“We have a situation,” said Calvino.
“I’ve made myself clear, I am staying at the Brandy.”
“Jess, get his head down.”
Jess reacted instantly, jamming Naylor’s head down with the flat palm of his hand, crushing his Panama hat. He kept on pushing until he had Naylor below the window level, face in the seat. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Stay down.”
Jess turned around just as the truck hit Calvino’s car. The truck rammed the car hard. Jess drew a .9 mm automatic out of a holster concealed under his jacket and swung the gun around.
“Get on the shoulder,” Jess said.
Calvino punched the accelerator and tried to pull away from the truck. The truck caught up in a couple of seconds. Backseat driver, thought Calvino.
“The engine’s souped up,” said Calvino. He was driving on the shoulder.
“Or this piece of junk has no power,” said Naylor. The truck nudged the back bumper, a kiss, then a hard ram. “This isn’t real,” said Naylor, his head jerked from the impact. Jess no longer had to push him down.
“I thought Thais weren’t supposed to touch another person’s head in Thailand,” said Naylor.
“The exception to the rule is a farang someone’s trying to kill,” said Jess.
“Here it comes again,” said Calvino. “Big mama of a truck.”
A Thai male in his early twenties, a full head of thick black hair flying in the wind, leaned out of the passenger’s side of the truck and squeezed off several shots from a handgun he held with both hands. He was a bad shot. And the cabin of the truck was too high, forcing the shooter to aim and shoot downward at the moving target. One shot hit the door, and another shot hit the headrest on the passenger’s seat next to Calvino. Another shot blew out Calvino’s rear window. “Can you get a shot?” shouted Calvino from the front seat.
“I can’t get a clear shot,” Jess was looking up at the grille of the huge truck. There was no shot to be had.
“Can’t you go any faster?” screamed Naylor from the backseat.
Calvino switched from the shoulder to the slow lanes, then switched lanes again, the truck in hot pursuit, and as he doubled back onto the shoulder, the truck shifted gears and at the last moment, Calvino made a hard right turn. The truck slammed head on into a Thai motorcycle cop gunning his bike at high speed, going the wrong way on the shoulder. Since he was one of the “boys” he apparently didn’t feel he had to follow the normal rules: like obeying the prohibition of motorcycles on the expressway or going in the right direction. No one would ever know for sure what was in that cop’s head in the nanosecond he had between seeing the huge fucking truck and getting himself smashed against the grille like a bug. He didn’t leave a skid mark. Head on straight into the truck. His motorcycle, crumpled like a cheap toy and slid underneath the truck, sending sparks of metal against cement across the expressway. As Calvino slowed, he looked back and saw the truck veer off to the left, dragging the motorcycle, which had caught on the undercarriage of the truck with the cop slammed against the grille, the truck exiting the expressway on the off-ramp to the Suttisan.
“Jesus, they killed that cop,” said Naylor, looking out the window. “Mangled him. Have you ever seen people drive like that? That driver had to be nuts or on speed.”
Calvino dialed his mobile and Pratt came on the line. He explained what had happened. Pratt said he would take care of it.
The incident was over in less than five minutes.
“Anyone hurt?” Calvino asked, while he still had Pratt on the line. “Everyone’s okay,” he said, dropping the mobile phone on the seat. He leaned forward and brushed some of broken glass off the dashboard.
“Do you still want to stay at the Brandy?” asked Jess.
Wes Naylor sat up straight, his hat in his hands, assessing the damage.
“I can’t wait to post this airport-ride-to-hell story. Don Muang Death Ride.”
Calvino shook his head. “Brandy Hotel it is.” He stopped at the tollbooth, paid the fare and headed for the Sukhumvit Road off ramp. There was enough loose glass on the floor that every time he switched lanes the glass shifted, making a soft distant sound like ice striking an empty glass at the end of bar counter.
“You’re not taking this seriously enough,” said Jess.
Naylor’s eyes suddenly got big. “Seriously? Are you joking. Those guys were high on drugs. Calvino dissed them. They got angry. Road rage is how I read this. We get this all the time in America; you know what it’s like, Jess. This happens five times a day in LA. They weren’t trying to shoot me. They were trying to kill you.” A strange laugh came out of his throat like he had gone insane.
“That’s an interesting theory,”said Calvino. “But it is totally fucking wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“No question about it.”
Naylor was looking angry. “I can prove it. I am still fucking alive. If they had wanted to kill me, I would be dead.”
Arguing with a reductionist asshole was a waste of time.
Calvino was trying to make sense of this LA lawyer and Cause-member website owner/operator/member—what he was and what he did. Calvino still hadn’t decided as Naylor’s story kept shifting. Even in the worst neighbourhoods of the Bronx or Brooklyn, Calvino had never met anyone who had been shot at and showed so little emotion. Was Naylor some kind of California fruitcake and this was really the way Americans on the coast dealt with an ambush? It was starting to bother him that whoever this Naylor guy was, nothing about him fit together. The puzzle was scattered pieces without any design emerging. The whole set-up was as crazy as a betrayed wife. Calvino just drove, keeping his thoughts to himself, letting Jess keep up the conversation with Naylor.
When they finally reached Sukhumvit Road, Calvino turned left, then at Soi 1 he made another left-hand turn, taking the short-cut through the grounds of Bumrungrad Hospital which came out on Soi 3—Nana Nua—a one-way soi which became Soi 4—Nana Tai—on the other side of Sukhumvit Road. Security guards stopped them as they entered, looked in and saw that two of them were farang and one of them looked in need of medical attention, and then waved them in, directing them to the parking lot. Calvino accelerated past the parking lot, weaving through the narrow lanes until he came to Soi 3.
“Those guards thought you were going to see a doctor about your face?” asked Wes Naylor in a joking voice.
“You can’t make a right off Sukhumvit onto Soi 4 so I am cutting through the hospital lot rather than going halfway to Cambodia before I can make a U-turn.”
“You ought to be driving a cab,” said Wes Naylor.
“Driving a cab is safer. You just don’t get what happened on the expressway. And because you don’t, I feel we could be in for major trouble,” said Calvino.
“I don’t think so.”
This was one of those stupid, throwaway lines that one can never believe someone says but somehow in real life people say such things all the time. Calvino stayed silent, looking at Naylor in the mirror, the clinical way an adult looks at a child who has asked if there are chrome poles on Mars with beautiful yings swinging around them dressed in bikinis.
Jess looked at the steady stream of six lanes of traffic that barely moved one-way along Soi 3. Calvino edged into the flow. Every time Calvino braked, more pieces of broken glass spilled from the rear window, raining down on Jess and Wes. Jess picked a small piece of glass off his collar, rolled it between his finger and thumb. “Fucking glass,” said Naylor, brushing a shard off his hat.
Jess was also thinking about how close they had come to being shot. How the truck had hit the car, then killed the cop and fled the scene rather than coming in for the kill.
Fifteen minutes later, Calvino pulled into the parking lot of the Brandy Hotel. It was an old R&R hotel built in the Vietnam war era; eleven floors high, and memories stretching from rice paddies and foot patrols to the peace time generation of the Cause-members. In the background, the contour of
the new Marriott looked like an alien spacecraft hovering, closing in from the horizon, threatening to dwarf the Brandy, swallow it whole. As Calvino got out of the car, he reached back and opened the back door and Naylor climbed out, kicking broken glass onto the pavement. “You are like a fucking bull in a china shop,” said Naylor, grabbing his hat and putting it on.
A row of small stunted trees—lacking water and oxygen and poisoned by the traffic fumes—somehow survived in the center of the parking lot at the entrance to the Brandy Hotel. Along the side of the hotel, an open-air bar had already drawn a few customers and yings who were perched—the yings with bare legs crossed—on high bar stools drinking Singha beer or soda water. Jess pulled Naylor’s bags out of the trunk of the car. He made a point of walking around the back of the car and putting them down at Naylor’s feet. “Your bags.” He didn’t need to say any more. Naylor could see that there was no way Jess was going to carry his bags for a grand a day or ten grand a day. Jess still didn’t much like Naylor’s crack about not touching his head because this was Thailand. He was trying to save the man’s life. Calvino was probably right: this guy was a total asshole. It was hard putting one’s heart into keeping a complete asshole alive.
“This is great,” said Naylor, reaching down for his carry-on bag, leaving the heavy one on the pavement. “Just like I remembered it. The really good things in the world never change. You come back to Bangkok in a hundred years and the Brandy will still be here.”
“What’s to like?” asked Calvino. As far as he was concerned the place was a box, a dump, a sterile concrete bunker made of too much sand and not enough cement and there was no way it would be still be standing in a hundred years.
“You don’t get it. This place occupies a time warp from the sixties universe. This could be 1968.”
“If you don’t mind, Captain Kirk, let’s check you in,” said Calvino.
“Don’t forget your other bag,” said Jess. His toe touched the heavy bag.
Naylor grunted and leaned over and picked it up.
Walking in single file, they entered the large, open hotel lobby. On the right was the main reception counter and a wall of small safety deposit boxes. Naylor marched straight to the counter, put down his bags, and asked the clerk to check for his reservation. His name came up on the computer screen, as Naylor craned forward to see. “That’s me. Naylor, Wes. I’ve stayed here before. Do you remember me?” The clerk handed Naylor a form to complete. He looked at Naylor like he had never seen him in his life. Naylor looked far more startled at not being recognized than he had been during the shooting on the expressway. Jess stood to Naylor’s right facing the door, checking the guests in the lobby. It was pretty quiet in the lobby.
“What do you think?” asked Jess.
“From a security point of view the place is hopeless,” said Calvino. “One of us should phone Dr. Nat and let him know that Naylor’s made a change of plans. Here, use my mobile phone.”
Jess took the phone and started to dial. “He’s not going to be happy about this.”
“If he wants the four grand back, tell him that’s no problem. I can wire it to him tomorrow or give it to you now. However he wants it.”
This was the last thing Jess wanted. He held up his hand. “Keep the cash. And don’t get in a rush.”
“The guy’s stupid or he has a death wish,” said Calvino.
“Or he’s both.” The phone was ringing in LA and a moment later Jess was speaking in rapid Thai to Dr. Nat who was on the other end.
The Brandy wasn’t exactly the hotel that people came to looking to be protected against corporate take-over death threats. Running from the entrance to the coffee shop were large windows. Chairs were scattered around the lobby. Groupings of chairs with tall straight backs were situated near the windows. A half-dozen old geezers in their sixties and seventies slouched down in the overstuffed chairs with blonde fake leather coverings, which had that early Thermae look. They looked like what the Cause-members called a Pfizer Gang. The yings called them Jurassics. After the dinosaur movie. A packaged tour of pensioners was being arranged on-line by retirees; Cause-members, fellow-travelers (though in need of that afternoon nap) in search of the Monster Fuck at an age when their cocks should have stayed flaccid. Instead with a drug boost, fifteen, thirty minutes into an erection they still had an erection that a dog couldn’t chew off. They wore the now classic Causeway “V” T-shirts. One of the old guys turned and Calvino spotted the blue “V’s” stitched over his heart. Most of the others in the lobby wore the blue crescent-shaped lapel pin. One little blue pill stretched out the wrinkles from one organ but left its toll in the exhaustion etched onto their faces. The old men in the lobby looked dead tired. Some of them dozed, mouths open, and if they hadn’t been snoring, they could have passed for the dead. Pfizer heads never took naps in their hongs; it was part of the code, saying you were old and had to go to bed, but catching forty winks in a stuffed chair, that was inside the line of acceptable behavior because the moment one’s eyes popped open there was a selection waiting, signaling, promising, and propositioning.
At that moment, they were better off sleeping, as there were few yings in the lobby. Behind the Pfizer Gang were a couple of fake Christmas trees set up on tables. Red bows and blue balls covered both trees. Four or five yings wore evening dresses and pancake make-up. They sat in a circle at a table drinking orange juice; they leaned forward in Chinese chairs hand-carved with scrolls, flowers, fancy whorls, glancing over at the Pfizer Gang wondering when one might wake up, pop a pill, stagger over to their group, and take one of them up to his hong. One of the ying brushed back her long flowing black hair to reveal a pair of blue “V” earrings. A gift from a Cause-member.
Calvino leaned over the counter and addressed the woman working the counter. “We will need three adjoining rooms,” he said in Thai.
The woman at the desk didn’t even blink. “Cash or credit card.”
“Put the hongs on Mr. Naylor’s credit card,” said Calvino. “All three rooms.”
“Wait a minute, Calvino.”
“The hongs at the Oriental are paid for. We’re talking rack-rate about three times your hourly billing rate. So I think under the circumstances you might be generous enough to your client to spring for the hongs at your choice of hotels.”
“I am not going to argue with you.” But he wasn’t paying any attention to Calvino and walked straight past him and over to the Pfizer Gang. “Boys, how are you? I am Tail-gunner.” He winked.
One of the old guys sat up in his chair, his eyes popped open. “I’ve read your stuff on the web. It’s great. And I hope you can settle the conflict between Weasel and Mucus.”
The Cause-members had online names that made ham operator names elegant.
“I am certainly gonna try. I am here to hold a peace council. Glad to see you boys are in town and having a good time. If you need anything, I am in hong 501.”
Calvino exchanged glances with Jess. “Peace council,” mouthed Calvino. Jess shrugged his shoulders.
“Dr. Nat told me you were here on a hotel deal,” said Jess.
“Yes, I am. But I am also a man with many missions,” replied Naylor.
A bellboy picked up Wes Naylor’s bags. Two more bellboys sniffed around, looking for Jess and Calvino’s bags, and getting the hint quickly that there were no more bags, they peeled off formation and shuffled back to the entrance like cranky wind-up toys with rundown batteries.
With Naylor walking between his two bodyguards, they passed a bank of telephones where three or four hookers thumbed little black books, phones cradled between their necks and shoulders like brokers selling swamp land in a boiler room set-up. The hookers were trying to get early bird short-time bookings. The yings eyed Naylor, ignoring Calvino and Jess; they seemed to have a sixth sense about who was new, who was on the make, and who might be another black book entry. Naylor returned their smiles. That was first contact, thought Calvino. Captain Kirk and alien creatures excha
nged facial gestures that were a prelude to earthly breeding.
“Love those smiles,” Naylor said. “They melt you right down to the core.”
“The Pfizers in the lobby make me look like a kid,” said Calvino.
Naylor glanced at his watch. “I have an appointment at the Plaza in two hours.”
“Don’t you have an important meeting tomorrow?” asked Jess.
“I am prepared. Over-prepared. I need to unwind. I’ve had a long day. I’ve been shot at. Seen life pass before my eyes as that cop called my name at the airport. And now I want to have some fun.”
Calvino and Jess exchanged glances as if to say someone would be waiting to unwind his main action, ripping off the hour, minute and second hands, leaving him outside of time. Leaving him dead.
They waited at the elevator and a bellboy pushed the up button. A security guard in a blue shirt sat at an old-fashioned wooden office desk reading a black and white comic book. He didn’t bother looking up as he turned the page.
Not more than two minutes after they entered their hongs, Jess knocked on Calvino’s door. “Come in. It’s open.”
Jess walked in and closed the door behind him. Calvino stood with his back to the door, looking out the window. “What did Dr. Nat decide?”
“Stick with him. I know this is crazy, Vincent, but Dr. Nat thinks that Naylor can pull off the hotel deal and get back to LA alive.”
“Are you a betting man?” Calvino turned around and faced Jess.
Jess shrugged. “I am Thai. I believe in karma.”
“I would bet that Wes Naylor knows something he’s not telling us.”
“Like what?”
“Like why he didn’t shit his pants on the expressway.”
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