The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

  “You’re a real conman, aren’t you?” she said. She was leaning against him. Another shirt button had popped open.

  “What went wrong with the POW scam?” she asked.

  “It was my last chance to get back into the US legally,” he said. “As a hero I could convince them they were wrong about me stealing the plane and operating undercover. I was a week away from getting on that flight. I was having a final medical. I’d spent four months in a sort of up-market prison camp in Hanoi. I figured it was worth the inconvenience. I grew a beard and let my hair sprout wild. I got the shit bitten out of me by insects. I ran into a few walls, collected some grazes and bruises. And I picked at the food they gave us so I’d lose weight. After those four months I looked the part. Could have convinced anyone, I thought. But then this smart-assed little bastard Pathet Lao doctor comes and examines me. He decides I’m not sick enough. Haven’t been ravaged enough by diseases.

  I mean, shit. All he had to do was sign a release, god damn it. They should have been happy to be rid of me. But, no. This guy wants to do the full Edgar J. Hoover investigation to make himself look good to his Vietnamese bosses. He lied about a bunch of stuff, but they believed him and bumped me from the flight. Tried to get me into CIA hands. But I escaped.”

  “You remember his name?” she asked.

  “I’ll never forget it,” he said. “Fake Doctor Siri Paiboun. His name still comes to me in nightmares. But I’ve fixed him.”

  “How?”

  “I set the mental son on him. I have to tell you there was always something scary about the boy. He was crazy about me to the point that he’d have done anything I told him to. In fact, he was clingy. Deranged, I’d say. I told him me and his whore mother had a disease. Got it into his head that Paiboun was responsible for us dying. She’s not dead either, the mother. She’s still putting it out there for old geezers. I see her slumming around the bars some nights. The boy was easy enough to stir up. I arranged for his scholarship to be cancelled, blamed Fake Dr. Siri for that too. So I knew he’d be pissed, knew he’d find a way to get revenge on behalf of his dead mother and dear old Uncle Henry. He promised me in the last letter I got from him. That’s when I ‘died’ and left him in vengeance limbo. The guilt would have been too much for him not to go through with it.”

  “Ah, I hear my name,” said Siri. “You must have got to the meat in the sandwich. We’re not far from the end.”

  Dom’s weapon was on the ground beside him. He was leaning with both fists on the refrigerator, blocking half the picture. The bar conversation continued.

  “So, what have you been living on all these years?” the woman asked.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard,” he said. “I run a very profitable import-export company here in Ubon. Made quite a fortune off of it. Of course, I’m still very active in the international peace movement.”

  “There really is no end to you, is there?” said the blonde.

  “Look, this is a bit embarrassing,” he said. “I’ve left my wallet in the Benz. Could you get this and we’ll go somewhere quieter.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “You’re staying at the hotel, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What say we get another bottle and burn off some calories over there?”

  “Sounds peachy,” she said. “But, hey. Do you mind if we take those two guys sitting at the end of the bar?”

  She nodded in that direction. The man followed her gaze.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Yeah, we kind of came together,” she said.

  Two Western men in casual clothes appeared in the picture, grabbed Henry by the arms and stood him up. Their heads were all out of the frame now.

  “What are you doing?” said the man.

  “First I’ll retrieve my camera from my overnight bag and make sure it’s working.”

  The woman approached the camera. The picture went dark briefly then returned. She was holding the camera now and pointing it to another table where two Thai men sat drinking beer. They made V signs.

  “If they could speak English,” she said, “those two plainclothes Thai police gentlemen would probably say, ‘You’re under arrest.’”

  “On what charge?”

  “Where should we start?” she smiled. “You’ve just confessed to a dozen illegal things you really did, and another dozen that you probably didn’t do. We’ve traced several postal scams back to you already. But we can start off with immigration violations and work our way up to inciting murder. That should keep us busy.”

  Siri got to his feet and stretched his stiff old back.

  “Good show, eh?” he said. “I’ll leave it up to you to sort the mushrooms from the toadstools in that salad, but I think you’ve got the gist of it. He had no connections to the peace movement. That was a story he perfected to explain why he’d been there for so long. But even if every word he spoke was a lie, you can surely see how you and your mother fit into his world of fantasy. And perhaps he really believed all the garbage he said. Dementia works in odd ways. He was never a successful businessman. He taught English—made just enough for his next drink. It seems his world pretty much existed in the postal service. In his apartment they found begging letters and applications and scams. They found some letters to you he hadn’t sent. They all asked for help with money.”

  “This is all a setup,” said Dom. “You put this all together to mess with my mind.”

  He reached down for the gun.

  “Don’t do it,” came a voice, and the building echoed with the sounds of gun hammers cocking behind him. While Siri had kept Dom engaged, Phosy and a few select officers had entered through the rear door and taken up positions.

  Dom laughed.

  “I had you in my sights, you know?” he said.

  “I know,” said Siri. “But secondhand revenge is rarely effective. You were carrying someone else’s vengeance. Those few seconds it took to step into your stepfather’s shoes were enough to throw off your timing.”

  “I don’t believe that was Henry on the film,” said Dom.

  “Yes, we thought that would be the case,” said Phosy. “That’s why we’ve arranged for a family reunion.”

  “With Henry?” said Dom.

  “You’re under arrest in Laos which probably won’t be a lot of fun for you,” said Phosy. “Our prisons aren’t the most hospitable. So we’ve arranged a happy moment for you to take to jail with you.”

  “Our American colleagues were delighted to hear of Henry’s whereabouts. He’s been on their wanted list for a long time. Our friend Cindy was only too pleased to join our sting operation. They’ve transported your daddy to the US consulate here before flying him down to his own oblivion via the embassy in Bangkok,” said Siri. “His dream of being repatriated will come true, but I think he’ll be admiring the land of the free through barred windows for a very long time.”

  Epilogue One

  “Hey, Say,” said Monh, “not putting on your stockings tonight?”

  Say and Monh and two other Lao were in a corrugated tin hut in Bangkok. They’d worked on the site till it was dark. Then they ate instant noodles and went to bed, too exhausted to listen to the radio or look at pictures in magazines. That’s the way it was seven days a week, and, for Say with his nightmares, it had been hell. He’d nearly died in an accident a few weeks before. He’d been so exhausted he almost fell from the thirty-fifth floor of the unfinished building. Monh had grabbed him at the last second. It was because of this that his relatives at the camp had sent him the charm. It was ancient, that much was obvious. It was yellowing with age. His mother told him it had belonged to a great shaman. It hung on a simple string and weighed no more than a bubble but it contained great magic.

  He’d worn it the day it arrived, and for the first time in a year he didn’t see her in his dream—
the succubus. She didn’t taunt him. Didn’t attempt to seduce him. The next night he left off the nightdress but wore the stockings. He dreamed about fields and chickens and friends from the old days. She was afraid of the charm. He knew it. And tonight he’d be leaving off the stockings, and his roommates wouldn’t mock him again.

  Because Say had the power.

  Epilogue Two

  “It’s quite mundane, isn’t it?” asked Daeng.

  “What is?” asked Siri.

  “Life without an assassin breathing down your neck.”

  They were on the veranda at the French embassy enjoying one of Civilai’s leftover bottles of Merlot. Seksan, the not-French ambassador, was in the kitchen frying up another batch of crêpes. The moon was just an unconvincing smile in a tar sky. Ugly had reverted to form and remained on the pavement beyond the barbed wire–garnished wall. Like Daeng, he continued to wag a tail that only he could see.

  “How did they get along?” she asked. “Fraudulent father and homicidal son?”

  “Phosy said they were together for five minutes before the boy attempted to garrote Henry with his belt.”

  “Families. What can you say?”

  They looked at the inflatable Fred Flintstone punching bag that sat at the head of the table. He hadn’t touched his drink.

  “Still not talking to us, Civilai?” said Daeng.

  “He’ll get over it,” said Siri. “I haven’t spoken to him about the whole murder thing yet, but I imagine he’ll be more angry at being a victim of a lie than at being dead.”

  “It’s another one of your biggest nothings, isn’t it?” asked Daeng. “America believing their war was justified. Laos believing we have something to boast about. And this, a young man fooled by a pack of lies.”

  “People are basically stupid,” said Siri. “We’re easy to dupe. Nobody asks for proof anymore. A lie told with confidence is indistinguishable from the truth.”

  The scent of sweet crepes frying reached their nostrils.

  “Any other news from police HQ?” Daeng asked.

  “No sign of Dr. Porn’s body,” said Siri.

  “I’m glad she wasn’t involved in all this,” said Daeng.

  “She kept quiet about her past but now that the files have been released it appears she was in the same business as you.”

  “Noodles?”

  “Subterfuge, deception, insurgency, revolution, counterintelligence, spying.”

  “It’s good for a country girl to have interests other than sewing,” said Daeng.

  A strong breeze cut through the embassy garden and Fred Flintstone rocked back and forth.

  “See?” said Siri. “Civilai always did appreciate a good joke.”

  And as the evening wore on and the warm air currents mingled in the embassy grounds, Civilai danced with his trademark lack of coordination, and Siri smiled in his direction, and they told stories about the old fellow that would have been farfetched . . . were they about anyone else.