The Marriage Tree

by Christopher G. Moore

  As Jaruk disappeared out of the bookstore, Calvino phoned Marley.

  “Light up the sword tree,” he said. “Introduce Thanet’s wives to each other.”

  FORTY-SIX

  WHEN CALVINO GOT back to his office, he stood in front of Ratana’s unoccupied desk and listened to voices coming from his inner office. He opened the office door and found Ratana and Marley sitting together, perched in front of two separate computer screens. They were scanning the two screens simultaneously as Ratana translated the Thai into English. At the other end of the desk, fresh flowers from Villa Market lay inside their paper wrapper. Next to the flowers was a white china plate with pieces of sliced pineapple assembled in three neat rows and two dessert forks positioned like fortress cannons flanking the ends. The sweet scent of the pineapple and flowers filled his room. The handgrip from his .38 Police Special protruded from his leather holster, which hung on a coat stand.

  “Jaruk looked, acted like a tough guy until the very end,” said Calvino, “when I noticed he sounded nervous. He couldn’t wait to get away. I wonder, was it me? Or being surrounded by all of those books?”

  He looked over Marley’s shoulder at one of the computer screens.

  “How many of Thanet’s sword trees are you growing?”

  “A forest. All the saplings are getting to know one another,” she said with a smile, turning to look up at him.

  They exchanged the unmistakable look of two people trying to clearly communicate shared feelings.

  Calvino stepped back from Marley’s side and moved closer to Ratana, who sat forward in his chair.

  “Where’s he going with my money?” he asked.

  Ratana pointed at the screen.

  “Ladprao. After he left Siam Paragon, he changed taxis twice.”

  She zoomed in on two spots on the map where the switches were made.

  “He wants us to think he’s using classic avoidance techniques to shake a tail,” said Calvino. “He’s seen too many car chase movies.”

  “Khun Vinny, what if he finds the tracking device?” asked Ratana.

  “He will assume I planted one. This guy is smart and capable. That’s why Thanet hired him. Jaruk’s counting on the theory that farang are stupid and will have underestimated him. By changing taxis, he’s confirming that he thinks we’re physically following him. That should shake us, he’s thinking, and he doesn’t have a clue. He’s bought into the decoy as the only tracking device he has to worry about. Hightailing it back to Ladprao is what we expected him to do. He’s a cleaner. He knows what people look for, and how to hide or dispose of evidence that makes people ask embarrassing questions.”

  “He’s stopped at a Big C,” Ratana said, pointing at the screen. “It’s not far from the MRT station. Have a look.”

  Calvino saw the flashing red dot as Ratana enlarged the image on the map.

  “All that money, and he can’t wait to going shopping,” said Calvino.

  Marley had set up the two sets of tracking software the day before. A Google map of Bangkok’s streets with a flashing red pinpoint identified Jaruk’s exact location. On the other computer Ratana was helping Marley understand the stream of Thai data flowing in and out of Thanet’s cell phones. Four women were the targets of the surveillance. Three of them were Thanet’s minor wives—Nuu, Toy and Kaeo. A JPEG photo of each woman was positioned above the stream of data from her cell phone, Facebook and Twitter accounts. The fourth target, Nee, was Thanet’s major wife. For the Chinese four is an unlucky number, Ratana told Marley as she scrolled through the data, translating what popped up on the screen from the SMS feeds.

  “Looks like Thanet’s sword tree seedling is growing into a redwood tree in record time,” said Calvino.

  Activity onscreen with the wives suddenly jumped like the New York Stock Exchange during a buying frenzy. The stats pump had been primed, and masses of real-time telephone data appeared: calls back and forth, and then a stream of calls exchanged between the numbers, showing the phone users were contacting one another. The rate of new Facebook postings and tweets shot up like a rock star caught with his pants down in a cowshed. Their accounts caught fire once Marley had emailed a package of data, the text translated into Thai, to each of the four women—photos of each minor wife, age, name, weight, education, ID card number, place of birth, Bangkok address, make of car and registration number, and bank account balances. A second round of information followed fifteen minutes later that included intimate text messages exchanged between each of the women and Thanet. Fifty, sixty percent of it was simple cut and paste, the same message sent to each woman.

  “He’s moving again,” said Ratana.

  “Fast shopper,” said Calvino.

  The three of them watched the red dot move down Ladprao Road and stop at the entrance to Soi 35.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Marley.

  “Getting a bowl of noodles,” said Calvino. “Or conducting business—there’s an Internet shop near the top of the soi. Or maybe he’s thinking over what his next step should be.”

  Using one of the forks, he speared a slice of pineapple. He chewed the fruit and speared a second slice, offering it to Marley. She hadn’t been spoon-fed for some time.

  Ratana smacked her lips.

  “Oh, my God!” she said, reading one of the feeds.

  “What do you have?”

  “These two are actually talking to each other: Kaeo and Nee.”

  That was a mia noi, minor wife number three, and the mia luang, the major wife. And Toy and Nuu had also been sending Thanet SMS messages. Toy sent a message to Thanet saying she’d slept with Jaruk. She must have also sent it to Kaeo, who said she’d also slept with Jaruk.”

  “Jaruk’s homecoming might not be what he expects.”

  “Kaeo and Toy both sent SMS messages to Jaruk, begging him to take them away from Bangkok.”

  Marley said, “Forward those messages to Thanet.”

  Calvino and Ratana exchanged a look. He thought about the cold look in Jaruk’s eyes when he’d asked him about the car bombing.

  “Send it along,” said Calvino.

  Ten minutes later, the red dot moved down Soi 35. A second red dot, tracking the wireless radio-frequency ID strips in the stacks of thousand baht notes appeared on the screen. It was going in a different direction.

  “He’s switched the money into another bag,” said Calvino. “Bought it at the Big C is my guess.”

  They watched as the red dot from the RFID strips moved at considerable speed away from Ladprao. Jaruk was in a hurry to get out of the area. Calvino had figured Kaeo or Toy would have shared not only a husband but also the same gigolo. Jaruk was exposed as Exhibit A in the debate about the need to employ eunuchs to run a well-managed harem.

  The red dot stopped moving. The screen showed a program error.

  “Try rebooting,” said Calvino.

  Marley’s effort to reboot failed to bring the program back online.

  “The server’s down.”

  “They don’t have a backup?” asked Calvino, shaking his head.

  Marley worked to find one as Calvino and Ratana watched her quickly going from one page to the next without success.

  “I’m not waiting,” said Calvino.

  He pushed away from his desk and reached for his leather holster.

  “Where are you going?” asked Ratana.

  “To get my money before Thanet finds him.”

  “Be careful, Vincent,” said Marley.

  Calvino leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Track his SMS,” he said. “He might text where he’s heading.”

  He checked his .38.

  “My grandfather taught me never to take the easy way out,” said Calvino. “He was a painter. There are lots of ways to save on paint and canvas. You can hire someone to do the painting, and your name might be on it, but it will never be yours.”

  Ratana continued to track the SMS traffic between the wives and Thanet, as well as t
he messages sent to Jaruk, to which there had so far been no reply. Like a hive brain, the collective consciousness had come to the conclusion that Jaruk was on the run. In the great unravelling, the yarn never spools back into the perfect pyramid in which it was sold; it spirals into knots, tangles and braided loops, forming a jumble of potential couplings. When Ratana looked up, both Calvino and Marley had disappeared. She thought it funny that Marley had called him Vincent and not Vinny. And that Marley hadn’t spoken what had passed through Ratana’s brain: “Vinny, don’t go after him.” But that was wives’ talk, and Ratana understood that kind of talk was not their shared language. The irony being that Calvino would love Ratana for that.

  When she went downstairs, she looked out on the sub-soi. She saw no sign of them.

  Jaruk was slouched in the back of the taxi when he took the call from his boss.

  “What the fuck is going on? I’m getting messages and calls about you and Toy, and now about you and Kaeo. What is this? How do they know to talk to each other? How do they know?”

  He’d lost face, but Jaruk didn’t need a visual to see that. It echoed in his voice, all that hurt and rage boiling over inside. Just a bit more and he’d lose control. Jaruk had seen his boss reach that point with others who’d crossed him. Men Jaruk never saw again.

  Jaruk screamed for his taxi to stop. The driver eyed him in the rearview mirror and decided it was a good idea to pull into a parking place in front of a row of shops.

  “You’d better come to the office.”

  Jaruk heard the tremble in his boss’s order. He got out of the taxi, paid the driver and walked into an Internet café.

  He didn’t like his boss’s attitude.

  “I’ve got an appointment, boss. Can Lek handle it?”

  “I said come to the office. Now.”

  The bluster made the voice gravelly.

  “Sure thing. I’ll be right there,” Jaruk said, ending the call.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING Marley phoned Calvino just after 8:00 a.m.

  “I found where Jaruk’s hiding. I just emailed you the location. I suggested to Ratana that she let Colonel Pratt know.”

  “He’s no longer on the police force,” Calvino said, sitting up in bed.

  “He’s your friend,” she said. “He’s involved. I thought he might want to know.”

  “You’re right. It’s five after eight. Jaruk’s either sleeping or he’s halfway to Cambodia. But there’s only one way to find out.”

  “He didn’t make any calls from his phone,” she said.

  “Good, it means he’s sleeping.”

  Calvino got out of bed, showered and dressed. He looked out the window at the traffic flow toward Klong Toey and decided driving a car in that neighborhood was a good idea. His motorbike would get snatched in ten minutes.

  Before Calvino was out of the shower, Colonel Pratt was on the road after Ratana’s phone call. Cop or not, he had to check out the information. When she told him what district Jaruk had fled to, he remembered the place from the old days. He’d known the location as a boy and had no trouble finding it again. Marley had picked up the signal, a strong, steady frequency.

  Calvino pulled up to the curb, looked at his cell phone screen and got out of his car. He paced up and down the street until he found himself standing in front of Colonel Pratt, who wore a white shirt and dark slacks. They were outside the building where Jaruk or at least his money was resting. Colonel Pratt held a black gym bag with “Manchester United” in red on the side.

  “Got something for you,” said Colonel Pratt and tossed Calvino the bag like a football.

  The bag sailed through the air and Calvino caught it with both hands. He judged the weight to be around five kilos’ worth of thousand baht notes.

  “What’s inside, Pratt? Mangoes?”

  “It’s Jaruk’s bag.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s inside. But you don’t want to look.”

  Calvino moved forward.

  “He’s been disemboweled,” said Colonel Pratt.

  That was enough to stop Calvino.

  “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “Same guy.”

  Colonel Pratt held up Jaruk’s Thai ID card.

  Calvino felt a wave of relief. It had been a loose end that needed to be put right.

  “Jaruk’s the asshole who set off the bomb,” said Calvino. “He gave me the phone that he used that night. It was an old eight hundred baht Nokia. Not even a maid would be caught dead with one. But it’s perfect for a bomb disposal guy like him. I’ve got it at my office. It’s yours. The same SIM card he used that night is still in it. He hadn’t changed it, which tells you something. Leverage against the boss.”

  “The phone has to connect him to Thanet,” said Colonel Pratt.

  “Marley found out that Jaruk phoned Thanet only a couple of minutes after the blast.”

  He looked at the west end of the building, which was near the canal.

  “He got what he deserved, and then some,” said Calvino.

  He wondered if the building flooded in the monsoon season.

  “Karma,” said Colonel Pratt, watching Calvino turn and walk toward the building.

  “Room 103,” said the Colonel.

  Calvino walked along the footpath in front.

  Colonel Pratt called after him.

  “He cost me my chance at the Blue Note when he blew up Yadanar’s car. I know you lost someone you loved, but I lost something of value that night as well. It changed the course of my life. We both lost something we can’t get back.”

  Calvino didn’t look back and was out of earshot after hearing “my chance at the Blue Note.” It didn’t matter that Colonel Pratt’s voice trailed off in the distance. Calvino could fill in the blanks. He knew the pain in the Colonel’s heart and the words it would use to express itself.

  Calvino walked inside and down the corridor, stopping in front of a wooden door with “103” painted in green. He tried the door. It wasn’t locked. Slowly he pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it shut behind him. The curtains were closed, and the place stank. Calvino took out a handkerchief and put it over his mouth and nose, but it didn’t stop the fetid smell of a slaughterhouse from invading his nose and mouth. He opened the door of a cheap plywood closet with mirrors on both panels. Calvino pushed the hangers with a few shirts and trousers down the rail.

  He’d already, out of the corner of his eye, seen the form of a man on the bed. He wanted to take his time, save the inspection of the corpse for last. He wanted to know something about how the man who’d killed Mya lived. He looked at a shelf and the other walls. Not a single book in the room. A microwave oven, a guesthouse room-sized fridge, a small sink, an oval mirror—the guy had enough mirrors to replicate a short-time hotel—a table and three chairs. There were some photographs of Jaruk in uniform a decade younger. More photographs of him with a woman in Pattaya—the location’s giveaway was in a sign on the side of a hill at the end of the bay. In one of the photos Jaruk looked nine or ten years old, holding a fishing pole and standing next to a man showing off a string of fish. The man was in his thirties. The boy squinted against the sun, smiling into the camera. A river and fields spread out behind them. Jaruk’s father was a good bet for the identity of the older man. How had the smiling boy who’d gone fishing with his dad become a man named Jaruk with a heart so chilled that no feelings leaked out when he killed? Nothing in the pictures gave a clue.

  After he’d seen enough, Calvino walked to the back, where the bed stood under a window. He pulled up a wooden chair and sat next to the bed. He sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, staring at the corpse. It wasn’t a hallucination. He was in a room with someone who was not only dead, but someone whom Calvino had wished dead. Seeing the body butchered like that of an animal, the dead man’s face bloodied and with eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. The bladework had carved a deep gorge from the chest downward through the stomach
cavity, exiting at the groin. Calvino had expected to find peace once he’d seen the body of the man who’d killed Mya. He felt nothing close to that release. He only wanted to vomit. Before he’d been murdered, Jaruk had experienced genuine suffering and pain. The death scene pointed to a killer who was high either on drugs or hate. Professionals were violent and efficient and had no reason to leave behind a message. It was simple—do the job and leave the scene immediately. A Guy Fawkes mask was angled against the pillow so that it appeared to be staring at the body with its empty eyeholes and wide grin.

  A message intended for someone, but for whom?

  Was this the state of a man’s body climbing the sword tree for eternity?

  By the time Calvino emerged from the building, Colonel Pratt had walked down to the canal and squatted down, watching the barges.

  “When I was a kid,” said the Colonel, “my father sometimes brought me down to the river to watch boats. He said the barges and ships brought us our food and coal and sugar and rice. That without the river the lifeblood of Bangkok would be destroyed. Our ancestors came to these banks to make offerings to the goddess of the river. A few of the old ones still do the rituals. But look at it now. I no longer see the holy place I remember as a child.”

  Colonel Pratt glanced over at Calvino.

  “What do you think about what you saw inside?” he asked.

  “Good luck finding who killed him,” said Calvino. “The police will take one long look at him, the Guy Fawkes mask and who he worked for, and will tell the press, ‘It was either a personal or a business conflict. Investigation to continue.’”

  In Jaruk’s case there was much to investigate: his boss, the way he was killed, the manner of displaying his body next to a mask used at political rallies and also captured on video in the office of Dr. Nattapong, before he and his receptionist were shot. A cop like Colonel Pratt would know this world and find it alien and unknowable at the same time. For Calvino there had been a missing dimension of meaning inside the room, one he’d looked to reveal itself. Someone had left a coded message and all he had to was break the code.