Over time snakeheads had been added to the basement aquarium. Some said it was the Eight-Niners who had brought them in to terrify the squatters. Others said the Chinese owner had released them to make merit and to terrify the Eight-Niners, who had begun to get a little too independent. The sunlight didn’t reach that depth, and the fish could feed unseen, undisturbed. Over a long enough stretch of time, all traces of the bodies would disappear.
McPhail stormed into Calvino’s office, a lit cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, and planted on Ratana’s desk a bunch of orchids he’d bought at Villa Market.
“Good morning, Ratana. How’s John-John doing in school?”
“Top of his class,” she said.
“Is Vinny’s grooming him to be an investigator or what?”
“It’s more likely not an investigator,” she said.
“Smart. Is the private eye open for visitors?” His voice was loud enough to carry into Calvino’s office. McPhail laughed at his own joke. He went into Calvino’s office, closed the door behind him and sat down in a chair.
“My brother won the California iron man triathlon. He did it, Vinny.”
Calvino could see the pride in McPhail’s face.
“He found what he was looking for,” said Calvino. “But would you trade places with him?”
McPhail shook his head.
“Are you crazy? On Facebook he’s holding up a trophy. Is that what’s it’s all about, showing the world you won a race?”
“Depends on the race you want to run in.”
“But he did win, Vinny.”
“No one ever wins,” said Calvino. “When a man realizes there’s no finish line, no tape to break with your chest, no audience on their feet cheering you, that’s when his life starts to make sense.”
“Okay, I get it. Enough about my brother. I have more news.”
He waited for Calvino to ask him. Calvino knew the ploy and allowed the silence to lengthen.
“Have you seen Glover’s blog this week?” McPhail finally asked. “He took down the black wreath. He’s back in business.” A broad smile crossed McPhail’s face as if to say ‘I told you so.’
“Wasn’t he on his way out of Thailand?”
“He’s not gone yet. Maybe he’ll change his mind. He wrote a whole blog about Road Kill, with pictures of the old gang. I’m the one who introduced him to that crazy Thai who made Montana Mountain Burgers. You missed Road Kill at Washington Square.”
McPhail waited for a moment for the importance of that information to register with Calvino.
“Aren’t you going to open his website and look?”
McPhail leaned over the office desk, staring at the screen.
“Fucking fish. Go to Glover’s site.”
A few clicks later, the screen filled with images of the Road Kill van. There were pictures of Gop, the boy, Munny, McPhail and the old gang. McPhail was captured flashing the very same victory smile his brother had shown as he held up the trophy.
“What a fucking day that was, Vinny. You’re looking at people who know how to make a real hamburger.”
“They have that look.”
“You’re jealous because you missed it. It happened on the day you disappeared. The Lonesome Hawk crowd, or what was left of them, kept asking, ‘Where’s Calvino?’ And I said, ‘Drinking Champagne beside a swimming pool.’ ”
“I was tied up with Osborne.”
“Fuck Osborne. He made you miss a piece of history, man.”
“Ed, my goal is to live as far outside of history as possible. History is a territory where mostly bad things happen to good people.”
“Glover’s story took off like crazy. It’s everywhere now. Road Kill has gone across the world. Right along with the madness of banning beer after midnight and warning labels on a bottle of beer. How fucked is that? No more beer girls. Kiss Mr. Tourist’s ass adios. Hasta luego. Because he ain’t comin’ here. Even Road Kill has left the building, just like Elvis. Everyone is asking what happened to it. When is it coming back to the Square, the old-timers keep asking me. Those burgers gave them something to look forward to. Now, like the Square, it’s gone. Vanished like Amelia Earhart or D.B. Cooper. What a mystery!”
“Road Kill is on the Cambodian border,” said Calvino.
“Who’d you hear that one from?”
“McPhail, rumors in Thailand don’t have fathers or mothers. They’re orphans of loan sharks, con men, streetwalkers and fortune tellers. No one claims them until they become legitimate.”
“In that case, I’ve heard Road Kill is still in Bangkok hiding out from the cops and military. They’ve gone underground. Glover’s had hundreds of emails from his readers claiming they’ve found it and bought a burger.”
“Any photos to support this?”
“They’ve said there’s a code of silence. Farangs who find it swear an oath of secrecy to protect Road Kill.”
Calvino nodded, smiling.
“I know that look, Calvino. But it’s not bullshit. What if your rumor is bullshit, isn’t that a good possibility, Mr. Selectric typewriter writer?”
Ratana came into the office in tight jeans, high heels and a scalloped-neck blue blouse with long sleeves, holding a printout.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about Road Kill,” she said, handing the printout to McPhail. “I’ve seen a couple of posts on my timeline. One had some photos I thought you might want to see.”
The photos showed the Road Kill van with a long line of farangs in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops, smiling and giving the victory sign. Behind the van was an arch with a replica of the iconic temple of Angkor Wat and a sign reading “Welcome to the Kingdom of Cambodia.”
McPhail looked up from the photo.
“Jesus, Road Kill right on the border!”
He handed the picture to Calvino.
“Business looks good,” said Calvino.
“You wouldn’t have a drink hiding in your bottom drawer, would you?” said McPhail. “Or is that just a rumor?”
Calvino leaned forward and gestured to McPhail to move in closer.
“Tell her she looks good in the jeans,” Calvino whispered.
“Tell who?”
“Ratana, you moron.”
McPhail leaned back and cleared his throat.
“Hey, Ratana, you look hot in those jeans.”
“Thank you, Ed. At least someone in this office notices what a woman wears.”
Calvino sucked in a couple of cubic feet of air to stop himself from replying. Instead he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.
“McPhail, you need a drink.”
Ratana went to the cabinet and removed three glasses, setting them on the desk. Calvino poured two stiff shots for McPhail and one shot for himself. He raised his glass and McPhail raised his.
“Here’s to happiness.”
“You forgot someone,” said McPhail.
Calvino poured a neat shot into Ratana’s glass. He raised his glass and McPhail and Ratana followed.
“Welcome to the deep end of the pool, where the non-swimmers are dropped,” said Calvino.
McPhail shivered and flicked his ash before taking a long, steady pull on the whiskey.
“Man, this is going to break the hearts of the old gang. It’s like, you thought she was your wife, and it was just another short-time boom-boom with a thick slab of meat packaged between two buns. Then a moment later she’s at the door, not letting it hit her ass on the way out. Sorry, Ratana!”
McPhail looked up at her, but she’d already gone. Then his eyes found her empty glass.
“She’s heard it all before,” said Calvino.
McPhail leaned forward and whispered, “She’s not only hot, she knows how to drink. You’ve been overlooking what’s on your doorstep.”
Then he smiled, took the bottle and poured himself a refill.
“You said there was something you wanted to tell me.”
> “How would you like to take a little trip across the border?” said Calvino.
McPhail lit a cigarette.
“When?”
“Next week.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I heard through a friend that Road Kill is franchising into Cambodia.”
“You’re kidding.”
“A Cambodian needs financing. It could be a good investment.”
“Calvino, you’ve become a capitalist pig. You and Osborne are always sniffing the money trail.”
“I figure we’ll spend three, four days looking around. All expenses paid.”
McPhail finished the whiskey and poured another refill from Calvino’s office bottle.
“This wouldn’t be a cover for a relocation?”
“McPhail, when you’ve got skin in the game, you see it through.”
“I can’t wait to tell Glover about Road Kill going to Cambodia.”
“The border, anyway.”
“But Sarah Palin can see Cambodia from there while she eats a Monster Hawaiian Burger.”
It was what the Internet and globalization had brought to the world—chasing a food van across borders in Southeast Asia. Calvino wanted to say something more but stopped himself. Cambodia was a place where a lot of families had died. The country was littered with villages of ghosts and fields of unmarked graves packed with bones. The old homes had long ago disappeared along with their occupants. Only the minefields remained. Many of the new generation, men like Munny, had taken their families to Thailand. But everything had changed for them there in just a few days, much as it had in the Khmer Rouge days. He’d gone back with nothing but the clothes on his back, a one-legged man and a boy who wasn’t even his own. He was the kind of asset worth investing in.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”
—Graham Greene, The Quiet American
PRATT WAS OUT of uniform, sitting alone on a bench in Lumpini Park, the sun to his back, holding a book. He’d come a half hour early for the solitude and a chance to read. He looked beyond the garden to the lake, where a young Thai couple passed by on a paddleboat, pedaling and laughing as if the world they were living in were a friendly, ordinary place for lovers. He looked up from a well-thumbed collection of plays by William Shakespeare. Pulling out the bookmark, he studied a stylized drawing of the Bard.
How could one man have been so wise, he asked himself. As he waited for Vincent Calvino, he’d been passing the time reading Othello:
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing.
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands.
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
“Where’s your lovely shadow? Or is the fair Lieutenant Pim hiding behind a tree?” asked Calvino, as he sat down beside Pratt on the bench.
“She’s gone on to a new assignment.”
Calvino nodded, looking at the water.
“A woman with high ambitions.”
Pratt placed the bookmark into the volume and closed it.
“It’s a long play. The script is still being written. New characters, new plots, new motives,” he said.
“I should have seen the Ballard thing coming,” said Calvino. “Him showing up in Bali was no chance meeting. He was on assignment, and we were his business. Think of it from their perspective. We were in Rangoon together. You had a thing with the wrong woman, someone with a connection to a big-time drug dealer.”
“I cleared that inside the department a long time ago.”
Calvino raised an eyebrow as if to ask whether Pratt really believed it was cleared as opposed to kicked down the road.
“Ballard and some other people had other ideas.”
“But there was nothing to find,” said Pratt.
“That hardly matters. Once people make up their minds there is something, they keep on looking even after it’s clear they’re chasing their own tails.”
“You still don’t believe it was Ballard they pulled out of the river?”
Calvino shrugged, leaned forward and stared at the lake.
“Ballard made a big play that his problems started with an art exhibition in London. His photograph was all over the Internet. Whether he set it up that way or was a victim, there’s no way he could go back in the field. He needed a new identity, but first he had to die.”
“He needed help to make the arrangements,” Pratt suggested. “Finding an unclaimed body from the morgue.”
“That works,” said Calvino. “The Alphabets must have had a senior guy in your department. Otherwise there would be too many loose ends. Any idea who that might have been?”
“His name doesn’t matter. He’s been removed.”
“Removed? Or transferred to an inactive post?”
“Let’s call him General Sor. He was removed. Peace, order and work efficiency were the official reasons. There’s more. A criminal investigation has started into his links with trafficking in the South. And according to Manee, his wife has left him. She would know. His wife was on the fountain restoration committee.”
“Who burned him?” asked Calvino.
Pratt shrugged.
“I don’t know. There were no fingerprints. He no longer served their interests. You were getting too close to the truth. That likely explains why they backed off.”
“General Sor did his best to set me up for a murder charge.”
“People like him don’t play nice, but don’t take it personally. He tried to set me up, too,” said Pratt. “What matters is he’s gone. He won’t be coming back.”
“The day Davenport and Howard came to my office, Davenport asked me why I had high-level encryption on my cell phone and office computers. I asked him how he had that information. He just looked at me, that dead-eyed stare. Howard said, ‘How does some second-rate private dick from Brooklyn who’s nothing more than a glorified skip chaser have access to encryption that even the NSA doesn’t have?’ From his tone of voice, I got the impression it was something he’d thought about. People who use highly specialized systems must be hiding something. They keep their information private, and that’s the ultimate crime to the likes of Howard. Loyal citizens don’t worry about who’s reading their emails because they have nothing to hide. They should share improvements to encrypted programs so the good guys can stay a couple of steps ahead of the bad guys. They believe Marley is secretive, and they want to know her secrets. That’s what they hate about her and about me, too. ‘Whatever she’s got on you, it’s not worth betraying your country’—those were Davenport’s words. Davenport wasn’t the kind of guy who could string together more than three or four words without running out of gas, and there he was making a little speech to let me know they’ve failed to crack my contacts or read my email, and they’re taking it personally.”
“Marley’s encryption program was a red flag to them,” said Pratt.
“Howard and Davenport aren’t important. They’re just the face.”
“Whose face, Vincent?”
“The face of the deep state, the double state, the one that runs like an operating system in the background. They work out of the embassy in Bangkok. They work with their counterparts here. People like you and me, if we’re not useful, are just things that get in their way. A coup brings them into the spotlight. They were there all along. We just didn’t see them.”
“You are innocent, Vincent. It’s always been a big part of your charm.”
“Like the dumb leper who lost the bell around his neck years ago but no one had the heart to tell him.”
“That sounds like Graham Greene,” sa
id Pratt. “Once a leper, always a leper. The bell no longer matters.”
“I was making it easy for them. Someone working inside the deep state in Thailand or in Washington saw an opportunity. Real politics happens in that dark place where the light doesn’t shine. That’s where you find the people who make all the workarounds. With the system broken, workarounds are all we’ve got now.”
“You want something, Vincent?”
“General Sor’s real name.”
“What use would that information be to you?”
“He was someone who hated the idea you returned and received a promotion. My leper’s bell is ringing, telling me your guy was someone who trained with the FBI and then became an asset. Was Ballard his handler, or Howard? It doesn’t matter who he ran errands for, does it? Someone decided—one stone, two birds. A body is fished out of the Chao Phraya River. They say it’s Ballard and try to pin a murder rap on me. Only Ballard isn’t dead. He’s disappeared into a new identity. And General Pratt, my close personal friend, is implicated in covering up the murder. The scandal is leaked. You’re forced out of the department again, only this time for good, and I’m frog-marched between a couple of US marshals back to the States on a murder charge.”
“It nearly worked,” said Pratt. “Only it wasn’t me who discovered the link between the General, Ballard and the two agents stationed at the embassy. Ballard met him when they trained at Quantico.”
Calvino exhaled, shaking his head.
“Marley.”
“She had their cell phone conversations. She had something more powerful, too. She had taped their meeting where they planned the operation.”
“And Howard and Davenport?”
“She had all of it. I couldn’t protect you, but she did.”
“All of this over a couple of jazz festivals that made them suspicious,” said Calvino. “They’re paranoid, and what do people like that do? They build a plausible story of conspiracy to prove they’re right. It didn’t matter that none of it was true. It was plausible. They thought you were hiding behind the saxophone and festivals while masterminding a drug cartel. They invented a story linking Rangoon, Jakarta, Bali and Bangkok. They’d written you down as the drug kingpin who had expanded your connections with a Rohingya smuggling group. With my encryption software, I was making the calls they couldn’t trace or tap. You were forced into retirement because your own department wouldn’t believe you. Then came the coup and your friends in the department found a way to bring you back. But someone inside convinced someone at the embassy that you used dirty money to buy your way back. Your enemy inside the department got them to believe that you’d bought your way back into the department.
Crackdown Page 34