Asanee sat in the chair, leaned forward on her elbows, and stared at the photograph in silence for nearly a minute.
“She was very good to me. I loved her very much.”
“I’m going to ask you a very big favor,” said Lawrence, turning her around on the chair.
“Can,” she said, moving her face close to his.
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
She relaxed, touching his face with the back of her hand; he looked a little scared, she wondered if he was worried about Tuttle coming back.
“I can lock my room. My father never come inside. Ever,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. “Sarah talk about you. I think you good for her.”
If Sarah’s diaries had revealed any thing, they were one long document of how he hadn’t been good for her, Lawrence thought.
“What did Sarah say? ” he asked
“That you take good care of her.”
“And you think I could do the same for you? ”
“You want I make love with you? ” she asked, her English deteriorating by the word.
It would have been so easy to destroy Tuttle. All he had to do was carry her upstairs to her bedroom. He had offered her on a silver platter before. Taking Asanee to bed would have allowed Lawrence to win. What was inside his mind was Sarah sitting behind her desk, talking to Asanee. She hadn’t said that she loved him, or that he loved her, only that he had taken care of her.
“Promise me you won’t tell Bobby I was inside here,” he said.
“Why? He not care. Jing! Jing! —Honest.”
“Just promise me.”
“Not tell Fawn, or anyone else this time,” she said, dropping her head.
She looked ashamed. Asanee had lost face with just about everyone over the Fawn affair. She felt that she had dishonored her father; humiliated herself; disgraced the school; and carelessly abused Sarah’s memory.
“Promise me.” He slowly pulled up her chin.
“I promise,” she said. Asanee ran crying out of Tuttle’s room, slamming the screen door behind her, into the house. He heard her feet on the stairs, the distant slam of her bedroom door.
* * *
THE feeble croak of a rooster broke through the early morning sky as Tuttle walked into the main house, finding Asanee and Lawrence at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.
“Any coffee left? ” asked Tuttle, as he walked across the wooden floors in his socks.
Lawrence watched him go into the kitchen and pull a mug from a cupboard. “Aren’t you just a little surprised that I’m here? ”
Tuttle shuffled back to the table and sat down. “Bangkok is full of surprises; you get motion sickness if you rock on your heels every time someone surprises you here.” He added milk to the coffee, and Asanee stirred in her chair.
“I go to bed now,” she said, leaning over to kiss her father on the forehead. “You look very bad. You not take good care of yourself. Why? ”
“An old girlfriend.” Tuttle winked at Asanee, and nodded for her to climb the stairs to her bedroom. It was an excuse that she would both accept and like. She had a romantic notion that a man without a woman was an electric system without any current. “Ning. You remember Ning? ”
“Too tired to think. Cannot remember.”
After his second cup of coffee, Tuttle ran his open hand through his hair and pulled out the envelope of photographs. He tossed them to Lawrence. “The skull bar photos. Don’t ask how, where, who, or why. It doesn’t matter.”
Lawrence watched as Tuttle rose from the table, walked across the main room. It had begun raining. He opened the screens one by one, and closed the windows. The boom of thunder rolled in the distance; stopping, the rain splashing outside off the flat roof, a flash of lightning, followed by another rumble, this time closer. They listened to the rain and thunder, saying nothing, as Lawrence, his face grim, his hands shaking, looked through the photographs.
“Elegant, aren’t they? ” said Tuttle.
“I don’t mean to he ungenerous, but I’m about to turn over one million dollars. Why are you showing me these? ”
“The school can’t accept the money, Larry.”
“You’re turning it down? ”
Thunder splintered the brief silence after Lawrence’s question. It was followed by another intense clap that shook the windows. Lawrence felt the vibration running up his arms from the table.
“More than half my life, I’ve been exiled, between lives, countries, relationships, jobs; but I found a kind of contentment, even happiness, Larry. Not because I ever succeeded at anything. I have mostly failed. But failure buys you something that success never does—your freedom; you get ignored, the greatest luxury of all time—you are left alone. The moment someone smells your success, it is the same as the smell of the blood of another man’s fresh kill. Your head rises above the crowd, and there is always a Colonel Chao, waiting in the wings to become your partner, to cut himself into your life. To cut your life apart if you say no.”
“I know how to go through all the legal hoops,” said Lawrence. “Plug any loophole. That’s my job.”
“How do I explain this,” said Tuttle, waiting for a roll of thunder to end. “There is no rule of law here. Not in the sense you use it. There are loose arrangements. Accommodations that people must make to stay in business and alive. A million dollars is a sponge that attracts a large pool of people; it sucks them up in a thousand tiny holes. Sarah’s money will be divided up like spoils of war. Easy loot. You can’t fix it with all the legal documents ever written in America. This is not home territory, Larry. Forget the law of contract. Small-arms fire pierces any contract. About Asanee’s back, about the rest of the kids. It won’t work. The money has already made an armored carload of new friends I don’t need or want.”
Lawrence eased back in the chair, crossed his legs. For a long time, he listened to the driving rain.
“Did you? ” asked Tuttle.
“Did I do what? ”
“Take her to bed.”
Lawrence sighed and wetted his lips. “She wouldn’t give me the time of day. Not that I didn’t try. You think I could do that to my father, she asked me. She was right, Bobby. She couldn’t. Whatever has gone on between you two has nothing to do with me. You might have thought you couldn’t trust her. After Sarah, I could understand that. But this girl loves you, Bobby. No stranger is going to come between you. Not me. Not anyone.”
“Tomorrow we have to fix things.”
“I know,” said Lawrence, stretching his arms and rising from his chair. He left before Tuttle could thank him. Thank him for what, he wasn’t exactly sure.
18
Fawn and Asanee giggled as they crossed the small waiting room area. As far as anyone could remember no one had ever seen either Snow or Crosby in a necktie. Tuttle had sent them over to Silom Road to price computer equipment for the school, and gave them the rest of the day off—a holiday—and with an order—stay out of the bars. He wanted them both out of the way.
Since lunch everyone had been stealing glances at their watches. Snow and Crosby waited for Lawrence’s arrival, edgy, gangling their legs over different ends of the same desk. Over several Singha beers, they had pieced together their separate encounters with Tuttle the night before, leaving out those aspects that made them appear small, and simple-minded, and taking credit for independently arriving at the same conclusion that the matter of Lawrence’s change of heart was best left to Tuttle.
Yet there was an unspoken tension. If things, for any reason, fell through, the other was already listing reasons why it was not his fault but rested squarely on the shoulders of the other.
“The trouble with you, Crosby, is you’re fucking doomed, man. You probably had that nanny sucking on your wick when you were six. You gotta be bent. Twisted, man. Tuttle wormed the information out of you just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“He got me out of a rather tight spot,” said Crosby. “A combat sq
uad of bloody Yanks had their bowie knives at my throat. One knife and a branding iron to be exact.”
“Gambling with rednecks, man. You’ve got your head up your ass. And what does a goddamn limey know about Americans? Fuck-all. What is England anyway? A land of cave-dwellers who go out and suffocate each other at soccer games. Grim. A fuckedup place definitely on the skids. You patrol the town like Chinese body-snatchers. Except you’re not benevolent or an association.
“But you and the Chinese body-snatchers live for the old body grab. They’re sitting in a van over on Soi Asoke right now. Those little reedy-voiced assholes with radios that allow them to tap into the police and emergency bands. They make merit by arriving at the scene of a fatal accident and picking up the bodies. Crash victims mangled and broken; head bashed in, arms and legs cut off. They scoop them up in plastic bags. Oh, shit, there’s a finger over on the curb I’ve missed. Damn, wait a sec, man. It’s got a fucking big gold ring on the knuckle. That’s gotta be worth some big bucks. They haul ass back to their temple, take a couple of Polaroid photographs of the body and tape them in the window. That’s lunchtime entertainment for the office workers. They go up to the window drinking their Cokes and point at the latest man, woman, or child with the smashed-in heads. And you know what their reaction is? You’ll like this, Crosby. They’re fucking laughing their heads off. Man, there ain’t a grim face among them. They’re joking and laughing. You’d think they were looking at a high school yearbook. That’s the high point of their day.
“And everyone of them is saying the same thing, ‘That fucker’s dead as shit. Man, that could’ve been me. But I’m looking at this dead fucker, I’m alive. I’ve got a good destiny. Ain’t life wonderful.”
“They really get their rocks off if there’s a picture of a dead farang in the window. They laugh themselves sick. This is a special treat. A white face that’s been splattered all over the streets of Bangkok. They can’t wait to get back to the office and tell their friends. Phone their relatives.
“Guess what I saw in the temple window today? Mangled farang. Man, his face looked worse than a temple dog. He’s gonna come back to Bangkok as a snake or a pig or a monkey. And that will be a step up. Farang to monkey. That is progression. Advancement.”
Crosby swung his feet off the desk. He walked over to the window and looked out at the soi. There was no sign of Lawrence’s chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Crosby checked his watch; out of reflex, Snow checked his. Snow drummed his fingers on the desk, beating out a tune and humming.
“They could have been Aussies,” said Crosby.
“Who? ”
“Last night at the poker table.”
It had become something of a tradition for them to rally around the neutral ground of bashing Australians whenever the conversation became too personal, or they needed relief from the boredom of waiting.
“No way, man.”
“Why not the fucking Aussies? ” Crosby sounded slightly hurt as if Snow wasn’t playing the game properly.
“They’re the Appalachians of the Orient. Those wandos could never learn how to play poker. If you could teach one, he wouldn’t have any money. Besides, who’s going to play cards with an Aussie? You look across the table, and whammo, there’s this guy with a thick jawline. Heavy brows. Caveman head. He’s grunting for dead meat. I keep telling Tuttle, flood Australia. Turn it into rice paddies for the people on Java. Think about it. Fifteen million albino cavemen on that huge island. It’s a stone’s throw away from Java, man. You know how many Javanese are crowded on their tiny shithole island? One hundred million. And they’re starving their asses off. On a clear night the Aussies can hear all hundred million of them chanting.
“Rice, man. Need rice.
“Only the Aussies can’t understand them. Man, they only understand caveman lingo. Sooner or later someone’s gonna tell the Javanese to build ships. Put their people inside and invade Aussieland. Train the Aussies to plant rice. But that may be beyond the Aussie ability level. Planting rice takes a certain state of civilization. You gotta be able to use your thumb and index finger together. So how the fuck are they gonna play cards? ”
Crosby looked away from the window, grinning. “That’s Lawrence Baring’s car.”
Khun Kob came out of the headmaster’s office, wearing an orchid in his lapel and sunglasses, and walked to the window, standing shoulder to shoulder with Crosby. His personal comfort violated, Crosby stepped back, lit a cigarette, raising his eyebrows behind the headmaster’s back. Tuttle sat deep in the padded chair inside the office, leaned far behind so his head touched the wall, reading the Bangkok Post. An influential person, whose company traded on the stock exchange, had been machine-gunned on his way to the golf course the day before. There was a photograph of the bullet holes in the car door and the shattered windshield.
Lawrence, in a gray business suit, walked straight past Crosby, Snow, and Khun Kob, without exchanging a glance or word.
“Let’s hope the photography works,” Crosby whispered to Snow.
They gathered outside the office, ears pressed against the closed door.
“So what’s the problem, Larry? ”
“You know what the goddamn problem is. I won’t play any more games. I want my own people in this school. You call Snow, Crosby, and that . . . that buffoon running around with a cataract in a jar, teachers? And this joke you call Old Bill? He’s pure dead wood. You’re carrying a pack of losers.”
“You’re talking about my friends.”
Lawrence’s shrill groan echoed through the door. “The money goes through the American Embassy. They will supply the teaching staff. Let those clowns interview for a job. One more thing. No more bar girls teaching, or as students. I want a clean-cut all-American image. The Embassy has agreed to supply American flags for each student. You get the picture? ”
Tuttle cleared his throat and in a clear, controlled voice said: “I don’t think so, Larry. Have a look at these. You’re looking at the picture. Maybe the American Embassy would like to know who is putting up the cash and for what? Lawrence Baring, Esquire, skull-fucking little Patpong bar girls. That doesn’t set well with the American flag and loyalty oaths, does it? And what will your law firm think about that little girl—what is she, Larry, twelve, thirteen years old, going down on you at a bar? ”
“You sonofabitch.”
Tuttle nodded and mouthed the words, “Do it.”
Lawrence’s punch broke his nose. The force knocked him back into the padded leather chair. He staggered to his feet, surprised that Lawrence had packed so much into the blow; he nodded for a second punch. This one put him down. He looked up at Lawrence in a half blurry, spinning room. Then the door opened, and Lawrence stood framed in the doorway. “Any one sees those pictures, and I personally will make a phone call. One of my clients is a Teamsters’ local. I keep their pension funds straight. They owe me. And they know people who know people. People from Los Angeles who are world class with guns, bombs, and other toys; people you, and your Khun Kob, Snow, and Crosby might wish they had never met. And they will kill you so slowly you will want to help them with the process.”
Lawrence was given a wide berth leaving the school; his feet fell heavily on the wooden staircase. Crosby, Snow, and Khun Kob stood at the window, not saying a word, and after the Mercedes left, they found Tuttle, bloodied, his face swollen; his left eye puffy and nearly closed.
“You need a doctor. You’ll take a couple of stitches to close that cut above your eye,” said Crosby, kneeling down with a handkerchief, and wiping the blood away from Tuttle’s face.
“The guy was an asshole, man.”
“His demand to fire us was totally unreasonable,” said Khun Kob. “He cannot!”
“Lay off,” said Crosby. “The man’s been beaten because he wouldn’t let that lunatic fire us. Think how much face you would have lost. And with an election in the wind.”
“Forget about politics, man,” said Snow. “Shit, remember Jimmy Hoffa. The Tea
msters. The guy does pension plans for hitmen.”
Khun Kob hooked his thumbs into his belt hoops. He knelt down beside Tuttle, who was shaking his head. Tuttle moved his jaw back and forth, moaning. “I won’t forget your good ethics,” said Khun Kob. “We defeated this enemy together. Now we will make a better school. Colonel Chao has expressed an interest in our school. I will make an appointment and explain to him the drawback.”
“Just tell the Colonel we did our best,” said Tuttle, looking up at Snow and Crosby. “Friendship above money.”
“You may be the only farang in Thailand who put friendship and money in that order,” said Crosby.
“Being beat up in Thailand by a fucking American mob lawyer,” said Snow. “That’s why America’s doomed.”
A Killing Smile Page 31