The Marriage Tree

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Why did he lie about knowing about the girl?” he said.

  “What other choice did he have? He denied raping and killing her,” said Calvino. “He told you the truth. You saw the video with the doctor and his receptionist. Ploy died in their office. She died in surgery. What more do you want before you write on the file, ‘Case open and shut’? Jaruk and his buddies loaded the body in the Fortuner, drove it here and set up the little shrine.”

  “Open, yes,” replied Colonel Pratt. “Did Akash tell you his real name?”

  At first Calvino didn’t answer. He’d withheld that information. He found getting caught out in a lie the most difficult of human experiences.

  “I found out about it from one of his friends.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Is that how it is?”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way, Pratt. If we can work together like before.”

  They both knew how that had turned out. Colonel Pratt had nearly lost his job protecting Calvino from an obstruction of justice charge in connection with the car bombing. Calvino’s history of crazy visions had been enough to convince the Colonel’s boss that Calvino needed psychiatric treatment. Dr. Apinya, with her foreign medical degree and fluent English, had been chosen for him. Calvino hadn’t had much choice—submit to therapy and rehabilitation or face criminal charges for tampering with crime scene evidence.

  “As far as I can see, we are working together. What we saw in Dr. Nattapong’s office gives me no other option. We’ve come back here because I want to show you something.”

  The Colonel reached into his pocket and held out a small object in the palm of his hand.

  “One of these statuettes was found here. I thought it was unusual. I showed it to Manee and she recognized it immediately. It’s a Hindu deity called Agni. See the two faces? He’s the Vedic god of fire. Agni is the link between the gods and man, heaven and earth. Sacrifices are made in his name, and he takes the offerings to the world of the gods through his fire.”

  Calvino thought about Colonel Pratt’s wife, Manee, drawing upon her knowledge of Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese deities. She’d recognized the icon. What she couldn’t answer was what that particular deity was doing in a shrine next to a dead girl, apparently not a Hindu, in a remote part of the Tobacco Monopoly Land.

  Colonel Pratt stood up, passing the figure of Agni to Calvino.

  “Akash isn’t a Hindu. He’s a Muslim. So why would he bring a Hindu image to a shrine?”

  “You didn’t say anything about Agni before,” said Calvino.

  It felt heavier than it looked as he held it in the palm of his hand.

  “Not everything is passed along. Like your being in the room where Akash’s friend Anal Khan was found dead. I don’t recall that conversation.”

  Calvino handed the icon back. He watched as the Colonel held the figure of Agni between his index finger and thumb, slowly rotating it, stopping a moment as each head appeared.

  “I knew the cops on the scene would report and would pass it on to you,” Calvino said. “No need to duplicate information.”

  Colonel Pratt shook his head.

  “That’s not the reason, and you know it. You didn’t tell me because you knew that Akash hadn’t accidentally stumbled upon the body. A friend had sent him to this place.”

  He looked at the ground where the body had been found.

  “It would’ve been bad if I’d told you, Pratt. You’ve got orders to keep away from me. What’s your boss gonna say when he finds out that we’ve kept a secret channel open? Rather than putting you in the position where you had to betray a friend or betray your boss, I kept quiet.”

  Colonel Pratt wiped his mouth with his free hand.

  “Vincent, my friend, we Thais look for the middle path. Because we wish to avoid finding ourselves in an extreme position.”

  “I know a thing or two about that middle path. It’s the one taken when you reach a dead end. There’s no middle to it. You either climb over the wall or turn around, face the problem, take your chances, or you hightail it back to where you came and hope things blow over. The middle path is where we’re standing. Do we keep going or retreat?”

  The Colonel looked at the small Hindu god.

  “What was this two-headed god of fire doing here?”

  Calvino opened his briefcase, removed the tiny security camera and listening device and handed it to Colonel Pratt.

  “Take it. It’s evidence of the men who killed the doctor and receptionist. Why not call it in?” asked Calvino.

  “No, I am not calling it in,” said Colonel Pratt. “I’d like to talk to Jaruk.”

  “I suspect it’s going to be hard to find him,” said Calvino. “As Thanet’s driver, he has unofficial immunity until video footage starts turning up. Then it starts to get interesting.”

  “The men wore masks. There is no proof that one of them was Jaruk.”

  “Exactly the point. Just enough doubt to let Jaruk slip away.”

  They’d had this discussion before they’d left the plastic surgery office. What should they do? Call the police, go after Jaruk or jump over the ring of fire that appeared on all sides? Colonel Pratt had decided to borrow some time, suggesting that they return to the place where Calvino had found the body. The Colonel had needed time to think over his options.

  Before they’d left the doctor’s office, Calvino and Colonel Pratt had wiped their fingerprints from the scene. The CCTV camera in front of the building couldn’t be wiped. It would have recorded the time of their entry. The autopsy on the doctor and the receptionist would likely reveal the time of death to be close to the time of their arrival at the office. They’d left using the stairs at the back. “I’d be willing to bet those two guys came in and out this way,” Calvino had said as they descended.

  The men in the Guy Fawkes masks caught on Calvino’s tiny spy camera had been professionals, Calvino was sure. Colonel Pratt didn’t disagree. He wished that, like the killers, he and Calvino had used the back entrance without the CCTV camera, but it was too late for that. Besides, there’d been no reason when they’d arrived at the office building to suspect they’d be walking into a fresh murder scene.

  Having been the first to arrive at the doctor’s office, as a cop, Colonel Pratt knew the drill, the thinking and the kind of question that begged for an answer: how would he and Calvino explain their timing? If it had only been the timing, that could be a coincidence. But Calvino had previously been to the office using a phony identity. His secretary had pretended to be his wife.

  “I’ve got the video, Pratt. The doctor and his receptionist spilling their guts about killing the girl. There is no ambiguity. And what’s in the second video? There are two clowns in Guy Fawkes masks who strong-arm the doctor and his nurse into the surgery. We hear off camera the muffled sound of gunshots.”

  “The second video also shows us walking into the office.”

  “After the gunshots,” said Calvino. “The sequence of events is clear.”

  “We have raw footage. A video can be edited.”

  The vulnerability to an accusation of video tampering wasn’t the main thing bothering Colonel Pratt. He was far more worried about Thanet’s connection: what Thanet knew, his involvement and his motives. If his driver had been caught freelancing and engaged in a criminal partnership with the receptionist, then greed and fear would have been two good reasons to have the doctor and the receptionist killed. The problem would have been eliminated. The receptionist and Jaruk had squeezed a chunk of change from the doctor to clean up the surgery, and Sukanya had earned herself a lifelong extortion threat over the doctor. The two of them were sitting pretty. Jaruk could hoist a mission-accomplished flag. That indicated to Colonel Pratt that either Jaruk was much smarter than a normal driver or he was working his relationship with the receptionist under orders from his boss.

  Why would someone like Thanet have any interest in a Rohingya or Burmese
refugee who had been sold from a camp? For a foreigner the evidence in the video was the deal closer; for a Thai the moving pictures were a mosquito in the room of an untouchable with a hide as tough as an elephant. The person possessing the video was the one doing the sweating. Does he sell it to Thanet? That would be suicide. Does he destroy it before anyone else sees it? Does he turn it into the department and possibly become marginalized or even forced into exile abroad with his family for their safety? The Colonel knew there were no good choices.

  The fingerprints of Calvino, Ratana and Colonel Pratt had been all over the office. They’d wiped them down as best they could, but it would have been impossible not to miss a set of prints. The Colonel had acted against his boss’s orders, helping his farang friend Calvino—the same foreigner who had embarrassed the department by questioning their report on the explosive device used to kill the two Burmese entertainers. Calvino had witnessed his first hallucinations in the days that had followed the bombing. When Colonel Pratt had convinced him that he needed therapy, Calvino had agreed not because he thought it would do any good but because it would help the Colonel out of a tough spot. The Colonel had been right. Once he’d started seeing the doctor, the cops had backed off, allowing Colonel Pratt’s crazy farang friend to fade into the background—on the condition that the Colonel kept him away from the case or any other case. Calvino had been issued his retirement ticket, and Colonel Pratt had guaranteed that Bangkok would have one less private investigator sticking his long nose into police business.

  “Has anyone looked into the possibility that Thanet has links to the smuggling and trafficking of illegals?” asked Calvino.

  “Go home, Vincent.”

  “That’s not answering my question,” said Calvino.

  “It’s advice.”

  “And you? Where are you going?”

  Colonel Pratt looked at the building in the distance where the plastic surgery clinic was located. Flashing red lights on police vehicles passed by and turned into the sub-soi leading to the building. “When sorrows come,” he recalled, “they come not single spies, but in battalions.” Shakespeare had voiced a number of universal truths, but none was more enduring than his insight into treachery and the dangers of secret lives and powerful people.

  Calvino turned to leave.

  “I’ll hold onto the video camera and recorder,” said Colonel Pratt.

  Calvino stopped, turned around, briefcase in hand.

  “They’re yours.”

  “Stay out of the case, Vincent. You’ve cleared Akash. I’ll see he’s released. You’ve found out the identity of the murdered the girl. It’s over for you. There’s nothing more for you to do except get into deep trouble.”

  “That’s what crazy people do,” said Calvino. “Cause trouble for the sane.”

  They strolled through the Tobacco Monopoly grounds.

  “See you later,” said Colonel Pratt, before he disappeared down the MRT stairs.

  Calvino didn’t ask where he was going. He turned back until he came to the running track and walked around the perimeter of the lake. Joggers slowly huffed and puffed their way around him. Voices inside Calvino’s head told him that it wasn’t over. The same voices told him that Colonel Pratt would be surprised to learn that Calvino had followed his advice. He knew that Calvino was a different kind of bird. One that scratched in the dirt like a fighting cock, holding his ground in the pit, waiting for the chance to sink his spurs into the flesh of the champion cock who’d never lost a fight.

  THIRTY-THREE

  RATANA OPENED THE water tap, rinsing a plate in the kitchen sink and stacking it with the other plates, bowls and glasses in a drying rack. She’d used a spare key given to her by Calvino long ago along with the instruction that in the event of an emergency, she should let herself in. As Calvino lived in a constant state of emergency, she had a fair amount of latitude in using it, but this was the first time she’d done so.

  She had worked for Calvino long enough to know the difference between a tough time and a life and death situation. His problem, in her mind, was he no longer saw the distinction. It had become all life and death situations without end, and that had burnt him out. Colonel Pratt had phoned her and said that he thought Calvino was in a bad way, and she might do well to check in on how he was living.

  Assessing the condition of Calvino’s condo, Ratana thought she’d seen this scene before. Anyone with experience of the living conditions following a typhoon, tornado, earthquake or flood would have wondered if a natural disaster had struck his condo unit. She’d cleaned the counters, changed the sheets on the bed, done loads of washing and ironing, cleaned the floors and windows. It was a difficult job as she carefully worked around his photographs, newspaper clippings, charts, diagrams and a miniature recreation of the car-bombing site on the coffee table.

  The first thing that Calvino noticed as he walked into his condo was a pair of women’s shoes neatly positioned near the door.

  “Hello!” he shouted.

  “In here!” came Ratana’s familiar voice.

  He removed his shoes and hurried through the kitchen, passing Ratana with a panicked expression.

  “Well, hello, yourself,” she said as he exited the kitchen area.

  She found him standing in the sitting room, hands at his side, silently observing the cleaned room.

  “I hope it is okay,” she said.

  Calvino nodded, as he glanced at his computer on the table. His Mac PowerBook had been moved slightly from where he’d left it.

  “The place looks...”

  “Something the matter?”

  “Did you move the computer?”

  She shook her head.

  “I cleaned around it. I might have.”

  His eyes lit up as he contemplated the extent of the transformation. She’d restored his condo to a state of order so long removed that he had no longer remembered how it had once looked. The clutter, dust, mold and debris mirroring his state of his mind had disappeared. He checked the other rooms, hardly recognizing the space. In the sitting room, she had been careful to maintain his evidence of the car-bombing case. She’d done something that he’d no longer felt capable of doing; she’d restored order. Everything had been organized by a mind that saw how to lay out the documents without disturbing the nature of the underlying material objects. Inhaling the smells of soap, cleaning liquid and polish, he felt a glorious sense of renewal and rebirth.

  “I’m glad you finally used the key,” he said.

  Ratana watched her boss pour himself a drink and sit down at the computer.

  “It was the right time,” she said. “I am surprised that even ghosts would come to your home as I found it.”

  Calvino looked up.

  “They never stayed for long.”

  He glanced down at the Mac PowerBook, asking it, “What secrets do you hold about Agni?” It wasn’t a question he could ask his Remington typewriter.

  As Calvino began Googling, Ratana looked over his shoulder at Agni, the Hindu god of fire on his screen.

  “Recognize him?” Calvino asked Ratana as he sipped from the glass.

  She sat next to him and studied the image at the top of the Wikipedia page. Agni’s profile read like some of the men she’d found on dating websites—ever-young, an immortal, a messenger and a go-between for the gods and mortals. She suppressed a giggle.

  “Why don’t you ask Colonel Pratt?”

  “He’s a little busy at the moment. What do you know about the Hindu deity named Agni?”

  The flow of Hindu gods through the cultural back door meant Thais recognized many of the major ones.

  “The god with two faces,” Ratana said. “Manee is the expert in Hindu deities, of course. Actually, we were just talking about Shiva and Vishnu earlier today. Did I tell you that you that my mother bought an Agni amulet in India when I was twelve? Agni is a guardian between two worlds.”

  “Like the Romans. They had a two-headed god named Janus.”

&n
bsp; “You are always finding an Italian angle,” she said, “just as we Thais find an Indian or a Chinese one.”

  Calvino smiled.

  “Glad to hear you admit it.”

  “I thought you’d still be with Colonel Pratt.”

  “Something came up,” he said, pulling up the Wikipedia page on Janus. “Janus was the god of beginnings, change, transitions. Among the Romans he cropped up as the god of choice in rituals for births, marriages and deaths. One of Janus’s heads faced the past and the other faced the future. The Romans believed Janus occupied a middle ground between barbarism and civilization. The past was the time of the barbarian, and the future was the era of the civilized, refined Roman citizen. Janus had an eye on both sides of our human nature.”

  “Your mother taught you that about Janus?”

  “My mother was Jewish. My Italian grandfather taught me about Janus.”

  “Janus and Agni are the same god under a different name. J and A.”

  “Yeah, that’s good—J and A,” he said.

  “It’s an easy way to remember things. Just memorize the first initials: J and A.”

  “Like JAI.”

  “I don’t see any I in the picture,” said Ratana.

  “I’d like to ask Yoshi Nagata his opinion about the missing I.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Ploy’s tattoo. The JAI tattooed on her ankle. I thought it was her owner’s initials. Or the Thai word for heart, transliterated, but when Pratt showed me a figure of Agni that they found near her body, he couldn’t figure out what it was doing there. There’s the Hindu and Roman mythology and the tattoo. Are they connected?”

  “Are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would Ajarn Yoshi know?”

  “In his condo he’s got a collection of bronze deities. One of them has two heads. I wondered where that god fits into Buddhism, so I asked him. He said he’d devoted much time to looking for patterns in numbers, connections between objects and between this world and the next. He came across as what you’d expect from a yoga teacher. I thought it was just part of his sales pitch for students.”