Comfort Zone

by Christopher G. Moore

  Calvino looked hard at him.

  “Nothing personal, Mr. Nguyen, but next time you want to arrange a meeting, you should make a phone call.” He glanced at Marcus’s mobile phone on the table.

  “The phones in your hotel are bugged,” he said. “Is that a fact?”

  “It’s a fact.”

  “I’m curious about facts.”

  “Such as?”

  “Where were you the night Drew was killed?” asked Calvino. Marcus’s mobile phone rang. He answered it and spoke in rapid

  Vietnamese.

  “Harry said you were a man who came straight to the point. And so am I. I was sitting right here on that night. That’s a fact,” said Marcus, switching off the mobile phone.

  “You can ask the waiter...any of the staff. We heard the explosion.”

  Smooth, planned, flawless, thought Calvino. Marcus Nguyen had brought him to his alibi, a courtyard inside a mosque. If you wanted a back-up story for a murder then a mosque had to be an inspired piece of forward planning.

  Several bowls of steaming rice and curry had been placed on their table. Marcus helped himself to the rice, spooning it on his plate.

  “Do you like curry?” asked Marcus. “This mosque is famous for its curry. Pre-1975, I came here often with friends. The old grandfather knew me and he brought me beer in a brown bag. Beer in a mosque. Another fact. But we Vietnamese are pragmatic people. And the Indians who have been living and working more than four generations have picked up on this small adaptation which has allowed for all of us to find a way to survive. For every rule there must be an exception.”

  “And for every murder there should be a revenge,” said Calvino. “Yes, you are right in theory. But, in practice, when there is so much murder, you have to be selective in your revenge or you wouldn’t have time to clean the blood off your hands before meals.”

  “The Chinese have a saying, if you set out to get your revenge against another man, dig two graves,” said Calvino.

  “But Harry’s not Chinese. Besides, as Harry knows, in Vietnam, we would dump Chinese bodies in both holes.”

  Calvino had, despite himself, started to like Marcus. Committed, self-assured and guarded, he thought, as he faced the window looking out onto the courtyard. It had metal bars like a prison, and a cob-webbed screen covered the bars. A cover on a cover on a cover, he thought. The room was small, protected. It was a perfect meeting place. The possibility of the government having an agent or listening device inside seemed remote. Beside the window was an old mirror with a red plastic comb wedged onto a rusty nail. How many faces had looked into that mirror over the past sixty years, how many men had combed their hair, walked out and died? After Marcus spooned more curry onto his rice, he turned his attention back to Calvino.

  “Harry asked that I help you in any way that I can. And I said that will be up to your friend. Some people want help. Some ask for help. Others prefer to do things on their own. So I said to Harry, ‘I’m here. I will contact him, and let him know that, if he wants help, then all he has to do is ask.’ You phoned while I was Singapore and I took that to mean that you wanted to ask me something.”

  Marcus spoke with an American accent.

  “How long were you in the States?” asked Calvino. “Eighteen years.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  Marcus smiled. “To help my country.”

  Bullshit, thought Calvino.

  “Who do you think killed Drew?”

  “The communists killed him. Of course.” “How do you know that?”

  “When you are Vietnamese you know things.”

  “They arrested an ex-RVN sergeant for the murder,” said Calvino.

  Marcus nodded, then sighed. “A crippled vet who bore the scars of violence, the helplessness of being on the losing side. He was a soft target. Nothing can save him from losing this war again and again. Sometimes I look at the cadres from the North. The winners. And I ask myself, how could such people have defeated us? Curled in the mud, the rain on their necks, they knew they had a larger capacity to absorb damage, to accept injury and pain. It’s given them a hangman’s conscience. After a while you no longer notice who is dropping through the hole in the scaffold. An ex-RVN sergeant was no more involved in the killing than you or me.”

  “Did you become an American citizen?” asked Calvino.

  Marcus nodded. “But inside,” he pointed at his chest, “the heart is Vietnamese. You know what I am saying?”

  Harry was right about Marcus being emotional. He had an emotional stake in the communists being the bad guys, the collective fall guy for every misery, death, and fucked up thing. He had fought against them with all that he had and they had won. That he had come back to help his country was a good line, but Calvino wasn’t buying it.

  “You know anything about overseas investors and a fund being launched this week in Saigon?”

  “It’s not a state secret. It’s called the Vietnam Emerging Market Fund. Their timing has been perfect. This is the twentieth anniversary of the communists marching into Saigon. Confiscation and re-education camps. That’s how they celebrated their victory,” said Marcus, sounding, for the first time, a little bitter. He polished off the rest of the beef curry.

  “No beer in a brown bag?” asked Calvino.

  Marcus looked up. “In the old days, I knew the old man who ran the restaurant. He knew how to turn a blind eye. He was their grandfather. He died a long time ago. The new generation, well, let’s say they are different. Not so pragmatic.”

  “You think that Douglas Webb had a reason to kill Drew?” asked Calvino, nursing his drink. One of those compact, crude questions flying out of the blue.

  Marcus shifted his head from shoulder to shoulder, weighing the possibility.

  “He’s not the murdering type.”

  This was spoken casually by someone who appeared confident in his judgement on who was capable of murder. Again, Calvino asked himself what emotional agenda was Marcus playing out. If he was going to rely on this ex-Marine’s assessment of an American lawyer practicing law in Saigon, then he wouldn’t be doing the job Harry Markle had sent him to do. Harry could have left the job to Marcus but didn’t do that. He had his reasons and Calvino had to trust his gut feeling that Harry had enough experience of Marcus to back his decision.

  “You and Harry go way back,” said Calvino.

  Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, you can say all the way to hell. Let me tell you something about Harry Markle. He never called me a gook or a slope. He never called any Vietnamese those kind of names. Even when we were in the shit. We were human beings to him. I thought all Americans were like Harry Markle. But after eighteen years in America, I didn’t find many like him. People who saw me as one of them. This acceptance, tolerance, whatever you want to call it, I think it was what kept Harry from ever fitting back in the States.”

  “What were you doing in Singapore?”

  Marcus cracked a smile.

  “Making money.”

  ******

  CALVINO returned to his hotel after leaving the mosque. He was asking himself how he was going to play the case. This was an abstract question and the image of Mai flooded back into his mind, getting in the way of an answer and making him feel frustrated and foolish. How many farang had arrived in Bangkok and, twenty-four hours later, were sucked into some ice castle inside the Zone, and had fallen “in love” with a local girl over a lady’s drink? Many (he answered his own question) and the failure rate pushed the hundred percent marker. She wasn’t a bar girl, he told himself. Forget about Ho Chi Minh City, but not even Saigon had anything approaching the Zone. He was starting to sound to himself like Marcus Nguyen justifying his world view according to who were communists and who were not. He decided to leave it alone, took the elevator down to the reception, pushed through the hotel entrance and walked twenty meters to the Q-Bar.

  Like his hotel, the Q-Bar was part of the Municipal Theater Complex which under the old regime—the te
rm the communists used—became the National Assembly. Cyclos and motorcycles were parked on the walkway between the bar and a concrete fountain. Across the street was the Caravelle Hotel and floodlights illuminated a giant construction crane driving piles. The earth shook each time the pile driver hit the top of the pile. On the wall of the theater complex he came to a large, bronze Q, and pushed the door.

  The Q-Bar might have been downtown New York City on a rainy night. On one side a couple of Vietnamese women floated in and out of the shadows like a couple of cobras protecting their nests, as if warning you never to take your eyes off the eyes around you, the position of the next person’s head, you kept alert waiting for a strike. There were Aztec copper light fixtures keeping the lights dim, murals on the walls, jazz playing and a crowd at the bar. The clientele was overwhelmingly farang with a few Vietnamese women in cocktail dresses, high-heels and heavy make-up standing around the bar, others seated at some of the tables. He was running half an hour early because he wanted to check out the place. He heard his name called.

  Douglas Webb got off his stool and walked over to him. They shook hands. Caravaggio figures had been painted on the wall. To choose the images from this Northern Italian painter was like an inside New York joke. Caravaggio was an alcoholic, gay and a fucking genius; a high Renaissance painter, in the early baroque style. He was a painter who loved street people and used them as models for saints, immortalizing the most flawed as the most sacred. There were Caravaggio’s street men, young, brooding, sullen men embedded in dark reds and greens, their flesh illuminated by overhead lights. Their doomed eyes, staring back at people standing two deep inside a Saigon bar. If there were a Caravaggio’s law it would be: Look for the face of the saint among the faces living in the back alley, the bars, the gutter. Webb’s eyes followed Calvino’s to the wall paintings.

  “Caravaggio is the painter. Bar owners love his images. And why not? How many painters have the claim to fame of getting themselves killed in a barroom brawl?” asked Webb.

  “Caravaggio’s an icon.”

  Calvino had that moment where he almost slipped, and said, “No, people who know nothing about art say Caravaggio was killed in a barroom brawl. Not true, though the record was shrouded in doubt, he died on the 18th July, 1610, sick, feverish, broke. He died at a young age. Some said he was about the same age as Jim Morrison when he died. Others said he was older. Whatever his age, Caravaggio was definitely in the running for the original rebel without a cause.”

  A wiseguy from Brooklyn would say what Calvino said, “Yeah, killed in a bar fight. When I open a bar, I don’t want that kind of trouble.”

  Calvino was thinking that working undercover was a lesson in humility, you stayed the course by keeping to your role, not showing off. Webb was a guy who turned up late for his appointment but early for a drink.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Beer,” said Calvino. Behind the bar and below the Caravaggio figures was a glass shelf with the premium bottles lined up: Glenlivet, McAllans, Cardhu, Black Label. Better stick to beer, thought Calvino.

  “If you want to run a bar, you have to set a good example for the customers by drinking premium whisky. Then you get the right crowd. A beer crowd isn’t where the money is. They vomit on themselves, get drunk, fight, spill beer. That kind of thing.”

  Calvino wondered how long after he had left the offices of Winchell & Holly, Douglas Webb had waited to phone the New York phone number listed on his card to check him out. Did he phone after the first time or after Calvino had returned a second time with the five grand deposit? Would he do it himself or go through his New York office? That was the fork in the road. You either made a left into light or a right into darkness.

  “Glenlivet. So long as it doesn’t come out of my deposit,” said Calvino.

  “This is on the firm,” he said, smiling. “Why the generosity?”

  “Getting a lunch date with Mai. Impressive. A Hanoi girl, too.” He had obviously reassessed placing Calvino in the Forrest Gump category of clients.

  “She’s attractive,” said Calvino, wondering whether Mai had volunteered the information or if Webb had asked her. “You’ve got a point about attracting the right crowd. I have something to learn about Saigon and the bar trade. But that’s why I have hired your firm.”

  A bartender with a scarf tied around his neck and a large white Q on his black T-shirt set down before Calvino on the bar a neat shot of Glenlivet. Douglas Webb raised his glass for a toast and as Calvino followed, their glasses touched. “Here’s to success, Vincent. In the bar business. You appear to be a lucky man. With women and with money. Hopefully your luck will rub off on your Saigon bar.”

  “How do you know that I’m lucky?” asked Calvino, sipping the Glenlivet.

  “I’d say winning two hundred and fifty grand in a lotto is running with luck blowing in your sails,” said Webb.

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “I made a discreet inquiry. I’ll be honest with you. When you practice law in Southeast Asia you have the reputation of the firm to consider. Today, when you came into the office and started talking about moving large sums of cash, well, it was only natural,” and Webb let his sentence trail off into silence as he drank from his glass.

  “Like running drugs,” said Calvino, flashing an innocent smile. Webb exploded into a cough, some expensive whisky spilling

  down the side of his face which was turning red at the same time. On his business card, Calvino had used his brother-in-law’s address and phone number. Frank Demato had been briefed to expect some overseas phone calls, and that Vincent was his brother and the two of them had won two hundred and fifty grand in the New York State lotto but Vincent, the asshole, had split for Asia with the entire amount of money, and that Frank was going to personally kill the sonofabitch and anyone who withheld information about where Vincent was hiding out.

  Webb drank from a glass of water the bartender brought. He took a deep breath, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. Calvino stopped himself from making a crack about how beer drinkers throw up while whisky drinkers just coughed themselves to death. Fortunately Webb had recovered before Calvino said anything.

  “I spoke with Frank. He’s pretty upset with you.”

  “You didn’t tell him where I am?”

  Webb shook his head, coughed into his hand.

  “Attorney-client privilege. I couldn’t do that without your prior written permission.” This fell out of his mouth like one of those tape- recorded messages heard inside a high-rise elevator.

  Webb had made a right at the fork in the road. He hadn’t gone to his New York office but had phoned directly, keeping things private. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. He might have done both. Faxed New York and phoned Frank Demato directly to double check that New York had done the required due diligence. What mattered was Webb was satisfied that Calvino’s story checked out.

  “Thanks, counsellor, I guess I owe you one.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. To help in any way that I can. And, of course, we must stay within the law.” Webb ordered another round of drinks as one of the Vietnamese girls with long hair and in a red cocktail dress came over and planted a kiss on his cheek. He spoke to her in Vietnamese, she giggled and slipped away.

  “Your girl?” asked Calvino.

  “No, she’s a working girl. Nice, but expensive. A Saigon girl.”

  Calvino watched the hooker go and sit at a table with two other girls.

  “You speak the language well.”

  Webb gave a crooked smile. “I try to practice every chance that I get.” He paused for a second, rolled the ice around the inside of his glass.

  “I am concerned about your funds, Vincent.”

  “The lotto money?”

  “That’s a lot to be carrying around Saigon. Where is it?”

  “In my hotel room,” said Calvino.

  “Bad idea. You should deposit the money in a bank.”
>
  “I heard the banks here are a risky place to keep US dollars. I might not ever get the money out of the country.”

  “So the conventional wisdom goes,” said Webb. “I can arrange to keep your money in our office safe. We do this for some of our clients. You put it in the hands of a local partner, and you might as well not have bought the lotto ticket.”

  “I’m starting to feel better already,” said Calvino.

  He was thinking about the bag of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills that Pratt had arranged to borrow from the evidence deposit room of the Crime Suppression Division of the Department. It was only a loan, Pratt had told them. Sometimes they used the notes to pay ransom demands. Sometimes they used it to trap drug dealers. Sometimes they tried to trap bad actors who had gone too deep inside the honey ice. The money had many uses, many lives; died and was reborn over and over again and had found its way to Saigon. Stashed in a plastic bag in Vincent Calvino’s room at the Saigon Concert Hotel and soon it would be in the possession of Winchell & Holly. A Vietnamese girl, mid- twenties, came in without warning on his blind side and wrapped an arm around his waist.

  “You like me?” she asked.

  Webb was watching him closely.

  “How would you like to work in a classy bar for me?” he asked her.

  Before she could answer, another Vietnamese stepped between Webb and Calvino. The other girl melted away into the crowd. Her replacement was dressed to kill in black ao dai with gold sequins fashioned in flower petals. This was no ordinary bar girl. She carried herself like a boardwalk model, with confidence, elegance, and the way she made a small half-smile suggested she had some inner strength to deal with Saigon and a whole lot of other places just as ugly.

  “How’s my little toc dai?” asked Webb. Toc dai, long-haired women Viet Cong soldiers, was not a term this woman liked.

  “Toc dai means a woman Viet Cong,” she said to Calvino. “Webb likes showing off his three or four words of Vietnamese.” She sounded agitated, hostile.