Cold Hit

by Christopher G. Moore

  “What you’re saying is you blackmailed the family with the story.”

  “Hey, whatever it takes. And, don’t forget that bomb worked as well. Besides, Wes got his deal done. No more death threats. I’d call that a success. I thought you’d be happy. So why do I get this distinct feeling that you’re upset?”

  “I am having a bad day, nothing personal, McPhail. What hong is Jess in?”

  “509,” said Pratt.

  “One more thing, Pratt; how did you end up here?” asked Calvino.

  Pratt smiled. “McPhail phoned and said that you had asked me for a favor.”

  “What favor was that?” asked Calvino looking over at McPhail, who was lighting another cigarette.

  “You know, man, that the Colonel was to come around and tell the owner that he should be careful.” McPhail blew out the smoke. “Nothing heavy, just to let them know things were dangerous with bombs killing people on Sukhumvit Road. And the police were thinking about reopening the case on the cause of death of the father.”

  “Remind me, why did I want Pratt to do this favor?”

  “Because it would remove the threat to this guy you were hired to guard. The same guy you asked me to guard for you. If the deal closed, no more threat. Finished. Everyone’s a happy camper.”

  “Naylor was never under any serious threat,” said Calvino.

  “No shit?” replied McPhail, his jaw open and smoke pouring out.

  “What are our chances of getting Jess back to LA?” Calvino asked Pratt.

  “I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not; As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.” Pratt quoted Orlando’s reply to the Duke who had asked, “Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy can do all this that he hath promised.”

  “What is that you just said?” asked McPhail, looking confused and amused at the same time—a state of being that pot induced. “Shakespeare? Cool. Man, you are profound for a cop.”

  NOI smoothed out her white nun’s habit, brushed her long nails against the pig’s bloodstain that had turned an ugly blotchy dull copper tone. She sat on the edge of the bed, legs crossed, absorbed in her cleaning ritual. Actually she was buying time as she collected her thoughts, deciding what to leave in, what to leave out, editing her story, taking her pitch to that ultimate level that all super-sales people desire to achieve just once in their lifetime. Across from her, Jess had been asking for her confession. The fact that he was dressed as a priest and was a real life cop and a real life LAPD cop was enough to make Noi scratch holes in the nun’s habit as she tried to navigate in her own mind what she was going to say to him. She liked him. More than that, she was attracted to him; physically attracted to him ever since she saw how well he could kick someone in the face. That made her feel safe and happy all at the same time. When Calvino wheeled into the hong, she looked up at his tired, beat-up face, and took a sip of water from a glass. She was glad that a farang was in the hong because farangs always made it easier to tell stories. They so much wanted to believe and they were so fucking earnest. The terrible oppression of being alone with Jessada in that hong, knowing he could see right through her, drill straight through her core material, see that she was bullshitting. The interrogation was almost too much to bear, even though she wouldn’t have minded fucking his brains out—that was different from having his brain sift through the stuff that had happened to her. So she decided to continue her story, pretending that Calvino was the guy listening and forgetting that Jessada was only three feet away making her horny. She continued repeating her story, the start of the story anyway, over and over again, like a broken record or like a ying in a bar putting the needle on the beginning of the scene long enough to have refined her pitch to such perfection that the polished surface of reality became the only reality? And this little stutter trick was to throw everyone off as if she was confused and just working through it the first time. Or was she the real thing?record each time a new customer sat down and asked about her life. From the moment Calvino walked into the hong, he had sensed what was coming down, the way she repeated herself. He asked himself: Had she been on the scene long enough to have refined her pitch to such perfection that the polished surface of reality became the only reality? And this little stutter trick was to throw everyone off as if she was confused and just working through it the first time. Or was she the real thing?

  Give her a break, he thought. The nun’s habit worked in her favor; if she had been in a bikini, forget it; he would have been out the door. It all started over lunch at a restaurant off Silom Road.

  “I was with my friends. There was a group of us eating lunch. Maybe ten people. All from the same office. All of my friends were women. Silom office workers’ Mafia. That’s what we called ourselves. We talked about everything. We gossiped about the bosses, talked about films, soap operas, movie stars, getting married, getting rich, buying a condo. And no one was paying any attention when a farang came over to our table. I thought it was some kind of a mistake. He leaned forward and whispered loud enough for my friends to hear that he was madly in love with me. I pretended not to hear him. Only he repeated himself loud enough that everyone else stopped talking. I could have died. He had been at the next table. He said that he had been watching me ever since I had arrived. I thought he was joking. I told him that he had a sweet mouth like all farangs, and I thought he would go away. I go back to talking to my friends. But the farang doesn’t leave. I giggle. But he doesn’t understand this is my way to ask him to leave. Next he pulls up a chair and he says, ‘Please give me your phone number.’ ‘Why should I do that?’ I ask him. And he is ready for me. ‘Because I want to marry you.’ My friends are watching the whole thing. They hear him proposing. Maybe some are a little upset, jealous. This is a young, good-looking farang who is thirty-something. But I have no experience in someone doing this to me in public. I think he’s not dtem baht. Slightly crazy but not in a bad, dangerous way. I try to ignore him. That doesn’t work. He takes hold of my hand and drops on one knee. For whatever reason, maybe I am, a crazy girl, I start to take him seriously; I am not from upcountry, I am not stupid. I went to university. I graduated from university too. My family is not rich but middle class and they are very strict with me. No way a farang would be my husband. What should I do? I am about to do something that will disappoint my family. Maybe I am selfish. Because what I do next I know is wrong and will hurt my family. I take out my pen and write down my phone number. Now I think he will go away. And I think he won’t call me and I am a little sad. I wonder if anything he said was real or truth; I think that someone had put him up to saying all those things to me or he was born with less than 100 satang in the baht. Thai slang for moron.

  All this happened on a Monday, and a week later, I went to bed with this foreigner. Three weeks later he gave me his grandmother’s wedding ring. He told me his grandmother put it on for the first time in 1907. I was so proud to have the ring on my finger. I would have done anything for him. Two months later, I had a baby inside, and only then did I start to find out the truth. When I was six months pregnant, I told him I would spend the night at my mother’s house. I missed him too much so I went back to the apartment. It was two in the morning and he’s in our bed with two bar yings from Nana Plaza. He was bent over one of them spanking her. With his hand. Her ass had red handprints. You could see the shape of each finger on her skin. I asked him, ‘What are you doing?’ And he answered me, ‘A root job. I am rooting her. Stick around and you might learn a thing or two.’ Root job, I had not idea what he was talking about. Root canal, tree root, root beer, root as in Route 66. I really didn’t know that farang used this to mean having sex and doing other things. Like spanking. A week later I caught him with another girl. He was using a belt this time. This was no accident. This was his secret way of life. He cannot leave bar yings alone. He cannot stop himself from spanking them. When he’s not at work, he’s on the Internet three, four hours a day, posting photos of yings he has spanked. Puts them out there for
anyone to see. I saw the photos and I read what he wrote about the yings. Afterward I vomited. I was seven months pregnant when I found out that he had a child by a bar ying in Chiang Mai. He doesn’t send support payments, though sometimes he goes to see his baby. I know him now and know that he had no interest in his child. I know he will have no interest in my baby. A month after I had the baby, I found out he had given other women his “grandmother’s wedding ring” dated 1907; either the grandmother was getting married lots of times in 1907 or her grandson was a liar. I knew in my heart that I made a big mistake marrying him and that I had better get out of his life.” Noi drank from a glass of water, put her head back for a moment.

  She had taken them on the grand tour through the emotional and psychological freak show she had lived with the father of her baby; a farang who was half computer nerd, with the rest divided between Romeo, bum, scam artist, dreamer, and user. This monster had deceived her. Her friends and family abandoned her. She had nowhere to turn, no place to go. She had given birth to a beautiful child and she worried that he would no doubt come infrequently to stare at this child like the one in Chiang Mai as if it reaffirmed that he was capable of reproduction, that his genetic material had been passed down the line one more time. It was too late for her to go back to her old life. Being middle class and Buddhist, an abortion had been out of the question; her life was set now. She learned to accept a fate that was without hope; a remorseless fate of one day after another in which no one she had ever known or loved would recognize that she existed.

  “That was Danny. The farang who died at the Emporium?” Jess was asking her in a gentle way.

  She shook her head. “No, I met Danny later. He was a ‘jockey’ or that is how he described taking yings from Bangkok to the States. Sometimes to England or Japan. Like with my husband, I didn’t know what Danny really did until much later. I am such a stupid girl,” she said. “So when you ask me to trust you, I ask myself, ‘how can I do that?’ Each time I trust a guy before, I get hurt.”

  “Did Gabe Holerstone lie to you?” asked Calvino.

  “To be honest, he didn’t. I met Gabe at Renoir on Soi 33. I had just started the week he came into the bar. Only two months earlier I had the baby. The bar hired me as a hostess. No dancing. No see-through blouses or bikinis. No one had in my dreams. I got a percentage of what the bar took but Gabe was a smart businessman and he kept most of the money. I was a popular girl and very busy most nights; forced you to go out with customers. The other yings said the tips were good. Then I met Gabe. I told him my story. After he listened, he said that he owned a Thai karaoke bar in Hollywood, and that a really good crowd came to his place. And that if I really wanted a fresh start, working in the bar wasn’t the way to go; I should go to Los Angeles and he would help me with my singing career. That had been my secret dream. To sing. To get paid to go on stage and sing before a large audience. I am looking at this guy across the bar, and I am thinking of all the lies farangs have told me. Is this bullshit or is this the opportunity of a lifetime? God, I really don’t trust my own judgment. I think to myself, what do I have to lose? Not much. My respectable life was ruined, my reputation destroyed, my respectable family and friends saying that I was nothing more than a farang’s whore. Gabe’s offer was a chance to leave Thailand. I had no future in my own country. Why not leave? With my university education, I had no trouble getting a visa from the American Embassy. A month later I was in LA standing in front of Gabe’s place. In my mind his club was a grand palace like in the movies. Glamorous people, expensive cars in front, waiters in black tie. Instead, it was a rundown bar that served near-beer and the customers were mainly second, third level Koreans and Japanese businessmen. They paid forty-three bucks an hour for me to sit and talk to them. We would go back to the karaoke room and sing together. It was cheaper than seeing a shrink and probably a whole lot less stressful, as the customer didn’t have to say anything if he didn’t want to. And if he did, then I laughed as if what he said was the most amusing thing I had ever heard. By the time tips and drinks were factored in, it was costing the customer a hundred bucks for an hour’s conversation. And I didn’t have to fuck them. No one I knew would ever believe men would pay a hundred dollars to talk to a girl and know that the money only bought an hour of conversation. Gabe had promised me a singing career. And I was singing every night. Before an audience of one, two, up to six customers. But this was not the career I talking and singing five, six, seven hours. Multiply that by a week, then a month, and it was clear I was making some serious cash for Gabe.

  “I moved into Gabe’s apartment, showed up for work, and talked to Koreans all night, seven days a week. He had already hired my brother. After Charn got busted for drugs, I went to Gabe and asked for money to hire a lawyer. He gave me a couple thousand dollars. I owed him big; hiring my brother, paying for the lawyer, so when he asked me to go back to Thailand for a holiday, all expenses paid, to see my son, I felt it was my duty to help him. He explained how he had invented this game where he would hire a private eye to try and find me but I was to stay out of Bangkok until Gabe told me that it was okay to talk to the private eye. And once he gave me the all clear, then I was to pretend that I didn’t want to talk to Gabe. When I asked why he wanted to play this crazy game, he put a forefinger to my lips, asking me to remember that he had helped me and Charn and that Charn was still in jail and would need a lot more help. A couple of days later I get a call from Danny, my ex-boyfriend, a farang I met after I left the father of my baby. We had a thing that lasted six weeks. We had fights over money, his cheating with other yings, his lying. When I saw him this time, he looked completely changed. He had a new job. He picked me up in a new 730 BMW. He had a new Rolex and wore an expensive French designer shirt with gold cuff links. He told me he had learned his lesson about how I had said he was irresponsible. He said that he had found a good job, and was in business with some really cool people. I asked him what kind of work and he said he had become a ‘jockey.’

  “I liked his change of attitude and even thought for twenty-five seconds that something like a second chance might be possible. He said that he had scored a DJ job and the money was good. So I asked him who his boss was. ‘Gabe Holerstone,’ he said and I nearly fell off my chair. Danny had a gun and showed it to me and I started to get scared. The next thing he’s falling from the fifth floor of the Emporium.”

  He had taken the big jump. Actually, Naylor had thrown his ass over the side, looking down as Danny went splat on the marble floor. Blood pouring out his ears and mouth. Brain splashed out of his skull. Calvino remembered finding her holding his lifeless cracked skull leaking brains onto her lap. And now he was thinking about the holes in Noi’s story. Stuff that she had left out. He didn’t believe for a minute that she had suddenly run into Danny and found out that he was working for Gabe. A jockey didn’t make the kind of cash for toys Noi had described; either she was lying about the new BMW or Danny had other cash flows. And not a word about Kowit and how he figured in the trouble her brother had gotten himself into. She was fast, smart, knew the kind of things to dwell on, like the spanking fetish of her nameless husband; the kind of thing that would have brought Jess over to her side, set him up to hate the bad farang who abused the women. The whole time that she was talking Jess was writing down notes in his cop’s notebook. He had hardly looked up. There had been no need to egg her on; Noi was in high gear with the brake off. By the time she started talking about what happened in the Emporium, Calvino decided it was time to get her talking about LA again.