The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  “I told her,” said Calvino.

  Brandon’s jaw dropped. It wasn’t his best look.

  “Goddamn, Vinny. You’re supposed to be on my side. That report was confidential.” His fist clenched around his glass, and for a moment it looked like he might throw it against the wall. But there was no clear space between the art and windows. He set the glass down. Tanny cracked a smile for the first time. She had gotten to him, and she knew it. It was more of a smirk that comes with having scored a small victory. Brandon exhaled loudly, rolled his head like a swimmer coming up from the bottom of the pool for air. She’d won a toehold on the beach, and she gave every indication of intending, like a good Marine, to fight until she captured the position she’d been sent to secure. “You led Marshall to believe there was just the one report. I don’t think he’d like that. Do you?”

  “Judas,” whispered Brandon, baring his teeth at Calvino.

  “I didn’t mislead anyone,” said Calvino. “It’s no secret that Kowit interviewed Achara last January. That’s on public record. You asked me to cooperate with Marshall’s investigator. You said give her a desk, a phone, a computer. It’s a due-diligence exercise. ‘We’ve got nothing to hide. Give her whatever she asks for.’ Do you recall having that conversation?”

  “Well, give me a dead fish to eat. It’s obviously all my fault.”

  “Anytime you want me off the case, let me know,” said Calvino. It took half a minute before Brandon broke eye contact.

  Lost in thought, Brandon swirled his drink around the inside of the glass like a chemistry student conducting an experiment in a beaker. He looked up, shook his head.

  “That’s what Marshall wants. Work together. I’ve got it. Like you said, there’s nothing to hide. We’ve got some important contracts to sign next.”

  “Correct. There are some important contracts to sign,” said Tanny.

  Brandon rubbed his fingers together. “Money. That’s all Marshall thinks about, cares about. I’ve got a relationship with Achara. It might mean nothing to Marshall, but it means something to me.”

  “I’ll leave you a set of documents. Please sign them. There’s a signing tab so you’ll know where to. Let me know when you finish, and I’ll arrange to have them picked up,” she said, pulling out a sealed envelope and sliding it across the table.

  Calvino waited for Brandon to pass it to him with the instruction, Have a look at these and let me know what you want me to do.

  Only Brandon didn’t say that. “You can work out of Calvino’s office until then,” he said. His hands folded over the envelope.

  “I’ll let you know what I find,” said Tanny, and then she rose from the table.

  That’s the way Brandon wants to play it, thought Calvino. Cards so close to his chest that you’d need a scalpel to peel them off. As the meeting ended, Brandon walked over to the windows and rattled off a set of specific instructions to Tanny: Use Calvino and his office so she could go through the information, study the evidence, evaluate the risk, and interview Achara. Then submit her final report to Marshall.

  “It’s up to Marshall whether you see my report,” said Tanny. “Don’t take too long in signing the documents.”

  Brandon’s slightly deflated grin faded. Calvino waited for showman’s comeback, but Brandon fell into silence, leaving Calvino and Tanny to discuss the details of their working arrangements over the next few days. A couple of times Calvino glanced at Brandon, who was half listening, but his mind was somewhere else—maybe outside in the pool splashing around with the yings. But there was a hint of seriousness in the silence, and as Brandon had explained, that was something you weren’t supposed to be in Thailand, unless, of course, there was some major problem.

  Brandon’s stare fixed on a distant point, a space beyond the swimming pool, the yings running around the pool edge in their tiny bikinis. It was as if he had seen an invisible force approaching, one that couldn’t be easily stopped, a strong, determined, and unyielding wall of trouble. “That’s it. Why don’t you work out what you need to do at Calvino’s office?” said Brandon. “You don’t need me.”

  “You’ve got things to do,” said Calvino, looking at the envelope on the table. Brandon shrugged and waited for a servant to pour him another drink. Once he’d sipped the fresh drink, he went to the door and shouted for the yings to return to the nest. It wasn’t so much that Brandon was interested in talking to them as that the yings shielded him against the isolation and the waiting for the wall that was closing in and about to entomb him. Marshall had used the financial crisis and political unrest in Bangkok to set in motion forces that couldn’t be pulled back. Only Brandon didn’t fully believe that; he had a plan to stop Marshall. And sooner or later he’d have no choice but to let Calvino in on the plan. But not on this day, or inside his house in the presence of Tanny Craig, a dark angel dispatched from New York with an envelope delivered in front of a witness.

  She’d handled Brandon like a veteran bullfighter, showing the cape, letting him charge, stumble past, a look of dumb surprise on his face as he missed and circled for another run, then missed again and again, until he got tired and told them to leave. Calvino found himself attracted to this messenger. She had class. And she excelled at something Calvino liked—letting a bull run himself around in circles until he collapsed. He had an idea she would be waving her cape at him next, and that made him smile. It’d been a long time since Calvino had come across a worthy adversary whose first instinct was to unholster her sexuality and use it as a weapon to get what she wanted. Tanny had revealed at the funeral, and now at Brandon’s, that she had other, more powerful weapons. Her instincts made her effective in the field and more than a little dangerous inside a room. She worked like a long-distance runner, who, unlike Brandon, never broke a sweat.

  SIX

  CALVINO, HIS NECKTIE unknotted, jacket slung over his shoulder, strolled into the Lonesome Hawk. Worldweary, absorbed in private thought, he walked past the bar without acknowledging any of the regulars. But it didn’t much matter; most sat on their barstools, heads down, concentrating on their food, their women, their troubles.

  Old George’s death acted like a hydraulic pump, filling the bar with a deep sense of gloom. Outside, a jackhammer vibrated. Men slowly drank their Singhas from the bottle, peeling the labels off with a thumbnail. A thick fog of cigarette smoke hung over the bar counter. A law had been passed making smoking inside restaurants and bars illegal. No one cared. George’s death had dragged everyone down a couple of notches, looping their thoughts to the future, when it would be their turn to be transformed into a thick rope of gray smoke coiling against the Bangkok sky. McPhail climbed off his barstool, picked up his cigarettes and drink, walked over to Calvino’s booth, and slipped inside, grinning. Given that George had been cremated and everyone was drunk or nearly drunk in grief over the old man’s death, Calvino tried to read some meaning into McPhail’s larger-than-life smile.

  “The woman picked you up at a funeral. George would have been looking down applauding. Everyone’s been talking about how you scored. Calvino had a ying crawling into his car at George’s funeral.” He winked at Calvino, leaned over and shook his wrist.

  “You’re the man.” Calvino stared at him. This was how false legends were launched.

  “You think that you did the right thing?” asked McPhail.

  The ethics of picking up yings at the funeral of a fallen comrade had obviously been a topic of discussion at the bar. The speed at which McPhail had joined Calvino indicated that he’d been anointed with the task of finding out the details.

  “It wasn’t a score. It was work, McPhail.”

  “Sure. You don’t want to talk about it. Spoil her reputation. That’s noble.”

  “She’s an investigator from New York.”

  McPhail frowned. “Everyone said she was Thai. New York? Vinny, cut the bullshit. Who was she, and does she have a sister?”

  “Tanny Craig. And she’s as American as you. I take that back
. She’s more American than anyone in this bar.”

  It wasn’t an explanation that McPhail had expected.

  The rumors had already had the ying working in one of the “dead artist” bars on Soi 33. A couple of the regulars swore they recognized her. One claimed to have bar-fined her five weeks ago. McPhail had the unpleasant duty of passing this along to the others waiting at the bar.

  “Believe what you want. She only looks Thai.”

  “An American?” McPhail rubbed his jaw.

  “I saw her passport. She’s an American.”

  McPhail lit a cigarette and blew smoke to the side.

  “George’s ashes would roll over in a little wave inside the urn.” He shouted at a passing waitress who was already a grandmother. Her eyes were red from crying. She sniffled as she took Calvino’s order for a double Mekong and Coke.

  “She was one classy-looking broad. Everyone else who was at the funeral was talking about her. When are you seeing her again?”

  Calvino figured that “everyone” covered McPhail and maybe Arnold.

  “In half an hour,” said Calvino.

  “You animal. Your place or hers?”

  “In my office.”

  “Kinky.”

  “She has a desk and computer at the office.”

  “She’s working for you?”

  “The other way round,” said Calvino.

  “You’re doing her. I can tell.”

  “Don’t quit your day job. You’re no mind reader.”

  “I don’t have a day job.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “She’s your problem. You picked her up at Old George’s funeral, and now she’s moved into your office. You’re like some guy fresh off the boat.”

  “Did it look like I picked her up?”

  “Was she or wasn’t she at a fucking funeral?” He studied Calvino’s reaction. “Gotcha.”

  “I told you she’s not really Thai.”

  The regulars were going to be disappointed that Vincent Calvino had walked out of Old George’s funeral with an American who only looked Thai. “Did she know George?”

  Calvino shook his head and drank a long pull from the Mekong and Coke. “Never heard of him.”

  “She crashed George’s funeral? How sick is that?”

  “Trailing me,” he said.

  McPhail smiled again. “What did you do to her?”

  A couple of the regulars turned from the bar, and their attention focused on Calvino. They wanted to hear his answer to that question. “It’s not personal. She’s in Thailand investigating a murder.”

  That was the kind of answer McPhail and the regulars liked. “She’s tough, then?”

  “She’s like someone with a new hammer. She sees the world full of nails that need a good hammering down.”

  McPhail’s eyes widened as he looked back at the kitchen. The cook walked out fanning herself, her blouse tied to expose a large, flabby stomach. “I’d like to have nailed her. So would have everyone at the funeral. But she went with you.” Metaphors never worked all that well on the Lonesome Hawk crowd; they stuck with beer and literal explanations.

  “She thinks I can help her.”

  “Can you?”

  “I’ve done about all I can.”

  “But she wants more! Like all women!” shouted one of the men from the bar.

  It was easier to cure a man of his addiction to drugs and alcohol than to wean him off his stereotypes, thought Calvino. Tanny didn’t fit their mode, and that made some people in the bar confused and angry, the signs of coldturkey sweats.

  Old George’s booth remained empty, the water buffalo head on the eternal wait for its master’s return. Men with bloodshot eyes lifted their bottles of beer more slowly than usual, slightly drunk, more than a little anxious about what came next. Like most foreigners in Thailand, they were either too afraid or not afraid enough. It was the rare man who got the balance between paranoia and complacency pegged without some delusion intervening to throw him off course. By leaving George’s funeral with the beautiful stranger ying, Calvino had given them something to cling onto. He tried for a moment to see Tanny Craig through McPhail’s eyes, the eyes of the other men around the bar.

  But what he saw was an all-business professional sweeping Brandon Sawyer’s room for bugs while three stunning yings splashed outside in a swimming pool.

  “Hey, Vinny, who’s the new girlfriend?” Convict Carl shouted across the bar.

  The bar chatter subsided as all eyes were on Calvino. The demons of prison life still haunted Carl, gave him an edgy tic in his right eye. McPhail lit a cigarette, allowing the smoke to curl out of his nostrils.

  “Carl, when I find a new cellmate, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Calvino paid for his drink and slid out of the booth.

  The guy next to Carl nudged him in the ribs and laughed.

  “You know about cellmates,” he said.

  “But you just got here,” said McPhail.

  “I need to get some air. And I’ve got work to do.” He looked around at the men. He knew the faces. What he didn’t know was what was behind most of those faces.

  Except today their masks had come off; grief was the great paint stripper, taking off layers of pretense, petty emotions, and secret grievances, exposing the bare cement walls of life and death underneath.

  “The American government has a plan to put microchips in everyone,” said Norris, his hairy arms and chest exposed in the one-size-too-small T-shirt with the word “Bangkok” and a stylized garuda on the front. “FEMA has built hundreds of prisons in California and on the East Coast. Some of them can hold fifty thousand prisoners. These prisons have the razor wire strung along the fence facing inside. And another roll of the razor wire is laid down but not facing the inside. You hear what I’m saying? That razor wire is for the outside world. You tell me, has there ever been a prison built with the barbed wire strung to keep people out? They don’t want anyone looking inside, snooping around, and putting shit on the Internet. George saw what was happening. Everyone sees it. They plan to use chip implants to download credits for work done. That’s a fact. You’re told to spend what’s on that chip each month or lose it. No carry forward is allowed. They don’t want anyone saving up to buy their freedom. The government will be able to track you wherever you go. They’ll know what you spend and what you buy. They’ll sell that information. It’s a circle, Vinny. And if you try to break free, then you’ll find yourself in one of those prisons. No more rights to challenge the police. They can hold you for as long as they want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Norris had spent hours trading conspiracy theories with Old George. George’s death would be hard for Norris, who had lost his best audience. Norris took a long pull from his beer. Some men needed a good excuse not to return home. Norris had found his.

  “I didn’t see you at the funeral,” said Calvino.

  Norris shook his head, sighed. “They would be taking pictures of everyone who went. You can be certain they got your picture. It goes into a file.”

  “For the chip implant,” said Calvino.

  Norris nodded, smiled. “They didn’t get my picture.”

  “But they will, sooner or later,” said Calvino.

  The muscles in Norris’s neck tensed. His lips folded around the bottle as he tilted his head back, eyes nearly closed. He looked up and sighed. “I hope that day never comes.”

  “Norris, I wanna see a picture of one of those secret prisons,” said McPhail.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I want to see the razor wire. With hundreds of prisons, someone somewhere must have taken a picture with their cell phone,” said McPhail.

  “Close the goddamn door!” shouted one of the men three stools down the bar.

  The noise of the jackhammer roared through the bar as Calvino stood holding the door open, letting a blast of hot, polluted air roll in. Getting away from Norris was as challenging as findi
ng evidence to support his various conspiracies. Once Big Henry started bellowing about the noise from the jackhammer, Calvino found the opening he needed, and he slipped out of the bar, leaving McPhail and Norris to argue over the existence of America’s secret detention centers.

  SEVEN

  OUTSIDE, IN THE heat, Calvino turned right and walked toward the Irish pub, stopping outside the muay Thai joint on the corner. Two farangs wearing trunks and gloves, their feet wrapped, danced around the ring, and a Thai trainer, a head shorter and darker, shadowed them. No one had ever seen a Thai kickboxer in the Lonesome Hawk; they were young, hard, lean men, two generations younger than the bar regulars. Calvino watched the two young men with cropped hair, square jaws, six-pack abs, and bulging shoulders and arms. They had the physical capacity to inflict a lot of damage using only their hands and feet. Both men wore headguards and plastic mouthpieces, making them look like advanced alien invaders in baggy silk shorts. McPhail came up alongside and stopped beside Calvino.

  “To listen to Norris, you’d think a conspiracy got George,” said McPhail.

  Calvino nodded, watching through the window. “There was no conspiracy. Only old age—that’s not a conspiracy. That’s called a good enough reason to die.”

  The glass doors of the muay Thai joint stood wide open. The jackhammer noise made no difference to the boxers or the trainers. The entryway to the gym was littered with cheap plastic sandals and chewed-up tennis shoes. The large tennis shoes belonged to the young farang boxers. Beyond the door, in the ring, the boxers circled, threw a tentative punch, arched a foot into the strike position, all concentration and focus as they moved around the ring, looking for any edge, any opportunity to connect with a takedown blow. In the corner a middle-aged Thai sat with his legs crossed, eyes closed like a monk in deep meditation, a thick layer of calluses on bare feet that rested on a desk, tattooed arms stretched behind his head. The boxers didn’t seem to mind. They sparred, lost inside the moment, unaware of Calvino and McPhail watching them. One boxer twisted to the side, landed a punch; the other reeled against the ropes, and then backpedaled before responding with a flurry of punches.