Cambodia Noir

by Nick Seeley

  “Vy, there’s a girl missing. A twenty-three-year-old reporter. And I need that friend of yours: the one who does bones.”

  For a moment she’s got nothing to say.

  * * *

  There was more yelling—always is, with Vy—but she said she’d come. She sees an angle; trouble is, I don’t know what. Can’t think about it now, anyway. The afternoon buzz is wearing off, and I can feel the exhaustion creeping in.

  I have to fortify my room. Bottles of vodka. Bed against the door. TV on, loud, so I won’t hear their voices.

  It’s not the living I’m worried about: it’s the dead. They’ll all be coming for me tonight.

  If I’m lucky, June won’t be with them.

  DIARY

  . . . can soak their determination ANNOUNCEMENT: the 25-year plan to save Cambodia from EVERYTHING while somewhere and

  she’s back she’s back she’s back she’s come for me the chorus to carry it all underground and in the air-conditioned boardroom the man from the ministry points to his slides goes silent,

  the night is everything in poison till it chokes you, but you will never even slow them in lost because we are out of balance . . .

  run, run, it won’t do you any good

  while skinny men in shorts lean over sides of their narrow boats to drag them in

  . . . Earth feels what they are doing and moves, mud gathers where there are no trees and slides down slowly into outside maybe just over

  choking the fish that feed the people and the bombing into the muck on the edge of the water, tearing up the tree roots the sea

  The whole country is slipping away a bit at a time brings the last of their corpses to the surface in great waves of bone and meat, but fewer every year . . .

  . . . can I hear you calling when there is no darkness left?

  WILL

  OCTOBER 14

  Sun burning my eyelids.

  Something stings my face.

  “Jesus, Will. What have you been doing?”

  The voice gets my eyes open: Vy.

  She’s the kind of tall, classic blonde you see in cigarette ads from the early sixties. I always forget how stunning she is. Now she’s standing over me, all in white, practically glowing in the morning sun. The look on her face is the same one guys on a ten stretch in Rikers get from their wives. Phann hovers behind her, solemnly smoking.

  Look around: the room is a wasteland of shattered glass, torn paper, decaying trays of hotel food, roaches and cigarette butts. The bed frame is upturned against the door: they’ve had to push it aside to get in. I’m in the corner, in some kind of nest made of the mattress and the bedclothes. I’m smeared with blood from my cut-up hands and feet, and I appear to be naked.

  “Thought you couldn’t make it until Tuesday.”

  Vy lifts an eyebrow. Guess that means it’s Tuesday. “Get dressed.” She stalks out.

  Phann rests the cigarette in his mouth and sticks out a hand to help me up: supremely unconcerned. He hands me my boots.

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugs, reaches behind his ear, and produces a joint. “I think you need it.”

  * * *

  Viola.

  She used to be a lot of fun.

  Now she dolls herself up in white chiffon and linen like something out of colonial Indochina, but she’s still the high priestess of destruction. Her dad’s a Nobel Prize–winning novelist; her mom was the star of 1960s French cinema. (I never read her dad’s books, which drove her mad; it was her mom who first introduced her to smack.) She was born beautiful, empty, and damned. She came to Cambodia looking for Colonel Kurtz with a needle hanging out of her arm. When we met, it was all playtime. But things changed. She got the fear, cleaned herself up. Left Cambo in the mud while she climbed the ladder. Country director, regional coordinator, UN talking head. Start your own foundation so your jet-setting pals can give to a good cause. She spends more time in Paris than Phnom Penh now: visits here are strictly pity trips. She’s the only one who can’t see the cliff coming up ahead.

  What Vy doesn’t know is how much she still hates herself.

  * * *

  It’s just after noon by the time I make it to the Dane’s. I’m hungry as hell and my head is pounding, but I feel surprisingly solid. Guessing I did most of the damage in the first twelve hours, then slept for the next thirty.

  I remember nothing.

  I ask the Dane for a vodka tonic and whatever food he can get me in the next five minutes. Vy is waiting on the back balcony, smoking Gauloises and reading some magazine with a big-eyed child on the cover. With that much money, I guess you don’t mind being a cliché.

  “Thanks for coming.” I collapse into my chair. She doesn’t speak. “Where’s Bones?”

  “She’s waiting in the hotel.” No expression. British accent now: she’s keeping her cool.

  “Until you decide I’m on the level.”

  She lifts her chin with practiced indifference, but her eyes grab me, electric green. “Well, what am I supposed to think? You call me out of the blue and tell me you’ve found—”

  “Not here.” I hold up a hand. “Get the professor, we’ll talk on the way.”

  She’s looking at my drink, lips pursed. “You sure you’re in shape—”

  “I’m fine. An—” And you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. “Anesthetic. You know I don’t like boats.”

  She’s looking to delay, tries another tack. “You should call the police.”

  “Sure, once I have a clue what I’m looking at.”

  “And how will you explain how you found it?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “Well, you had better at least tell me.”

  I let that hang in the air. Finally: “You know how I found it.”

  She looks at me, first angry, then scared, then like she’s about to cry. She settles on angry. “No, Will, I don’t.” Razor blades on glass. “It’s one thing to jump on every city shooting and say you have a nose for trouble, but this”—it comes out “zis,” her fingers tangling a web of air—“this is unreal.”

  There’s the angle: she’s looking for a fight. I thought she’d be tired of those, but some people never get enough. I’d hate to see her in the ring.

  “You know better,” I say. Give her a minute to remember.

  There’s a moment I think she’s going to walk out, that it’s too much: I can see all the old stuff flooding through her head and nothing I can do to stop it. I have to let it play out.

  I’m thinking of the day we first met: in the FCC a million years ago, smelling of opium and grinning at each other over cocktails like kids psyching themselves up to shoplift Playboys from the corner mart. We had fun.

  Try not to think about that: none of it was real, anyway.

  She stays seated, so I figure I have a chance.

  “I didn’t call for old times’ sake,” I say, once everything that could possibly happen hasn’t. “I’m working.”

  “Really? It looks like you’re having a psychotic break. Or possibly just doing your best Burroughs impression.”

  Grin. “Wanna play William Tell?”

  “And you’re drunk.”

  “Not yet. What, you gonna arrest me?” I stick out my arms, wrists up like I’m waiting for the cuffs. Spill some vodka. She has a good long look, running her eyes from wrist to biceps, then back to my face.

  “Let’s go, then,” she sighs.

  * * *

  Vy’s forensic scientist is named Bun My. She cuts up corpses for just about everybody—National Museum, Antiquities Ministry, United Nations. Plenty of work in Cambo if you’re an expert in human remains. Folks still find mass graves from the Khmer Rouge days on a pretty regular basis. Bun My isn’t the best around, but she’s good enough, she owes Vy a lot of favors, and she’s not in too deep with the cops. She’s small as a child, but there’s no way the boat takes five, so we have to leave Phann behind. That worries me some: I’ve got to like the old fighter, and I
figure he’d be good to have if things get rough.

  I don’t mention that to Vy.

  It’s already hot by the time Lon pulls out onto the blue, and no one is saying much. We just hide under our hats and wait. I’ve poured some vodka into a water bottle, so the boat’s stuttering and jerking is manageable—still, the ride seems to take hours.

  When we reach the spot, Lon cuts the motor and we drag the boat to rest. Vy’s in jeans now, but still rolls them up over her swamp boots to clear the muck. Bun My jumps straight out, not worrying about her clothes. She’s wearing the same khaki outfit and sandals they issue all dirt hounds with their master’s degree.

  She looks puzzled. “How you find this?”

  I settle on something close to the truth. “The person I’m looking for took a photograph of this spot. I recognized it and wanted to look around.” It’s believable enough—if you haven’t seen the photograph. Bun nods; Vy frowns.

  Lon starts to follow, but I motion for him to stay with the boat. The rest of us go into the woods.

  I shoved the dirt back over the bones before I left, but it’s easy enough to see where. Bun goes right in, clearing with tiny, careful fingers. Vy and I watch—I’m wishing again we had Phann with us.

  “Wait here,” I say.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I want to see where this path leads.” Better not to be surprised. Vy glares, and I turn away before she can say anything.

  * * *

  The strange, nervous energy that filled the place on my last visit is gone, but the narrow track through the woods still makes my heart pump faster. I don’t see any marks that look recent—but I’m not much of an outdoorsman. Mostly, I’m worried about who I might find on the other end.

  I’ve pushed through a few hundred meters of brush when the ground starts to rise. The path twists up a muddy little cliff, and then I’m standing on the edge of a wide dirt track. Large enough for a truck, and used often: green grass sprouts between brown wheel ruts. A logging trail?

  Wherever this leads, I don’t think I’ll get there on foot. But someone has been moving something through these woods. Someone who leaves bodies behind?

  * * *

  “It’s not her,” says Vy, voice like rock candy.

  “Are you sure?” I’m looking at Bun, who looks back at Vy and says something in French.

  “The bones are male, probably forty or—late forties, early fifties,” Vy translates. “About five foot six, likely Asian, though she can’t be certain. He has several old wounds, stabs and one gunshot. The bones are all cut up, marks all over, so no clear cause of death. Not much else she can tell without a lab, but it’s definitely not June.”

  For some reason, the news doesn’t surprise me. I’m relieved—then not. How convenient would it be to have it all end here? A simple story, another Cambo casualty. I push the thought away.

  “Fine,” I say. “Finish putting them back, and let’s get out of here. I’ll think of something to tell the police.”

  Vy looks down at Bun, who chatters something else in French. She’s looking back and forth from Vy to me, excited.

  “What?”

  They’re both looking at me now, Vy’s eyes wide and bright. “There’s something else,” Vy says. “You said the ground looked turned up when you got here.”

  I nod. “There was nothing growing there. Soil was soft.”

  “Even in this climate, it would take months for a body to go completely to bone. Maybe a year. Long enough for ground cover to grow back, certainly.”

  Of course it would. Idiot. Well, what do I know about this stuff? I’ve seen people go into the ground; not usually around when they come out. “So it’s a reburial,” I say hopefully. “Body was moved from somewhere else.”

  But there are other explanations, ones I like less, and I see them all flicking over Vy’s face: that these bones have been here much longer, and I found them because I knew where to look. Better still, I put them here.

  “Are you sure they’re all from the same person? Only one body in there, right?”

  Vy turns to look at Bun, who nods. Back to me: “How did you find this, Will?”

  “I told you.” Vy is staring, hard, but Bun is talking again, trying to get her attention, gesturing with her hand like with a knife.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “What do you think she’s saying?”

  “Fuck’s sake, Vy, just tell me!” I’m screaming.

  She takes a step back, wary. “She can’t say much without a microscope, but she thinks some of the marks on the bones are . . .” Bun nods, Vy sucks air. “Are marks like you would have from someone cleaning the flesh off. With a knife, maybe, or—” She shudders.

  Bun looks at her expectantly. “Ou des dents,” she repeats, spreading her lips wide and biting down.

  Vy’s eyes: open wounds.

  “Cover them,” I croak. “We’re getting out of here.”

  * * *

  In Vy’s room at the Dane’s. I’m well into a fresh bottle of vodka; she’s chain-smoking on the bed.

  The sun was still high as we made our way back, but it felt like midnight all the way. No one said a word. I kept trying to figure it: Maybe a whole corpse would have been too easy to identify? Or the murder could have happened a long time ago, and the killer moved the bones? Better: someone uninvolved found the bones and reburied them rather than deal with them. There were plenty of stories of cannibalism from the KR years: someone found an old grave and didn’t want the hassle of police and reporters and historians, so they dumped the bones in the swamp. There: that’s simple, believable.

  But then how did June know? That photo exists for a reason.

  At the docks I paid Lon—a little too much, but nothing remarkable. Trying to buy silence usually just gets you noticed. Hopefully he thinks I went to show my friends the beautiful lagoon I found the other day.

  Alone now, it takes us some time to get our voices back. When we do, I tell Vy almost everything—glossing over the details of why I was staking out the Aussie and Charlie. She’s not impressed.

  “And Bun doesn’t know how old the bones are?” I ask, for the eighth or ninth time.

  Vy shakes her head.

  “If we had them in a proper lab, she could tell you how long they’ve been in the ground, whether they spent all that time in one place, whether they were buried with a body or separate. All sorts of things.” She drops her lashes and looks at me. “But we don’t.”

  “Shit. We’ll go back and take a couple. Just the little ones, enough for her to look at. They won’t even be missed—” I’m cut off by a shoe flying past my head.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Her face looks like someone grabbed it in the middle and twisted. “Do you understand nothing?”

  “What do you mean?” I’m drawing a blank. I can handle people, but around Vy it breaks down fast.

  “That body was a person, and he’s dead. Something horrible happened to him. You can’t just leave him lying out there because it might inconvenience you.” She’s crying now; it makes her ugly. “That man, whoever he is, deserves an investigation, deserves some justice!”

  Is she serious? It must show in my face, because she screams again (“This is not a joke!”), grabs another of her shoes, and tosses it at me. This time her aim is pretty good, but I see it coming and knock it out of the air. She reaches down for something else and I pitch the vodka bottle over her head. It smashes against the wall, showering her with glass, and she freezes. Then I’m around the bed, reaching for her. Block a kick to the groin and catch her fist halfway to my face. She plants the other one in my solar plexus, and I grab that, too. Let her struggle: she’s not moving me anywhere. I think she expects me to scream or hit her, and when I don’t, she finally goes limp, looking at the floor.

  “Listen to yourself,” I say, soft as I can manage. “You think we’re in Paris? Where do you think we are?”

  Vy looks me in the eye and spits. “In he
ll.”

  I don’t move. “You want to go to the police? It’s as likely as anything the police did this. Or if not them, then the army, or someone else connected to the government. They’ll move in and cover it up and say nothing ever happened, just some silly tourists having a scare over . . . dog bones. The best chance that skeleton has of getting a name would be if it turns out to be three thousand years old. But it’s not, is it?” I drop her arms. Wipe my face. Light a cigarette.

  Vy’s still looking at the broken glass at her feet. “No one ever says no to you, do they?”

  “Everyone I’ve asked for an insurance policy.”

  “What would you be worth?” She’s not laughing. “You’re a parasite. You use everybody—just to get to the next score. Even when it’s not the drugs, or the money, you play with people, so I guess you must enjoy it.”

  “And you just like rolling in the mud.” She slaps me, hard enough I drop my cigarette. It smolders on the bedclothes, and I pick it up before we have to call the fire department, too.

  Her look says everything about where she’s running, and what from.

  “Gimme three days before you go anywhere with this,” I say.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Please.”

  “Oh, who am I going to tell?” She laughs now, long and low. Tosses herself back on the bed. For a second I see the Vy I knew. This is hell—and she can’t stand to be too far away.

  “Now the pleasantries are past”—I lean over her—“there’s one more thing I need from you.”

  * * *

  By the time we’re done making faces at each other, the exhaustion has come back, and I can barely stand up. Vy and Bun are on their way up to Phnom Penh, and I’m staggering back to my room, thinking wistfully of all the pretty bottles of vodka pining away in the Dane’s closet. Sorry, ladies, another night.

  I find Phann sitting in his car outside the hotel, listening to the radio. Give him the rest of his cash, and some extra, and tell him I’m done. He should go back east. He pockets the money, then he reaches under the dash and pulls out a gun. Some kind of automatic: silver, greasy looking. Big. I have a half second of fear, but he holds it out to me, butt first.