Comfort Zone

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Let me apply my civilian’s way of thinking to what is happening in Saigon. Big business interests in the States are sniffing around Vietnam. Looking for a way back in. There is a consulate in Hanoi, putting out feelers for them. These are the same people who set up mutual funds. Funds like the Vietnam Emerging Market Fund. And who is their financial adviser? A CIA Bangkok Bureau man. Interesting, don’t you think, Colonel Prachai? These are the kind of conservative business types who don’t want the boat rocked. Washington says they want Markle’s case closed because they want to turn on the tap pouring out ten billion dollars of aid. Aid is linked to business. Business to profit. Markle’s murder is a political embarrassment. And there are those who are investing millions of dollars in private deals. No one wants the gravy train derailed. Now that it is back on the tracks. Saigon turf war makes great newspaper copy back home but you know and I know that it doesn’t hold a teaspoon of 333 beer.”

  “You’ve been away from the States for too long, Calvino. You don’t have a clue how things work there any more, assuming you ever did.”

  “Maybe I need some education. That’s why the Lieutenant Colonel and I thought we might go along to the launch of the Fund tonight,” said Calvino. “Mingle with all those who know how things work in America and Vietnam. It will be like a graduate course. My continuing education in American foreign investment. I saw a list of the Fund directors. It reads like a Who’s Who of those in America and South Vietnam who lost the war. So they are bringing their money back. Interesting. Makes me wonder what they are going to do with that money in Vietnam. Using a financial adviser who is CIA makes me real curious.”

  Pratt played it real cool, the smile never leaving his lips, looking out at the courtyard, the ancient trees, the staff on the second floor balconies, the ghosts of those who had come and gone, dreamed and lied, promised and retreated for all those generations. The weight of history fell all around them, and Pratt wondered if they felt the burden of all that destruction, death and loss arching like a streak of lightning against a pitch black sky. Only it wasn’t a sky, it was a landscape of an entire people that had been shattered.

  “Is that right, Sir?” asked Harris.

  Pratt nodded. “Did Drew Markle do legal work for this Fund?” This was a question he had expected from Calvino. It caught him off guard.

  “Yes, Sir, he did. He was a fine lawyer. Without Winchell & Holly’s help we wouldn’t be as far along as we are. Markle did his part.”

  “And what part was that?” asked Calvino.

  “Take some friendly advice. Go back to Bangkok. Do your skip chasing cases. Find someone’s missing husband. But get your nose out of this case.”

  Harris was rocking and rolling with rage. He stirred three teaspoons of sugar into his coffee and the spoon just kept moving like he was on automatic pilot. Calvino thought about how far he should push him.

  “The advice doesn’t sound all that friendly.”

  “Don’t underestimate what can happen.”

  “Do I look like a guy who underestimates the forces of big money? I hope not. I remember you at the Fourth of July picnic. You were wearing those funny Bermuda shorts, black with yellow bumble bee stripes and white jock socks up to your knees. You were selling lotto tickets. Free tickets for two to Singapore. Free dinner for two at the Oriental Hotel. Three nights in Phuket. Shaking hands, showing the world how friendly and down home Americans overseas can be in the middle of Bangkok. Anyone who can pull off that act deserves respect, Fred. So don’t worry about me spoiling the quarterly report of any American company doing business in Vietnam on account of someone getting themselves whacked. In Brooklyn, people get whacked all the time. It’s mostly turf wars over the drug concession. A man’s got to protect what’s his. If he don’t, then who will?”

  “Exactly, Calvino. Then who will?”

  “Mr. Harris, did Mark Wang or his family have money in the Fund?” asked Pratt, as Harris got up from the table.

  He leaned back over the table. “Yes, Sir, he did. That’s on the record.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Harris. You have been very helpful.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” He glared at Calvino, then turned and walked across the courtyard.

  “He stiffed us for the bill,” said Calvino.

  “It may have been worth the price,” said Pratt. “He didn’t say anything.”

  Pratt smiled. “He said a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “He didn’t want us going to the Fund reception tonight.”

  “Because he’s afraid we’ll start calling him Fred Harris.”

  “There’s something else he’s afraid of.”

  “What?”

  “We might find what we have been looking for.”

  Pratt sat back in his chair, looking at the bill as a waiter ran over. Calvino snatched the bill away and handed the waiter a twenty dollar bill.

  “It’s my turn,” said Calvino.

  “See you at the reception,” said Pratt.

  Calvino watched him leave, thinking that he had the Markle diskette in his pocket and he hadn’t mentioned it. He felt guilty, like he was withholding evidence from him. They had worked cases before and this was the first time he had held out on something as important as this. It wasn’t that he had forgotten the diskette and what it might mean for breaking the Wang case as well as his own; some instinct had made him hang back. He knew it came down to a conflict of loyalties. Mai on the one side, Pratt on the other. She had trusted him. Giving him Markle’s computer diskette had been a major risk. Whoever had killed Markle and Wang had been doubling up their risks as well. Harris and company were involved. The Thai Police Department. International investors, Hong Kong, and that was only the start of the list. What link between the two men could have been so important that both died within twelve hours of one another? In his Bangkok hotel room, Wang’s computer hard disk had been wiped clean. No floppy diskettes had been recovered. In Saigon, the Vietnamese were inside the law office and onto Markle’s computer files and hard copy print-outs within hours of his death. Coordination. People in two cities, two countries, had to be working together toward a common goal. Calvino asked himself if it had been the Vietnamese Security and Intelligence Police who had taken the files. Fred Harris had people on the ground in Saigon, old regime operatives who might have impersonated the Vietnamese security people. It was something to think about.

  As Calvino walked out of the Continental Hotel, he remembered how Harris had been sweating in the courtyard. He had the face of a deeply troubled man with a slow burn swelling inside. Harris had little patience in explaining his actions to outsiders, to civilians—a word he used like an obscenity—someone like Calvino who was on his turf, threatening to stake a claim to a higher moral ground. He had wanted to ignore Calvino, who was unaffiliated in a world where affiliation was power, authority and respect. Calvino didn’t exist within the bounds of Harris’s world, Calvino was another farang in a deep Zone sleep, no compass, no direction, no way of escape.

  Calvino thought about Harris’s treatment of Pratt. He had been quick to recognize Pratt’s official position, his connection to power and authority. Pratt had arranged the security for the Fund directors in Phuket. After Wang’s murder, that wasn’t a hard sell. Was Harris throwing up a smoke screen at the Fourth of July picnic, or had Harris been tipped that something was going down? Context. The request hadn’t come out of the blue, it was part of a much larger package. It had bothered Calvino at the time, and as he walked along the road, the same questions came back. Why hadn’t Fred Harris set up an official meeting with Pratt, or better yet, gone to one of the generals or someone in the Ministry of Interior? Exactly who was at risk in Phuket and why? Why raise a sensitive security issue at a social function, the Fourth of July picnic of all places? Was it a coincidence that only hours afterwards Mark Wang, who was on his way to the meeting in Phuket, was murdered in a Bangkok hotel? Was Harris using the chance meeting with Pratt to cover himself, or to sta
ge a performance for someone who was watching him?

  His mere presence had annoyed Harris, thought Calvino. But the distaste Harris had shown covered a deeper anger, that he was in Saigon on official business, something was about to happen and this civilian was getting too close to whatever it was. Harris didn’t like it, and Calvino had begun to wonder if the Karen’s Bar trio had been arranged not by Douglas Webb but by Harris and friends. Having missed the chance to take him out, Harris had to endure the humiliation of sitting at the same table with the man who just would not leave well enough alone. Let’s say then, thought Calvino, passing the fountain opposite the Q-Bar, that Harris was the guy who killed Wang. Maybe he didn’t pull the trigger but he had the hit carried out. The irony of Pratt’s situation was he was to deliver the name of the person responsible for Wang’s murder. To accomplish his mission, he had to write a name on a piece of paper and send it up the chain of command. His job would be finished. He could return to Bangkok, Manee, his kids, his life, and whatever happened to that name and piece of paper would happen out of his sight, out of his knowledge. Was this any different from what any political commissar was assigned to do: purge an enemy who threatened the system, the structure, the organization? You closed ranks and acted whenever an external threat occurred. Who wasn’t guided by this principle? The police, State Department, investment banking house, law firm, Zone people? It was the way of the world. Pratt’s piece of paper with the name would be the same as a judge’s death sentence, delivered to Wang’s relatives, the designated executioners. Whoever touched that kind of power was tainted, thought Calvino. Vietnam was a place which had sucked out the moral core of many men and governments, leaving that dry rattle of numbers, the body count. This time they were returning as investors in a mutual fund, crunching numbers and being tracked by guys like Fred Harris. The entire group had checked into the Continental Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon was dead, buried, and the twenty year anniversary had been celebrated. Was Harris in Vietnam looking for a way to reconfigure the winners and losers in the Vietnam War ?

  ******

  ONE can learn a great deal about the character of a man in listening to what he chooses to reveal about the past. The same rule applied to countries. Countries distorted, withheld information, and outright lied about their past. After leaving the Continental Hotel, he walked down Le Loi Boulevard to a newsagent’s stand opposite Ho Chi Minh Square. The stand was no more than a cubbyhole and loaded with foreign newspapers and magazines. The owner, a slender Vietnamese with a thin, black mustache and gold wire-rimmed glasses, stood out front, keeping an eye on the Square and the Rex Hotel on the far side of the Square, calling out to foreigners who walked past to buy a newspaper. His English was street-smart American accented.

  “I heard there was a big fire last night in Saigon,” said Calvino. The owner sucked on a cigarette, nodded, looking at his feet.

  “People are careless in Saigon. There are fires every night,” he said with a nervous, forced laugh. “People cook over fires!”

  “Anything about a big shophouse fire in the newspapers? Some people found dead inside?”

  Questions about fire and death made the vendor nervous. He took refuge behind his well-worn street vendor’s smile which said get the fuck out of my face. “No time to read every newspaper. What you want? Time magazine. Newsweek. Far Eastern Economic Review.” He held up one after another from the counter sticking out on the sidewalk.

  “No, forget the international magazines. A Vietnamese newspaper is much better.”

  “Can you read Vietnamese?” He pushed his glasses up and took a closer look at Calvino.

  “There should be a picture,” said Calvino.

  “Here,” he said, handing Calvino a two-day old English language newspaper. He glanced at the paper. It contained news about rice export goals, the meeting of the People’s Committee, and a story about a Korean managing director who had humiliated a Vietnamese worker. Food, politics, and anti-foreigner stories. Communist newsspeak stories, control and restriction in every sentence. Calvino laughed, wondering how he had ever been so crazy to think that the press in Saigon was like the press in Bangkok. Bad news stories about crime were counter-revolutionary sabotage and incitement and a journalist would go to prison for the crime of having leaked State secrets. Who gets killed in the street is a State secret. You didn’t have to be a graduate of a school of journalism to see that the barcodes of daily events were perfectly matched to the vision of State policy. Calvino gave the vendor five dollars and he started to make change. If you wanted to know what really happened, you had to tap the bamboo telegraph at street level.

  “Keep it,” said Calvino. “Tell me something, was there anything in the Vietnamese press or on the radio about a fire last night?”

  The vendor was frowning as he looked at the five-dollar bill. Calvino laid another ten-dollar bill on top of the five and this brought a slight smile.

  “Shophouse fire. Someone said it was in a shut-down bar. I think it was called Karen’s Bar. It’s history. Dust and ashes, like the old regime,” he said. “In Vietnam, everything is history, even today will be history by tomorrow.”

  “What’s it say about the fire?” asked Calvino. “Oil lamp got knocked over.”

  Calvino nodded. “An oil lamp was knocked over? Careless people. I think they will go to prison for a very long time. Burning down buildings is no good for investment. When they write the history of today, you know what they are going to call it?” asked Calvino.

  The vendor shook his head.

  “The day when everyone in Saigon became an investor.” “Boring title,” said the vendor, grinning.

  “That’s because the investors are people who ultimately win all the wars, and they are boring.”

  The story had been twisted, compressed and buried. The distance between Fred Harris, Winchell & Holly, and the People’s Committee was getting smaller and smaller as everyone started to count profit margins above all other margins. Like the margins for justice, the margins for doing right, the margins for honesty— those margins had been eroded, torn down with the Berlin Wall, and what was left on the landscape? People on someone else’s turf at the wrong time of day.

  He heard someone calling his name. As he turned around, Marcus Nyugen was removing his aviator sunglasses and leaning out of the driver’s side of a new red BMW convertible. He had the top down and in the passenger ’s seat was a Vietnamese woman, mid-twenties, tall, angular, with an ice skater ’s figure and MTV presenter ’s face, dressed in a top-of-the-line tennis outfit, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  Calvino walked over to the car.

  “Heard about the fire last night,” said Marcus.

  “Someone knocked over an oil lamp is what I hear,” said Calvino. “Maybe it was a cow. Or a ghost.”

  The supermodel Vietnamese girlfriend slowly lowered her sunglasses. She looked like she never sweated and never got any further than the inside of a BMW with her tennis racket.

  “Accidents happen everywhere in the world,” he said, glancing over at his girlfriend. “This is Diep. Beautiful, don’t you think? And she fits within the seventy-five year rule.”

  Calvino hadn’t heard of this rule, and Marcus was pleased to see the puzzled look on his face.

  “You don’t know the seventy-five year rule? It works this way. I add my age to the age of the girl, and the total number can’t exceed seventy-five years. I am fifty-three and Diep’s twenty-one, so it’s a perfect match.”

  Zone speak, thought Calvino. Zone rules.

  Diep hadn’t said a word. She sat erect, smiling, holding her racket in one hand and her sunglasses in the other.

  “I think Webb set me up last night. Sending me for an appointment at Karen’s Bar.”

  Marcus looked back. “Who else knew you were going to Karen’s Bar?”

  “I can think of a couple of other people.”

  “All you have to do is give me the word. I’ll do the rest. I promised Harry Ma
rkle I would look after it personally. If it’s Webb, just give me the nod. That’s it, you’ve done your job. You can go home.”

  “She understand English?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Not a word. Beautiful, isn’t she? And you are wondering what she’s doing with an old guy like me? There’s a Vietnamese saying that translates roughly into, ‘one night leaning against the royal barge is worth more than a lifetime inside a fisherman’s boat.’ ”

  He switched on the ignition, slipped his aviator glasses back on, saying, “See you around.”

  ******

  DARLA stretched out on the beach chair, chest pointing toward the sun with the swimming pool a couple of feet away. Calvino walked along the main walkway leading up to the Floating floated up the Saigon River. The hotel floated. In an emergency it could be sent down river. A dozen tourists were sunning themselves around the pool. Some kids splashed at the shallow end. Two of the kids wore the inflatable water-wings that kept their heads above water level and allowed the mother to sit calmly at the edge of the pool, her toes submerged in the water as she read a book. Calvino walked past the mother and sat down in the beach chair next to Darla who wore a bikini so small that her name in eight point type would have spilled over the edges and onto her flesh. She was parked under a large, sun-faded pink and gray umbrella. She had fingernail polish, manicure set, mirror, brush, eyeliner, lipstick laid out like an operating room nurse who had adapted her skills in setting up the surgeon’s operating table. The only operation going on at the pool was cosmetic.

  “How you doing, Darla?” Calvino asked, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back in the chair.

  She lowered her sunglasses and smiled.

  “Vincent, you’re not going to believe this. But I was just thinking about you.”

  Across the pool, a Japanese business type was staring at her. “Yeah, what were you thinking?”