Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn

by Christopher G. Moore

  “You mean stop the fighting?” asked Calvino. “Create a country,” said Pratt.

  ******

  CALVINO wouldn’t have missed the meeting with Mike at the bar near Independence Monument for all the soft-shelled crabs in New York City. He arrived early—around four-thirty in the afternoon. Pratt wasn’t all that happy to see him going out the door of the Monorom Hotel and onto the back of a motorcycle without back-up. Playing lone ranger in Phnom Penh was a short-term occupation. But Shaw had intervened and taken Calvino’s side.

  “We will be two hundred meters away. He’s wearing a wire as well. I suspect if things go wrong, which they won’t, then we’ll know about it just as quickly as Mr. Calvino.”

  “Things always go wrong with Vincent,” said Lt.Col. Pratt. “That’s his charmed way of working. Otherwise he would

  have been dead at twelve,” said Shaw.

  “If my mother had spoken with an Irish accent, she would have sounded like you, John,” said Calvino.

  “Not to mention the way the two of you talk, it reminds me of my parents arguing whether I should be restricted to the house for getting into a fight.”

  That ended the discussion. Twenty minutes later Calvino arrived at the shophouse run by a Chinese man in his early thirties who spoke reasonable Thai and sold contraband liquor, which had been knocked off an UNTAC duty-free shipment. So the husband said, explaining the low price for Johnny Walker Black Label. His Thai wife stood out in front of the shophouse, putting up an umbrella over a table, and then wiping it down. Three round metal tables were positioned on the pavement. She looked up at the clouds, held her hand out, shrugged her shoulders and stared hard at Calvino’s face which wasn’t looking all that pleasant with the stitches, bruises, and swelling.

  “Expecting rain?” asked Calvino.

  “Too much rain. No good,” she said. “Someone kick your face?”

  This was coming from a woman whose face looked dented by the usual grief and despair life served up as daily fare.

  “A band of wild mules,” he said, smiling and watching her hand wipe over the tabletop.

  “Bad people in Phnom Penh.”

  No question about that, he thought. “Bad people everywhere,” he replied.

  He ordered a Tiger beer and after she walked away, he rocked on the back two legs of the metal chair. The sun broke clean through the clouds like a laser beam drilling through a dense grayish cataract. Pratt and Shaw had pieced together some of the details surrounding the grenade attack at the lake. But they weren’t forthcoming. Why should they be? What did it matter in the larger scheme of things for UNTAC? Ms. Thu missing a leg and two young prostitutes killed. The fact two whores were dead in a hut beside a lake no one had ever heard of never made the news any more than it would ever make sense. As he drank his beer he watched the wind and sun washing inky green waves over the wet grass field beyond. He watched the play of light until a motorcycle pulled to a stop beside the curb. Patten carefully climbed off the back, putting his weight on a wooden crutch, paid the driver and limped over to Calvino’s table. There was something different about Patten as he sat down at the table. Calvino tried to put his finger on it.

  “You’re a long way from Washington Square,” said Calvino.

  Patten leaned his crutch against the table and sat down. “I guess you’re a little surprised to see me?”

  Calvino shook his head and drank his beer.

  “I was wondering what took you so long,” he replied. Patten fuddled with his crutch as examined Calvino’s face for a moment.

  “Who mugged you?”

  “I didn’t get the name of their tribe.”

  “Whoever they were, they do pretty good work.”

  “I got the feeling that they had a lot of practice.”

  In the small margin between his pencil-thin moustache and his lip, sweat beaded, spilling down the corners of his mouth and splashing onto the leather cushion of the crutch.

  He looked like a one-man irrigation system that had gone wrong. His suit was rumpled and one button was missing on the jacket. The wind blew a lock of brown hair and he fought a losing battle to keep it out of his eyes.

  “You find Hatch?” asked Patten, fumbling for a Lucky Strike cigarette.

  “In about thirty minutes I’m meeting him here,” said Calvino.

  “Is that so?” He arched an eyebrow.

  Calvino didn’t reply and kept nursing his Tiger beer.

  The waitress came over and took Patten’s order for a double gin and tonic with lots of ice.

  “Well, I can tell you a few things you should know, Calvino. But it doesn’t matter. Because you’re working for me. And I’m telling you that you’re off the case. It’s closed. Got it?”

  “I’m fired?” asked Calvino.

  “You’re being relieved of your duties. You’re no longer working for me.”

  “Was I ever working for you, Patten?”

  Patten wiped the sweat off his face and drank his gin and tonic straight down, held up the empty glass and motioned to the waitress. When he looked back at Calvino with that set of dead, defeated eyes, Calvino figured out what this extra different thing was that Patten had packed from Bangkok to Phnom Penh—it was called fear. The man was scared. It was in his eyes, creasing his mouth into a death-like grin, making swallowing hard. And his voice was packed solid with the dry ice of fear bubbling up from the stomach all knotted and twisted with cold. Drinking scared.

  “You’re playing with some dangerous people, Patten.”

  “Hell, I’ve played with the devil himself and kicked his ass, and enough other dangerous assholes for a dozen lifetimes. Fought beside them. Fought against them. Been shot out of the sky by them. And I’m still alive.”

  There was a storm brewing in Patten’s face as if what he was saying had decoupled from what he was really feeling inside. The second double gin and tonic arrived and Patten sighed, taking a long sip.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say Hatch invited you to the meeting,” said Calvino. “And you’ve been in Phnom Penh for a while, waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “I thought you might have the answer,” said Calvino. Toward the roundabout near Independence Monument a motorcade appeared out of nowhere. It traveled down Sivutha Blvd toward the Tonle Sap River, the sun striking the highly polished lead sedan cars. Tiny flags fluttered from the front of each car. Following the two sedan cars came a pure white APC and on top five UN soldiers in blue berets stood erect and proud at full attention. At the top of the APC was a stunningly beautiful woman in full combat gear. Her full, moist, red lips in a perfect pout; the eyeliner and blue eye shadow like someone going down a catwalk. Her hair was pulled back underneath a UN beret. She looked like a goddess of war, a supermodel of peacekeeping. Riding on the top of the APC, she moved down the gangway in style, and in the latest fashion. She was dressed to keep the peace and as she passed the outside bar she waved like a beauty contestant on a Rose Bowl float. She smiled at Calvino who gave her a mock salute, touching two fingers to his forehead.

  “I’m a sucker for a woman in uniform,” said Calvino. Patten cupped his hand over his eyes for shade.

  “She isn’t wearing a number,” said Patten.

  “I thought you were the man who said everyone had a number,” said Calvino.

  There was a final wink and nod for the soldier. Why would anyone want to live anywhere but in Asia, Calvino thought? Behind the APC were two white UNTAC transport trucks, each carrying a dozen troops from Third World countries in combat gear. An escort of spit-and-polished parade dress troops smiled and waved as they passed Patten and Calvino. More than a decade earlier, the rats had starved to death on the streets of Phnom Penh; the official motorcade slowly rolled through a city which in 1975 had set back the calendar to Year Zero, emptied itself of people, and littered the countryside with bodies. UNTAC had come to reset the clock to the 1990s.

  From the arm patches Patten recognized some of the troops. />
  “Indonesians,” he said. “Some real role models for democracy.”

  Calvino wasn’t listening. He looked beyond more of the smiles and slow-motion waving by the soldiers. Twenty meters behind the last troop truck was a motorcycle, a Harley covered with chrome, which was ridden by a tall, lean foreigner, with a two-day growth of beard, dressed in jeans, leather jacket and T-shirt; his long dirty blond hair blowing away from his face revealing three earrings in one ear. He had a joint stuck in the corner of his mouth. The biker did a wheely, spiking the front wheel of the Harley into the air like a cowboy breaking in a spirited horse.

  “Hatch must have the only Harley in Cambodia,” said Calvino.

  “You have to give him that,” added Patten. “I don’t have to give him anything.”

  “He may have his own ideas about that.” Patten finished his drink and gestured for another as Mike Hatch dismounted from the Harley. The highway gear and machinery of gangs and gangsters. Hell’s Angels. Then he walked straight to the table, clenching his fists. Calvino was reminded of the Bulgobatts. A white looter out of uniform, looking for spoils to plunder.

  Finally, Calvino had found the man everyone was looking for and he wondered how in the world one such man out of nowhere could cause so much trouble. By smuggling guns into Thailand? He looked the part of a gunrunner. But he was running some heavy-duty merchandise to get this kind of special attention.

  ELEVEN

  THE RUSSIAN MARKET

  SUNRAYS BOUNCED OFF the three tiny diamond earrings that formed a half-crest moon on a ridge of Hatch’s right earlobe. It was more a wrinkle than a ridge, an indentation in the earlobe. Calvino remembered reading that research scientists said such an indent was a genetic marker for an early heart attack. The scientists didn’t know why men with an earlobe like Hatch’s faced early death. But like most people they observed a lot of things they didn’t fully understand. Calvino’s first impression of Hatch was that it was likely that, given the new circles he was keeping and the likelihood of people trying to shove a steel rod through the wheels of that circle, dying in the saddle of his Harley of a heart attack was the least of his worries.

  After Hatch dismounted from the Harley—all that chrome catching the sunrays in a blinding flash of light—he stopped to smooth down his jeans as he stood beside Calvino’s table and, without an invitation, sat down. Up close Hatch’s face looked as if the chisel edge had been a high-proof alcohol with a screw-off top combined with a designer street drug like Ecstasy. The final result was not Mount Rushmore quality art; it wasn’t art at all. Just another badly sculptured face, features weathered by abuse, too little sleep, and too much time in smoky rooms. Hatch had the genuine look of a grifter; someone whose dreams were always twice as large as the proceeds from his small-time criminal activity. Only he had gone from the minors to the major leagues. He stared hard at Calvino as if to intimidate him. It was a New York City street look. Calvino had seen it before and it didn’t worry him. As Hatch came closer, Calvino got a better look at his half-lidded eyes, which had gone yellowish like peeled hardboiled eggs with the yolk too close to the surface.

  “This is the man I told you about. Vincent Calvino,” said Patten, a quiver in his voice. “He’s one of us. From New York.”

  “Yeah?” said Hatch. “So you’re the prick who’s been riding my case all over Phnom Penh, asking every whore at the Lido if she knew about me.”

  The New Jersey accent was unmistakable.

  “I tried information but you weren’t listed,” said Calvino. Hatch smiled with a row of broken teeth.

  “Yeah?”

  “Patten, here, hired me to deliver you some money he says was owed to you,” said Calvino.

  “It seemed a queer assignment. But I took it knowing he wanted something else. Something he was keeping to himself. I was interested in finding out what game you two were playing. And how a guy named Fat Stuart fitted in before he was killed. I figured the odds were you were involved in some shit. So I decided to bring you the money and find out how deep in the shit you are standing. From what I can see you are up to your neck and sinking fast. I don’t like getting set up. And I figure it this way. Sending me out to meet Fat Stuart was a set-up. Only I didn’t fall down. If you want a straw man, you have to know something about hay. The way I see it, neither of you guys is what I’d call a professional, which explains why you are deep in something that’s got you both real scared.”

  Patten looked away, his face gone pale. “Do I look afraid to you?” asked Hatch.

  “Anyone who has been hiding out like you is scared,” replied Calvino.

  “Who said I was hiding? You tell him I was hiding?” He turned and glared at Patten.

  “I never told him that,” said Patten.

  “You had some wrong information,” said Hatch.

  “I was hired to find you.”

  “No one ain’t never had to be hired to give me money. So this is a first.” As he finished the waitress brought him out a tall can of VB beer.

  “But it don’t matter,” said Calvino. “Why’s that?”

  “Because my client’s taken me off the case.”

  Hatch raised the can of VB in a toast. “Here’s to free money.” Then he turned to Patten, who stared at the road. “And to people willing to pay for what’s free.”

  “You guys still don’t get it. Do you? You appear to have a business conflict with some very important people. You read the Bangkok newspapers and you know that business conflicts are the leading cause of death among the merchant community,” said Calvino.

  “Where did you get your MBA?” Hatch suddenly turned biker belligerent.

  Calvino leaned over, grabbed Mike Hatch’s wrist and pulled him across the table, knocking over Patten’s glass and an empty Tiger can.

  “You’re a wise guy, right? This isn’t Jersey. You can make the grandstand entrance but chances are you’ll get yourself dragged through an exit and into some shophouse alley. Where some asshole who can’t spell asshole will put a bullet through your head. You don’t run guns outta Phnom Penh and into Thailand without some influential people noticing. And these influential people who notice, they keep asking the same question. Who do you work for? That question makes them a little crazy. Edgy. You know what influential person means in Thailand? You don’t wanna know; you don’t wanna ask. Let’s say they live above the line. And guys like you are below the line. And these people start thinking how they can get information about an asshole on a Harley in Phnom Penh who thinks he’s Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. Harlem’s tough, right? Brooklyn, right? Jersey, maybe. But the people who are thinking about you aren’t gonna read you the Miranda rights, let you call your lawyer, give you an ice cream sundae with cookies. They can arrange to fit your balls with special clips made out of barbed wire. Make you bleed. You think you’re connected. Your connections are your guarantee, your protection. Forget it. They don’t mean dick shit. After they finish with your balls, they will keep on cutting until your knees are stumps. In case I’m not making myself real clear, unless I get some direct answers, I’m saying the two of you should be kissing your asses goodbye. You’ll end up like Fat Stuart with ants eating your tongue.”

  Calvino let go of Hatch’s wrist and he snapped back hard into his chair, his hand twisting his wrist as if it were sore. It became real quiet for a minute or so.

  “You didn’t know about Fat Stuart?” asked Calvino.

  Hatch’s face twisted into a sneer, then he turned to Patten as if Calvino wasn’t there.

  “He’s dead,” said Patten.

  “That fat fuck? He’s dead? How?” The word stuck like a fishbone in Hatch’s throat.

  “At the racetrack eating lethal chemicals in a brownie,” said Calvino.

  “I think it’s the way Fat Stuart would have wanted it,” said Patten, cracking his knuckles under the table. He was nervous enough to fly over the moon.

  “That fat fuck wasn’t just another piece of street litter. We did business
with him, Patten. Christ, I can’t believe it. That you didn’t tell me.”

  “I recruited Fat Stuart.”

  “Bullshit,” said Hatch. “He came to you because of me. I had sold some watches for him once. Another time we scored some diamonds. That’s why he came around.”

  “Not to mention you two served time together,” said Calvino.

  Patten’s eyes narrowed. “First time I heard that one.” “We’ve got a lot of firsts,” said Hatch. He was worked up and it was coming through in his tone of voice. “Like hiring this guy and not coming here yourself. Not telling me someone killed L’Blanc. Why? You didn’t think I’d find out that Fat Stuart was dead? Who killed him? Tell me that much.”

  Patten piped in. “Don’t take it so hard. So you did a little business before. That’s history. Remember you were the one who said, ‘He’s another asshole who likes Thai whores and has no other place to go. One of thousands of fucks like him. Except twice as big.’ Those were your words, Mike. So don’t get weepy over Fat Stuart. He was a no-hoper. The world didn’t stop when he died. Hell, the next race was only delayed thirty minutes. The world don’t care Fat Stuart’s dead, Hatch. I don’t give a fuck. Why should you?” asked Patten.

  “Patten, you’re starting to remind me of some Khmers I had some trouble with a couple of months ago,” said Hatch.

  That made Patten sit taller in his chair, the hair standing out from the back of his neck.

  “You threatening me?” asked Patten.

  “When I threaten you, Patten, you won’t have to ask. I am talking about a fuck I fired. It’s a story you’ll like. It’s about some cowboy like you who hires the wrong people.” Hatch was looking at Calvino when he said ‘the wrong people.’ He hadn’t forgotten the mean streets of New York look that people throw like a laser light show around a room of people who are waiting to be convinced you are less afraid of dying than they are. Once that is out of the way everyone can go back to their meal and conversation. The waitress came with another tray of drinks as Hatch started his story.