Noble Lies

by Charles Benoit

  It had been months since he had visited the Super Queen but not much had changed. All the tourists cared about was the size of the bar and the number of girls, and the Super Queen had the longest and the most. Some of the other bar-beer owners sunk thousands of bhat in smoke machines and fish tanks or laser-lit bar-backs and self-flushing urinals. But no guy came to Bang-la Road to see high-tech toilets. They came to get fucked—well and cheap. The Super Queen would be here long after the smoke and laser bars were gone.

  He walked past the last tables to the booths that ran along the back wall, spotting her fire-red hair in the dim light. She sat alone, lighting a fresh cigarette, the breeze of an unseen fan creating a jet stream of smoke across the tops of the empty booths. When she saw him approach she clapped her hands once, cackling as she gripped the cigarette with her thin lips.

  “Four-time, Four-time,” Won shouted, pointing a bony finger at him, her dangling earlobes bobbing as she laughed.

  Jarin smiled a rare smile at the sound of his old nickname, earned after an evening with some bar-beer girls, word getting back to Won about his bedroom performance. That was twenty-five years ago. They were older now—Won looking a hell of a lot older—but he was glad that over all that time, over all those changes, it was still the same between them.

  “Sawatdee krup, you old bitch,” Jarin said, bringing his palms together and bowing his head slightly as he slid into the booth across from her.

  “Sawatdee kaa, little dick,” Won said, smiling so hard her voice was an octave higher. She took a drag on her cigarette as she looked at him, her head nodding.

  “Little dick? I’m Mr. Four-time, remember?”

  “Well they got Viagra now,” she said, switching to Thai. “Everybody’s Mr. Four-time.” She held out her hand, snapping her fingers, starting the game they played every time he visited. Jarin took a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket, ran a thumbnail across the front, tearing the cellophane off the box. He knocked a cigarette up and offered it to her. She reached over and took the whole pack. “So I hear you lost your whore.”

  “She wasn’t my whore. She was bait. And he took it.”

  Won lit a fresh cigarette and handed it to Jarin. “You think he was behind it?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  Won shrugged, flicking ash onto the tabletop.

  “No, it was him,” Jarin said. “And you know more than you’re telling me.”

  “I haven’t told you anything.”

  Jarin nodded and for a few minutes they sat, smoking their cigarettes, enjoying the comfortable silence. He was counting the ceiling fans, wondering why they had them on when there was such a good breeze coming off the water, when Won tapped his arm. “Who was that guy, the one that used to own the Playpen?”

  “That’s going back,” Jarin said, smiling as he rubbed his chin. “Tray. Tran. Something like that. Why?”

  “The place had that funny entranceway. You came in and had to make a hard right then back again, remember? Well this guy…Tong, that was his name. Anyway Tong decides to fix the entrance, make it easier to get in. Everyone told him to leave it alone, but no, he had to make it better. He goes in with his own crew and they knock out a wall, the one with the mirror on it. They’re cutting the last poles when there’s this big crack and the whole corner of the bar drops down five feet. Nobody got hurt but he had to close until he got it fixed. Cost him a bundle and when it was done it still had that funny entrance.”

  “And the moral of the story is I shouldn’t go after Shawn.”

  Won finished her cigarette, crushing it out in the full ashtray.

  “I need your help, Won.”

  She smiled but much of the humor had drained away. “That’s what JJ said. Got the shit beat out of him.” She waited, but he didn’t say anything, rolling his cigarette in his fingers as he watched the smoke rise. “I want your word you won’t hurt Pim.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “And the old man and the kid. You leave them alone, too.”

  He nodded.

  “That American couple. They’re not part of this.”

  He looked across at her but said nothing, the look in his eyes saying it all.

  “It’s Shawn you want, not them.”

  Jarin leaned back and slung an arm across the back of the bench seat. “Just tell me what you know, Won.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was one guard ahead of him on the stairs, two behind, with a third joining them as they passed the second floor landing. At first Mark thought they would start at the top floor and give him a push, one of those unfortunate accidents that tended to happen in the stairwells of certain police stations, but they seemed content to let him walk down on his own. He wondered if they were taking him back to the holding cell, but that was on the other side of the building and this was not the way they had come.

  The lead guard stopped at the bottom landing and pushed open the crash bar on the fire exit, everyone squinting at the blinding white light of the afternoon sun, the blast furnace heat of the blacktop parking lot rushing in, sucking the cool air out of their lungs. There were five white patrol cars in the lot, the whole thing surrounded by a high wooden fence and an even higher row of palm trees. The guards spoke to each other in Thai, and between the words Mark heard a heart-stopping, metal-on-metal click, either the safety release on a police issue automatic or a tiny handcuff key lining up lock tumblers. A lifetime later, he felt the cuffs come off and, slowly, brought his hands from behind his back. He rubbed his wrists just like he did every time he had cuffs removed and stepped outside.

  “Haaeng nee,” one of the guards said, tapping him on the shoulder. Mark turned and the guard handed him a clear plastic bag. Inside Mark could see his wallet, passport, and sandals. Without another word, they pulled the door shut, leaving Mark to hop from foot to foot on the sun-baked blacktop. He slipped on his sandals and thumbed to the picture in the passport to be sure it was his. All the money in the wallet—bhat and dollars—was still there, another surprise courtesy of the Thai Police. He stuffed the wallet and passport in the cargo pocket of his shorts along with the wadded up plastic bag and started across the parking lot toward a latched gate at the end of a sidewalk. He was passing between a pair of parked cruisers when the passenger door opened and blocked his path.

  Mark stopped and took a deep breath of humid, sauna-hot air. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He bent down to look in the patrol car, expecting to see Captain Jimmy sipping on a tall Thai iced tea. Instead he saw a small, dark-skinned policeman with oversized mirrored sunglasses and a patchy mustache. “Seat,” the man said, waving Mark in, snapping his fingers for Mark to shut the door behind him.

  He wore the same uniform as the others, the same flat arrogant smile, no idea how ridiculous the giant-sized aviator glasses made him look. His right arm was stretched out and draped over the top of the steering wheel and, although the seat was so far back the toes of his polished boots just touched the pedals, Mark’s bended knees were wedged tight against the dashboard. The cop stared out the front of the car as if Mark wasn’t there. Eyes level, he turned his head left and right like a slow moving camera scanning the parking lot. He said something in Thai and by the inflection in his voice Mark assumed it was a question.

  “I don’t speak Thai,” Mark said, realizing after he said it that no matter what the cop asked, it was a stupid answer, either obvious or irrelevant. It didn’t make a difference, the cop kept talking, his words as steady as his gaze. Hands on his knees, Mark said nothing.

  Back in his office, before the guards had taken Mark away, Captain Jimmy had told him that he was to leave Krabi by the next ferry. “If I ever see you again,” the captain had said, “I’ll make up a reason to lock you up.” It was all very John Wayne, the captain’s voice dropping to a whisper, his dark eyes looking out from unde
r his brow, but Mark didn’t doubt that he’d do it. As he sat in the car, the sweat starting to roll down his back, he wondered if missing the ferry was part of the plan.

  The cop stopped talking and turned his head until Mark could see himself in the cop’s mirrored lenses. The cop waited a full minute, then said, “Shawn.”

  Mark felt his eyes widen, the cop nodding at his involuntary reaction. “Shawn,” the cop said a second time, this time drawing the word out as he turned back to scan the parking lot.

  “Yes,” Mark said, “Shawn Keller. Do you know Shawn?”

  The cop smiled. “Shawn.”

  “Listen. I’m trying to find Shawn Keller, his sister—”

  The cop snapped out a sharp reprimand in Thai, and Mark stopped talking. Mumbling, the cop did a quick left right scan before turning back to Mark. He held up an index finger. “He she drink.”

  There was a pause, then Mark heard himself say, “What?”

  “He. She. Drink.”

  “Great. What the hell does that mean?”

  “He she drink, he she drink.” The cop’s voice was rising, his finger shaking at Mark.

  “Is this about taking that girl to the bars last night, because I already told—”

  “Shawn. He she drink.”

  Mark turned his palms up as he shrugged, wondering how the gesture translated. “Shawn he she drink?”

  “Krup, krup. He she drink. Shawn.”

  “Wait a second,” Mark said, his expression matching his disbelief. “Are you saying Shawn is a lady-boy? A, uh, what’s the word…a katoey?”

  The cop grit his teeth and slapped at Mark’s head, his short reach landing the blows on Mark’s shoulder. “Gwonteen,” the cop spat out the syllables in time with his slaps. Mark turned his head away and tried not to flinch. The cop grabbed his upper arm and shook it. “Shawn. Krup?”

  “Yes. Shawn. Krup.”

  The cop shook his arm again but he seemed pleased with Mark’s response. “He she drink. Krup?”

  “He she drink. Krup.” Mark nodded, but that didn’t make it any clearer.

  “Krup, krup. He she drink.” The cop let go of Mark’s arm and patted him once on the shoulder. He pointed at the door. Mark stepped out, his knees cracking as he stretched his legs. The cop reached over and pulled the door shut.

  Mark crossed the parking lot in ten quick strides. He raised the latch and swung the gate open and looked back. The patrol car was empty.

  ***

  A woman’s voice came over the PA system and although she spoke in Thai, Mark could tell by the reaction of the others in the waiting area that she was announcing that the afternoon ferry to Koh Lanta was ready to board. He nudged Robin awake and stood up, Pim and her grandfather stepping up behind him, the boy busy making his final selection at the bank of gumball machines. There were thirty or so people in line, most of them tourists, and although the monitors listed a dozen ferry runs that would leave before nightfall, when the ferry to Koh Lanta pulled from the dock, the open-aired terminal would be empty. A plaque near the entrance said that the terminal was less than a year old. Mark wondered what it replaced.

  They handed the security guard their tickets and joined the line of passengers that weaved back and forth through open rows of handrails like they were all heading for the same unpopular amusement park ride. Although it was no larger than a pair of city busses parked side by side, compared to the long-tail they had arrived on, the ferry was a huge and seaworthy vessel. The tourists clambered topside to work on their tans, all the Thais ducking below, sliding into the fast food restaurant style booths that butted against the large open windows. It was like his first week in Kuwait, when American troops ran around in their tee shirts and gym shorts while the Arabs, fully dressed, just smiled. He ducked his head and stepped down into the boat.

  The Thai passengers had all filled the portside tables which told Mark that even though he had brought them below, they’d have some of the afternoon sun anyway. There were a couple of family groups, a booth of twenty-somethings with backpacks, and few passengers traveling alone—an old woman in a flowery print dress, an orange-robed monk, a soldier on leave, and a young guy with a bum leg who pulled out a newspaper and held it up in front of him the whole trip. Mark tossed his backpack in an empty booth, Robin sliding in across from him, Pim and her family filling the booth behind them. Robin dug in her backpack and pulled out a bag of trail mix she had bought in the terminal and set it on the table. She also palmed a fat Snickers bar and Mark pretended not to watch as she stretched her arm out along the back of the booth, yawning, dropping the candy into the boy’s lap. “So one more time, what’d that Australian guy tell you?” she said, ignoring the excited giggling erupting behind her.

  “He said that your brother came to Krabi shortly after the Tsunami, maybe mid-January. He had lost some weight and was still pretty banged up, but he was healthy. This guy says that Shawn was at every party he went to, but that he never saw him smoking. Anything. Anyway, he said Shawn stayed in Krabi for a few months, then decided to move to Koh Lanta, try to get a job with a dive shop. The last this guy heard, he was still there.” Mark untied the plastic bag and scooped up a handful of strange nuts and unfamiliar dried fruit.

  “And what about her?” Robin said, jerking a thumb back at Pim.

  “He didn’t mention her one way or the other.”

  “Who? This guy or Shawn?”

  Mark thought a moment. “Shawn.” He watched her face light up. She leaned back in the plastic booth, as happy as she had been since he met her. Maybe there was something to this Noble Lie business after all.

  Outside, the harbor chugged past. The port was small and the only cargo ships docked were old style tramp steamers, right from the pages of a Conrad story, rust-buckets that oozed oil and diesel fuel and god knows what else into the fish tank-clear waters. Flying above paint-chipped names and ports of registry were the earth tone tri-color flags of third-world banana republics he couldn’t have found with a map. The high-pitched roar of long-tails’ engines competed with the high-pitched whine of the Thais’ conversation; proximity giving the edge to his fellow passengers. The Arabic he had learned in Egypt and the Gulf had been deep and guttural, the patois in Jamaica almost lyrical. Thai was all nasal. He wondered what they would say about English, what sounds they made up when they were pretending to talk like an American. Did they notice the differences between a Brooklyn and a Boston accent, could they tell a Californian from a Canadian, or were the inflections too subtle? What about a Texas drawl and a Scottish brogue—were they broad enough to hear? The fact that they would know it was English at all would have impressed him. He wasn’t even sure they were speaking Thai.

  Robin swung her legs up on the bench seat, propping her back against the window frame. It was one thing to be attractive on a tropical beach or standing naked in an air conditioned hotel room, it was another to be just as good looking, just as sexy, with sea-spray matted hair and your face glistening with sweat like a glazed ham. She noticed him looking at her, “What?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  He leaned sideways to rest an elbow in the open window. “What’s so special about your brother?”

  She paused, looking at him, then shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “I just think it’s strange for someone to travel halfway around the world to look for a relative who is old enough to take care of himself.”

  “You have any brothers or sisters?” she said.

  It was his turn to pause and shrug. “I suppose I do.”

  “And if they were missing, you wouldn’t try to find them?”

  “There’s a difference between missing and hiding.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “You know what I meant. You wouldn’t look for them?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Now see, I find
that strange.” She smiled. “And I think that says more about you than about me.”

  Mark saw his opening. “So tell me more about yourself.”

  “I’m not the mysterious loner here.” She scooped up more of the trail mix.

  “Where you from in the States?”

  “A small town in Ohio. You wouldn’t know it.”

  Mark nodded, conceding the point. “When did you decide you needed somebody to help you in Thailand?”

  “At your friend Frankie’s bar, when I realized that I was a chicken shit.”

  “Don’t you have any friends back home that would have come with you?”

  She looked away. “No. Next question.”

  “So you just walked into Frankie’s and said I’m looking to hire somebody to find my brother, who you got?”

  She pursed her lips and thought a moment. “Yup. That’s pretty much it,” she said, nodding, “except I was bawling my eyes out and hyperventilating so it probably didn’t come out so clear.” She tossed a couple peanuts in her mouth. “Frankie told me all about you.”

  “Obviously not,” Mark said.

  Robin dug in the plastic bag, pulling out a wafer-thin dried banana slice. “You were a Marine in the First Gulf War.”

  “Operation Desert Storm,” he said, like the Great War veterans who couldn’t have conceived of a sequel.

  “I was in fourth grade. We made cards in art class for the soldiers. Did you ever get mine?”

  “Crayon drawing of stick figures under a smiling sun? About ten thousand of them? Yeah, they arrived.”