Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  Old George frowned and shook his head. “What the fuck did you win? All I see are serious injuries. If that’s winning, what the fuck do you call losing?”

  “We rescued a kid, you old fart.”

  Calvino stood close to the bar; he still hadn’t got a drink. He raised his hand, pretending he had a glass. Old George looked pale, his eyes cloudy. All the years had accumulated and were pushing him from behind. He had started to feel his eighty-four years.

  Old George sneered. “I’ve got socks older than you, McPhail.”

  “That because you haven’t changed them since I was born.”

  Old George hummed and waved him off like he was one of the lottery ticket sellers trying to get into his bar. “How many stitches did they put in?”

  McPhail looked at his arm, “A hundred and ten.”

  “Fuck off,” said Old George. He leaned out of the booth and looked down the bar until he spotted Calvino. He waved his cane to draw his attention. “Vinny. That’s right, it’s you I’m talking to. What’s this about you staying overnight with some Spanish princess?”

  “Where did that come from?” asked Calvino, staring at McPhail.

  “How would I know? But it’s all over the Square.”

  “You believe rumors on the Square?”

  Old George looked sheepish, leaning forward on his cane. “Don’t bite my head off. I thought I’d ask. After the war I was in Spain and, ooh la la, those Spanish women were something. I thought maybe you got lucky. That’s all.”

  “Come on, man, you left Cowboy with her, a kid, and a hooker,” said McPhail, pulling a cigarette out of his mouth and gesturing with it.

  “And a kid and a hooker,” said Old George, his eyebrows shooting up. “The story’s getting a lot better. A tag team. That’s my boy.”

  The half-a-dozen people at the bar stared at Calvino, waiting for somebody to say something. “It wasn’t that way, George,” said Calvino.

  Baby Bear, the waitress, dressed in tight jeans and a T-shirt, appeared and put a Mehkong and Coke in his hand. She gave him a wide grin and nodded at Old George. He looked at the drink and then caught Old George’s idea.

  “It’s on the house,” said Old George. “You helped some people out last night. That’s what I heard. It’s your buddy here who said you bagged a Spanish princess. What the fuck does he know about Spanish?”

  “I speak better Spanish than you speak English,” said McPhail.

  Old George’s face knotted up as if he’d got a whiff of something dead behind the kitchen fridge. “I was speaking English to Nazis waving white flags before you were born. ‘Drop your rifle or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’ That’s all the English you needed to know during the war.”

  Calvino flashed an easy smile at Old George, whose heavily lidded eyes squeezed shut. The old man went still as if he was reliving some moment when German soldiers had refused to come out of a farmhouse. Calvino walked to his usual booth in the back of the bar. The plastic placemat, the spoon and fork, and the bottle of expensive ground pepper had already been laid out for him. McPhail followed with a fresh glass of vodka and tonic.

  “You phoned and asked about Casey. That’s why I’m here,” said McPhail, sucking on his cigarette.

  Baby Bear climbed into the booth behind McPhail and began to rub his shoulders and neck. “Don’t stop,” he said, eyes closed. “That feels good.”

  “What’s this about a Spanish princess?” asked Calvino.

  McPhail’s eyes half-opened. “I was joking with George. You know how he takes things literally. I know and you know the mem-farang wasn’t gonna get anywhere close to you. But do these guys want to hear that she brushed you off after you saved her ass?”

  “Why do you think she brushed me off?” asked Calvino.

  “After years bar-fining yings, you don’t have the skill that it takes for a mem-farang. They want a young guy and they want to be wooed. When’s the last time you ever wooed a woman? Sometime last century would be my guess.”

  Calvino shook his head and pulled his wallet out. “How much did the hospital set you back last night?”

  He saw that McPhail was looking past him, his brow furrowed. Calvino half-turned and saw the small corner shelf with the ceremonial plastic lotus painted gold, augmented with real flowers and a plate of bananas. A family of geckos had attacked the bananas. Calvino turned back around to find that Baby Bear, now kneeling, had both hands massaging McPhail’s skull. As she dug her nails in, he made tiny whimpering noises.

  “McPhail. Money. Hospital bill. Hello?”

  “Sorry, man, I’m still on painkillers,” he said, finishing off the rest of his vodka tonic.

  Putting down his empty glass, McPhail took out the envelope from inside the sling and passed it across the table. Calvino opened it, looked at the bill, and put it back in the envelope along with five-thousand baht. He slid it across the table. McPhail stuffed it back into his sling without looking inside.

  “That fucker with the knife last night wanted blood. And he got blood. If I ever see that asshole, he’ll wish he’d never been born.”

  “Did you get a look at him?” asked Calvino.

  McPhail shook his head. Only a few of the white skulls on McPhail’s black T-shirt were visible around the edges of the sling. It was his I-almost-died shirt that he wore whenever he had a near-death experience. “But I can find out.”

  “There’s no point doing that unless you plan on taking things to another level.”

  McPhail’s face deflated. He lit another cigarette. With his arm in a sling, there was no other level to which McPhail intended to take the matter. He just wanted to drink and smoke and talk—and get sympathy from the yings over his damaged arm. “What happened with you and the Spanish princess last night? Come on, something must have happened.”

  “Let’s talk about Casey,” said Calvino. The waitress, a grandmother to two children, brought a chicken potpie to their booth, dumping it, steaming hot, out of the aluminum pan and onto Calvino’s plate. She smiled like he was one of her grandkids.

  “Casey? You wanna talk about Casey?” said McPhail. “Let’s get it out of the way.”

  “You see the newspaper?” Calvino asked McPhail.

  Sipping his drink, McPhail shook his head.

  Calvino continued. “There’s a story about a secret CIA prison in Thailand, and it looks like Casey’s got some information. They want to pull him in to ask some questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” asked McPhail.

  “Why he destroyed the tapes of the interrogations,” said Calvino.

  “Casey knocking heads and smiling into the camera. That would be in character,” said McPhail. “That’ll have them talking at JUSMAG bingo night.”

  Earlier in the morning, Colonel Pratt had phoned Calvino, asking if he knew where Casey had gone. Calvino had had no idea. Casey was a client; he wasn’t babysitting the guy. He could be anywhere.

  “He’s making himself scarce.”

  McPhail exhaled a cloud of smoke and coughed. “Who in the fuck wouldn’t?”

  The Colonel had been around to Casey’s apartment and had been told Casey had left town. A lot of other people had been in and out of Casey’s apartment as well. Last time anyone had seen him, he’d shown up at the security desk with two suitcases and asked the guard to call a taxi for the airport. He must have been tipped that the storm was coming and slipped out of the country while he could.

  The security guard said he’d watched Casey climb into the back of a taxi, and that was the last anyone had seen of him.

  “He may have left the country,” said Calvino. “If Interpol’s after him, he’s on the run.”

  “What does Pratt think?” asked McPhail.

  “That he’s here in Thailand somewhere.” The Colonel had said it was doubtful that Casey had left the country. Immigration had a computer record of all foreigners who entered and left; Casey wasn’t one of the foreigners who’d left. Calvino’s reaction was that some
one at immigration had fucked up—put in the wrong spelling of the name, lost the card, or misfiled it. Or maybe Casey had managed to get through without the card getting processed or had used a fake passport. Or maybe he’d gone to the airport but hadn’t left the country.

  There were private ways of entering and exiting the airport, and a special-ops guy like Casey would have been familiar with how to come and go like a ghost, leaving no trail. “But why would he want to do that?” Colonel Pratt had asked. With someone like Casey there could have been a dozen good reasons bubbling under the surface. Colonel Pratt thought it most interesting that Casey would have told everyone he was going to the airport without saying exactly where he was going.

  The point the Colonel had made was that a military man like Casey didn’t go missing in action. Men like him knew exactly where they were going and the purpose for going there. Colonel Pratt thought it was more than a coincidence that Casey had left for the airport shortly after Ratana had come up with his phone number as the reason for Nongluck’s bundle of playing cards.

  After Calvino finished explaining to McPhail the Colonel’s failed attempts to track down Casey, he cut open his chicken pie.

  “Colonel Pratt found the taxi driver who took Casey to the airport. He’d dropped Casey and his two suitcases on the departure level. Casey gave him a hundred-baht tip.”

  “And he went inside, took the escalator up to arrivals, and took another taxi back to the city,” said McPhail.

  “Maybe, or maybe he just kept on going. If he doubled back, do you have any idea where he’d be hiding?”

  McPhail sipped his drink and got Baby Bear to light his cigarette. Worry lines appeared on his forehead. He shook his head side to side, as if to dislodge the little box holding all the ideas he had about Casey. “I followed him for three days. JUSMAG, Siam Paragon, Chinatown, the Nana Hotel coffee shop, an outdoor restaurant on Soi 4, a short-time hotel on Soi 40, and an eye clinic on Thong Lo. The man had a full schedule. I don’t see how he’d have time to draw the water for a waterboarding interrogation. Or rob banks or whatever other crimes they want him for.”

  Calvino had gone over the list with Colonel Pratt that morning. “You said you lost him in Chinatown.”

  “He fucking disappeared,” said McPhail. “Like a rat up a drainpipe.”

  Old George looked down the aisle from his perch. He pounded his cane on the floor a couple of times until he caught Calvino’s eye. “Does medical coverage come with McPhail’s assignments?”

  “Blue Cross all the way, George.”

  “Don’t talk to me about crosses. Are you paying his bill?”

  “He’s fully covered.” Calvino counted out the amount of the bill all over again, folded the notes, and handed them to McPhail.

  McPhail flipped through the notes and turned around. “He’s paid it, George. Twice over.”

  Old George leaned over his cane and smiled. “Don’t give him so much money, Vinny. He’ll slit his other arm himself. Now order some more goddamn food. Think of it as rent. I can’t make any money if all you do is come in here and use my place as your second office.”

  “Two specials. Will that do it, George?”

  “That’s more like it,” Old George shouted.

  Old George grimaced as he looked at the TV. He murmured under this breath, “I hate this cut-’em-up shit. But the girls love it. Go figure.”

  “How’s the arm by the way?” Calvino had forgotten to ask McPhail.

  “It looks like Godzilla chewed on it, mistaking it for a Happy Meal.”

  Calvino pushed the potatoes and carrots around his plate. He put down the knife and fork and leaned back, arms stretched out. Baby Bear worked her fingers into the knotted muscles along the sides of McPhail’s neck. He might have been cut up, but he didn’t look like he was suffering much.

  “What was Casey doing at an eye clinic on Thong Lo?” asked Calvino.

  “Getting glasses or his eyes checked.”

  “You don’t know? You didn’t take two minutes to go inside and ask?”

  “I didn’t have fucking time. This guy is running around like an Olympic sprinter. Did you want me to go in the clinic and yap about whether Casey is twenty-twenty or to follow circus boy to where he was flying to next?”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “Of course he did the right thing, Calvino.” Old George was eavesdropping while pretending to listen to the music. He couldn’t help himself from making editorial comments.

  “We all know that, George. I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

  “Have your conversation. Go ahead. Get your specials and talk. What do I care if some punk goes into some high-priced eye clinic in Thong Lo? It’s no skin off my nose. I know Casey. He’s been in my bar. He seems to have no eye problems. A man who goes to an eye clinic who doesn’t have an eye problem is looking at some other problem to solve. I’m eighty-four years old and don’t wear glasses. You see this black hair? That ain’t dyed black; it’s natural. And my kishkes are as good as when I was twenty-one years old. Ask any of these girls if I’ve got a problem with my kishkes. Just ask them.”

  Calvino thought sometimes he should put Old George on the payroll.

  “How many times can you use your kishkes? One day they’re gonna blow out like cheap tires on the expressway,” asked McPhail.

  “Don’t you start with me, McPhail. I just got you full medical coverage and you’re threatening my kishkes. They’ll be bumping and grinding long after you’re gone.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  TRACER WAS PARADING around the condo in black boxer shorts and an undershirt, sidestepping the pool table with the balls racked. The previous night hadn’t changed anything. They’d awoken in Bangkok to another hot day, a day of work in progress. A bank of clouds closed in on the distant horizon. He opened the balcony door and stepped outside. The air was heavy. Squatting down, he read the dial on the wind meter he’d clipped to the metal railing. The readout gave direction and speed. He glanced over his shoulder at Jarrett sitting at the table and nodded. Wind was down. That was good news. One factor in the calculation of targeting over distance was wind. Ignore it and the chances increased that the sniper would miss the target. Back inside, Tracer picked up a notebook and made notes.

  “Wind check?” asked Jarrett.

  “Five kilometers an hour, some gusting. Wind coming from the east.”

  “The weather report predicts rain. It shouldn’t be raining this time of year, should it?” asked Jarrett. He hated rain on the job. Shooting in a rainstorm not only knocked visibility down to twenty meters, it interfered with the flight pattern of the round. Bullets did funny things in the rain, and funny things weren’t what a sniper wanted a bullet to do. It wasn’t a standup comedy act; it was a closing act.

  “It’s been raining most afternoons,” said Tracer, looking up from his notebook.

  During the preparation for a job, Jarrett sometimes thought of himself as something like a professional golfer. His assistant, the spotter, was like a combination coach and caddy, a man whose wisdom, experience, and knowledge were indispensable on the course. But there was an important difference between the two games. A professional golfer who shot eight under par would go on to win nearly every tournament he played in and walk away with fat promotion contracts, a busload of groupies, and of course the prize money. Shooting the equivalent of eight under par for a sniper was failure. The expectation was a hole in one every time he teed off. Not even Tiger Woods could do that. Jarrett rotated his left arm in a wide arc, then his right arm. After that he dropped to the floor and did fifty push-ups.

  Waiting for the shot caused Jarrett’s muscles to stiffen up. The total focus and concentration made him feel edgy. He stayed alert and depended on the blues to pull him into the psychological zone he needed to occupy before pulling the trigger. Every sniper had his trick for finding that zone. Jarrett found it with Tracer’s help and the blues.

  So far it had been a normal job and norm
al conditions. The aborted shot came with the territory; Jarrett could deal with it. Sometimes they would set up in the field and wait three or four days for the target to appear. Then they got one shot, what in the trade they called the JFK special, the headshot that seals the deal. Pack up and leave the scene. In a few seconds the downtime is logged into the past as forgotten history.

  Something different was playing in Tracer’s mind. Jarrett looked up from his position at his friend. Tracer’s restlessness, his constant high-alert mode, was obvious, for instance in the way small things like a noise in the outside corridor spooked him.

  “Something’s bothering you, Tracer. It ain’t the wind. It ain’t the possibility of rain.”

  Tracer slowly moved his binoculars clockwise, scanning the buildings and the road below. “The first time we set up, the target didn’t show. An abort makes me uneasy. An abort is a whisper from deeper voices that somethin’s wrong.”

  “What else is the whisper saying, Tracer?”

  “They never tell you straight out. But they give little hints. Like, Tracer, you keep your eye out for what’s out of place. Look for what doesn’t fit in the picture. Is there anything or anyone who breaks the pattern of what you should be finding?” Tracer scanned the scene, finding vans, police cars, and a chopper that flew overhead; people in the windows of apartments, offices, and shops.

  “Anything stick out that shouldn’t?” asked Jarrett.

  Despite the long hours of waiting, a mission could roll faster than a dog with a back full of fleas. It made them both uneasy.

  Tracer lowered the binoculars; he had a ritual to perform. He touched them with his mojo bag, gently rubbing it down the barrel of the lens in neat, measured strokes. He muttered some words his father had taught him. Ever since Jarrett had known him, Tracer had had his touch of magic, a pinch of good-luck thing, and Jarrett never complained or made fun of it. Only this time, the ritual had gone on longer than before. That troubled Jarrett, who liked everything to be in place exactly as it always had been.