A Haunting Smile

by Christopher G. Moore

  Snow, who had perfected a professional stringer’s instinct for knowing when and where world-class Asian massacres were about to happen, had returned from America. Snow was reporting live from the site of the slaughtering outside the Royal Hotel. And his HQ Termite, Daeng, was curled up under the sheets, crying. She claimed to have seen a ghost. She refused to get out of bed and get dressed.

  “A ghost, hey?”

  “Farang ghost,” sobbed Daeng.

  “Farang ghost, huh? Why not a coke, maybe a big, fat hamburger from room service?”

  Intense bursts of gunfire raked the air on Rachadamnoen Avenue. Snow crouched near the window, watching the action below. He looked back at Daeng, who lay completely covered in the white sheet.

  “Hey, don’t take it personal. The soldiers ain’t necessarily shooting at you,” he said.

  She didn’t take this as comfort and her silent crying turned into a wail.

  “You don’t believe Daeng,” she said, referring to herself in the third person like most bar girls.

  “Forget about ghosts. Think like a normal HQ girl; about going home,” said Snow. “Your mother and father, and brothers and sisters. Everyone happy in Daeng’s village, they are all waiting to see you.”

  It didn’t work. She was a strange girl, thought Snow. What Snow didn’t know was that Crosby, a friend from the old days of teaching English at Tuttle’s school, another HQ regular who cruised the fast lane, had arrived from England the week the Army had marched in the street and started shooting people who were claiming they knew better than the Army the meaning of democracy. It was a hell’va a thing to die for in the streets of Bangkok, Snow thought. But man, what a story. And the bucks from filing. The BBC didn’t pay peanuts. And he was filing like crazy to every bureau, radio and TV station he had ever strung for.

  The Thai political troubles had flushed out Snow, and then Crosby; brought them back, as if they could sense the doom, smell the blood before it was let, and the fear and hopelessness of those who stayed in the streets after curfew, as if they knew the stakes of those willing to fight M-16s with their bare hands. There were not a lot of regulars in the crowd of newcomers who circled around HQ. Then Tuttle appeared out of nowhere and a couple of HQ girls dragged him by the arms over to their corner booth. Half a dozen were squeezed like spiders inside the booth; several of the girls were already drunk on Mekong. Their eyes a filmy yellow, they threw back their heads and laughed. One hiked up her dress and showed her product. Another grabbed at her crotch and squealed with laughter. It was early in the evening at HQ and already a booth of girls were all wet mouths and dry eyes, engines going full throttle and ready to ride.

  Tuttle spotted a mobile phone on the table.

  “Where did this come from?” asked Tuttle.

  “Papa, don’t ask.”

  “I want to phone a friend,” said Tuttle.

  Toom, a girl from the old days, a cigarette hanging from her mouth, pushed the phone across the table.

  “You buy me a beer.”

  “I buy you all a beer. Just one thing.” He let his voice trail off.

  “Who you wanna take tonight?” asked one of the girls. She was heading straight to the price of the round of beers; only she got her price wrong. “Maybe Oh, or Joy, or Dee? Who you think is a sexy girl?”

  “Stop calling me Papa,” said Tuttle.

  Using the mobile phone, he punched in the number of the Royal Hotel. The girls pawed at him. One licked his earlobe, leaving a trace of Mekong. The hotel line was busy the first two dozen times, and then, finally he connected. No surprise. Everyone in the Royal Hotel was filing like bandits. Story after story was going out across the world. The hotel switchboard operator put him through to Snow’s room as if the gunfire in the distance did not exist.

  “Hey, what’s happenin’, man?” asked Snow, hearing Tuttle’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “That’s what I want to know,” said Tuttle. “And have you seen Asanee?”

  “Haven’t seen her. But I’ve not been lookin’. I kinda hope she’s not out there tonight. You hear the M-16s?”

  The gunfire rumbled over the crackling line. And, above the gunfire, Tuttle heard the terrified cries of the HQ girl. Snow glanced over at the girl whose scream was hardly dented by the pillow she pulled down over her head.

  “Why do I always pick screamers?” asked Snow, watching her squirming under the sheet.

  “What are you doing to her?” asked Tuttle.

  “Not as much as I would like. An HQer and she doesn’t like the gunfire. Can’t say I blame her.”

  “Can I to talk to Daeng?” asked Tuttle.

  His question caught Snow off guard.

  “Hey, man, what’s this about? How did you know her name? And don’t tell me you took her in ’78,” said Snow

  A loud sound of banging on the door drowned out his voice.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Tuttle.

  “Shit, it’s not room service,” said Snow.

  The loud, thwacking sound which earlier had been body pumped against body had become boots kicking in the door. The sound carried through Tuttle’s mobile phone. Then muffled, angry Thai voices. Men with strident voices—the voice which raises the hair on the back on your neck—shouted orders. An officer walked over to the bed and ripped away the sheets. Daeng, curled naked in the fetal position, eyes squeezed, arms wrapped around her breasts, resumed her wailing. For Snow it was difficult to remember how her body had swelled with intense passion; but sexual passion had collapsed, bled away and she had become like some poor animal led on a rope to the slaughterhouse. He thought how pitiful and small she had become. To see her lying on the bed as if she had been broken, bent, subject to a terror eating away until she could only whimper. This girl who had sold her womb was now looking for a womb to crawl into and leave this world not as a corpse but as a fetus.

  One of the soldiers knocked the phone away from Snow and shoved him against the wall.

  “Hey, man, what’s the problem? I’m press. I’m a journalist. You want to see my press card? And that’s my wife you are abusing. Leave her alone or...”. The soldiers paid no attention to Snow and he didn’t know what kind of threat would attract their interest. Under the circumstances, the answer was probably none. Fear was on their side and not his. He leaned around one of the soldiers and picked up the phone.

  Tuttle was screaming into his ear. Snow put the phone to his ear and listened. “What are they doing, Snow?” But he received no reply; Snow couldn’t think what to say to Tuttle. So he kept on listening to Tuttle’s frantic pleas for information while the soldiers wrapped his HQ sweetheart in a sheet and passed her out the door like laundry.

  “She’s not registered in this room,” said the officer, looking through her wallet and pulling out her papers. “What’s your wife’s name?” he asked in a firm, clear voice that comes with being heavily armed and with the right to use force. He stared at Snow as he looked up from the house registration paper.

  “Daeng,” said Snow.

  “And her family name?”

  Snow grinned. “So I lied. We are just going steady.”

  “Press card,” snapped the officer. “Give me your press card.”

  The grin came off Snow’s face and he spoke into the phone while looking at the officer. “Damn, wouldn’t you know it. My press card expired. I’m renewing it tomorrow. You can verify me with my boss. He’s at the BBC in London. Be there or be square, as my boss likes to say.”

  Snow handed the officer the phone. He pressed it to his ear and listened, not once taking his eyes off Snow. Two of his soldiers stood in the doorway. Daeng had vanished.

  “Touch a hair on his head and the British marines will shoot your ass,” said Tuttle.

  The Thai officer slammed down the phone and stared at Snow. Something about the officer’s eyes Snow couldn’t read; searching eyes, looking for a way to say something that just couldn’t be placed into words.

  “Didn’t buy
it, huh?” asked Snow.

  “You’ve seen what’s happening outside. Tell the world what’s happening in Bangkok. You must help us. Because journalists are all we’ve got. You understand?” asked the officer.

  “I’ll do my job,” said Snow, and flipped the officer a salute, saying to himself, “Man, why am I saluting this guy?”

  The officer nodded, turned and walked through the door with his men one step behind. Snow heard the soldiers knocking on the door to the room next to his.

  “Fuck me,” murmured Snow. “Who would have figured it?”

  8

  FARANGS STRAGGLED INTO HQ looking pale, scared out of their minds. They were seeking the comfort of strangers on a night of death; they ordered drinks at the bar and found empty spaces at the booths and tables. None of the girls complained they hadn’t been taken out for a short time. No one wanted to leave the scene. One of the few times in HQ history when HQ girls and customers found fear of death had blotted out the usual fears attending a commercial sexual transaction. They were witness to an original story, a secret story, the real story of death of people just like themselves. Bangkok had become a war scene and rife with rumors. Some units of the Navy were about to launch a counter-coup. Elements of military units were marching into Bangkok from the North, and then from the South. Some had reached Soi 71. Rumors of war pushed out rumors of sex.

  The usual suspects were in town for the show. Guys like Snow and Crosby, who flown in before the first shots were fired, would have come anyway; they had a sixth sense about war, and like a rainmaker knew within twenty-four hours when the first showers would fall—metal showers of bullets, aimed head-high, and they knew that they would survive as they always had done in the past. They believed they were immortal. That was a mistake many had made rushing the Army units.

  Harry Purcell came into HQ at five thirty in the morning smoking a big hand-rolled Havana cigar. He found Tuttle slumped inside a booth with several HQ regulars.

  “I thought you were upcountry,” said Purcell.

  “I just lost a girl I was looking for, and I can’t find Asanee. Other than that, I’m having a great night.”

  Harry Purcell smiled. “You been listening to Radio 108.3?”

  Tuttle shook his head.

  “Didn’t think so. Addison is on the air. Asanee’s working a radio hot line.”

  “Thank God, she’s safe,” said Tuttle.

  “I don’t think I said that,” replied Harry Purcell.

  “It’s Addison. If anything happens to her...”

  “You will be too late because it will happen to everyone at the radio station,” said Harry Purcell. “About your lost girl, I see you’ve found some replacements.” He blew a cloud of cigar smoke to the ceiling.

  “Soldiers pulled her out of Snow’s room at the Royal,” said Tuttle.

  “What’s going on, Harry?”

  Harry’s eyes lit up. “It’s called command crisis,”

  “Harry, what are you talking about? People are getting shot in the street. And you talk about a command crisis.”

  “My family has supplied the command system for more than four hundred years,” said Harry Purcell. “We understand Command. How Command thinks. We understand the fear of command, and this has been our strength in the arms business. What does Command fear most? It fears most losing command to others. And what is the heart and guts of a command system? Command never has its orders questioned. Insubordination is questioning. Insubordination is a step from treason, which is punishable by death. This is the reason the killing starts; it explains why the killings continues—massacres are used to cleanse people of the urge to question.”

  9

  THE DECIDING FACTOR in hiring Ross to investigate Addison had occurred after Tuttle had a run-in with Denny Addison. It was unexpected. Addison had turned up at Tuttle’s English school on Sukhumvit Road to pick up Asanee after she had finished teaching. They had been seeing each other for several months, and Asanee had decided to move in with Addison. She wanted her father’s approval. But she was like her father—strong-willed. Once she had made up her mind that Addison had become her companion there was little Tuttle could do to change it. After the formalities, five minutes into the conversation, Addison made his move.

  “You see, Bob, the problem with writing is all the time you waste doing it,” said Addison, sitting back in a chair opposite Tuttle’s desk. “The way I see it, Bob, is you have to sit and type and type. That must make you crazy. And you’ve got no feedback. People need immediate feedback and gratification. You want to know if you’re pushing the right buttons. So I make my style of documentary. I’m working with people. I can kick back and ask funky questions everyone has always wanted to ask. And I’m off camera. It’s easy. But you have to select the right situation and the right people for the situation. Once you’ve done that, hey, you’ve scored, Bob.”

  “You must have a favorite writer?” asked Tuttle, swallowing hard. What Tuttle hated was being called Bob. His name was Robert.

  “My favorite writer? William Burroughs. Who else is there? And The Naked Lunch, hey, you gotta read it many times before you get what Burroughs was trying to do. Burroughs is the man. He scrambled words and sentences, made mashed potatoes with verbs and nouns. But he got what he was after—these incredible images. He was an image maker. He painted with words. He used words as his lens. And he did massive amounts of drugs. You’ve got to love a guy like that. He’s pure. After you’ve read Burroughs, forget the rest. Maybe there are some other good writers out there. But who cares? The work you’ve got to go through to find them. It’s torture. It’s not worth it, Bob. The reading time cuts into your babe time. And anything that cuts into babe time is a major crime. Burroughs liked babes. Yeah, yeah, I know he killed a babe in Mexico but that can happen to anyone. Too much drugs. It fucked him up. But he communicates what you’ve got to do. You have to create images. Words are a drag. A camera is better. Load the film, and watch. Sooner or later you stumble on something and go, wow, that’s a direct hit. A score in the zillion category. You can’t ever get words to do that. Unless, of course, you’re a Burroughs. But how many Burroughs are there? One, man. You can’t improve on him. So you do your own thing. Hang out with your babe, watch TV, eat pizza, maybe go for a swim. Keep it simple and easy. Asanee tells me you write stories or something, Bob.”

  “Something with words,” said Tuttle.

  Robert Tuttle had thought hard about how to remove this Burroughs disciple from his daughter’s life. Ross had a plan to deal with the Denny Addison problem. His idea was to gather evidence showing that Addison was incapable of being faithful. Tuttle had gone back to Ross’s office and found that Ross had gone. Ross was sitting in the bar below. Tuttle went up to him and asked him if he had found anything to confirm the suspicions that Addison was screwing around. Tuttle wasn’t certain what he wanted Ross to dig up; all he knew was he had an uneasy feeling that Addison was the kind to sleep around.

  “Of course, he fucks girls. He didn’t come here for the clean air and safe streets,” Ross had said. That was before he started the investigation and discovered Addison had a paranoid fear of AIDS and had done very little sleeping around.

  “Okay, he doesn’t take girls short time. Then find out Addison’s racket. What’s his scam?” asked Tuttle.

  “What if he’s clean? Then what do you want to do?”

  The way Ross asked the question had a certain meaning in Bangkok. Clients wanted pretty much the same final solution for a person who was causing them a problem.

  “Nothing,” said Tuttle.

  “We could make him into a drug dealer. Get his ass busted. Life in a Thai prison is roughly equivalent to death in America,” said Ross.

  “Forget it. Forget I ever mentioned this guy. His business is likely as clean as his sex life. Send me a bill. I’m good for it.”

  “Let me have a look around. Then if I find anything I’ll send you a bill,” said Ross. “Otherwise, consider it on the hous
e.”

  Tuttle wanted to avoid having Ross take an extreme action. It wasn’t so much fear of getting caught or moral objection as the dread that something would go wrong; that Ross would fuck it up and Addison would emerge stronger, meaner, and more determined to destroy what remained of his relationship with Asanee. Tuttle had this feeling of sang horn jai—a premonition that something would go wrong. Although Ross was quite drunk by the time Tuttle had tracked him down, he understood that some clients were tortured by conscience, and other clients had a narrow threshold for inhuman cruelty. Tuttle was the scholarly type, Ross had thought. He expected him to be tortured. He expected Tuttle would come back. When Tuttle came into the bar, looking like he was about to vomit, Ross was ready to handle the situation. He had his story about the floods and the strange fish in reserve. The story always worked on clients who sweated from conscience flashes.

  “Let me tell you a fish story about that,” said Ross.

  “I don’t want a fish metaphor,” said Tuttle. “I want to talk about Denny Addison.”

  “Fuck that. I’m tellin’ you about a fish.”

  Later Ross’s fish story had returned from Tuttle’s memory on the Nan River with all those floating bones. Ross was a dozen drinks into the evening, and as Tuttle approached him, Ross had transformed himself into a hard-boiled private eye persona.

  “You know it’s great,” said Ross. “Man, it’s bitter. I could write real bitter. If I was in a tight spot and it was the only way I could get out, I’d say, give me a piece of paper and a pen. You want bitter? Then I’ll write beyond bitter. You don’t know me. I can write vicious. Real street mean stuff.”

  He looked straight ahead, throwing back a drink, he brought his glass down hard. This was his way of easing into the story. He talked in a low growl of a voice—one which suggested the speaker might be a man accustomed to violence