It took three long minutes to drag the man under the house and bind him with tape, the cracking speakers in the stereo masking the noise. And for three minutes Mark expected to hear the ratcheting click of a shotgun shell dropping into place, but other than the thumping remix version of the same, endless song, all he heard was the deep breathing of the unconscious guard and, far down the hill, a pack of motorcycles racing toward the strip. He assumed the last guard would be waiting.
Mark rolled out under the kitchen window, avoiding the rectangle of light that angled down from the bare bulb above the sink. He knew he should duck into the bush, check the windows, the doors, look for movement, establish his target and reassess his options. He also knew he didn’t have the time to do it. There were no phone lines to the house but that didn’t mean a thing—even the coconut vendors on the beach had cell phones. He bobbed his head around the corner and, seeing nothing, went up the steps and through the spring-less door the guard had flung open.
At the entrance was a short hallway lined with empty shelves and Mark paused. To his right was the kitchen and he could hear the old man stacking plates in the cupboard. Pim had said that she would get word to her grandfather, tell him that a ferang would come that night, an American, but that he should tell no one, not even the boy, and that he must not act nervous, not make the guards suspicious. Mark had no way of knowing if the message had been delivered or, if it was, whether or not the grandfather would agree to go, but it was too late to worry about that now.
Across from the kitchen was the main room of the house and beyond that, a pair of bedroom doors. He could see the end of a rattan couch and part of a table, a pile of CD cases next to the stereo, twin columns of LED lights jumping in time with the beat. Mark took a deep breath, and stepped around the corner and into the room. It was empty, nothing but a matching rattan chair, the rest of the table and a dark TV. He angled across the room to the door on the right, faster than he wanted to move but slow enough to be silent. There was no doorknob, just a metal latch that he raised. Foot braced against the bottom, he cracked the door a quarter-inch and peered in.
At first he thought it was empty, just a dirty cot and bare bulb, but then he noticed the small boy sitting on the floor, a box of crayons fanned out in front of a pad of paper. The boy looked up at the crack in the door, his face blank and impossible to read. Mark had pulled the door shut and had just lowered the latch back in place when the man came out from the other bedroom, a bottle of Thai whiskey in his hands.
The man only hesitated a second but it was long enough. Mark lunged across the room, knocking the man back against the wall, ramming his knee up as the man swung the bottle at his head, cheap whiskey pouring over them both, the man grunting but not dropping, bringing the bottle down hard on Mark’s shoulder, more whiskey spraying as the thin glass shattered. Mark’s hand shot out, clamping tight on the man’s forearm, slamming his arm back against the doorframe, pushing the jagged edge away from his face, pushing until he heard the wet pop, the man’s elbow bending back, his numb fingers dropping the bottle. Mark gave the arm a twist and saw the color drain from the man’s face and without a sound he slipped to the floor.
Mark stepped back, keeping one eye on the dark bedroom, the other on the slumped guard, careful not to step down on the shards of glass. He was reaching into his pocket for the tape when he heard the floor creak behind him, the bamboo pole whistling as it swung in on the side of his head. There was a bright flash of light and a white noise roar filled his head, everything out of focus as he dropped to his knees, turning as he fell forward, his shoulder breaking his fall. He twisted and looked up at the man, a fourth guard he should have fucking expected, flexing his grip on the short bamboo rod, hefting it like it was a baseball bat, turning his hips to get everything into his swing. Mark tried to rise up but the room was spinning too fast, a warm trail of blood washing over his eyes, the man zooming in and out of focus, wanted to bring his arm up to block the blow but not sure how, everything moving so slow. Above him, the man jerked the bamboo higher on his shoulder, then stiffened, his eyes growing wide, mouth dropping open, a half step forward, then another, then falling face first onto the hard wood floor, Mark watching his eyes all the way down, watching them now as they stared sightless across the floor.
Framed by the hallway to the kitchen, the old man stood silent, white hair, white shirt, tattered canvas shorts, a foot-long bloody knife in his hand.
Chapter Twelve
Jarin took one last drag before dropping the stub of his cigarette onto the dead man’s back. It stuck to a sticky lump of congealed blood that had pooled in a fold of the shirt, just above his waist, smoldering out.
The man lay face down, his eyes wide, his mouth open, his body already bloating in the mid-morning heat. He had let someone get behind him, someone who knew what he was doing, the long kitchen knife slicing his kidney in two, twisting the blade as the man went into shock, dead before he hit the ground. The idiot.
Jarin knew the kind of men that worked for him. Not their names, of course. Most were like this one, bottom feeders, far down the food chain. He must have dozens just like him on one payroll or another, too stupid or too lazy to work for anyone else. But, obviously, stupid or lazy enough to get themselves killed. Jarin wondered what the book would say about this.
He had picked it up at the airport in Singapore, the first book he ever bought and the only one he could remember ever reading. It took the better part of a month but he’d gotten through it, reading a page or two every morning, squatting over the porcelain hole of the traditional toilet in his twenty-million-bhat home. Top Dog: The Ten Rules of Pit Bull Leadership. It was, according to the cover, everything the successful businessman needed to know to turn an under-performing mutt into a Rottweiler success story. And Jarin knew something about both.
As a kid he had trained fighting dogs for Sok Saek, one of Bangkok’s most ruthless gunmen. He had learned a lot from the dogs and learned a lot more from Sok Saek. Things were different back then, easier. Everything done on a handshake or at the end of a barrel. Now it was all unilateral agreements and strategic cooperation, multi-national corporations and electronic funds transfers. And fucking lawyers everywhere. It was almost impossible to make a living. That’s why he bought the book. The book said it had the answers, all he had to do was follow the rules, starting with Rule Number One.
You can either play with the puppies or run with the big dogs.
He was twenty kilos overweight, he smoked constantly and liked his Mekong whiskey straight, but as he looked at the body on the floor, Jarin knew it was time to run.
And this race would be with Mr. Shawn.
Jarin stepped around the body and walked into the kitchen, a squad of his men scurrying to get out of his way. Propped up on a stool next to the sink, a row of empty Coke bottles behind him, the man with the twisted arm rocked back and forth. His face was pasty white and his teeth clattered together, his lips red and swollen where they had ripped off the tape. His arm rested on his lap, his elbow bending two different ways. Jarin stood in front of the man and lit a fresh cigarette, the man looking up at him, the terror clear in his eyes. Jarin drew in on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out his nose, and said, “Describe him.”
The man was shaking now, the legs of the stool knocking against the metal cabinets. He opened his mouth to speak, stuttering, nothing but air coming out. Jarin sighed and shook his head, pointing to the man’s arm. “Did he do this to you?”
The man looked down, surprised that Jarin had even noticed, then looked up, his head nodding in jerky movements as Jarin snatched a bottle off the counter and cracked it against the man’s elbow. The man screamed and toppled over, his nose catching the rim of the sink as he fell, the blood cascading down his face, down the white metal doors. He squirmed tight against the cabinet, his good arm reaching up to block the next blow, Jarin grabbing the stool and slamming it down
once on the man’s ankles before throwing it out of the way, stepping forward, the sole of his sandal pressed hard against the man’s face.
“Ferang,” the man shouted, not daring to touch the foot that was crushing his jaw. “He was ferang.”
Jarin leaned both hands on the counter and dragged his sandal across the man’s face and down onto his neck. He could see the man looking up at him, his eyes wild, too afraid to move. Jarin shifted, rising up, all of his weight pressing down on the man’s throat. He flexed his knee, bouncing once, twice, holding his foot in place, the man never as much as kicking out.
It took less than a minute.
Jarin lifted his foot and turned his back on the man, running a hand across his head, sweeping his thin hair back in place.
Of course he was ferang. The locals couldn’t even look at him without cowering, let alone try something like this. Even now his own men looked away, men half his age, stronger, each of them carrying guns. And every one of them puppies.
Then there was Mr. Shawn.
Jarin walked out of the kitchen, through the hallway, the men shuffling behind him. He stepped around the body, saying, “Get rid of them,” without turning around, and walked out the front door and onto the porch.
Another morning in Phuket. Another day at the head of the pack. Jarin closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath through his broad, flat and twice-broken nose, clearing his head.
Rule Number Four: Bite ‘em on the ass when they least expect it.
The rule had more to do with motivating employees with incentives, shaking up management teams, and surprising competitors with new marketing ideas, but Jarin saw how it applied to his world as well. Mr. Shawn’s little adventure last year had cost him a great deal of money, but it was more than just that. And it was more than the fact that Mr. Shawn had put a kink in what had up to that point been a smooth operation, an operation that had taken several years and countless bribes to establish.
This Mr. Shawn, he realized, had just bitten him on the ass. Again.
Jarin didn’t need a book to tell him what he had to do.
***
Mark Rohr wiped the salt spray off his sunglasses and looked across the inlet. Crowded tight along the back of the beach, a row of thatch-roofed huts perched high on bamboo legs, lines of wet laundry flapping like flags across the small fishing village, a dozen long-tail boats moored up on the sand. As their own long-tail had motored north along the west coast of Phuket, Mark had watched hundreds of boats cruise back and forth through the night, fishermen heading out or heading home, pea-green chemical glow-sticks tied around the stubby point on the low bow. Miles from shore, trawlers attracted whole schools of fish with banks of lights that lit the water like a movie set.
It had taken longer to get down to the boat than he had expected. The old man had led the way, taking them down a hillside path that ran parallel to the main road. They had passed close to several houses, people on the porch watching them as they walked past, the old man looking straight ahead, the boy quiet, watching his feet, careful not to trip on the roots that buckled up under the packed dirt. They crossed the beach road at a dark bend and went down to the shore, the long-tail waiting just as JJ had promised. They walked out into ankle-deep water and stepped over the low bow, the old man swinging the boy up and into Pim’s arms. The boat’s owner pull-started the motor, swinging the ten-foot propeller shaft to the side and into the surf.
“Any problems?” Robin had said.
“None that could be avoided.”
“An old man and a kid.” She shook her head. It was dark but Mark was sure she was not smiling. “She better not be lying.”
Despite its shallow draft and narrow width, the boat proved stable on the open water, but the sea was flat and Mark wondered how stable it would have been with even modest swells. He sat on an ass-wide board at the bow, Robin behind him, settled between their backpacks on the bottom of the boat, her bare feet up over the side, her tribal tattoo anklet visible against her lighter skin. The old man had sat near the center of the boat. He kept his back straight and his hands on his knees, staring ahead the entire trip. Pim had the last seat—the boy, almost as big as her, asleep on her lap. At the rear of the boat, his lean body silhouetted against the night sky, the boat’s owner stood on one leg, a heel propped against a bony knee, a lazy hand on the throttle. When the drive chain broke and flew overboard—the engine revving wildly, waking Robin but not the boy—Mark thought they might drift till morning. But the owner pulled a cardboard box from behind the gas cans, drawing out an oily chain that he wound into place, knocking the engine tight with a wooden mallet, all of it done by the faint light of the crescent moon.
He’d known lots of nights just like this one. Hugging some dark shore, sneaking through some mountain pass, bullshitting past a check point, driving all night in a stolen truck. Sailing off Yemen. Crossing the desert in Libya. Hiding in Iran. Lost in Wherethefuckistan. And in the hold or in the trunk or strapped under a coat or fiber-glassed to the fuselage, kilos of Ethiopian qat, cases of AK-47s, barrels of Johnny Walker, blocks of hashish, DVDs of porn. And people. Illegals looking to get in, a different kind of illegal looking to get out. If the pay was good and the odds acceptable, the cargo didn’t matter. And if the pay was excellent, nothing mattered. But the pay was never excellent and the odds were always greater than you planned for, and too many times there was no pay at all. The risk of doing business with the kind of people who needed his skills.
And it was always the easy jobs that fell apart. Just drop off the package and you get paid. Get me across the border and it’s yours. Bring it in and you get the reward. Find my brother and I’ll pay you five grand. He didn’t expect anybody to get killed—he never did—but things happen, especially on the easy jobs. A weekend into this one and so far one guy was dead, he had a fat welt on the side of his head; and in addition to a hot blonde with a surprising catty streak, he was hauling around an old man and a little kid because a Thai hooker who claimed to have the information he needed refused to leave them behind.
It was still early but Mark knew that there was a chance this job wasn’t always going to be this easy.
“Hey Columbus,” Robin said, tapping the seat of his shorts with her painted toenails, “if you see a drive-thru, pull in and get me a tall coffee.” She was stretched out along the bottom of the boat, her head propped up on his backpack, her eyes shut behind her sunglasses, cool despite the rising heat and thick, humid air.
“Pim,” he said turning around, raising his voice to be heard over the popping motor. “Is this where we stop?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the beachside shacks.
“Yes, we stop here,” she said. “For now.”
“For now,” Robin repeated, just loud enough for Mark to hear. “Lovely. Just fucking lovely.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Sawatdee kaa,” Pim said, placing her palms together as she bowed her head, the tips of her fingers brushing the end of her nose.
“Sawatdee krup,” the old man responded, bringing his hands up chest high to return the gesture, smiling at the girl. She was well dressed, her jeans and blouse worth more than all the clothes in his home, but her wâai showed respect to his advanced age; and as he watched her climb the stairs to the porch, taking off her sandals and stopping at the top step so that her head remained lower than his as he sat on the wooden bench. The old man was glad to see that some parents still taught their children the important things in life.
He had watched as they had climbed out of the boat. The two ferangs had jumped out first, sandals in their hands in the knee-deep water. Like all ferangs, they had overstuffed backpacks, with straps dangling like ribbons and liter-sized bottles of water lashed to net pouches, carrying more with them than he owned, everywhere they went. The man looked like all ferangs, too tall and too big, but the girl was a pleasant surprise, with he
r long, blonde hair and curvy figure; a welcome change from the black-haired, flat-chested women he was used to seeing. The Thai girl was pretty, dainty but not fragile, her perfect white teeth and smooth skin reminding him of the village girls of his youth. There was an older gentleman in the boat, and he had watched as this man climbed out without assistance. He guessed they would be about the same age, that man and him, and he hoped that they would have time to talk. Stripping off his shirt and shorts, a small boy—no older than his own great-grand children—dove into the water, the ferang throwing a coconut far out into the low rolling surf for the boy to retrieve. Few outsiders stopped by the village and the old man tried not to let his curiosity show.
“You have a lovely home, sir, and I am humbled that you have opened your doors to me,” Pim said, adding the polite kâ ending to her sentence, her Thai light and clear.
“You are welcome,” the old man said, motioning for Pim to sit on the palm frond mat at his feet. “What is your name, child?”
“I am Pim.”
“And your father?” he said pointing to the boat.
“My father is dead. That is my grandfather.”
The old man nodded. “And I am Saai, but you may call me Uncle. You are not from here. What is your village?”
Noble Lies Page 7