The Marriage Tree

by Christopher G. Moore

  He showed them into his office.

  “I work cheap,” said McPhail. “Not for nuts, but cheap.”

  “Life doesn’t always work out the way we wish,” said Innes.

  “We won’t take much of your time,” said Calvino, moving inside the office.

  Innes occupied a stylish setup, an elegant package wrapped in chrome and glass that reeked of money. Innes slipped behind the bar, positioning himself in front of his notebook computer and a stack of IPO listings. Another computer was on his office desk at the other end of the room.

  “That’s good. I have very little time.”

  “The demands of work,” said Calvino, taking a stool at the bar opposite Innes.

  “I was told you were once a lawyer.”

  He’d Googled Calvino’s name. The desired knowledge was never more than a couple of clicks away.

  Calvino leaned forward, elbows on the bar.

  “That was a long time ago. New York still had the Twin Towers.”

  “Those good old days are gone.”

  “They weren’t all that good,” said Calvino.

  Innes raised an eyebrow.

  “At least we can agree that, whatever they were, those days are behind us.”

  They circled around each other, buying time, sizing the other guy up like a couple of prize fighters in round one.

  “On the phone you said you had contacts in Rangoon who might be useful for one of my clients,” Innes said.

  Innes ran a one-man Bangkok consulting operation. Calvino had seen his type of expat businessman before. He might not understand a lot about Thai culture, but he got one thing right—in Thailand appearance is substance. What you see is all there is. Nothing behind the mask but another mask, so what would be the point of ripping off the mask? Innes’s office was big enough to house half a dozen lawyers. All that space for one man—that was a message. In the hyper-dimension of business, power needed lots of room.

  Innes’s personalized style had the look of a private members’ club designed in the minimalist tradition—sleek, opulent, polished designer furniture with surfaces as slick as a candy apple. Cherry wood bookshelves that rose from floor to ceiling against one wall were filled with leather-bound law books that looked untouched. Another wall displayed one of those museum-sized Burmese canvases of hill tribe people working the land. A full wet bar with stools and glass mirror was on the left side, and opposite the bar was a sitting area that featured one of those ten-grand sofas that looked like it had been looted from a Middle Eastern palace. The office was his personal signature, each detail confirming the status of Innes as a substantial person.

  He grinned as he watched Calvino and McPhail drink in the fine details of their surroundings.

  “Hey, I know the guy who painted that,” said McPhail, walking up to the huge framed oil painting. “How’d you get something that size out of Burma?”

  The question gave Innes an adolescent’s joy that his efforts were appreciated, perhaps even envied.

  “That’s confidential,” he said.

  “Lawyer’s talk for getting away with a crime,” said McPhail. “I never seen anything he painted this size.”

  “A one-off commission,” said Innes. “The original buyer had a sudden financial problem and needed money.”

  In Bangkok, unless a man’s showcased possessions re-moved all doubt about his success and wealth, he had no entry to the backrooms where the deals were made, no important friends in high places—and that meant he existed in perpetual orbit, ringing around but never quite landing inside the network. Calvino had checked out James Arthur Innes and found that he had received large retainers from resource and energy companies doing business in Canada, the United States, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia. Hiring a lawyer like Innes was useful for big foreign corporations, which coughed up large fees for his access, negotiation skills, monitoring and reporting on the shifting power arrangements inside the Thai business and political system. He delivered the important stuff that couldn’t be found online or done in backroom offices of legal drones working in Bangalore.

  Innes was sitting pretty. He had the smug confidence of a middle-aged white man gone soft at the waist, the flesh on the face going slack around the jawline, with strong shoulders under the tailor-made suit. Calvino scanned the framed photographs perched in front of the law books on two of the bookshelves. Four of them were of Thai women, smiling—one in a nightclub, another on a beach, the third at an exclusive restaurant and the fourth, a younger woman, sitting on the ten-grand sofa, legs stretched out, throwing the photographer a kiss. Jane Doe wasn’t among them.

  McPhail poured himself a scotch from a bottle of fifteen-year-old single malt whiskey.

  “The minister of natural resources is an old pal of mine,” said McPhail.

  He mentioned a name.

  “I’ve played tennis with him,” said Innes. “But that’s not the reason you want to talk to me.”

  Calvino pulled a photograph of Jane Doe out of his briefcase and slid it across the bar.

  “She’s the reason.”

  Innes slipped on a pair of gold-framed reading glasses. He picked up the photograph, studied the face and removed his glasses. Calvino watched the expression on his face. The photograph of a woman you know, someone you’ve slept with, someone you’ve kept, who is now obviously dead, will cause the hardest face to flinch. Nothing registered on Innes’s face as he laid down the photograph.

  “Who is she?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”

  “What makes you think I know her?”

  Calvino gave him a second photograph with a close-up showing the tattoo on her left ankle.

  “Same girl, different angle.”

  Innes again examined the photograph as if it were a footnote in an IPO offering and then looked up.

  “Take a look at the tattoo on her ankle,” said McPhail.

  “With your initials,” said Calvino.

  “She wasn’t much older than this whiskey,” said McPhail, lifting his glass in salute.

  Innes broke out laughing.

  “You come to my office with pictures of a dead girl who has the word ‘heart’ tattooed on her ankle, and you think we have a connection? I should throw both of you out.”

  Calvino glanced over at the bookshelves.

  “Before you do that, I see you keep pictures of your women. Collectors are in my experience proud of their possessions. Your outrage isn’t all that convincing. Before I go, I’d like to ask if any of the ladies in those pictures have your initials tattooed in private places?”

  “Get out!” Innes said.

  “No way I’m leaving any fifteen-year-old whiskey behind,” said McPhail, draining his glass. “And I do know Mr. Big in the mining business in Burma. If you want an introduction, we can work out a commission.”

  “Out!” said Innes.

  Innes came around from his side of the bar with a Glock and waving it like a magic wand or a baby rattle—the way a man flashes a gun when he doesn’t have any experience in handling one. He was acting like a man whose knowledge of guns came from TV.

  “You can take a man out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the man,” said McPhail, shaking his head as he stared at the weapon.

  “One last question: where were you on Tuesday night?” asked Calvino.

  Halfway surprised the sight of the gun hadn’t triggered a hallucination, Calvino decided that, if nothing else, this stagey threat suggested that maybe he was getting over his ghost problem.

  Innes lowered the gun.

  “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”

  “Just answer my question, Innes,” said Calvino, making no effort to get up from the bar.

  “I pulled an all-nighter to meet an important deadline,” said Innes.

  “You were in your office alone?”

  Innes clenched his jaw, shaking his head. It occurred to him that Calvino wasn’t someone he could easily throw out of the of
fice, close the door on and have the problem go away.

  “I was with that one,” said Innes, pointing the barrel of the Glock at the last photograph on the bookshelf.

  It showed a twenty-something Thai woman in a tight red dress with bee-stung lips, narrow hips and a smile like she’d been plugged into an electric circuit board.

  “Her name is June. She spent the night.”

  Calvino climbed down from the bar stool, walked over to the bookshelf, pulled the frame off the shelf, turned it around, opened it and took out the photograph. He looked on the back. Innes was the meticulous type—IPO work required a certain mentality about information—and he’d written June’s name, phone number, date of birth, address and breast, waist and hip dimensions on the back.

  “You can print another one. I’d like to take this one.”

  McPhail said, “Man, he’s gonna shoot you if we don’t get out of here.”

  “Mr. Innes would only pull the trigger if he could bill for it. Otherwise, no, he wouldn’t shoot anyone. This isn’t Chicago. Isn’t that right, Jim?”

  Calvino had walked back, stopping a couple of inches from Innes, crowding him, the intimidation of physical proximity that people from New York taught people from Chicago.

  A man who lavishly furnished an office might have the temperament to redesign the women in his life. Plastic surgery was another form of art appreciation.

  In the elevator ride down to street level, McPhail said, “A nasty bastard, even for a lawyer. Because he’s loaded, he thinks he can pull a gun. What the fuck was that?”

  “He’s operating in a tough world. So he thinks he has to act tough or he’s gets eaten before breakfast. And what is his one brilliant idea? Wave a gun. He’s a two-bit actor who wants to be taken seriously as a performer,” said Calvino. “He’s been lucky so far to play before amateurish audiences. Innes is a cheerleader pretending to be a quarterback.”

  Lighting a cigarette, McPhail countered: “Wrong. He’s like the team owner. That painting from Burma is worth at least a couple of hundred grand. Think about it, Vinny. What’s in it for Innes to kill the girl? He can buy, trade, exchange or throw away any woman he wants.”

  McPhail had an insider’s logic and experience. Either way, from what Calvino had seen, Innes didn’t have the stuff of a murderer. Posers, he knew, are cowards underneath, covering their fear with masks of bravado, afraid someone might discover the truth and humiliate them. Also, Innes had an alibi, and Calvino would check it with his girlfriend named June.

  “Akash didn’t kill the girl,” said Calvino. “But the difference between Innes and him is Akash is in jail. He’s a nobody without a wall to hang his shirt on.”

  McPhail took a long pull on his cigarette.

  “Why do you give a shit about the khaek?”

  As the doors opened, Calvino walked out first.

  “I’m thinking about Jane Doe’s family. Do they even know that she’s missing? If that were my daughter, I’d want someone to tell me she’s died.”

  “When Innes pulled the gun, did you have one of your hallucinations?”

  Calvino shook his head.

  “No flashback. No nothing. A middle-aged guy in a suit, his hand shaking as he held the gun... No, all I felt was contempt. I don’t think anyone has ever hallucinated on contempt.”

  “That’s good, or you’d be lost in a permanent state of delusion.”

  With McPhail, Calvino found he either laughed or cried.

  “Ed, if truth were an economy, the trend line would be clear. We’re in for a major depression. Separating people from reality is all there is left.”

  “No wonder you hallucinate, Vinny.”

  “Ain’t it the truth?” said Calvino.

  The elevator door opened and they stepped out into the corridor filled with people going about their business.

  TWELVE

  A FEW MINUTES before four on Friday afternoon, Mon Hla strolled the grounds outside the family hut in Mae Hong Son, shading her eyes against the bright blue sky and trying to avoid staring into the blinding, fiery ball of the sun. She’d heard something coming from the direction of the mountains. She searched the sky for the source of the growing sound of a roaring engine and beating blades.

  Their hut was the odd one out in the camp. The others were hunched and weathered like a group of old women; they’d been built from bamboo stripped from the nearby forest, capped with corrugated roof sheets and supported by thick poles they’d cut from trees. Shoots of green grew from some of the bamboo poles, smearing the line between the living and the dead.

  Mon Hla’s family hut was made of more substantial stuff, materials that cost a lot of money—red bricks, concrete bricks, cement and a foundation. Their hut was the only one like it in their row, a cause of resentment from the bamboo hut people. The camp was isolated from the nearest Thai village, and Mon Hla’s family lived an isolated life within the camp. Living like turtles, her family tried to ignore those who ignored them except to ask for a loan. Mon Hla had never thought they were better than those in the bamboo huts, but what she thought hadn’t changed anything.

  She walked toward a winding, muddy stream and a terraced hill that sloped down to the edge. From their hut they had the best view of the blue mountain ridge hugging the sky, warming its shoulders against the sun. Her thoughts drifted from the mountains to her sister in Bangkok. She remembered her sister’s face, smiling and laughing. Mi Swe had a child’s face.

  Two days earlier the members of her family had been stirred from their daily boredom by the turmoil and worry of an unannounced visitor. The man’s appearance had scared them. He’d arrived wearing an official uniform, walked directly to their hut and demanded that her mother and father tell him why Ploy had run away. No one in Bangkok could locate her. The uniformed official demanded to know where she’d gone. The family’s eyes were blank as they stared at this stranger. His uniform had gold buttons that caught the sun. Her mother and father glanced at each other, confused by his presence and his question. Each sought comfort in the other, neither had any to give.

  Their eyes blinked with frightened ignorance.

  “You must find Mi Swe and return her immediately,” he said.

  “How can we find our daughter? We can’t leave the camp. It’s not allowed,” Nang, her mother said.

  The official looked angry.

  “You will contact your daughter. If she doesn’t return in two days, there will be a big problem.”

  Her father, Sai, shook his head, shrugged.

  “There is no problem. Our daughter knows her duty. We raised her to believe in the Buddha.”

  The official calmed down, his face less flushed, and he attempted a tiny smile.

  “Then we all understand each other,” he said. “But if Mi Swe doesn’t return, the Buddha won’t be able to help her or you.”

  The father remembered the face of the official. He was the one who had brought a stack of money and given it to him the day his daughter left. With it they had built a fine hut from bricks and concrete. Even Buddha would have understood why they’d been forced to accept the money. They breathed a sigh of relief when the official left the second time, but they couldn’t ignore his threat.

  Now, a couple of days later, the outline of a helicopter was taking shape against the blue sky. Sunlight hopscotched off its windscreen. In months past Mon Hla had watched helicopters dusting crops far away. Like tiny metal windmills flying through the air. But she sensed this one had another mission. She couldn’t figure out where it was going or who the men were inside. She wondered what it would be like to look down on Mae Hong Son from the sky. What would the world look like from up there? Would it be cooler in the sky?

  In the mountains it never got as hot as it did in Bangkok. Mon Hla’s sister, Mi Swe, wrote letters saying how hot the city was and how lucky her sister and brother were to be in the north. She signed them with her Thai nickname, Ploy. New identity, but the same sister, the same Mi Swe who had walked to the s
mall river to haul water buckets to the family home when it was just another bamboo hut like those that everyone else lived in.

  Songkran heat had crept up like a mugger and hit the north with both fists. Two scorching hot days had come and gone since the official had visited their hut. Mon Hla knew her father was worried. No one had heard a word from Ploy or her friends; they had no idea how to contact her.

  The helicopter turned from the mountains. The bird’s altitude dropped as it approached the camp. It was difficult to judge the speed. The engines screamed like an angry hawk. Other people, old and young, emerged from their huts, shading their eyes, staring at the object coming toward them from the sky.

  Heat had drained the energy of both her parents, who stayed inside the cool brick hut. Her shirtless father lay on a cot watching her mother in front of the gas stove, cooking a special treat, rice cakes. Mi Swe had sent them money from Bangkok every month, but it was “Ploy” who had more recently been sending them twenty thousand baht each month. No one in the camp had that kind of money. Even the doctors, police and officials earned less. But now their family lived in a brick and concrete hut and had lots of money. Their neighbors whispered how the family had sold their daughter for gold. They grinned at the family like the village idiot stroking a pet rabbit. True, it was a great deal of money, but most of it was being spent on her brother, Swe Thaik, who suffered from a rare kidney disease with a long name. He needed daily medicine, the camp doctor said, or he would die. Most sickness in the refugee camp was treated with a couple of aspirin. No one wanted Swe Thaik to die. True, Mi Swe had gone to Bangkok to work, and money had been exchanged.

  “What is it?” her mother shouted from inside the hut.

  “It’s a helicopter,” Mon Hla said, turning back to shout her response.

  Mon Hla’s mother stood in the door watching her daughter and many other children and young people laughing as they ran toward the river, waving their arms to attract the pilot’s attention as the furious sound of rotating blades reached their ears. In the past, an important visitor had arrived by helicopter and handed out small gifts to the children. Maybe that nice man was inside with a new round of gifts. Every day in the camp, children and adults drank down hope—as empty as dreams—filling their bellies until they were fat with sensual desire.