Paying Back Jack

by Christopher G. Moore

  Jarrett and Tracer sat in silence, blending into the crowd. What set them apart was a degree of alertness that people waiting for planes don’t usually possess. From the tension in their bodies and the way they scanned everyone around them, Calvino could see they were still pumped up—on full-alert and looking for another shoe to fall. A couple of young farangs, one white, one black, looking like the weight of the world was perched on their shoulders. Calvino lowered Casey’s carry-on suitcase onto the table and eased himself into the chair next to Tracer.

  Calvino’s face was puffy and discolored from Casey’s beating and nicked here and there. There were small tears in his clothes, and his knuckles were raw from crawling on the balcony. He might have passed as a farang who looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Or he could pass as a geezer who had been mugged by a katoey in the shadows of a walkover.

  “How did you get through the front door?” asked Jarrett.

  “I told them I had a fight with my Thai wife. She won. I’m leaving the country. They waved me through. I think they get a lot of that,” said Calvino.

  “What do you want?” asked Tracer.

  Calvino searched his right pocket and then, shifting his weight, searched the left one. Digging deep, he pulled out the laser pen and pointed it at Tracer’s head and depressed the button on top. Then he laid it on the table. “Funny what kinds of gadgets can end up saving your ass,” said Calvino. Then he opened the carry-on case, pulled out Casey’s cell phone, and laid it on the table. “Casey had your numbers in his cell phone.”

  Jarrett picked up the phone.

  “He had you listed under Sniper and Spotter,” said Calvino, watching him scroll down the list of names and numbers.

  Jarrett found Waters at the very end. That was the name he wanted. He showed the phone to Tracer. “Lots of numbers,” he said.

  “He had me listed under PI, but I didn’t take it personally,” said Calvino. He didn’t mention that Casey had Nongluck’s buried under Whore #3 and Cat as Whore #2. That had left him guessing who Whore #1 was.

  Casey had a reputation for planning his missions meticulously. There was nothing half-cocked about the man. His training included counter-surveillance teamwork where he watched over high-value friendlies. That required an eye for detail. Hunting for a high-value target required one set of skills; another set was needed to find that one person in a crowd, an assassin, whose sole mission was to take out the person you’d been assigned to protect. Anyone in the crowd might pull a gun. Casey had the advantage, but this time it had failed him. If you did the numbers, you could see it was bound to happen. While talent and preparation minimized the risk, it didn’t eliminate it. In Casey’s case, he had been undone by a private investigator with no training but who came up, when it was needed, with one lucky move. Both Jarrett and Tracer marveled at how Casey had made the mistake of thinking he had it all figured out, that he was in control of the situation.

  “Take down all the numbers you want,” said Calvino. He watched Jarrett erase his number and Tracer’s from the address book.

  “What else you got inside that case?” asked Tracer.

  “Casey’s passport, showing immigration had stamped him out two days earlier, and a return ticket to London. The Bangkok-to-London leg has been used.”

  He’d booked the same flight that Jarrett and Tracer had bought tickets on. Tracer smiled as he looked at Casey’s ticket.

  “He planned it well,” said Calvino. “If you look at the whole package, Casey isn’t in Thailand. He’s somewhere in London. One more thing, I parked his car in the long-term parking with a ticket issued two days ago.”

  Tracer and Jarrett looked at each other. “How’d you do that?” asked Jarrett.

  “I switched tickets with another car I found one level up.”

  “So Casey’s in a pub drinking warm beer,” said Tracer, sipping his coffee.

  “Although there is a mess to clean up.” Calvino held out the keys to Casey’s apartment. “I don’t do housework.”

  Both men stared at the keys. “What’s in this for you?” asked Jarrett.

  “I don’t like being set up. And I don’t like cleaning up someone else’s mess.”

  Calvino dropped the keys on the table and pushed them across to Jarrett.

  “You’re not listening to what I’m asking. What do you want?”

  Calvino nodded, grinned, and put a hand on Jarrett’s shoulder. “Someone fucked with me. I’d like some payback. And I’d like some help.”

  Jarrett smiled and Calvino removed his hand.

  “You got your payback. Casey’s dead,” said Tracer.

  “He’s right,” said Jarrett. It was a moment that reminded him of MacDonald blinking back tears as he stared at the two dead men on the floor. The absurdity of standing and breathing flooded over MacDonald. Jarrett saw something similar in Calvino.

  Rumpled, bruised, with cuts on his face and hands, Calvino looked like a supervisor at a glass factory whom angry workers had fed through a machine. “It’s not finished. Casey was no lone gunman. He had to be working for someone. Maybe you’ve figured out who that is. And that’s why you’re leaving in a hurry. You know they aren’t going to let this go. I don’t see why I should take the blowback alone. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Roger that,” said Tracer.

  Jarrett pressed his lips together; he still wasn’t convinced. “Why don’t you tell us what you were doing hanging out with Casey?”

  Calvino shrugged, looked down at the blood-matted sleeve of his sports jacket, thinking there was no way the dry cleaner was going to get that out. “He came to my office with a job to do.” A tone of unease entered his voice. “Well, it seemed like a normal investigation at the time. He paid me to follow a Thai businessman’s mia noi and report her movements. His son had been killed in Thailand. The businessman was implicated in the murder. Casey had a legit beef. But it seemed his beef was with you guys. And as hard as I try, I can’t understand the connection.”

  A smile crept across Jarrett’s lips. “I hear you loud and clear, but there’s a problem.” He said it in a way that a Thai might say it, meaning a mountain stood in the way of getting across the road. “We’re not sure why he had a beef with us.”

  “I don’t see that as a problem. I see it as an opportunity.”

  “You don’t want to get involved in this,” said Tracer.

  Calvino cocked his head, nodded his head for a moment. “I am already involved. And I’ve got a bad feeling none of this ends with Casey. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Jarrett tapped a finger on the set of keys. “Casey’s condo might be a problem.” He looked around and, in a half-whisper, continued: “You have to understand that a .308 may have gone through the wall and hit something else. Maybe it hit someone across the hall. Someone may have called the cops, and they might be crawling all over Casey’s place now. We walk in and the first thing the cops are gonna say is, welcome boys, thought you might like to explain what you’re doing here and how Casey’s head isn’t where it should be, and his neighbor next door has a gaping hole in his chest.”

  “Except it was a soft-nosed round,” said Tracer. “That doesn’t keep on going for a mile and a half.”

  Calvino, hands on the table, looked at the two men. “The round didn’t go through the wall. Once it hit his head, it must’ve gone into ten thousand pieces.” Casey had just taken his eye away from the scope and looked up when the .308 slug passed through his skull at a point just above his ear.

  Jarrett and Tracer exchanged a look, with Jarrett leaning over and whispering something to Tracer.

  “If you’re fucking with us, understand that that is a mistake,” said Jarrett.

  “I’ve made mistakes with Casey. I don’t intend to repeat them,” said Calvino. “And from your situation, I’d say you two made a couple of mistakes along the line, too.” Jarrett and Tracer exchanged an uneasy look, part alienation mixed up with some serious anxiety. Calvino later told Colonel P
ratt that at that moment, he saw something in Jarrett; something that convinced him, this was a man who wanted to go back and deal with the problem. Tracer had been the one who’d have been happy to close the books on Casey, but he did what Jarrett wanted. The three of them shared a bond: Casey had carefully worked to put them in a position to kill them and someone had paid him for the job.

  “How do we know that you aren’t a fuck-up?” asked Tracer.

  “You don’t. I suggest we start by going to Thong Lo. You stay in the car a soi away,” said Calvino. “If the cops are there, you won’t get a call. If the floor is clear and Casey’s room is the same as I left it, I’ll phone and we’ll deal with it.”

  Jarrett exchanged a glance with Tracer, who nodded. There’d been something else, something from Reno’s bar, that had been bothering Jarrett. He decided it was best to get it out in the open. “What’s your connection with Wan?” asked Jarrett.

  Somehow it always came down to a ying. “I don’t have one. If it’s sex you’re thinking about, forget it. She helped us get that kid out of Cowboy. Wan knew the backdoor escape and led us out. I never saw her before that night. You see this?” He’d opened the palm of his hand and showed them the laser pen. “You saw the kid. Later, she gave it to me. One of those things you don’t think too much about. Maybe going through the window would’ve been enough to draw your attention. Or, again, maybe you’d have missed it. Somehow I have the feeling if she hadn’t given it to me, then you’d both be dead. I’d be dead, too. Does that answer your question?”

  The men waited, heads down, thinking, hands around their coffee cups. Then they looked up to study the private investigator sitting on the opposite side of the table. What did they know about this guy? Going back to town was taking one huge risk. Everything they knew told them to go straight through immigration and into the business-class lounge and forget this had happened. Calvino had run into their car in Washington Square, he’d run away with Jarrett’s ying, and he’d used a laser pen and a back flip through a balcony window to save their lives. But who was he?

  “Give us an hour. If we decide to board the plane, thanks for the signal. If we don’t get on the plane, we’ll meet you outside the arrivals terminal. And we can take a taxi back into town.”

  Calvino nodded, got up, and left the table. Jarrett checked the time and then dialed Harry Jarrett. He had a few questions about Casey that he wanted to ask his father. When the old man picked up the phone, Jarrett said, “I’m in a situation.”

  Harry knew exactly what that meant. He had about one hour.

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-EIGHT HOURS were required to fluff the premises; precision slicing, cutting, and cleaning left Casey’s condo clean—on the surface, that is. If a forensic team had gone through the place, they’d have still found all kinds of evidence. But the work was good enough for a condo with the rent paid up for three months and a tenant who’d punched out of the country, according to immigration records.

  As they’d worked, removing glass fragments from the balcony, stuffing the shards into a large black plastic bag lined with newspapers, Calvino had held up a mango-shaped piece of glass, turned it over, and dropped it in the bag. “You did the right thing,” he said. “Not shooting Somporn.”

  Jarrett caught Tracer’s eye. A glint of resignation passed between them.

  “Then I’m glad it worked out the way it did,” said Jarrett.

  “That would have been a shame. Hitting the wrong person,” said Tracer.

  “We never should’ve been sent to do this job,” said Jarrett.

  Calvino looked at the two men. “You know what? I want to believe you.”

  Two weeks later, Calvino received a plain envelope with a clipping from a New Jersey newspaper inside. No return address appeared on the envelope; it was postmarked from Newark. Waters’s body had been found by police, curled up inside the trunk of a car outside Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. He had been shot at close range, execution-style, into the back of his head. The killers had mutilated the body, removing the male package and placing it in a ziplock bag next to the body. The New Jersey authorities had no suspects or leads, and the murder was a professional hit. Calvino had to decide whether to pass the clipping on to Colonel Pratt. His friend had been patient, as well as distracted, as the election campaign had come to an end. Everyone in the department had been holding their breath, reading tea leaves to find evidence of their future under the new government. Somporn had been elected and was rumored to be in consideration for a cabinet position.

  Calvino had had some news of his own. Wan had gone home. Fon’s father hadn’t wanted her, so Wan had taken the kid with her. Juan Carlos had spent the money set aside for sinsor, the bride price, and cut a deal with Auntie, who was happy to count the money and hand over the girl. The Taiwanese customer wasn’t willing to match the one-million-baht price that Juan Carlos had offered. Juan Carlos and Wan had taken Fon upcountry, buying new hives and bees. He still hadn’t come back to Bangkok. Marisa had said, “He’s helping her with the bees.”

  Calvino understood and backed off.

  Marisa laughed. “Of course, you should go see Juan Carlos. But I’m returning to Spain. It’s where I belong. Not in this place.”

  The shock wore off as he recalled no one from the outside belonged in this place. The fortunate ones discovered that early enough to cut their losses.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me?”

  “I think you knew,” she said. “This is your world, Vinny. These people are you and you are them. I know you tell everyone that you’re from New York. But that isn’t true anymore. You’re from here. I can never be from this place.”

  “Thailand, home? I’m a New Yorker.”

  She grinned. “It doesn’t matter, does it? One day you must come and visit, and then we can talk about it,” she said. “We need some time.”

  “You might find me on your doorstep.” His crooked smile drew a smile from her as well.

  Her answer had been vague, open-ended, as their relationship had been. She’d chosen to be polite and he had chosen to let her slender thread of dignity and hope stretch to beyond the horizon.

  FORTY-THREE

  YOU CAN’T KILL PEOPLE without being haunted by them. Words to that effect crept into the conversation Jarrett had with his father. Harry Jarrett sat forward on the deck chair, slapping sunblock onto his neck. His son opened a beer and drank straight from the bottle. Behind them was the outline of Hua Hin, a fishing village that had become a small city hugging the shoreline. Casey had been dead for more than a week when Harry flew into Thailand. His son waited at the airport with a hired car and they’d driven to Hua Hin.

  “Looks different,” said Alan, nodding at the city.

  Harry rubbed sunblock on his arm, smoothing it forward toward his wrist. “We look different, too. So does the world once you let enough years accumulate.” He rubbed his hands together, stretched them back behind his head. “That feels better.”

  “You think it was a mistake to let MacDonald go?” he asked his father. It had been his idea at the time.

  “You said he was as much a victim as Jack. I thought at the time that that was a pretty good argument. After we’d saved his ass. I thought that a man’s not gonna forget that fact anytime soon.”

  The boat rocked softly as they sat together, watching for some movement of their fishing poles. The last couple of hours, Harry had been talking about a lot of people, places, incidents, but MacDonald had been one of the people who’d most interested Alan.

  Harry had classified clearance. But better than access to secret files, he had work experience with and personal knowledge of both Waters and Casey. But it came as a surprise to Harry that these two would betray everything they’d stood for. He phoned his son back on a secure line once and they talked about the possibilities. Included on Harry’s short-list were the Colombians, a Bosnian, and an Australian businessman. T
hey all had their reasons and sufficient funds for such an operation. But the Bosnian general was appealing a war-crimes conviction and that made it unlikely he’d risk getting involved in something that might prejudice his case. That left the clan running drugs out of Cali and the crooked businessman from Perth.

  He had done some deep soul-searching and following-up with people he’d not been in contact with for many years before he was confident about why things had happened the way they had in Bangkok.

  Harry reeled in the line, checked the bait before making a perfect overhead cast. The hook, line, and sinker broke the surface with a splash. “I’ve got a few ideas, but you’ve got to understand that a lot of what I’m saying is conjecture.”

  Jarrett stared at the empty sea, feeling the movement of the boat.

  “What’s your take?”

  “Casey was under pressure. Things went sideways on his last tour at a secret prison in Baghdad. I know the guy who got him the assignment in Bangkok and fixed his problems in Baghdad. A report got passed down the line along with a death certificate or two, stapled to a medical affidavit that the men had died of natural causes.”

  Jarrett looked at his father, who’d stopped to take a sip of beer. The old man was still in pretty good shape, he thought. It had been Harry’s idea to hire the boat in Hua Hin.

  “What was the deal he had with Waters?”

  Harry showed his teeth, pulled his baseball hat forward over his forehead. “Damn, I forget how hot it gets here.”

  “Waters,” said Jarrett.

  “Casey had accumulated a lot of chits, knowing one day he might need them. It seems one of his major debtors was Waters. You already know they were buddies in the marines. Waters first met Casey in Beirut. Terrorists had blown up a building, killing a lot of our men. Waters should have been in that building, but he wasn’t. Casey had insisted he stay behind and help him close the bar late. So Casey had saved his life. A few years later, Casey was best man at Waters’s wedding. Waters and Casey stayed in touch. After the first Gulf War, Waters joined Logistic Risk Assessment Services as a private contractor. I always liked that name; it could have been an insurance company. They sent him to Iraq. I’d known Waters for a long time. It seemed kind of natural he’d continue helping out as he had in the past. He was good at finding the right men for a freelance job. He’d done a payback job before, and I’d briefed him on the background. Maybe I talked a little to much about Jack Malone and what happened to him.” Harry Jarrett sighed like a man with a regret rising to the surface.