LONTAR issue #2

by Jason Erik Lundberg (editor)

  *

  Her cell phone gave a space-age whoosh. The message said: Call me.

  "So where are you?" Salee asked as soon as Mimi answered.

  "I'm in Surin. I've rented a room for a couple of days."

  "Can you boil a thousand eggs where you are now?" Salee said. After all, there was bound to be a wat around the corner—it was Thailand; even if Mimi had to make a run over the border there were plenty of wats over there. Khmer eggs were cheaper, too.

  "I don't know," Aunt Mimi said, "there's a kitchen but I don't know if they have a pan big enough. You really need a thousand?"

  "Achan Po's giving me an apartment worth seven million dollars before it was renovated—what's a thousand eggs? Anyway, I need magic to help my attorney."

  "But even if I find the eggs and a wat, it's not going to be an Achan Po temple."

  "It's covered in the teachings," Mimi said, "You can reach the Achan from a distance, like with a cell phone."

  "Okay, but be careful. There's only one way I could have known about that smack. He tried to kill me because of prison culture. If he didn't, he would have lost face. The one he really wants to skin alive and screw with a red-hot soldering iron is you. Your Aunt Pu's son Kee is in the same jail and says Somchai's already made a thousand calls to Thai Town in California. He has your snuff team lined up but he's having trouble transferring dough. The bank won't accept instructions from inside the jail. He'll probably try to do it on the cheap with one hit man, then follow up with a full crew if you survive."

  "Don't worry about it," Salee said, "just make sure you take the eggs to the wat. You want me to wire you the money now?"

  "No," Mimi said, "money I have. I'm in shock, that's all."

  *

  That evening, Bethany aka BW brought all the papers for her to sign and told her she was about to be the major shareholder, chairperson and managing director of a company named Grosvenor Interactive Interiors—well, you had to call it something. Salee very much wanted to give her attorney a top-up massage, but Bethany said she had to prepare for court and didn't have time.

  *

  On the day she had to go to court, Salee got up early to meditate in the bedroom she'd turned into a shrine. There was a plastic effigy of Achan Po high up on one of the walls that bristled with flashing purple lights, and a tray underneath where she placed bananas, oranges and a sachet of Nescafé. She figured he didn't need anymore eggs just at the moment. Then she dressed in a slick black trouser suit with white lace blouse and left to meet Bethany at her law offices. Salee found her legal counsel sitting in her chrome-and-leather swivel-back chair frozen to the spot.

  "I'm having a nervous breakdown... I just don't seem to be able to move... I can't understand it..." As she spoke, she turned gray and an expression of horror grew on her face.

  Salee looked under the executive chair and saw a thin trickle of yellow liquid. "Don't worry about it," she said and went to the bathroom to find some tissue and a towel. The lawyer obeyed her like a child and, bare bottomed, told her where she kept her spare black skirt and some paper panties. It took no more than five minutes to clean and re-dress Bethany Winsgrove Washington, but the attorney was shaking all over. Salee took her hand and led her down to the street to hail a cab. When she'd settled Bethany in the front seat she sat behind her and wondered what she was supposed to do with a zombie attorney at the most critical point of the scam? Trouble was, lawyers were people who needed an explanation for everything. Salee wasn't like that at all, she took her dharma straight from the Achan, no questions asked. She didn't know how to begin to explain anything. All she could do was close her eyes and wait for Achan Po to give her the right words. When they came, they were a little shocking, even for him.

  "Forget the law, it's a bunch of crap," she found herself saying as she massaged the nape of Bethany's neck, "the whole society's so messed up, it's like a piece of stellar debris falling into a black hole. Slip your chains and take off while you still can. Just step out into emptiness."

  The attorney's mouth opened and closed a couple of times. "Will you catch me?"

  "Of course not. You're weightless." Salee worked the back of Bethany's neck as long and hard as she could, then sat still and waited.

  "Wow," Bethany said, rubbing eyes that had turned into blue saucers, "this is better than coke. The criminal path to enlightenment! I never would have thought of it myself. Seems to work. Look."

  Salee looked at Bethany's outstretched arms. Straight as a ruler, steady as a rock. She'd better sit behind her during the hearing, though, in case she needed another sutra.

  *

  But once in court, Bethany put Salee in the witness box so she could tell Judge Ann Hawkins how one Somchai Nansurikorn had hired her company to carry out extensive re-decoration of the thirteen bedroom apartment, work of the highest order of craftsmanship with the best materials money could buy. With glacial calm, Bethany took out a file with about fifty photographs of the inside of the apartment. The judge lingered over the stainless steel kitchen for a moment and seemed to admire the island. Then came the punch line when Salee explained that the said Mr. Somchai Nansurikorn had disappeared without paying a penny of the bill. Bethany came up to the witness box to hand Salee a bundle of papers to verify. They included the incorporation documents and the long inventory of work done. Salee confirmed all the docs were what they purported to be.

  "Did you say the owner of this thirteen-bedroom apartment has simply disappeared without a trace?" Judge Ann Hawkins said, looking Bethany straight in the eye.

  Bethany coughed to indicate embarrassment at having to intimate what she could not prove, namely that there were indications that said Somchai Nansurikorn was involved in an illegal trade and was wanted by the FBI, but that was confidential and not to be bandied about.

  "He's thought to be in hiding somewhere in South America," Bethany finished in a rush, white as a sheet.

  "Big place," the judge said

  "Probably Argentina or Chile," Bethany said, one hand in the pocket of her jacket working a piece of tissue over and over.

  "Is this all in an affidavit somewhere, sworn by your client?"

  "Page 15C in the bundle," Bethany said, breaking under the judge's gaze and starting to shake.

  "So how are you going to serve him?"

  "We're applying to serve on the property itself," Bethany managed before succumbing to a fit of coughing.

  "Okay. Then if you prove the case, your client gets judgment for—what's the figure?"

  From the witness box Salee saw Bethany turn gray and wobble on her feet—and there was not a damn thing she could do about it. Well, there was one thing: "EIGHT MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND THREE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS, YOUR HONOR," Salee hollered in a voice crammed with righteous indignation.

  Silence. Judge Hawkins, stern as hell in her black gown, shifted the awesome burden of her attention from Bethany to Salee, as did the clerks, the ushers, the other lawyers and all the court groupies. The judge let a couple of beats pass, said, "Thank you, but please allow your attorney to answer my questions," then turned back to Bethany. "Is that the right figure, counsel?"

  "Oh, yes, your honor," said Bethany, quite recovered and clear as a bell.

  "Okay, so how does that help, if he's holed up in some bordello in Argentina?"

  "If we've been unable to locate the defendant by that time we would have no choice but to apply to take a lien on the property. Basically, we would have to transfer ownership of the entire property to my client's corporation."

  "How much is the property worth?"

  "It's been valued at about seven million, your honor, but that was before the extensive internal work undertaken by my client. It hasn't been valued since," Bethany said, steady as a rock.

  "You would auction it?"

  "Not necessarily, your honor, this is a poor time to be selling property. My client would wait for the market to move higher."

  "Okay," Judge Hawkins said, signed something
and gave the papers to her clerk to deal with. "Order for service on the property should be ready by tomorrow. Next case."

  In the cab back to Bethany's law offices, the attorney sat next to Salee in the back seat, smiled, curled up with her head on her client's shoulder and fell asleep. By the time they arrived she had woken up and was back to normal. Well, almost; there were lapses of concentration, as if a few dozen synapses had burned out, but otherwise okay. The attorney even managed some professional advice, in a stuttering, sporadic, bewildered monologue: there were plenty more steps to go...maybe the judge would want to see the work Grosvenor Interactive Interiors had done on the apartment, especially since she'd seemed to admire the kitchen...especially the island. "Maybe she'll use us to renovate her own place," Bethany said dreamily. "A new career for you and me. You know what? The law's just a bunch of crap."

  Salee said: "Is there a gun shop around here? I need to buy a few." Given the attorney's vulnerable state, Salee didn't want to explain that Somchai had already tried to kill Aunt Mimi and was likely using one of his prison cell phones this very moment to talk to Thai thugs stateside, so she said: "It's so big, that apartment, there could be burglars at one end of the place and you wouldn't know until it was too late. Squatters even." Bethany told her where the gun shop was but would not go with her to buy any. The tall skinny attorney stood on the sidewalk and waved a hand to take in the cavernous street. "This entire city is a piece of stellar debris falling into a black hole. Slip your chains and take off, everybody."

  *

  At the gun shop, Salee assured the clerk that what she wanted was strictly for her own protection, strictly to keep at home; no way was she ever going to walk the streets of New York with a firearm in her handbag. She wasn't American, after all. The clerk said that if it was strictly for indoor use there was no point worrying too much about accuracy; what they needed to discuss was stopping power. Basically, the bigger the caliber, the more stopping power. In the end she bought a couple of ordinary looking pistols and a handgun with a barrel so wide you could stick a tube of toothpaste down it. That one only fired plastic bullets, though. The bullets were thicker than her thumb, a lot thicker, but they didn't do any real damage. What you had to do after you stunned the assailant with the plastic bullet was to hold the gun by the barrel and clonk him over the head. Salee had little strength in her arms so she would have to use momentum: a great arc so the handle came crashing down just behind his ear. She guessed there would be more than one thug, though, even in the first wave, unless Somchai was still having trouble with the banks. In a big apartment like that, a lone Thai boy from up-country was going to be too scared of ghosts. Anyway, a single assassin she could deal with, no problem. But, like Mimi said, Somchai would sooner or later send an army after her, there would be a great gun battle like in the movies. That's why she'd asked for a half dozen of the semi-automatic combat rifles, but the clerk said he couldn't sell her any unless she had the right license. It sounded like another job for attorney Bethany.

  Salee supposed she'd be forced to bring over Uncle Tikka and his five sons: the Muay Thai boxing side of the family up in Isaan where they practiced getting kicked in the face from the age of eight and ended up hard as rocks with no brains. She'd taken the trouble to bribe someone in the American embassy on Wireless Road to get them visas, so they were all excited and ready to go. But she really didn't want to bring them over, it was going to be one almighty headache until the minute they got on the plane back to Thailand. Maybe it was already too late anyway? They would have to cancel a whole bunch of boxing engagements. She wondered, with a smile, how the Achan planned to fix it for her?

  *

  The doorbell rang. She didn't have any customers today, so who could it be? Nobody in New York showed up at someone's home without calling first; that was the best way to get yourself shot. She kicked off her slippers so she wouldn't make any noise walking down the corridor. When she got to the door and looked through the spy hole she saw it was a man in a black wool balaclava holding one of those combat rifles she wasn't allowed to buy. Good thing she'd taken her slippers off; if he'd heard her coming down the corridor all he had to do was spray the door and she'd have been duck curry. She walked back to the kitchen to collect the guns and some knives and a chopper from the knife block then found she needed a bag or something to put them in, so she grabbed her big handbag and returned silently down the corridor, hauling the knives and guns. The bell rang again. When she reached the spy hole, though, he'd gone. Well, he hadn't really, had he? He was pressed hard against the wall next to the door, with his rifle pointed at the ceiling, ready to rush her. Or something like that. The only good thing about the situation was that Somchai wasn't going to know for a few days if she was dead or not, so you could say Achan Po was using an early warning system here.

  What she needed was a ghost. Well, she didn't have one but she did have the shrine, so she left the bag next to the door and walked all the way to the shrine and stood on a chair to unplug the Achan and take him to the hall, where she put him on another chair and pointed him at the door and plugged him in so he was sending purple rays all the way to the front door. When she looked through the spy hole again she saw the thug in the mask was back with a skeleton key, which he was using to try to pick the lock. With maximum stealth Salee slipped the latch to make it easy for him. Too easy; when he put his shoulder against the door it flew open and there he was with his rifle and mask getting rayed by the Achan while she aimed the plastic bullet gun at his ear and pulled the trigger.

  Now he was deaf but not dead, holding his head with both hands, having dropped the rifle, wondering what the heck happened, staring with pop eyes at the purple-flashing Achan, certain he'd landed in one of the killers' hells already. She thought he was probably too tough to go down if she hit him with the gun the way the clerk at the gun shop had recommended, so she shot him in the head with one of the pistols at the same time as kicking the door shut, and now there he was, a corpse on the floor with a hole just behind his right ear and an exit wound coming out of his left eye. Bit of a mess; she'd have to clear it up later, after she'd thought about what to do.

  *

  Next evening, Salee lay on an Italian leather sofa in one of the lounges, reading a comic book in Thai, when the door bell rang. Who could it be? She wasn't expecting any more attacks until Wednesday and today was Monday, so she didn't bother to take her slippers off when she padded down the hall, which was now all spick and span, or riap roy as they said in Thailand: ship shape and ready to sail. When she looked through the spy hole, she saw it was Kline. When she opened the door she saw that he was standing bolt upright, all six foot seven of him, rigid, with a bunch of roses in his right hand. The roses, also, were held rigidly upright and Kline wasn't saying anything. It was like he was turned to stone. Not another zombie, Salee thought. She reached out and with the tips of her fingers stroked the massive fist that was holding the roses.

  "I, I, I," Kline said.

  "It's okay," she whispered, "it's just stage fright. Won't you please come in?"

  Even inside the flat he was still uptight. Salee was prepared to bet he hadn't done anything like this since he got engaged to his wife; probably not even then. To him she was a lady and he didn't have a clue what to do about her. She took the roses from him and led him down the hall to the kitchen so she could put them in a vase. "You okay, Kline?"

  "Can I have some water?"

  She poured him some Evian from a bottle in the fridge and he drank it all without stopping. "Just let me get it off my chest," Kline said.

  "Okay," Salee said.

  "I love you so frigging much it's like muscular dystrophy," Kline said.

  "Like what?"

  "I can't work, I can't sleep, I can't even watch baseball. It's been like that since the day I clapped eyes on you, but it's gotten one hell of a lot worse since you called me."

  "Muscular dystrophy is like that?"

  "I don't know."

  "T
ake off your shirt and pants. Keep your shorts on, we're not fooling around. We'll go into the lounge so you can lie face down on the sofa. No, wait, I'll get a towel and you can lie face down on the carpet. I'm going to give you a massage, move your chi to a better place. Okay?"

  "Okay," Kline said.

  "Forget the lounge, I want to take you to the shrine, so I can treat you in front of the Achan."

  "Okay," Kline said.

  She wanted to keep his chi out of his crotch for the moment, but she didn't want to open up the heart chakra and have to deal with all that dark emotion that was paralyzing him, which didn't leave much except the third eye, which was really all about smarts and Kline didn't seem to have too many of those. Probably he'd get a headache, which would be easier to deal with than the story of his disastrous marriage, his ridiculous kids or his lust for women other than the one he'd married: all the standard stuff.

  "How do you feel now?" she said when she'd finished.

  "A lot better. I'm hungry, though. You got anything to eat?"

  So the chi had got stuck in his gut. That was okay. "Want to order some pizza?"

  "Sure," Kline said.

  While they were waiting for the pizza boy to arrive, Salee said: "Kline, there's something I have to tell you."

  "A rival? I'll fight any duel for you. If you're telling me you're in love with another man, don't tell me who he is, I don't want to do time for murder."

  "This one's already dead," she said. "Want to see him?"

  She took him to the fifth bedroom, which she had locked. When she opened the door she realized she'd been so exhausted by all the cleaning she'd had to do the night before she'd not gotten around to taking the corpse's balaclava off. She let Kline do it while she was explaining, or half explaining, what had happened. She cut out the trafficking side of the story, and the laundering side of the story, and the scam she and Bethany had going to steal the apartment, which left vague hints about the Bangkok underworld and how once you get mixed up with those guys they just never let up, not even if you move to Manhattan. With the mask off, and minus an eye, the cadaver could have been any Thai man between the ages of thirty and forty. Probably a Muay Thai boxer, to judge from the rocky face and the scars.