Big Mango (9786167611037)

by Needham, Jake

“I read your column every Saturday, Mr. Phillips.” Lek spoke in a voice so soft that at first Bar wasn’t absolutely sure she had spoken at all. “And so did Harry.”

  Bar gave Chuck a long look, but he was still staring across the room and didn’t seem to notice.

  “Did you know Harry Austin well?” Bar asked Lek.

  “Reasonably well,” she nodded. “He was my husband.”

  Bar just bobbed his head a little and sipped at the dregs of his Carlsberg as if he knew she was going to say that. Winnebago cut his eyes at Eddie, but Eddie was watching Lek.

  “I said I’d bring somebody who could tell you about Austin, and like Mandrake the fucking Magician, I bring you his wife.” Chuck made a little two-handed flourish in Lek’s direction.

  “Widow,” Eddie corrected.

  “We’ll get to that later. Anyway, I think a little gratitude is in order here.” Chuck pointed at Bar’s empty Carlsberg. “One of those will do fine for me. I’m a cheap date.” Chuck looked at Lek and raised his eyebrows and she nodded. “And one for Lek, too. But she’s certainly not a cheap date.”

  Bar raised a hand at one of the waitresses, nodded toward his empty bottle on the table, and made a whirling motion in the air with his index finger. He had never figured out exactly what the hell that gesture was supposed to mean, but it always seemed to get more drinks brought to the table so he kept on doing it.

  Bar gave Chuck a weary smile. “So you’re suggesting we need to juice up the grieving widow with a little cash before this goes any further?”

  “No, Mr. Phillips,” Lek spoke in a much stronger voice now, one with a clear edge. “He is not saying that.”

  Bar made a gesture with his hands that he thought was appropriately apologetic, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not surprised you assume that I am just a bargirl who met Harry a few times and is now trying to make some quick cash. I’m not surprised, Mr. Phillips, but you are quite mistaken.”

  Bar had, of course, assumed exactly that.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said.

  “You didn’t offend me, Mr. Phillips. Thai women are used to it. Men always seem to think with their peckers around us, don’t they?”

  She had him there, Bar knew, so he just bobbed his head noncommittally and leaned back to await developments.

  “Where did you meet Captain Austin?” Eddie asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lek since she sat down at the table.

  “We met when I worked in the international section of Bangkok Bank. My job was to coordinate operations with our international correspondent banks.”

  Bar flipped his eyes toward Chuck who returned his glance with an insufferably smug smile.

  “Harry had quite a lot of money invested with us. Mostly term deposits in various currencies and some other very conservative stuff. Something was always getting fouled up and I helped him sort things out several times.” She stopped for a moment. “Anyway, the rest of the story is really none of your concern. The point is that eventually we fell in love and got married. After that, Harry insisted I quit working at the bank.”

  “Tell them why,” Chuck prompted encouragingly.

  “Harry worried about me. He said there were people who would eventually come looking for him because they wanted something he had. He said as long as I worked at a bank it would look like I knew about it and I would be in danger.” She hesitated again, selecting her words with care. “He never told me exactly what he meant, but I thought it was obvious it had something to do with where his money came from.”

  Chuck glanced at Eddie. “Did Bar showed you the picture?” he asked. “The one the motorcycle guy gave him?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Austin was the guy in the chair, wasn’t he?”

  Chuck made a question out of it, but Eddie didn’t bother to answer. They both knew it was true.

  “What the fuck’s going on here?” Winnebago snapped in exasperation. “If you got this all figured out, man, just tell us, huh?”

  Chuck slowly shook his head. “I’ve been trying to put the pieces together for a long time. Harry Austin was one piece, and now I seem to have found me some others. You guys probably know better than I do what kind of picture they make.”

  “Harry didn’t die in any accident,” Lek broke in. “I’m sure of it. Somebody killed him.”

  Winnebago pushed back in his chair. “Oh, Sweet Jesus.”

  “Who identified the body?” Eddie asked Lek.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t find out what had happened until the wat called asking for a donation to pay for his cremation.”

  “The ‘what’?” Winnebago asked.

  “Wat, not ‘what,’” Bar explained. “It’s the Thai word for a Buddhist temple.”

  “Who made the cremation arrangements?” Eddie watched Lek closely.

  “I guess the police must have. I didn’t.”

  Eddie started to ask her if she had ever heard of the Little Princess, but something made him hesitate and he was still thinking about it when Chuck took over the conversation again.

  “Forget all that shit.” Chuck was smiling and Eddie wasn’t sure he liked that. “Here’s where I’m going with this. Harry told Lek very little, but she gathered from one thing and another that everything was connected with the time he spent in ‘Nam.”

  Bar raised his eyebrows a notch, wondering if he was overlooking something obvious. “I thought you were investigating Austin. How was it you came to be such a close friend of the family and all?”

  Chuck shrugged off the implication. Eddie noticed he didn’t even flinch and made a mental note that Bar’s suspicions about Chuck and Lek were probably off the mark. If there had been any personal involvement between them, Eddie would bet he could have seen it in Chuck’s face when Bar popped him with that jab.

  “We didn’t turn anything up on Harry, so I just called him one day and introduced myself,” Chuck went on. “He thought it was funny as hell we had him down as a possible dealer and we hung around some after that.”

  “When Harry died, I called Chuck,” Lek said. She had gone back to speaking softly again and the four men leaned toward her, straining not to miss anything. “Harry gave me a key to a safety deposit box just before he died. It was at the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank on Silom Road. He asked me not to open the box unless something happened to him but, if anything did, to destroy what I found in it. When I saw what it was, I knew Harry hadn’t died in an accident so I took everything to Chuck.”

  All four of them watched Lek as she pulled several sheets of paper from her purse. Eddie noticed that the purse was a Chanel. At least he thought it was. The fakes they sold in Thailand were so good he was never sure if things like that were real or not.

  Lek was an attractive woman and she had that combination of confidence and vulnerability Eddie had always been a sucker for. As she fumbled in her purse, she shifted in her chair and her short, straight skirt slid further up her thighs. Eddie’s eyes traced her slim, bare legs all the way down to what may have been the sexiest, most feminine ankles he had ever seen in his entire life. What could a guy married to a woman like this be doing at a massage parlor? Maybe it was just a coincidence that Austin’s body had been found outside the Little Princess.

  Straightening up, Lek put the papers on the table, squaring up their edges in an unconscious gesture that caught Eddie’s eye. “These were in the box,” she said.

  Picking up the sheets of paper, Eddie scanned them while Bar and Winnebago leaned over and tried to see them, too. The first two pages were a list of names, some with addresses and telephone numbers next to them and some without. Eddie’s name and Winnebago’s were on the first page, along with both of their San Francisco addresses.

  The last five pages were photocopies of snapshots.

  Two pages showed different views of Austin and about seven or eight other men in off-duty fatigues clowning around a bar somewhere. Eddie didn’t remember ever seeing the place before, but i
t was obvious he must have. In the first photograph he was standing about ten feet from Austin, his arm around a cute little girl with hair down below her waist. In the second, he was sitting at a table resting his chin on one fist and looking at the camera with empty eyes. The last three pages were photocopies of the two photographs that had been mailed to Eddie and the one given to Bar by the motorcyclist, all with the same circles drawn around the same heads.

  “Oh, God,” Eddie groaned.

  “Yeah, first this…” Chuck waved at the papers Eddie was holding, “and then Bar comes strolling into my office with the original of one of these and a wild story about the other two winding up with you guys in San Francisco.”

  “Yeah,” Winnebago said. “And they were mailed from here in Thailand.”

  In the silence that followed, the sound of rattling dishes, snatches of music from the karaoke bar upstairs, and the sudden roar from out on Sathorn Road of a motorbike with a broken muffler all seemed unnaturally loud.

  Eddie cleared his throat. “So you’re saying Austin got the same pictures we got before he died. That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?” Eddie made a question out of it, but he knew it wasn’t. He was looking at copies of the pictures Austin had gotten, and the only reason he was looking at them was because Austin was dead.

  “Which brings me to the reason I called this meeting,” Chuck said. His eyes moved from Bar to Winnebago and finally settled on Eddie. “The lady and I would like to know exactly what the fuck you guys did back in ‘Nam that got Harry Austin murdered in Bangkok twenty-five years later.”

  Eddie mulled that over while Chuck, Lek, and Bar watched him. Winnebago studied a spot on the table.

  “I know you won’t believe this,” Eddie finally said, “but I don’t know.”

  “I’d stay away from this guy, Bar,” Chuck yawned. “My shit detector just went off the scale.”

  “Lay off, Chuck.” Bar’s jaw pinched into a tight line. “I haven’t made up my mind about any of this yet, but I’ll tell you one thing right now. No asshole is gonna frighten me away with a few old snapshots.”

  “You’re going to help us?” Eddie, surprised, turned toward Bar.

  “I didn’t say that. I just said nobody’s going to scare me off from something I want to do with shit like this.” He waved at the copies of the pictures on the table.

  “I don’t get it,” Winnebago said. “Does that mean yes or no?”

  Bar gave him a long look. “I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no yet either. That’s the best I can do right now. Live with it.”

  After that, the conversation wallowed along a while longer, but Eddie had lost interest. All he really wanted to do was get back to the Oriental, sit down quietly by himself, and think through all the stuff that was piling up in front of him.

  Chuck was right about one thing, Eddie realized now. He did know something. He was certain of it.

  He just had to figure out what it was.

  Twenty-Two

  WHEN Eddie and Winnebago walked out of the Stardust, a taxi was just unloading two wobbly Australians. Clutching cans of Fosters the size of small trashcans, the men struggled to steady themselves on the cracked sidewalk.

  “G’day, mate.” One of the men fixed Eddie with a beery eye and belched loudly as he scratched between his legs. “This the place?”

  “What place is that?”

  A theatrical leer rolled across the Australian’s face. “You know, mate.” The man spread his arms slightly just below waist level, cupped both hands, and began to rock his hips rhythmically back and forth. Eddie just shook his head. The Australians had left the rear door of the cab hanging open, and he and Winnebago quickly slid in and slammed it, putting an end to the moment of cultural exchange.

  “So what are we going to do now?” Winnebago asked.

  “Let’s get back to the hotel.” Eddie rubbed the tips of his fingers over his eyelids. “I’m still half whacked from jet lag.”

  The taxi driver twisted around in his seat, flashing a broad grin. “Where you come from?”

  “San Francisco,” Winnebago answered.

  The driver looked puzzled. “Where that?”

  “California. America.”

  “America good. You want massage?”

  “No massage,” Eddie said. “The Oriental Hotel, please.”

  “I know place,” the driver persisted. “Sexy girl. You have good time.”

  “The Oriental Hotel,” Eddie repeated.

  “Massage very nice. Make you feel number one. Special price for you.”

  Eddie sighed and opened the back door of the Toyota. “Come on, Winnebago, forget it. We’ll walk a while.”

  “Pai nai!” the driver shouted as they got out. “American all old lady! Germany better. Germany like lady. Much party animal!”

  The Stardust was about fifty yards off Sathorn Road on a popular soi for food vendors. The haze from the cooking fires mingled with the hot, saturating air tinting it a wispy blue. Toy-sized tables littered the street, most dark, a few flickering with the little mysteries of kerosene lamps. A wave of pungent smells rolled over Eddie and Winnebago: charcoal smoke, exhaust fumes, boiling rice, and fish sauce. From somewhere a radio was playing a Thai pop song and a female voice was singing, high and wailing, plaintive as a child yet still tantalizingly sexy. It was all half familiar, half unfathomable; half discord, half sweetness. It was, Eddie thought, beauty bred to strangeness.

  They walked past a large wok sizzling on a gas ring that was being fed by a dented, green gas bottle. An old woman smiled at them as she scooped a pile of something out of the hot oil with a bamboo-handled basket and dumped it into a bowl to drain. Winnebago regarded the contents of the bowl suspiciously and Eddie smiled to himself. He knew the Thais loved to snack on fried grasshoppers. He had even tried them once himself and had to admit that they weren’t bad. Still, he found it a little disconcerting trying to talk to someone who had a pair of tiny legs sticking out from between his teeth.

  Fishing some money from his pocket, Eddie stopped at a cart where prawns on wooden skewers were roasting over a charcoal fire. He bought two, handed one to Winnebago, and they went over and sat on a low brick wall. While they were eating, another man carrying a skewer of prawns ambled over and sat on the wall near them. Eddie didn’t even notice him at first. He was average and forgettable in every way: slim, dark hair, white shirt, and khaki pants. For some reason, Eddie thought the man hadn’t looked much like a Thai. Maybe he was Cambodian or even Vietnamese. Eddie couldn’t be sure.

  The only thing that caused Eddie to notice the first man at all was the second man. That man was quite a bit taller, and he bumped into Winnebago’s legs as he walked past.

  When Eddie and Winnebago glanced toward the tall man, the man who had been sitting on the wall jumped up, jabbed his wooden skewer at Eddie with one hand, and tried to lock his free arm around Eddie’s neck. The skewer glanced off Eddie’s shoulder without doing any damage other than smearing smashed prawn on his shirt, and then Eddie must have surprised the man by reacting so quickly. He certainly surprised himself.

  He jerked to his feet, ducking under the arm groping for his throat and, slamming his right heel backward, caught the man flush on the kneecap. As the man howled, Eddie pulled away and saw that the tall man wrestling with Winnebago. He hunched his shoulders and rammed his head straight into the man’s back, catching him low, just above the kidneys.

  “Head for the main road!” Eddie screamed as the tall man turned loose of Winnebago and sagged to the ground. “Run!”

  “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Just run, Winnebago!”

  After half a block, Eddie decided they would make the road easily. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the two men who had jumped them were just standing there rather than giving chase. He and Winnebago must have put up more of a fight than they expected and scared them off, Eddie thought at first, but then he looked back toward Sathorn and realized that the
men hadn’t been scared off at all. They were merely being patient.

  Two other men had emerged from the shadows and were waiting quietly near Sathorn Road. Eddie had barely started measuring the men and working out their chances when the odds changed abruptly. One of the men pulled something silver from under his shirt and held it dangling in his right arm. The lights from passing cars splashed sparkling patterns across it and the barrel of the gun glinted unmistakably.

  Eddie grabbed Winnebago’s elbow and pointed to the men in front of them. They made a U-turn without breaking stride and headed back the way they had come. Eddie was just trying to decide what they would do when they got to the men waiting at the wall when he saw Bar, Chuck, and Lek coming out of the Stardust.

  “Bar!” Eddie screamed, pointing at the two men with his left hand and holding up his right, making a little gun with his thumb and forefinger. Chuck sized up the situation quickly, and jerked a gun from a belly holster under his shirt. The two men looked over their shoulders when Eddie shouted and they twitched visibly at the sight of the beefy, no-neck farang pounding down the steps from the Stardust, unlimbering a big black automatic. The two men apparently decided that it wasn’t necessary to stick around for introductions. By the time they passed Eddie and Winnebago, heading toward their friends, Eddie thought they were moving pretty well, at least for young guys.

  ***

  CHUCK sloshed Johnny Walker into the two coffee mugs with gold DEA crests and pushed them across the table. Eddie picked up one and Winnebago took the other.

  “How about me?” Bar asked. “I’m all shook up, too.”

  Chuck ignored him and Lek studied her hands.

  It was almost eleven and the embassy annex was dark and quiet. In the cramped conference room, a rectangular table the color of dead leaves surrounded by six straight chairs with dented metal frames and black plastic seats took up most of the space. The white walls, blotched with yellow patches from the years of accumulated nicotine, were bare except for a small photograph of Bill Clinton in a black plastic frame and a travel poster extolling the wonders of Detroit. The harsh white wash of the fluorescent tubes strung across the cracked ceiling tiles made Eddie and Winnebago look even paler than they felt. For a long time, no one said anything.