“They can figure that out.”
Pratt shook his head. “We have been very thorough and had the full cooperation of Dr.Veronica and her staff in making the report.”
“You’re saying I owe her?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m just explaining what happened.”
Pratt knew the answer before Calvino asked the questions—he did owe her. They both knew it. But that didn’t solve the basic problem. She had gone over the line between right and wrong, and had sided with people she should have never given the time of day. They were dead now. She had survived. That was saying something for her ability and her luck. Philippe had been too powerful to touch, with too many friends in Bangkok, Paris, and Phnom Penh. But despite all that power it had not kept him alive.
As he sat opposite Calvino it had started to make sense how Hatch and Patten had got themselves killed in Phnom Penh. Someone who had nothing to fear, who would stop at nothing to achieve what he desired, had slaughtered them. Philippe had promised her seductive, powerful things—to revenge her cousin’s death in Bangkok and to retrieve her cousin’s necklace—and she had assumed he was a man of honor, who shared her values about the people who came to the hospital. That had been the deal. Her cousin, Fat Stuart, double-crossed his friends. Was his duplicity motivated by the desire to help his cousin? If so, it would have been the first evidence of altruism on Fat Stuart’s part. Maybe he changed his mind or couldn’t make it up. And Philippe was prepared to betray her as well.
The necklace was caught in a power struggle between two factions of the police department. Neither one had succeeded. But at the same time it meant that neither had lost. The political heat over the disappearance of the jewels would go off the boil and controversy would be forgotten again for weeks or months at a time. Both sides would take time to regroup and redeploy agents in the field until the necklace was found.
Pratt thought about the rumor of how the wife of one of the official s had appeared on a video wearing the necklace. Stupid, but there it was if the rumor were true. Evidence. In full, stop-action color, and the Saudis had a copy of the video. There was never supposed to be evidence against the powerful. But it was on tape. Now face was involved. Enough face to keep a couple of hundred thousand Thai workers barred from working in Saudi. If Pratt could return the necklace, then some honor might be salvaged by the police department. The necklace would be returned by those who had conducted the investigation into the theft rather than the thieves. The Thai workers could return to their jobs in the desert and remit their checks back home.
******
AT the airport, Shaw handed Pratt a copy of W.B. Yeats’ collected poems. “It’s not new. But I thought you might like something to read on the plane.”
The gesture touched Pratt. Just as soon as he started thinking all farangs—except Calvino—were insensitive, in it for themselves, rolling over the earth as if it were their private club, someone like a Shaw came along and shattered the thought. The book fell open to where Shaw had inserted a bookmark, and Pratt read a marked passage:
It’s long since I began to call up to the eyes This wise and simple man. All day I’d look in the face What I had hope ’twould be To write for my own race and the reality.
“Thank you, Deputy Superintendent,” said Pratt, looking up and closing the book. “And in return I would be grateful if you would take this.”
Pratt reached into his carry-on bag and pulled out his well-thumbed copy of the collected works of William Shakespeare.
“You can test him,” said Calvino.
“He knows it by heart.” “And that is the place to know Shakespeare.”
Pratt felt a chill course through him as he wondered if Deputy Superintendent Shaw of the Dublin Police Department might have been Thai in his last life. And in this life one of the reasons for coming to Phnom Penh for both men had been to make some exchange from the heart promised but denied in an earlier life.
******
THE flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok was just short of an hour. After the pilot had come on the intercom and announced they had reached a cruise altitude of 30,000 feet, Calvino had pushed back his seat and loosened his tie. Pratt was already lost in the book of Yeats’ poetry. It had been a perfect gift, thought Calvino.
“You ever have second thoughts?” asked Calvino.
Pratt looked over the top of his reading glasses, wondering what was behind Calvino’s question.
“Sometimes third and fourth thoughts,” he replied. Calvino grinned.
“Sometimes I think you could have made one hell’va wise guy in Brooklyn. What I mean is, you know what’s right but then you think maybe you don’t know what’s right. So you’re left thinking maybe there is no right. Then you think about a world for half a second where there is no right and you shudder. You know it can’t be that way. But you see a guy like Nuth and you say, where’s the right in this world? Everyone’s frightened, running for cover. Morality is manufactured as people go along. People come up with their own private codes. They’ve done it in Cambodia for thousands of years. And what have we got that shows right? Shakespeare? Yeats?”
Pratt had gone back to reading Yeats, half-listening to Calvino carry on his debate about right and wrong. He was about to turn the page when he saw Calvino’s hand slowly lower over the book and when he pulled it away, there was about the most beautiful necklace he had ever seen in any lifetime—and he had remembered seeing it once before, on video, around the neck of a police general’s wife—the stolen Saudi necklace.
“You picked up the hotel bill,” said Calvino.
“Fifty million dollars,” whispered Pratt.
Calvino could have disappeared into a new life with such a piece as this one and lived like a god. He could have bought himself out of his slum and dead-end life. But he didn’t because he couldn’t face himself. That was Pratt’s immediate reaction to the necklace. “Where did you find it?”
Calvino smiled. He slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand and shook his head. “It was so obvious.”
“Where?”
“In my hotel room.”
“Please don’t joke, Vincent.”
“It’s true, Pratt. It had been in the room all that time. Hidden in the bathroom ceiling. Fat Stuart used a jeweler’s drill to make a hole in the ceiling over the toilet. He closed the hole with a piece of bubble gum. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I went into the bathroom. I was looking at myself in the mirror and asking myself who was this person in the mirror. Someone I used to know in New York. I started to think maybe Fat Stuart had looked in the same mirror. That made me curious. We shared the same bedroom, the same whore, and even bet on the same horse. And I was thinking to myself why was Fat Stuart in the bathroom so long when he had a beautiful girl in his bedroom and Hatch was alone with her? He would have known that Hatch would screw her. He was greedy and possessive. Something else must have attracted his attention, and made him choose between it and the girl. That had to be some valuable item. Hatch wouldn’t think of how much time had passed. It was probably one of the few times that Fat Stuart had when Hatch wasn’t clocking his every move. While Hatch was making love with Thu, all the time Fat Stuart was hiding the necklace. I’m guessing that Hatch had had the real one. But Fat Stuart switched it with a fake and stashed the real one where no one would ever find it. The way I figure it, Fat Stuart couldn’t stop himself from selling that necklace more than once. One time to Hatch and another time to Philippe. Then he started to play wise-guy games. He didn’t trust Hatch and definitely not Patten. What he shouldn’t have trusted was the brownie.”
Pratt had the feeling that Calvino had made enough merit in this life to escape the wheel next time around.
“You did right, Vincent,” he said.
“You know what I’m thinking is good about this?”
“What?”
“That some people in the department are going to lose a lot of face. And I think they might want some revenge. So I’ve been giving some seri
ous thought to the idea of revenge,” said Calvino.
“Meaning?”
“You tell them that you found it in a room used by Mike Hatch. It’s a small deception. But figure it this way, Pratt. You can’t afford to let the crooks take away your boss’s glory. In New York they used to say that in real estate there are only three things that are important—location, location, location. With power there are three important things, too—image, image, image. Your side can’t be declared the winner unless you won. So take the necklace back and drop it on the general’s desk and tell him to call over the Saudi Envoy. You’ve got a surprise for him.”
Pratt grinned, turning the necklace over in his hand. It was a brilliant idea, bound to keep Calvino well within the rebirth cycle. He was thinking about Dr. Veronica, and how much she had wanted this very item, and the belief she had about how it would change the destiny of her hospital.
“If only Dr. Veronica could have seen this,” said Pratt.
Calvino leaned his head back against the headrest. “She did,” he said in a half whisper.
“I had to know, Pratt.”
Pratt looked over at Calvino. “Know what?”
“How she would react.”
“What did she say?”
Calvino turned his head toward Pratt.
“She said it was difficult to understand how much blood and bad feelings one necklace could cause,” said Calvino.
“And I told her she could be the umpire. She could play the role of God. She sat in her office holding the necklace, her eyes closed as if she were praying. I didn’t say anything. I waited until she looked at me. I told her the story about how the jewels were stolen and all the political troubles the theft had caused. Then she said, ‘Take it back to Thailand. I never want to see it again.’ ”
“What if she had decided to keep it?” asked Pratt.
“I had to find that out. I can’t say what I would have done,” said Calvino.
“She did the right thing.”
“I had to know that,” said Calvino. He was proud of her and it showed.
“We once had this discussion about how property is theft and the ends justify the means. But when it came down to it, she wouldn’t take it.”
“I am glad for you, Vincent. I know it was important to you that she came through this okay.”
“She knew that it wasn’t hers. Sure you can rationalize it and say that the Saudis exploited thousands of people for the wealth to create the necklace. But does that make it right to steal it and use it for other exploited people? Who gave her the right to choose?”
“No one,” said Pratt. “And if she had really tried to sell this necklace . . .”
Calvino interrupted him. “She would have been killed.”
Pratt liked it when they both reached the same conclusion at the same time.
“I tried to tell her that what she had planned could never have worked but I couldn’t. And I think her cousin knew that. He probably saved her life and she’ll never know it. Fat Stuart was a man everyone always made fun of but he died because he was a hero, Vinee.”
This surprised Calvino. “You saw her?”
“I went to the hospital. She was trying to do right, Vinee.”
“So was Pol Pot. That’s the trouble with the world. Everyone’s trying to do what’s right only it comes out wrong most of the time.”
“She said that she loved you, Vincent.”
“She said that?”
Pratt nodded.
“What time were you at the hospital, Pratt?”
“Three o’clock or so.”
“I had left half an hour earlier.”
Pratt put away the necklace as the air hostess came around with the drinks trolley.
“One more thing,” said Calvino. “Nuth. Any chance you can go through channels to get him out of T-3? He looked like he could use a change of scenery.”
“I asked Shaw to see what he could do.”
“Good idea. I’ll check with him next week to see if it worked out.”
Pratt wrinkled his brow. “You’re coming back to Phnom Penh?”
“I promised Thu I would take her back to Saigon. And funny thing, Dr. Veronica said she should come along just to make sure there were no medical complications.”
“That’s the only reason she’s going?” asked Pratt. “She promised to teach me French.”
“Do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Don’t try and teach her Thai. You never get the tones right. You would be calling her a horse or a dog rather than a doctor.”
“I promise.”
“One more thing,” said Pratt. “Yeah?”
“How much do you know about gems?”
Calvino raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“How do we know this necklace isn’t another fake? Another one of the little jokes left behind by Mr. L’Blanc?”
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Calvino. “I’ll run it through the lab.”
“How do you know that someone in the lab won’t pull something funny?”
“I don’t,” said Pratt.
“That’s what I love about Thailand. The certainty,” said Calvino.
“You never know where you stand and never know when you may fall.”
“And after you fall, where you will land,” said Pratt
The rice fields were below as the airplane descended to Bangkok. They looked out of the window at the City of Angels as the late afternoon light turned the Chao Phraya River a burnished gold, then a reflected green, and the canyons of high-rise towers thrust through a haze the color of wet cement. Above the horizon a star was shining. Calvino remembered he had no food in the house and would have to go shopping on Sukhumvit Road. Then he planned to crawl into his bed and sleep, the kind of deep sleep without dreams or hopes, a sleep without regrets, without knowing or thinking about how things got the way they are or how occasional fragments of decency escaped the forces of gravity.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian writer who once taught law at the University of British Columbia. After his first book His Lordship’s Arsenal was published in New York to a critical acclaim in 1985, Moore became a full-time writer and has so far written 19 novels and one collection of interlocked short stories.
Moore is best known by his international award-winning Vincent Calvino Private Eye series and his cult classics Land of Smiles Trilogy, a behind-the-smiles study of his adopted country, Thailand. His novels have been translated into eleven languages. His Vincent Calvino novels are published in the United States by Atlantic Monthly Press and in Great Britain and the Commonwealth by Atlantic Books.
He lives with his wife in Bangkok. For more information about the author and his work, visit his official website: www.cgmoore.com. He also blogs regularly with other cirme authors at www.internationalcrimeauthors.com
THE VINCENT CALVINO P.I. SERIES
CHRISTOPHER G. MOORE’s Vincent Calvino P.I. series began with Spirit House in 1992. The latest, eleventh, in the series is The Corruptionist first released in Thailand in 2010
Moore’s protagonist, Vincent Calvino is an Italian-Jewish former lawyer from New York who left his practice to turn P.I. in Southeast Asia. Calvino’s assignments take him inside the labyrinth of local politics, double-dealing and fleeting relationships. Unlike typical tough-guy sleuths, Calvino admits he would never survive without his guardian angel, his Shakespeare-quoting and saxophone-playing buddy, Colonel Pratt, an honest and well-connected Thai cop who helps him find hidden forces, secret traps and ways to keep him alive in a foreign land.
The twelves novels in the Vincent Calvino P.I. series are: Spirit House, Asia Hand, Zero Hour in Phnom Penh, Comfort Zone, The Big Weird, Cold Hit, Minor Wife, Pattaya 24/7, The Risk of Infidelity Index, Paying Back Jack The Corruptionist, and 9 Gold Bullets. The novels are published in Thailand by Heaven Lake Press, in the United States by Grove/Atlantic and in Great Britain by Atlantic Books.
/> The third installment in the series Zero Hour in Phnom Penh won the German Critics Award for Crime Fiction (Deutscher Krimi Preis) for best international crime fiction in 2004 and the Premier Special Director’s Award Semana Negra (Spain) in 2007 or the author’s website: www.cgmoore.com.
SPIRIT HOUSE
First in the series
The Bangkok police already have a confession by a nineteen-year-old drug addict who has admitted to the murder of a British computer wizard, Ben Hoadly. From the bruises on his face shown at the press conference, it is clear that the young suspect had some help from the police in the making of his confession. The case is wrapped up. Only there are some loose ends that the police and just about everyone else are happy to overlook.
The search for the killer of Ben Hoadley plunges Calvino into the dark side of Bangkok, where professional hit men have orders to stop him. From the world of thinner addicts, dope dealers, fortunetellers, and high-class call girls, Calvino peels away the mystery surrounding the death of the English ex-public schoolboy who had a lot of dubious friends.
“Well-written, tough and bloody.”
—Bernard Knight, Tangled Web (UK)
“A worthy example of a serial character, Vincent Calvino is human and convincing. [He] is an incarnate of the composite of the many expatriate characters who have burned the bridge to their pasts.”
—Thriller Magazine (Italy)
“A thinking man’s Philip Marlowe, Calvino is a cynic on the surface but a romantic at heart. Calvino ... found himself in Bangkok—the end of the world for a whole host of bizarre foreigners unwilling, unable, or uninterested in going home.”
—The Daily Yomiuri
ASIA HAND
Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn Page 31
