Noble Lies

by Charles Benoit

  One thing Mark knew for certain, this guy, Robin’s brother, Pim’s husband, he didn’t want to be found.

  Maybe it went something like this. He’s working at a dive shop in a true tropical paradise, screwing the occasional tourist girl out looking for an island romance and, despite what his sister thinks, keeping himself happily stoned. One day he meets a beautiful Thai girl, who, coincidentally, has access to prescription-level drugs. Whether or not he meant to, the next thing he knows he’s married. It’s fun for a month or two but soon it starts getting dull—he’s making next to nothing, he’s got a new wife to support, the strongest thing his dad-in-law’s pharmacy carries is cold pills and his old life of quick sex and blissful highs tugs at him all night long. He knows the tourists, knows their appetites, and decides he can make some big money supplying their needs. But he needs a bankroll to make it happen, so he sees Jarin. Before he can pay him back, Mother Nature steps in. He sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to disappear, to start over somewhere else with no ties. And he takes it. The gangster holds his bride hostage, waiting for him to pay back what he owes. Maybe he’s got the money, maybe it got washed away like the rest of the island, but in either case he’s not coming back. It made perfect sense.

  But at the same time it made no sense at all.

  Pim had said that Jarin controlled Patong and some of that rang true—a hideout in the hills, four men to guard a little kid and an old man, the power to force a Thai bride into prostitution until the money was repaid. But how much would a loan shark have risked on a foreigner who worked at a dive shop? And even at Thai rates, holding three people captive for over a year had to be expensive. No, there was something going on, something besides money, and either Pim knew and wasn’t saying, or there was a lot she didn’t know about her husband.

  And as Mark watched Pim laugh, bringing her hand up to cover her perfect smile, he thought about how little he knew her.

  ***

  Mark was glad when he saw the third man step out from the shallow alcove of the fire exit and into the narrow alley.

  It was long after midnight, and they had just left yet another nameless bar when Mark noticed they were being followed. The bar had been noisy, more rowdy than the others, mostly guys under twenty, slamming beers and punching each other in the shoulder, all piss and vinegar, sound and fury. See the one-eyed Chinaman, they had told Pim, not telling her which one of the four they had meant. But Mark hadn’t even finished his beer when she told him it was time to go, leading the way out the door and onto the deserted street.

  They were almost to the end of the block when the two men came out of the bar. Ahead, on the other side of the street, he could make out four men leaning against a dark gray wall, looking their way. If it was six, then no way.

  Coming up on his right, a black alley led back to the night market. Mark rubbed his palms dry on his shirt, not listening as Pim explained what one of the one-eyed men had to say. He took her by the elbow and made a quick turn down the alley. When the man stepped out in front of him, Mark knew it would only be three and he knew he had to work fast.

  Holding tight to Pim’s arm, he moved up the alley, Pim’s sandals scuffing along the dirty concrete as she tried to keep pace. It was not what the man had expected, the ferang coming up on him so quickly, his friends just now rounding the corner, the whole plan falling apart. The man held up both his hands, palms open, smiling, letting Mark know he didn’t mean any trouble, glancing out toward the street, watching his friends running down the alley, glancing back at Mark in time to see a fist arching around at his head, too late to do a damn thing about it. Mark stepped in with the punch and the man stumbled back, falling over empty cardboard boxes and busted cinder blocks, his forehead clipping the steel doorframe before he went down.

  Shoving Pim behind him, Mark turned to face the others.

  One was tall and thin, the other short but with a stocky fighter’s build. They had seen what he had done to their man, stopping just out of Mark’s reach, too proud to back off but too scared to move in, both men cocking their arms, fists loose, leaning their weight back on one leg, the other coiled, ready to strike, self-taught Bruce Lees waiting for their opening.

  Mark made it easy for them.

  He dropped his hands to his side and stepped up. As if on cue, the tall man lunged forward, snapping a kick at Mark’s crotch, not realizing that Mark had given him the target for a reason. The man was in mid-air when Mark angled his hips, the kick catching his thigh. Mark snatched hold of the man’s leg, raising it up over his head as he stepped forward, his heel coming down hard on the side of the man’s knee, picking the man up before he collapsed and throwing him against the dumpster with an echoing thump. The second man hit him from behind, both arms up around his neck, twisting, trying to pull Mark down as he pounded his knee into Mark’s back. Mark reached up and grabbed the man by the hair, bending his legs then diving forward, tucking his head down as far as he could, his body folding, the weight of the other man flipping around, Mark coming down on top, his shoulder driving into the man’s chest, Mark jabbing an elbow down under the man’s ribs. The man let go, his arms flailing as he fought to catch his breath. Mark rolled to the side and jumped up. “Let’s go,” he said. Wrapping an arm around Pim’s waist, he pulled her down the alley.

  As she ran, Pim turned away from Mark to look back over her shoulder. In the darkness, she smiled.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I don’t know why I waste my time,” Robin said, flicking off the hotel’s blow-dryer with her thumb, her other hand pulling a comb through her hair. “I’m going to be sweating so much I’m just going to look like hell anyway.”

  Stretched out on the bed, Mark could see her as she stood topless in front of the large mirror that hung above the dressing table, a hotel towel wrapped around her waist. He thought it was strange her feeling that comfortable with a man she hardly knew, but he wasn’t about to complain. There was a white scar on the side of her knee and an unfinished chain tattoo around her left ankle, but those were the only flaws he could spot. Her curves were smooth and even, and if he ran a hand up the back of her thigh or across her flat stomach he knew it would be firm and warm. And she had been right, despite her blond hair—her natural color, revealed when she had adjusted the towel, the mirror lower than she thought—she tanned a golden bronze. His back was stiff, his ears were still ringing from the tinny speakers in the last bar, he had a finger-shaped bump on the side of his head where he had been hit with a bamboo pole, and there was a fist-sized knot welling up where he’d been kicked, but it could have been worse. And besides, with her standing there like that, he hardly noticed.

  “So you and the dragon lady last night, huh?” Balanced on the balls of her feet, Robin leaned into the mirror as she applied her mascara. For a moment Mark considered telling Robin how Pim felt, telling her, too, what he thought about the way she treated the others, but the moment passed as he watched her cross the room to get her bikini top off the balcony railing. “Thank you for not bringing her back here.”

  Mark let it slide. “After the tsunami, your brother spent some time here in Krabi.”

  “How do you know?” she said, ducking behind the bathroom door with a pair of shorts and a black thong.

  “A couple people recognized his picture, knew his name. They knew he had been living on Phi Phi Island. One guy even knew about his run-in with Jarin.”

  “That guy from Phuket? Interesting.”

  “Apparently he made some enemies here, too,” he said as Robin, now dressed, sat down in the center of her bed, crossing her legs and leaning back on her arms. “Everybody knew about that but nobody would talk.”

  “Where is he now? Any idea?”

  Mark shrugged. “Somewhere south. They know he went to Koh Lanta—it’s a big island about three hours south of here.”

  “Ugh. Three hours?”

>   “Not in a long-tail. There’s ferry service between Krabi and Koh Lanta—a regular boat.”

  “Thank God. So did they tell you where to look on this island?”

  “They might have.” Mark pulled himself up, leaning against the headboard. The frame of the bed creaked with every movement, the joints worn weak from years of hard riding. “I’ll ask Pim what they said.”

  Robin rocked forward, crossing her arms, her elbows coming down on her knees. “You didn’t talk to these people?”

  “I don’t speak Thai, remember?”

  “So this is just stuff that she told you, you didn’t hear it yourself?”

  “I heard it,” Mark said, trying not to smile. “I just didn’t understand it.”

  With a loud and dramatic sigh, Robin fell sideways, burying her face in one of the fat pillows.

  Mark turned back the covers and swung his legs out of the groaning bed. A red and purple bruise as big as his palm peeked out from under his boxers. He grit his teeth as he stood, bracing for the pain he knew he would feel, his hip throbbing already, a four Advil morning. He’d stretch it out in the shower, the hot water not helping the swelling but it would feel good anyway.

  Fifteen minutes later, shaved and dressed, his baggy shorts covering the mark, he came out of the bathroom to find that Robin hadn’t moved, her face still buried, her legs still crossed.

  “There’s a restaurant next door, the sign out front says they serve American breakfasts.” He stood at the edge of the bed and waited till she rolled her head and looked up at him. “The ferry doesn’t leave until after lunch. I’ll find somebody who speaks English, confirm what she told me.”

  “And if you can’t,” Robin said, the words muffled by the pillow, “we leave them here.”

  ***

  The people in Krabi? They weren’t like the people in Phuket.

  They didn’t stare when he walked down the road and none of the kids he passed pointed or fell in behind him, faking a limp, swinging their leg out with every step. And the people on the bus? They were helpful, telling him that it was an easy walk to the pier from where the bus would drop them off; and they had seen him get on the bus, too, so they saw the way he walked, nobody telling him that he couldn’t make it there on his own. He liked that.

  Maybe it was because there were too many ferangs in Phuket, the Thais and the Chinese all trying to act all cool so the ferangs would buy stuff from them. But the ferangs, they never made fun of him. They were always polite, even the drunk ones. And some of the ferang women sometimes would smile at him, but he knew it wouldn’t go anywhere, the women always going with the kind of guys who made fun of him the most. He could never understand that. They already had everything girls liked, why did they need to pick on him?

  But in Krabi it seemed different. There were ferangs here, sure, they were everywhere, but there wasn’t any beach nearby so it was a different kind of ferang, the kind with the cameras and the backpacks, the ones who seemed out of place in the bar-beers of Patong, not everybody looking to get drunk or get laid. The businesses were different here, only a few souvenir places and no dive shops, the clothing stores selling things Thais liked, not just tee shirts and baggy shorts. There were car part stores and furniture stores and hardware stores—things tourists never had to buy. And the temples he saw were crowded, all day long.

  After the tsunami, people in Patong started praying more, buying garlands of white flowers for their Buddhas; and every morning he woke up to the heavy scent of incense, his neighbors burning joss sticks by the armful. Some of the old people said that the wave was sent to wash away the bad karma and he heard a few of the Christians say it was their god’s punishment for all the sin, but that was stupid since everybody knew it was from an earthquake. He had been up at the country club that morning, hoping one of the ferangs would hire him as a caddie. It was almost four kilometers from the beach, up in the hills, but you could hear that something was happening. By the time he got down to Patong, the ocean had already pulled back, and there was everything, just pushed up on the streets, and buildings gone and people crying or walking around, not saying anything, and sand and mud everywhere.

  He saw his first body near the Patong Beach Hotel, wedged up between a palm tree and the top half of a charter fishing boat, the hull ripped away, and he watched as bodies floated up from the underground parking garage of the Ocean Plaza shopping center. The more he looked around, the more bodies he saw. Thais, ferangs, some naked, the wave pulling off their clothes; others laying there by the road like they just fell asleep. The next day the bodies started to swell; and that week the tide brought some in from the bay, all of them bloated and black so you couldn’t even tell what sex they were, just whether they were adults or children. He didn’t have anybody to lose, but for weeks afterward he felt sad all the time. And now? A few people still had their altars, but when the tourists started returning, everything went back to the way it was before and he didn’t feel as sad anymore.

  He wiped the sleep from his eyes and took another sip of tea, shifting his weight on the low windowsill of the 7-Eleven that served as his seat. Across the street, at a table near the open window, the big American and his girlfriend were finishing their breakfast.

  Yesterday he had watched them as they climbed out of the long-tail at Chao Fa Pier, these two, Jarin’s whore Pim, an old man and a boy. It was already past sunset when they arrived and he tried to imagine spending so many hours on such an uncomfortable boat. He never liked the long-tails. They were loud and they rocked too much. Besides, it was so much faster to take the bus.

  Back in Phuket, he had watched the American talking with the man at the hotel, the ferang with the stupid-looking dreadlocks. And when the American went up the stairs to the rooms, the hotel man had walked straight out and down to the beach, walking right by him like he wasn’t there. He watched as the hotel man talked first to one long-tail captain, then another, then another. The hotel man talked to the last one for a long time, pointing up the beach and then bending over to draw something in the sand, the boat captain squatting down next to him, nodding.

  When the hotel man left, he walked over to the long-tail and asked the boat captain if he had seen the kick-boxing match the other night, knowing he hadn’t. It was four-hundred bhat to get in the door, more than the captain would make in two days. But it got them talking. They talked about fishing and football and how the tourists were finally returning before he brought up the hotel man, nervous that the captain would be suspicious. But no, the captain told him all about it, how he was going to be taking a couple of ferangs around Phuket that night, how the hotel man had wanted the captain to take them all the way to Krabi but there was no way he was going that far. He’d drop them off at a fishing village on the mainland, up near Laem Som probably, and from there they could get another boat to take them the rest of the way.

  He had talked to the captain a while longer, then walked to the rooming house where he’d been staying to get his hidden stash of hashish and ya ba pills. He had it all sold before midnight. Five thousand bhat—almost one hundred and thirty American dollars. And the money? It was an investment, like buying a kilo of Thai weed. You paid up front, but you made more later. The next morning he took a bus to Krabi, a three-hour ride, and he had the seat to himself. That made him wonder why the American would want to go by long-tail with all those hours in the sun. But that afternoon, when he saw the whore get out of the boat with the American couple, he knew that something wasn’t right. And he knew that somehow his investment would pay off.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As he walked up the sloping street, away from the small cafés that were clustered near the pier, Mark remembered what JJ had said about mornings making everything seem possible. Last night he hadn’t thought it necessary to confirm the things Pim had said, but then Robin planted a seed. He still believed that Pim had told him the truth, bu
t it was something he felt in his gut, not something he could guarantee. And his gut had been wrong before. When he told Robin he would ask around, confirm the things that Pim had said, it sounded easy enough, but that was an hour ago and, just as JJ had predicted, he was starting to wonder if he’d get anything done at all.

  The people in the cafés had been friendly, sitting with him as he explained to those who spoke English how he was looking for a friend who might have passed through. Had they seen him? Yes, he had been by, nice man, very kind. When? Oh, a while ago. A week? A month? Yes, something like that. South? Yes, that sounds right. His name? Well, I am not good with names…enjoy your visit, have a nice day. The Noble Lie, served with a broad smile and cup of Chinese white tea on the side.

  The street branched off at the top of the incline, one road circling back to the center of town and the intersection with strange statues mounted on marble pillars—cavemen carrying luggage?—the other road, narrow and in need of repaving, passed between a pair of cinderblock warehouses, leading to the backside of the night market and the late-night dives they had visited. He set off down the warehouse road, an hour to get a real answer before making up a Noble Lie of his own.

  In the morning light, the area around the bars lost its menacing feel, the hookers and the street toughs replaced by small kids in school uniforms and even smaller old women toting plastic bags of fresh produce. The bars themselves seemed to disappear, the windowless fronts and nondescript doors blending in with the walls as if they were seldom-used side entrances to elaborate shops that opened on wider streets. In Patong the bars never seemed to close but on this stretch in Krabi they looked as if it had been years since they had been open. He jiggled the handles on a few of the doors but they were locked. Behind one, an argument in shouted Thai stopped suddenly when he knocked; behind another he could hear the heavy hum of machinery that hadn’t been there the night before. He passed the opening twice before recognizing the alley.