for a lifetime.

  “Yeah, it’s good to see you too. About the other night: I didn’t thank you properly. Thanks again.” She held his hands in hers.

  “Sorry, but I’m on a stakeout. I’m working. What I’m trying to say is I’m not ignoring you. But I have to keep an eye out for someone across the street.”

  She turned around and looked out the window.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “It draws attention.”

  She slumped in her seat, dropping her bag with a thud, sulking.

  “Anyone looking in the window would see you with the binoculars. Now that would draw attention,” she said, the smile coming back.

  Being with a really smart woman was a bit like running a car into a wall at full speed; there might be enough juice to back up and drive away, but most likely the car would stall and shoot gray steam from its busted radiator. He put down the binoculars. “Did you see them when you were outside?”

  “No, I wasn’t looking,” she said.

  “The glass is tinted.”

  “No one can see in. So it doesn’t matter.” She had the last word.

  She hadn’t decided how much she cared about him. But she knew that she could care if she let herself. He’d snapped at her, and all she’d wanted to do was see what he was looking at across the street.

  A cold, unsettling feeling swept over her. She hated herself for the tears that welled up in her eyes. She wanted to leave. Calvino stretched his hand forward, touching her hand. “I didn’t mean to get on your case, but the guy I’m looking for knows I want to find him. He’s jumpy, I’m jumpy.”

  “I understand,” she said, meaning it.

  Reaching across the table, he took her hand and squeezed it. He said, “I’m watching the condo across the road. On the phone you said you wanted to talk about Fon and that it was important.” He inhaled the faint scent of her perfume, a subtle, soft smell of roses, like the roses in the lobby of Casey’s building. She wore a light blue dress that flattered her figure, and silver-and-gold earrings that moved like tiny windchimes every time she brushed back her hair. He looked away. An image of her in bed flashed back. He sighed, exhaling slowly, as if doing a breathing mediation. She’d had this thing that she wasn’t pretty; that her brother robbed all the looks in the womb. But he didn’t buy it. She was the kind of woman who made concentration on work impossible. He found himself glancing back at her face, her dress, her breasts, and her hands.

  “What’s happening with the kid?”

  Her hands folded nervously on the table. She watched as a waitress brought a glass of water. “Nothing.”

  Calvino looked away from the window, a look of surprise in his eyes. “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “What can I do when everyone tells me that what is right can’t be done?”

  “You congratulate yourself and relax. Because you finally understand how the world works,” he said. “Or …”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said, cutting him off. He’d gotten under her skin but she wasn’t sure how far, or how far she was prepared to let him go.

  “You didn’t let me finish,” said Calvino. “You push back. That’s what you have to do, or the right thing never gets done.”

  “There’s a way to help this child,” she said. Fon’s face had looked so worried as she’d left her at the condo for the UN meeting. She had grabbed Marisa’s arm and asked her not to leave. Marisa had leaned down and brushed Fon’s hair. “It’ll be okay. I won’t be long.” Fon stared at her, looking for some sign of truth overpowering her doubt. What would it take to destroy that look of pure terror on Fon’s face? she’d wondered.

  Calvino brushed a tear rolling down her cheek with the back of his hand. “I don’t see any good option for the kid. Or for you,” said Calvino. “You keep her and then get arrested, lose your job, get deported from the country, and they take the kid back. Or you give back the kid and cut out the drama in between.”

  Marisa fought back tears. “Look at me, just for a second.” He looked at her face, which was clouded with emotion. “Please don’t tell me there is no way.”

  There are people who believe that limits can be exceeded, and then there are those who believe that we are on the planet because our ancestors stuck to the limits. Calvino walked around to her side of the table, pulled up a chair, and held her. She took in a deep breath, her head on his shoulder. She had pumped the blood through his system at a rate that made him want to loosen his collar. He patted her back softly. Another time, another place, he might have gone for her; but when he stared into his own future, he saw himself walking alone. He admitted there was a moment when Marisa had gone below the skin and entered his bloodstream. But so did the common cold. Five days in bed usually cured what ailed him. Call it a chemical reaction, a biological imperative that hit all the right switches in his brain; sure the desire had coiled up inside, and he was having a hard time focusing on the building across the road, but he knew, and assumed she did as well, they had no real future.

  “What about Juan Carlos? Wasn’t he going to handle it?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “He tried.”

  “But Somporn said no,�
�� said Calvino. “No votes in helping a Burmese kid.”

  Her eyes widened. “That’s what he told Juan Carlos.” Marisa moved like a fox with full concentration on its prey nibbling a piece of cheese. “They only care about their money and power. Like the people in Madrid.”

  “In Thailand, money buys a yes.”

  “That’s true of every country,” she said.

  “Except that here most everything is for sale.”

  “You’re saying I should buy Fon?”

  Leaning forward in his chair, he found the entrance to Casey’s building in his binoculars. She had pretty much nailed it. In his mind, he hadn’t been thinking it all the way through, but he guessed that if he had thought it through, that would have been exactly what he would have said.

  He put it another way. “Auntie has made an investment in the kid. Auntie’s a businessperson. She looks at profit as a good thing. But she hates a loss. She’d as soon cut someone’s throat to stop someone from taking what was hers. There’s nothing personal between the girl and Auntie. They have a commercial relationship. She owns the girl. She wants to get paid. The price may be high. It’s got to cover loss of face, too, not just the value of the girl.”

  “Can you do this?” She searched his face.

  He thought for a moment about what he was getting himself into. “It takes time to make such arrangements.”

  “I don’t have time. Tomorrow at noon she goes back.”

  Calvino drank from his coffee cup. “She goes to Auntie. At least we know where to find her. We can negotiate later.”

  Marisa shook her head. “The guy from Taiwan will take her.”

  He admitted that she had a point. Auntie had already sold her. The only thing missing was delivery of the goods. That wasn’t usual. The habit of selling someone a couple of times remained widespread. A pimp like Auntie would have had a long history of taking money from more than one buyer and delivering, in the end, to the highest bidder. That was business. Fon was a seller’s delight: she promised a rich reward, and Auntie liked pocketing the profits from a prime asset.

  “It’s probably what happened between us the other night. I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t know why, but I trust you. You didn’t have to help on Cowboy. But you did. It proves at least that you can do the right thing.”

  “When a man’s got too many outstanding markers, it means he’s been trading good and bad for a living. What happened on Cowboy happened before I could think about it. I’m no saint. You just caught me on a good night. Sometimes I get lucky and slip into doing something right. But I don’t make a habit of hopeless rescue operations. It burns through a lot of good chits, and you still come out empty-handed.”

  She reached out and touched his hand. “You have a close friend on the police force. Could he do something?”

  “There are limits to friendship and even greater limits on the power your friends have.”

  She winced. It wasn’t the answer she’d wanted to hear. He’d mentioned Colonel Pratt when he was at her condo. The perceived wisdom in Thailand that most farangs believed was that if you had a friend inside the police force, then he automatically protected you as if you possessed an unofficial immunity.

  “Let me explain it this way,” Calvino said. “Not too long ago in an upcountry town, a godfather and his goons stormed into a police station and, in front of the brass, beat an officer unconscious. The word was the cop might have slapped the son of the godfather. The cop said he hadn’t hit the son. But it doesn’t much matter if he did or didn’t slap the kid. The father believed his kid.

  “You get the picture? That’s the kind of people you’re dealing with. Godfathers who’ve got influence. What I’m saying is that not even the police are safe from assault in their stationhouse. You’ve got ranking officers who are afraid to help one of their own who’s getting the shit kicked out of him right before their eyes. They freeze. When someone powerful decides to take revenge, it means that you are truly alone. There is no life raft in my friendship with the Colonel. If Auntie’s people want to hurt you, or the kid, or me, there’s no one who is going to stop them.”

  “I don’t believe that your friend would stand by while that happened to you.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. And that might get him killed.”

  “Then you won’t help me.”

  “I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is it isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to be very expensive.”

  “Whatever you want to charge, I’ll pay you.”

  “Don’t ever say that to anyone. Or if you do, make certain it’s someone you love. And who loves you.”

  “I like you, Vincent.” She was about to say something more but changed her mind. She touched his cheek. “I’ll go now. And thanks.”

  “Never thank anyone until you’ve got what you want.”

  She started to smile. “I always get what I want.”

  He watched her leave the restaurant. At the door, she looked back and smiled. Then she was gone. She was in the wrong country if she thought getting her way was the default setting. As he turned back with the binoculars, watching Casey’s building, he thought of all the things he should have said, the sorts of things that immediately pop into mind once it’s too late. What he’d wanted to say before she left was that when you fall off the edge in Thailand, just assume there will be no one to break your fall. It brought to mind the image of Nongluck falling past his balcony—as he’d sat, book open, drink in hand, looking out at the beach and the sea. He’d wanted to tell Marisa to remember that once the descent started, there was nothing between you and the street below.

  THIRTY-SIX

  CASEY’S PHONE RANG until an automatic message played. Calvino stood in the corridor outside Casey’s unit. He switched his cell phone to a second SIM card and dialed again. He had his ear against the door and could hear Casey’s phone ringing. It had one of those standard, default rings that people with no sensitivity about sound left on because it never occurred to them that they could change it.

  Casey answered on the third ring from the second SIM card. The ringing on the other side of the door stopped.

  “Open the door, Casey.” Calvino unbuttoned his jacket and reached inside, his hand resting on his .38 caliber police service revolver.

  “Calvino, I’m not dressed. Nor is the girl next to me. Come back in an hour and we can talk.”

  That constricted catch in the male voice that identifies he’s a sexual bunny thumping inside the rabbit hole wasn’t in Casey’s voice. Instead, the voice was deliberate and measured; a soldier’s voice.

  “Ball’s told the police what happened with Nongluck. I could call them now if you want. Five minutes tops and they’re here. Or you can open the door and we can have a talk.”

  “You want money?”

  Calvino drew his weapon and held it barrel-down with both hands as he stood away from the door, his back to the wall. He looked up and down the empty corridor. That time of the morning, most people were at work, or if they were the type who didn’t hold down a job, they were still in bed.

  “Read the newspapers, Casey. You’ve got the American congress, the American military, and the Thai police all looking to talk to you.”

  “And the CIA, the FBI, and the DEA,” said Casey.

  “The whole alphabet.” Calvino listened for movement. It had gone quiet inside Casey’s unit. “Or I could make a call and let the Thai police know where they can find you.”

  The cylinders in the deadbolt lock clicked with the solemn brevity of a hanged man’s last dance. The door slowly swung open. When no one appeared, Calvino moved forward and looked around the corner, both of his hands gripping the .38. It was no more than a side glance into an empty doorway. He pulled back, thought about Casey’s special-operations training.

  “Casey, let’s talk.” He hesitated before stepping further inside. From the corner of his eye, he registered something moving, like a bat flying down from a rafter.

  Casey, his ri
ght hand coming out of nowhere, smashed against Calvino’s hands in one swift move. No words, nothing but the physical blow. The force of it dislodged Calvino’s .38, which scuttled across the hardwood floor till it struck a chrome leg of the coffee table and started spinning like a top in front of the TV. Before Calvino reacted, Casey slammed his boot into his chest. The kick caught him with sufficient momentum to briefly lift him off the floor, knocking him against the door jam and drawing blood from the back of his head. Casey dragged Calvino half-conscious across the floor and dropped him in the middle of the room. He retrieved the .38 and stuck it in his belt. Then he stood over Calvino, looking down, holding a nine-millimeter Colt handgun a couple of inches from Calvino’s head.

  Calvino looked at the barrel of the gun; there was no silencer. “That’s gonna make a lot of noise,” said Calvino.

  Casey smiled, his finger on the trigger, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. Lifting the gun away, he walked across the room and closed the door, locking it. “You think I am going to shoot you?” he said. “Why would I do that? That’d be a crime, wouldn’t it?”

  Calvino didn’t like the tone in Casey’s voice. Whatever the idea was, Casey made it sound positively lethal. With his free hand, Casey removed a pair of handcuffs from a leather pouch clipped to the side of his belt. “Roll over, put your hands behind your back, and stay very still.”

  “Is this part of your job description?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of guys like you full of wisecracks. They’re the ones who usually cry out for their mother to come and rescue them.”

  He cuffed Calvino’s hands behind his back and wrapped duct tape around his ankles tight enough that the bones crunched together. Then he tore off more duct tape, using it to wrap Calvino’s upper arms close to his body. He lifted him from the floor and pushed him into a sofa chair next to a bank of windows. The blinds were drawn shut.

  As Calvino looked around the room, he spotted the rifle and telescopic scope on the table, the barrel pointed at the balcony window. Casey sat in a chair behind the sniper’s rifle, hands folded behind his head, grinning like he’d heard a joke or won a poker jackpot. He picked up Calvino’s .38 from the table and pointed it at him.