Sawai parked in front of a hotel near the end of the road. The sign said “Julie Complex” sounding more like a medical condition than a hotel.
“You said he worked in a gym,” said Calvino.
“He does. The gym is inside,” said Sawai.
Calvino and the guru walked down a long, narrow corridor. On one side was a mini-mart with bottles of Mekhong and Singha beer displayed in the window, and opposite was a massage parlor with foam mats lined side-by-side with a thin curtain separating each. Several middle-aged massage girls sat on the floor reading comic books. No customers were in his line of vision. Calvino touched his ear. Massage parlors made his ears ring and gave him a headache. At the end of the corridor, Sawai turned and started up a couple of stairs. Straight ahead were an office and the check-in counter and lobby of the hotel, and beyond was the entrance to a res- taurant. But Sawai wasn’t heading to the office and check-in counter of the hotel. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped and looked back. Calvino stood at the bottom of the stairs. He stared at the wall to the left of the stairs, where an Asian body builder with the body of Mr. Universe had been painted. Underneath the figure with the flexed bicep written in large bold script were the words: Golden Gym. Calvino continued up the stairs, keeping a step behind and to the left of Sawai. He didn’t have a good feeling about what might be waiting at the top. In an investigation, the art was in having a sense of the percentages, working them out in his head. Did they favor the punter or the house? With all gambles, the house had an edge. Otherwise casinos would be bamboo huts rather than palaces.
He took the next step and placed his bet. His left arm flexed against the .38 police special under his armpit. Sweat soaked the collar of his shirt. He wanted to take off the jacket covering his concealed weapon.
When they reached the top, there was nothing but another corridor. Sawai pulled open a door to the lobby of the gym and walked through and into the gym area where there were rows of benches and free weights on metal racks. As they came into the gym, a couple of Thai men were working out on the benches. In the far corner, a well-built Thai dressed in dark shorts and shirt spotted for one of the weight lifters. He stood behind the bench where the customer was lifting barbells with about a hundred kilos loaded onto the bar. His arms were pumped up and his head rolled back, looking at Sawai and Calvino upside down as the trainer turned away from the bench.
“Ton,” said Sawai. “The farang wants to talk to you.”
The trainer looked away from the bench and looked Calvino over as if this wasn’t what he had expected.
Calvino stared back at him, wondering how it was that this man had managed to stay alive.
Ton’s hand reached into his shorts and pulled out a key, tossing it to Sawai who caught it one-handed. It was a hotel room key. Room 402 was printed on the heavy wooden key handle.
“I’ll meet you in my room. Give me five minutes to finish with my customer.”
So far Sawai had told the truth. But the truth for a guru like Sawai was good for a sprint; over the long distance, lies were what let guys like Sawai pull ahead of the pack.
The request seemed reasonable.
“Okay, five minutes. Is that okay with you?” Sawai asked. Calvino looked around the gym. Ton was the only trainer in sight and the gym had people working out. It was reasonable to let him finish. In Thailand, the appearance of things was everything. People rarely asked whether what appeared to be real corresponded with the underlying reality. Calvino had a habit of asking. Appearances didn’t keep anyone alive. It was just the opposite. They were the best way to get oneself killed. As the hotel room key chain sailed through the air, he thought of the plane sticking out of the Royal Garden Plaza as if it had crashed. It hadn’t crashed. It had been built to look like something it wasn’t. As he saw the guru snatch the keys, he asked himself, Why not step out into the lobby so that Ton could finish up the set?
There was always a risk of the wings falling off the plane. Sometimes an investigation, no matter how much legwork he’d done, hit a dead end. More than once he had admitted to the client that he couldn’t help them. Valentine would have accepted that answer and moved on to find another way to return peace to his fiefdom of harem and goats. Ton was like the plane in flight. He was real. He was on his way down. It was all working smoothly. Nothing out of place.
The windows in the room where they waited for Ton looked out over the bay. Boats anchored all along the shore and below waiters were setting tables at an outdoor seafood restaurant. The hotel had been built over the beach. From the bank of windows a tourist could watch the boats for miles, or a local could use the room as a sentry tower, watching for particular boats coming in and out of the harbor. Calvino looked at his watch, marking the passage of fifteen minutes. The Thai sense of five minutes was somewhere between five minutes and one hour. He couldn’t really say that Ton was late. He was running on Thai time.
The guru switched on the television and opened the mini-fridge. He took out a can of Diet Coke, popped it open and drank from the can. He sat on the edge of the bed, he switched on the TV and surfed the channels, stopping at a game show. The guru immediately became absorbed in the game show. Watching him, it was hard to imagine that this was a man who held influence and power over Veera. Calvino stayed near the door. He thought about the probabilities of what had happened. He’d been hired to look into what appeared to be either suicide or domestic murder and had found himself on the edge of an international manhunt for a terrorist. A young woman had seen a boat come ashore with Hasam and a footlocker. Noi had recognized one of the men in the boat as the captain of a trawler. Jardine and Pratt said he was a JI operative. Jardine had talked to her and she’d gotten scared. She ran away, thinking life inside the compound of a rich farang would insulate her from the investigation.
Noi’s presence in the compound didn’t look good for Prasit. He had confessed to his personal guru about his sins, including some murders. And the guru was an advisor to some important people who might be embarrassed if this trawler captain were discovered. The safe play was to take down Prasit and his brother. The problem would be solved. Right? Well, not solved but contained. Ton was alive; one man left out of the team of three. That was strange, unless it was Ton who had been hired to kill Prasit and his brother. That way he could have proved himself a loyal soldier. The question that had been bothering Calvino was, who had hired Ton? The man sitting on the bed watching the game show snorted as he laughed.
“I have this theory that Ton was hired to kill Prasit and his brother,” said Calvino.
Sawai sipped the Diet Coke.
“Prasit hanged himself. Drug dealers shot his brother. Or the police.”
“That’s the party line.”
Calvino glanced at his watch. “I don’t think Ton’s going to show.”
“Wait a little longer. You have a theory. I have one, too.”
Sawai stared out the window at the sea. “A ying named Noi fall in love with Prasit. These things happen. His wife was very angry. You not know Thai lady when she’s angry.”
“How do you know this?”
“Prasit tell me. He said he was scared for his life. He had been fighting with Fon. She say, ‘Why you have to do this? Why you break my heart this way? Why you make me lose face?’ ”
“Why wasn’t Fon happy with a suicide verdict?” said Calvino.
Sawai shook his head and sighed.
“Farang not understand how Thai lady think. She’s a very clever woman. She knows drugs. Easy for her to give her husband an injection, put him on a chair, tie a rope around his neck and let him die. She wants more than her husband to die. She wants Noi to suffer. Dying is not so hard. We all get the chance. But suffering? That’s different. No one wants to suffer. Release from suffering is what the Buddha teaches. Fon says, ‘No, my husband not kill himself. Someone kill him.’ At first, you think I did this. We were close. I tried to help him find the path. Or you think that Sia Veera had him killed. None of that is true. Fon i
s too clever. She wants you to say it was Noi who killed her husband. Women are dangerous like a cobra.”
“How do you know that Noi was in the compound when Prasit died?”
The guru flexed his jaws.
“Ton saw Noi in the compound that day. She had an appointment to meet Prasit. But she’s too late. He’s already dead. Fon says Noi drugged her husband and made his death look like suicide. Why does Noi do this? Because Prasit wouldn’t leave his wife for her. You ever watch Thai TV?”
This explanation registered as a lie. Calvino had a good idea Fon would have mentioned Noi, but she hadn’t.
“Nam nao. It means dirty water,” said Sawai. “These stories every day about love triangles. It gives women many ideas. Thai women can’t watch enough of nam nao.”
“If Ton were in the compound that day, wouldn’t someone have seen him?” asked Calvino.
“Unless he had a secret way in. Ton seems like a well trained, resourceful man. Cunning. I can see him getting in and out without anyone noticing him.”
Sawai shrugged his shoulders.
“You can ask him. I don’t think he had any secret. He went to see Prasit. He went to borrow money. Ton had a habit of borrowing from his friends. He saw Fon injecting Prasit with a needle. He saw Prasit sleeping in a chair by the door. He’s very frightened and runs away.”
There was a knock on the door. Calvino’s right hand moved inside his jacket, touching the .38 police special. He moved back from the door.
“Why don’t you answer that, Ajarn Sawai?”
The guru finished the can of Diet Coke, rose from the bed and opened the door. Two uniformed cops stood in the door. Walkie-talkies on their belts squawked. Handguns riding high inside leather belts, they looked all business. One cop pushed into the room and did a quick look around.
“There’s been an accident,” said the other cop. “You come with us now.”
THIRTY-SIX
AT THE BOTTOM of the stairs leading to the gym, a small crowd had gathered. Women from the massage parlor, office workers, a security guard and some of the motorcycle taxi guys pooled at the bottom of the stairs like tadpoles on the muddy bottom of a rice paddy under the light of a full moon. They stared as two cops escorted the farang, and a man with a shaved head up the stairs and into the gym. Other cops kept the onlookers from following up the stairs. In the gym, a medical team was examining a body that was stretched out on the bench in the far corner. The same bench where Calvino had last seen Ton working with his customer. Ton had been spotting the customer and promising to join them in five minutes. Not far from the bench Colonel Pratt conferred with David Jardine and two other farangs in suits and surgical masks. One of them was dusting the bench and barbell for fingerprints. The other searched for hairs, fabric, and saliva, anything that might provide a clue as to the identity of the killer.
“You keep turning up in awkward situations. That tells me something,” said Jardine.
“What does it tell you?”
“That your dead gardener is getting you into something way over where you want to be.”
“You got something you want to ask me, then ask. This is Thailand. Don’t tell me when I’m in over my head.”
Jardine stared hard at him. “You can start by telling me what you were doing in this man’s room.”
“The way I see it, this is Colonel Prachai’s investigation. Why don’t I tell him the story and you can read his report?” Calvino looked at the body. Ton’s brown eyes stared lifeless at the ceiling. His tongue was swollen and red, extending from his mouth. It would have been a terrible way to die. Calvino remembered watching him spot the man on the bench. Ton’s body lay stretched out on the same bench and the barbell with a hundred kilos of weights lay lopsided with the bar over his throat. His larynx had been crushed.
Also crushed was Calvino’s theory that Ton had stayed alive by proving himself a loyal soldier. It had only been a matter of time. Calvino had been so close to questioning him. Calvino balled his hands into fists. He looked at the lifeless body and shook his head.
“I was waiting to ask him questions.”
“About Prasit’s death?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting that you are found in Ton’s room but he’s dead in the gym.”
“He wasn’t dead when the meeting was arranged.”
“Who is your friend?”
Jardine nodded at Sawai who stood a few feet back.
“A local holy man,” said Calvino. “You might have seen his Harley parked out front.”
“When did you see Ton?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“Who was he with?”
“He was spotting for a guy on the bench.”
Colonel Pratt stood silently off to the side, waiting for an opening in the barrage of Jardine’s questions. He finally saw his chance.
“Vincent, did you get a good look at the men in the gym?” asked Colonel Pratt. The first sensible question that had been asked, thought Calvino.
“There were a couple of body builders over there.” He pointed to the other side of the gym.
“I didn’t really get a good look. As I said, Ton was spotting a guy who was pumping iron on the bench. I saw his face upside down for five seconds.”
“Can you identify the man on the bench?” asked David
Jardine. “Was he having a conversation with Ton?”
“I saw them for a couple of seconds. The guy on the bench was lifting weights. He wasn’t talking.”
“Great,” said Jardine. “Helpful. You saw a guy on a bench.”
“I had no reason to look at him.”
“You’re investigating a murder. You look at everyone. That’s basic training.”
Calvino pursed his lips, rocking back on his heels. “You’re right. I should have asked for his business card. Asked him where he was when a gardener was murdered.”
“You can play wise or you can play smart. Your choice,” said Jardine.
“Why don’t we get our business over,” said Calvino. “Then we can all go home.”
“That’s smart.”
Colonel Pratt scratched the back of his neck and looked out the window at the street below. The guru sat on a bench opposite the body. He looked as if he were miles and miles away, another place, another universe. He’d been left out of the confrontation between Calvino and Jardine. The guru did what Thais do when farangs turn up the heat on each other; he turned inward. There was no percentage in getting involved in their conflicts. Let the farangs do what farangs have to do. Snarl and curse and threaten and get red in the face. Then let the winner report back when they’re done with each other.
Working over the bench, the suits continued to collect evidence from the body. Ton’s body looked smaller in death, broken in the way flesh and bone were pressed and smashed until the plasticity snapped and a spattering of blood and gore shot across the room, smelling vile. Finding someone killed in a gym with the murder weapon a heavy set of barbells made someone who didn’t work out feel good about themselves. A couple of the farang suits worked over the body, brushing and touching and probing, gathering and labeling as they went.
Colonel Pratt touched Calvino’s shoulder. “Jai yen,” he said. Keeping a cool heart with David Jardine was becoming a major effort. His style was to provoke and intimidate. It must have worked well in interrogation rooms with no windows and a single bulb hanging down from the ceiling. Getting information was one thing, but following up on that information and closing in on the man was another. All David Jardine had to show for his efforts was a woman who’d become a nun and couldn’t picked out Hasam from a photo. On the staircase curious onlookers wondered why so many farangs had been allowed inside the crime scene and why the Thai police had excluded Thai people.
One of the farang suits scraped underneath the fingernails of the corpse. Another suit handed Jardine a Ziploc bag, and inside was the body of a coiled and dead snake. The dead reptile would have looked good stuffed into one
of the jars in Valentine’s collection.
“Have you ever seen a snake like this?” asked Jardine. “Prasit saw one before he died. His brother’s body was found with one,” said Calvino.
Jardine moved in closer and talked just above a whisper.
“That points to the same killer. Find the person who had access to all three men and you have your man—or woman,” said Jardine.
“Okay, you’ve given me something. And now I’ll give you something. We’ve had been interrogating Hambali and he’s given us some useful information about money transfer sources, dates, and names.”
“I read that in the newspapers,” said Calvino. “He told us about Hasam.”
“The man named ‘Sword’.”
“I’d thought you’d remember,” said Jardine.
Calvino moved to the side as two medics walked past. David Jardine’s attention was focused elsewhere. Beyond the medics, he stared at Sawai who, subdued and strangely quiet, stood near a couple of suits in the corner. His mystical presence was vastly reduced. Calvino made him out as another freak working a con.
“Let’s have a little talk with Sawai,” said Jardine.
Sawai smiled as Jardine produced a photograph from an envelope and handed it to Calvino, who looked at the photograph and then passed it to Sawai. The man in the picture wore glasses and had a full black beard without a hint of gray. A puffy pudding of a face. Not a body-builder type. None of the men in the gym had a beard.
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