More Deaths Than One

by Pat Bertram

  Bob stared at him, not knowing what to make of the words. They sounded crazy, but said in that quiet, apathetic voice, they were also chilling.

  “What do they want you to believe?”

  “They said I saw aliens, but I didn’t.”

  “Why would they want you to think you saw aliens?”

  “I don’t know.” Townsend looked at Bob in surprise, as if he’d never asked himself that question. “Why would they?

  “I don’t know either,” Bob replied.

  Townsend’s gaze wandered, and all of a sudden his eyes grew round. He scrambled out of the booth.

  Bob held out a hand. “Don’t go.”

  “I have to. It’s the mean one. She yells at me.”

  Looking around, Bob saw a frizzy-haired, dark-skinned woman in a waitress uniform, scowling at the fleeing Townsend.

  “What was he doing here?” she demanded of Kerry.

  “I let him,” Kerry responded. “This once.”

  The scowl faded, but the voice remained hard. “If he comes in here again, I’m calling the cops.”

  ***

  The porch was old, solid, made of stone like the house. Its waist-high wall lined with potted plants hid a wooden swing from passers-by. Forsythia flanked the stone steps.

  “Pete didn’t build this porch,” Kerry commented as she unlocked the front door of the house. A mocking smile glimmered in her eyes. “As old as it is, I bet it will outlast anything he makes.”

  “What does your friend do?” Bob asked, taking note of the expensive-looking décor in the living room. Except for the brass lamps and the touches of turquoise, rust and black in the throw pillows and in the abstracts hanging on the walls, he saw only tints of ecru.

  “She’s a property manager for a multi-national corporation based in Germany.” Kerry tossed her keys and purse on the blonde wood coffee table. “We met in an accounting class at Community College where I went to learn how to do the books for Pete. Neither of us has a college degree, but she has a great job and travels all over. She also owns this house, stock in the company she works for, and a BMW. All I have are a few boxes of clothes and books, plus my car, which I’m still paying off. Life is strange at times, don’t you think? God, what am I saying. Of course you think life is strange.”

  She took Bob on a quick tour of the house, explaining that she used the guestroom, but that he could stay in her friend’s room.

  “You look exhausted,” she said. “Why don’t you get some sleep? If you need me, I’ll be right next door, changing out of my uniform.”

  Bob stood in the center of the gray-furnished room. The heavy musk perfume in the air made him feel claustrophobic, and he decided he’d rather sleep on the couch in the living room. As he left, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the dressing table. He moved closer to study his mirrored reflection and was reassured to see the same lean body, the same unimpassioned brown eyes, the same unremarkable, unsmiling face framed by shaggy brown hair in need of a trim.

  He tried to superimpose the other Robert’s image over his own. Was the resemblance as remarkable as he had first thought? The shape of their face, nose, chin seemed to match, as did their height and eye color, but there were differences, most notably weight, posture, skin tone.

  He sat on the couch in the living room and got out his wallet—the same wallet he had carried with him ever since college. He left his money untouched, but one by one laid the rest of the contents on the coffee table. A 1970 Colorado driver’s license. An ancient Denver Public Library card. A yellowed social security card. Lorena’s picture. Her Dear John letter written on tissue-thin paper. Dunbar’s business cards.

  “I thought you went to bed,” Kerry said, but-toning her shirt as she entered the room. She perched beside him. “What’s this?”

  “All I have to prove that I am myself.”

  She picked up Lorena’s picture. “This is Robert’s wife.”

  “And my college girlfriend.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Kind, gentle, unable to say no. Whenever anybody needed help, they went to her. I remember once we planned to go to the mountains for the weekend. We both looked forward to it, but she cancelled out at the last minute because a friend had a crisis with his mother.”

  Kerry took one final look at the picture, set it aside, and reached for the letter. “‘Dear Bob,’” she read aloud. “‘I know I promised to wait for you, but our being apart has given me time to think about what I want out of life. I now realize you’re not the kind of man I want. I’ve found someone else. By the time you receive this, we will already be married. I’m sure you understand that things are different now. This is the last letter I will ever write you. Don’t contact me. Sincerely, Lorena.’” Kerry turned her head toward Bob. “She doesn’t sound kind and gentle to me or like someone who can’t say no.”

  Bob took the letter from her and reread it, though he didn’t need to; he remembered every word.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I never noticed that before.”

  Kerry gave a little laugh. “No wonder you have headaches. Thinking about how she broke up with you to marry another you makes my head pound.” Her voice grew soft. “Did she hurt you?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How can you not remember?”

  “Right after I got the letter, I had an encounter with a landmine. Some of my memories from that time are fuzzy.”

  He could feel the alarm radiating from her suddenly still body. “You were blown up?”

  “I sustained no major injuries. My brain got a bit jostled is all. The doctor said I shouldn’t have any problems, but there might be some minor memory loss.”

  “And was there?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think so, but if I can’t remember, how would I ever know?”

  She nodded. “Good point.” Turning her attention back to the contents of Bob’s wallet, she grabbed Dunbar’s business cards and flipped through them.

  “Who’s Robert Dunbar? Oh, right. The golfer. Why do you have so many of his cards?”

  “Every so often he’d hand me a card, tell me if I’m ever in Denver to call him and we’d go to one of the golf courses around here. I always stuck the card in my wallet. I didn’t realize I had so many.”

  “Are you going to call him?”

  “No. He makes me uncomfortable. Golf wasn’t the only pleasure he found in Thailand. He often boasted of threesomes and sexual exploits involving pain—not his own, of course. I never met his wife, but I felt sorry for her.”

  “He sounds like the kind of guy who thinks his infidelities don’t count in a foreign country.” She set Dunbar’s cards aside, then studied the driver’s license, library card, social security card. When she finished, she turned sideways, pulled her legs onto the couch, and sat cross-legged, facing Bob.

  “Forgetting about the obituary that didn’t appear in the paper around the time of your mother’s first death, it does seem as if you’re the real Bob Stark. Or one of them. But I don’t see what that has to do with people hunting you. If they were at the airport waiting for you when you got to Denver, it means you had to come to their attention before you got back to the United States. What were you involved with in Thailand?”

  Bob gathered his papers and replaced them in his wallet. “Nothing. I lived a very quiet, serene life.”

  Laughter sparkled in her eyes. “Serenity is a big thing with you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It’s something Hsiang-li and I had in common.”

  “How did you two meet? If he’s as uncommunicative as you, how did you ever get to know each other?”

  “I went to The Lotus Room one day, attracted by its architecture. It was white and had a gold tiled roof with curled eaves, like a one-tiered pagoda. When I stepped inside, I found boisterous college students on spring break. Before I could leave, I noticed a door leading to an enclosed courtyard, and I went out to investigate. Eight-feet-tall, one-foot-thick walls muted the
incessant noise of the traffic. Enormous flowerpots containing bushes, small trees laden with fruit, and an incredible array of flowers obscured the walls.

  “In the center of the courtyard I saw a round pool laid with tiles shading from pale sea green at the rim to dark forest green at the bottom, making it appear fathomless. Pink and white lotus floated on the surface of the pool, and iridescent fish darted among them. Tables and chairs ringed the pool, but no one sat at them.

  “Hsiang-li came out, wearing rich green pajama-like pants and a thigh-length tunic decorated with gold metallic braiding. He said, ‘You like beautiful things,’ with an inflection that made it not quite a question nor yet a statement. I agreed, and the two of us contemplated the pool in silence for a long time. Then Hsiang-li nodded at me, saying, ‘Enough said,’ and went back to work.”

  Bob stopped. “How do you do that?”

  Kerry’s eyes widened. “Do what?”

  “Get me to talking. I don’t like to talk, especially not about myself, yet when I’m with you I chitter like a cricket.”

  She laughed. “Maybe, but you still haven’t told me what you did in Thailand.”

  “Nothing much. I worked for Hsiang-li. I painted. I explored the city. I went for long runs. Sometimes I had drinks with a friend. I led a very quiet life.”

  “People don’t hunt down others for no reason. You must have been done something.”

  She propped her elbows on her knees, put her fists to her cheeks, and stared at him.

  He tried to picture his life from the outside in, the way she would see it, rather than from the inside out the way he saw it. After a while his lips quirked in the faintest of smiles.

  “Well, there was that one thing.”

  Chapter 7

  Kerry’s eyes danced. “With you there’s always that one thing. ‘My mother passed away, and oh, yes, she’s already dead.’ ‘I went to the funeral, and oh, hey, I was already there.’ ‘I’m a mousy little fellow who’s led an uneventful life, but oh, gee, someone’s out to get me.’”

  Bob’s lips twitched.

  “Aha!” She held up four fingers. “Smile number four. Before you know it, you might even laugh. Or not.” The levity disappeared from her voice. “I guess you don’t have much to laugh about. So, what’s this one thing?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I have all night.”

  Bob drew in a breath. “Shortly after I met Hsiang-li, he mentioned that his restaurant used to be a quiet place, but a couple of years previously all these loud young people started to congregate there. When he said he didn’t know why, I told him a guidebook called A Pauper’s Guide to Thailand listed The Lotus Room as one of the cheapest places to eat. He got very still. Then, in a quiet voice, he told me that in China an Old Master Cook is a national treasure. His father had been an Old Master Cook and so had his father, and before he left China, Hsiang-li had been on his way to becoming one, too. He couldn’t believe people came to his restaurant for the cheap prices and not for the great food.”

  “Why did he leave China?” Kerry asked.

  “He was on Mao’s list of people to be purged.” Seeing her mouth forming the question, he said, “I don’t know why. Neither did he. But that’s another story. I suggested he triple or even quadruple his prices. People who appreciated good food would still come, and the others would find another cheap place to eat. I also suggested fixed rates to attract businesspeople who were too busy to haggle over prices but couldn’t stand the idea of anyone paying less than they did. He didn’t say anything, but after that his prices crept up until his became one of the most expensive restaurants in Thailand.”

  Kerry laughed. “When you said long story, you meant long story.”

  “Perhaps I should stop.”

  “No, don’t. I was teasing you.”

  “All right. When I finished eating that day, Hsiang-li asked if I would do a favor for him. He had a delivery to make at the Sheraton Hotel across the street, but he couldn’t leave right then and had no one else he could trust. I agreed. He reached under the bar for a parcel about the size of a brick, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string.”

  “Oh,” Kerry said, her voice flat. “I bet I know what was in the package.”

  “I thought I did too,” Bob admitted.

  “And you took it anyway?”

  “I trusted him, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. A week later, he asked me to make another delivery, which I did, but the third time I asked if the packages contained drugs. ‘No drugs,’ he assured me. ‘Then what?’ I asked. ‘Stolen merchandise?’ He smiled at me and said, ‘In a way.’ ‘In what way?’ I asked. I told him I’d been in the army for two years and had no intention of spending any more time in mandatory confinement, especially not in a Thai prison. He smiled at me again and said, ‘I am glad to hear you say that. Come, I have something to show you.’”

  “What?” Kerry asked when Bob paused. “What did he show you? Was it stolen merchandise?”

  Bob held up a finger. “Hsiang-li unlocked a door behind the bar. It led into a cool storeroom containing his back stock of liquor, beer, and wine. He turned on the light, stepped aside to let me enter, and locked the door behind us. A few steps took him to a rack half-filled with dusty wine bottles. He pressed a spot on the wall next to the wine rack at about knee height. The entire rack swung out to reveal a solid metal door with a combination lock on it, like the door to a bank vault. He fiddled with the lock for a few seconds, then opened the door.”

  Seeing the rapt expression on Kerry’s face, Bob feigned a yawn. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed now.”

  “You can’t stop now,” she exclaimed. “That’s not fair.” Then her mouth dropped open. She threw a pillow at him. “You’re teasing me.”

  “A little.”

  She grinned impishly. “It’s those hidden shal-lows again. I never know when they’re going to ooze to the surface and amaze me. So, what was in the room?”

  “Antiques. Old pottery, Thai bronzes, wood-carvings, porcelain figurines, jade Buddhas, heavy gold jewelry. One display case contained several small, very old, highly glazed figurines. All were the same color—pale tan with sepia accents—and all looked as if the same long-forgotten artist had made them. A few were realistic depictions of animals, like the ornate elephant in full regalia, while others were fanciful creatures such as unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots, and eagles with peacock feathers.”

  “They sound beautiful,” Kerry said.

  “They were. I wanted to ask Hsiang-li about them, but he stared into the case with such a look of sorrow on his face that I couldn’t intrude.”

  “Did you ever find out about them?”

  Bob nodded. “But not then. Hsiang-li roused himself, and pointed out various porcelain bowls. Bencharong, Sawank’alok, celadon.”

  Kerry tilted her head. “Celadon? Isn’t that a pale green cracked glaze? I’ve seen it in import shops.”

  “You probably saw Thai celadon, a repro-duction made by following the original Chinese method of glazing with natural wood ash and firing it in a white heat kiln, so it looks exactly the same as the ancient Chinese celadon. Hsiang-li’s celadon bowls, however, were some of the original pieces made in China. They were more than two thousand years old.”

  “You never answered my question,” Kerry said.

  “Which question?”

  “Was it stolen merchandise?”

  “No. All of it had been legally purchased from legitimate dealers and people who needed money so desperately they had to sell their family heirlooms.”

  “So what did Hsiang-li mean when he said that in a way it was stolen?”

  “Because the people who bought it thought it had been.”

  An uncertain look crossed Kerry’s face. “They thought it was stolen, and they still bought it?”

  Bob nodded. “Hsiang-li told me people go to Thailand expecting to buy cheap antiquities. One way to get them to pay what the ob
jects are worth is to make them believe they’re stolen. People are willing to pay a lot of money for stolen merchandise, perhaps because they feel they are getting away with something.”

  Kerry spread her hands. “I don’t get it. How did he make people believe the stuff was stolen?”

  “Bribery, mostly. Periodically he paid cops to arrest him on charges of selling stolen antiquities. They always dropped the charges, of course, but word got around. Secret meetings, hushed phone calls, sur-reptitious hand-offs, and other clandestine activities also helped get the point across.”

  “That hidden room probably helped, too.”

  “He didn’t bring customers there. He told me he’d never take the chance of showing the place to anyone who seemed willing to break the law.”

  “Was pretending to sell stolen property worth it?” Kerry asked.

  “Hsiang-li thought so. Mao Tse-tung killed off perhaps sixty million Chinese and forced millions of others to flee their homeland. All they had left were the few treasures they managed to take with them, and Hsiang-li wanted to make sure they got the true worth of their heirlooms. He also bought antiques from dealers, added a hefty profit for himself, and sold them to rich people who still paid less than if they got them through one of the big international auction houses.”

  Kerry’s brows drew together. “So what does all this have to do with the guys who are after you?”

  “Maybe nothing. You’re the one who wanted to know what I did in Thailand. But I haven’t reached the end of the story.”

  Kerry uncrossed her legs, and stretched them. Then, curling up again, she said grandly, “You can continue now.”

  “About three months ago, when I passed the door to Hsiang-li’s office, I heard voices inside. Since I understand a little Chinese, I knew someone was threatening Hsiang-li. I stepped into the office. Two Chinese men of average size with calm demeanors and very cold eyes leaned toward Hsiang-li. Their hands hung loosely by their sides, but their postures seemed menacing. They didn’t look like typical bruisers. They wore expensive business suits and appeared well bred, educated. They glanced at me. One said, ‘Oh, the kwai lo.’ Then they turned their backs on me. Hsiang-li hunched in defeat, and I knew something dangerous was going on.”