Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Forget what I said about L’Blanc and your case, Vincent,” said Pratt.

  “Patten wanted information from L’Blanc about Mike Hatch. I already told you that. He didn’t have any information or if he did, he was keeping it to himself. I followed his tip at the racetrack. The horse lost. Why? Because the jockey was a crook. I got screwed. This guy got killed. I want some revenge. You’re Thai, you can relate to that angle. Revenge.”

  Pratt smiled. Sometimes the farangs resorted to what they thought were Thai arguments to justify what they were going to do anyway. In the department, revenge was written in large script on the fulcrum of power.

  “We’ve been tracking Hatch for a couple of months,” said Pratt. “The African we arrested with AK47s said he bought the guns from Hatch. He also said this wasn’t his first trip to Bangkok. And there were other UNTAC personnel bringing guns through Bangkok.”

  “You gonna tell me if you got something connecting Patten to this? Or would that be giving away a state secret?”

  Not just a state secret but also a vital interest of the state, thought Pratt. “AK47s coming out of Cambodia must have someone working the Bangkok end,” said Pratt.

  “What did the African say about the Bangkok end?”

  “He said that he didn’t know the name of the boss. All he had was the address of a shophouse near the main post office on New Road. We ran down the owner who said he had leased it month-to-month to a farang.”

  “Patten?” asked Calvino.

  Pratt shook his head. “Stuart L’Blanc.”

  “Fat Stuart a gunrunner? I thought he was in the jewelry business.”

  “Sometimes business interests overlap. And that’s what I want to find out in Phnom Penh,” said Pratt, as the wheels touched down on the rainswept tarmac. It was also what Alice Dugan of the Canadian Embassy wanted to find out for her master in Ottawa.

  Rain slanted against the window. The storm from Bangkok had followed them to Cambodia. They had arrived in a heavy rainstorm, in a country which had been under dark clouds for as long as anyone could remember. A country run by the United Nations and populated with survivors from terror and death. Cambodia should be first seen in the rain, thought Calvino. As if the gods cried for what they saw below.

  THREE

  TOO YOUNG TO DIE, TOO OLD TO LIVE

  IT WAS JUST before noon when Ravi Singh, Detective Superintendent, climbed out of the mud-splattered four-wheel-drive white Toyota Land Cruiser with UNTAC painted large and tall and proud across the side. He was reluctant to leave the Land Cruiser double-parked in the departure area of Long Chenda Airport. Walking into the terminal, he looked back at the Land Cruiser every second step. Yeah, it was still in sight. He loved that Land Cruiser like a man loves a woman, but he didn’t trust others staring at her, looking for a chance to run away with her. For someone in his position to have his Land Cruiser stolen from the airport was more bad press than he wished to contemplate. The thought of the heat, which would follow, made him tense. He stood under an umbrella near the main entrance, one eye on his Land Cruiser while the other looked for the Thai police officer named Colonel Prachai Chongwatana, who was arriving from Bangkok.

  He easily spotted Pratt in the crowd; he looked, dressed, and walked like a cop—someone with authority, presence, and confidence, a man armed with the right tools to pick the lock of fear or doubt which chained most men. Pratt had cleared through the customs line ahead of Calvino and walked through the door and onto the pavement. Singh stood with rain water dripping off his umbrella, and as Pratt appeared, he saluted and then extended his hand, thinking life was too short for this assignment.

  He started to stumble over Lt.Col. Prachai Chongwatana’s name.

  “My friends call me Pratt,” he said. Mr. Singh looked relieved.

  “Pratt, I have a car waiting. If you would come this way. I’m Detective Superintendent Ravi Singh. Ravi, if you please. I received your fax yesterday and am pleased to welcome you to Phnom Penh.”

  “I have come with a friend, Mr. Vincent Calvino. He will be along in a minute. If it is not too inconvenient, I would ask that we wait for him.” No sooner had Pratt finished his request than Calvino appeared. Calvino stood with the carry-on bag hooked over one shoulder.

  “I’m Detective Superintendent Singh,” the UNTAC officer said.

  “Mr. Singh,” nodded Calvino. “Pratt, I can find my own way into the city.”

  “Quite impossible,” Det. Supt. Singh said. “It has been raining without relief for two days. The roads are quite impassable. Every road in Phnom Penh is flooded. As if we don’t have enough problems. This rain.” He sighed, one hand rubbing his beard. “On the bright side, UNTAC vehicle theft has dropped since the rains started. The motor cuts out and we catch them easily. We captured a few bandits this way. The problem is the shooting. The Khmers have taken to shooting at the sky. Most nights you will hear the shooting. Not to worry. They shoot their weapons not out of anger but to stop the bloody raining. So they can go back to stealing Land Cruisers again.” He looked up at the sky and shook his head.

  “If UNTAC had patrol boats, they would be disappearing in the middle of the city. Law enforcement is not quite as it should be. But we do our best. And welcome to Cambodia.”

  Det. Supt. Ravi Singh was dressed in the combination of local and UN uniform—he wore a UN light blue turban with a silver pin of the globe in the center and a well-pressed khaki colored New Delhi police uniform. His large oval face was covered with a full black beard; his eyes might have been rimmed with black powder and were permanently narrowed as if he were in the process of defusing an explosive device. He was an explosives expert by training, and had become one of the best at disarming ‘ordnance.’ He looked Calvino over as if he might be examining a suspected terrorist disguised in a suit and tie. Singh was no more than in his early 40s; he had been assigned from his unit—the New Delhi Anti-Terrorist Squad—to UNTAC Civ Pol and found himself in charge of the seven police districts in Phnom Penh. Det. Supt. Singh was not the water boy sent to pick up visitors, thought Calvino. Ravi Singh, as UNTAC’s head cop in the city, could have sent someone else. But he came out to the airport by himself. There had to be a reason for that other than professional courtesy. Whatever case Pratt had been keeping close to his chest was important enough to bring out a high-ranking police officer.

  On the way into Phnom Penh, Pratt made it clear that Det. Supt. Singh could speak freely in front of Calvino. He had the basic cop’s instinct, which made him watch what he said in front of civilians. Speech was automatically edited for their ears. Who knew exactly what kind of damage a civilian might do if he started talking to outsiders the way cops talked among themselves?

  “Vincent Calvino and I have worked together. He’s okay. Whatever you say won’t travel beyond this car,” said Pratt.

  “Friendship and trust. This is a good thing for men to share. It is a rare thing to be sure. And in Cambodia, may I say bluntly,” said Det. Supt. Singh, “the KR killed so many people, they still aren’t sure who they can trust. Or who are their friends. So you must be careful not to rely too much on what you hear from the street.”

  Calvino had the idea this speech was intended as much for him as it was for Pratt. “How much does a Cambodian cop make a month?” he asked.

  Det. Supt. Singh glanced over at Calvino.

  “Nine dollars a month. When they get paid,” he replied. “And how much does an UNTAC cop make?”

  “One-hundred-thirty a day. Rain or shine,” smiled Det. Supt. Singh. “Who said that life was always fair? It wasn’t an Indian or a Khmer.”

  “Or the guys running guns out of Cambodia,” said Calvino to Pratt.

  “What’s that about guns?” asked Det. Supt. Singh.

  “Why do I have this feeling that things are a little out of whack in the land of Brother Number One?” asked Calvino.

  “Mr. Calvino is an American,” said Pratt, as if to explain the question.

  Det. Supt. Singh nodde
d as if he understood. “Asians have their own way of thinking, Mr. Calvino.”

  “I get it. Someone from the West can’t ever figure this place out. That’s the conventional Eastern wisdom. The way I see it, criminals are not students of culture; they’re students of opportunity. They will take whatever they can get away with until someone starts cracking heads. So let me ask you, who’s cracking heads in Phnom Penh? Or is everyone on the take?”

  “You’ll see soon enough for yourself,” said Det. Supt. Singh.

  “We have rogue cops working the city. Rogue soldiers. Rogue politicians. In the jungle, all you’ve got for sure are rogue forces. Sometimes at each other’s throat. Sometimes doing business. Always ruthless and mostly brutal in their means. Corruption is everywhere.”

  “That makes it difficult to know who are the good guys and who are the criminals,” said Calvino.

  “You’ve been in Cambodia about an hour. Perhaps you can tell me.”

  This came across like a threat; the kind of statement made to people arriving from the outside and finding themselves in a fluid situation where everything was up for grabs. No one said anything for a few minutes. The roads were filled with skinny Khmers in their wet rags scuttling through the knee-deep water like a vast population of homeless refugees, like those who had been abandoned in one of those leaky boats carrying illegal Chinese immigrants to America. Dirty sewer water broke in small waves against their legs as motorcycles and cars passed. Poverty showed in their thin bodies, the bad roads, the wooden shacks, and naked children splashing in the water. The adults walked in the rain like zombies without purpose or direction. Calvino’s first impression of Cambodia was formed on the ride in from the airport, where the Land Cruiser passed groups of Khmer men, women, and children who appeared as if they had been cut loose from years of imprisonment—pushed out of the gate but without any idea of where they were or where they were going.

  By the time they had reached the Monorom Hotel the rain had become a drizzle, and Pratt and Singh had confirmed an appointment for dinner later that evening at an Italian restaurant near UNTAC Headquarters. Calvino was invited but declined. He watched the Land Cruiser take off with a burst of speed, sending ripples of muddy water lapping toward the entrance to the hotel. Phnom Penh in the rain made Bangkok look like Aspen, Colorado, he thought. On his instructions, Ratana had pre-booked Room 305 at the Monorom—the room where Mike Hatch had abducted Fat Stuart’s Vietnamese whore. In the 60s and 70s the Monorom was the place the journalists, CIA, and others with a taste for excitement and fat expense accounts had stayed. All the rooms ending in five were the deluxe suites with a private balcony overlooking Phnom Penh. The price of rooms was high enough to keep out the petty grifters like Fat Stuart who would be expected to stay in some rundown grifter hotel—Calvino guessed that someone must have been picking up the tab for L’Blanc.

  As Calvino was signing in, he looked over at the desk and saw that Pratt had booked Room 405.

  “Life is filled with coincidences,” said Calvino. “Or Ratana is working the karma wheel.”

  “I may have asked her where you were staying. In case I had to get in touch with you. She thought it was a good idea. She worries about her boss,” said Pratt as he finished signing the guest register.

  This was Ratana’s Thai way of not just showing loyalty for her boss but taking a much larger step, bringing him into the kinship fold—where family looked after family, checking and double-checking on their safety, consulting with other family members. Dependency was bred in the bone. The idea of an independent, self-reliant person—the hallmark of the West—was alien, threatening, and confusing. Allowing Calvino to go to Cambodia alone without contacting Pratt for advice was unthinkable.

  “Since you’re on the floor above, getting in touch shouldn’t be a problem,” said Calvino.

  “Less of one, maybe,” said Pratt. “You should come along to dinner tonight. Mr. Singh might be useful in tracking down Mike Hatch.”

  Pratt was thinking like a cop. Calvino admitted to himself that he didn’t have much to go on. He went up to his room alone, opened the curtains and looked out onto the balcony, then sat back on the double bed, unbuttoning his shirt. He slipped out a photo of Fat Stuart and looked at it closely. Fat Stuart had been dead about twenty-four hours when the picture was taken but he looked as if he were snoozing after eating half a dozen hamburgers. Stripped naked, Calvino walked into the bathroom, adjusted the water temperature in the shower, stepped in and felt the jet of hot water on his face and chest. He thought of Fat Stuart in the same shower. And he thought about L’Blanc’s whore who had likely occupied the same space, feeling the water, feeling alive, wondering what the next day would bring. Calvino’s law: some people shower in the past; others wash themselves for the future, but all that scrubbing didn’t stop the dirt from accumulating, burying one in the present.

  Toweling himself, he moved back into the bedroom. He checked the time—it was mid-afternoon. He opened his suit- case and took out a bottle of Mekong, broke the paper label, and unscrewed the lid. He poured two fingers of the gold liquid, swirled it around the inside of the glass. He thought long and hard before he went into the bathroom, stood over the toilet, stared, emptied the glass and flushed. He watched the water in the toilet as the Mekong gathered in the center of the whirlpool and then disappeared. You don’t find what you’re looking for inside a bottle of Mekong at three in the afternoon, he thought. He walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside the window the rain slanted down on Blvd. Achar Mean and, in the distance, shrouded in gray, Psah Thmay—or New Market—had a 555 cigarette advertisement covering the front of the main building.

  “We’ve been tracking Hatch for a couple of months,” he remembered Pratt saying. “We want to know why he’s sending war weapons down Sukhumvit Road.”

  Calvino had a description of Mike Hatch from Patten and Fat Stuart, and neither of them liked Hatch all that much. The basic information about Hatch was nationality—American; age—late 40s; occupation—businessman. Patten had an old photo of Hatch in a Hash House Harrier’s T-shirt, wild-eyed, looking winded, thin legs sticking out of red running shorts, Reebok running shoes, a weathered, lined face. Around the eyes and mouth were fissures which had erupted, caused by shifting tectonic plates running deep inside his blood and under his flesh. Hatch wore the dog-eared expression of one who had awakened after a four-day binge of heavy drinking and smoking, who had gone on the hash run to repent of his excesses—for guys like Hatch never had sins—and to milk any possible business connections from the other runners.

  Then it was to the bar. He was a boozer, thought Calvino, looking over at his bottle of Mekong. Someone who would take a drink at three in the afternoon. The human experience did that to a number of people. The drug of choice came in a bottle and was as legal as shoe polish. They both left a shine, which wore off after a walk around the block. Hatch had been a small-time businessman in Bangkok, exporting ready-made clothes, shoes, and toys. He did what he did for the money. If there was cash, then Hatch was at the head of the line. So why was Patten having trouble giving him fifty grand? It didn’t make sense, and Pratt had hit a sore point when he said that Calvino had taken the case just for the money. Where was the line separating him from guys like Hatch and Patten, he wondered. Into the bottle in mid-afternoon, and doing dirty work for the money.

  Hatch was a Washington Square kind of guy, a loner who drank in groups but was always alone; he had arrived in Thailand in the late 80s seeking his fortune, the time when just about everyone made it. There was gold in the streets in Bangkok in those days. How had a guy like Hatch missed the action? How had Calvino missed the same opportunity? Cambodia in the 90s was a second chance, a new frontier, a new gold rush. And guys like Hatch and Patten weren’t going to miss out this time around. But it wasn’t like before in the easy days. There was more competition, more danger and risk of failure this time around. Economic refugees from the West had started to pour into
Asia; a new wave of people who had never lived abroad before. Fat Stuart’s generation but without his prison record.

  Calvino thought about this for a moment, then rang down and ordered coffee from room service. He was chasing after a guy not all that different from himself; these guys had crash- landed in Phnom Penh, and Calvino was going to sift through the litter and figure out what they had left behind. He decided on that after Fat Stuart died. It was a personal thing; even if Patten hadn’t paid anything, he would have gone after Hatch, thinking that this kind of man could answer some questions about his own life that he had not dared to ask himself. He had this idea that if he found Hatch perhaps he would find something of himself he could better understand and maybe come to terms with.

  Patten swore that he hadn’t set up Calvino, and Calvino swore that if Patten were lying to him it was probably about the worst mistake in judgment he had ever made, including flying the F-5 in a low bombing run over Laos. They left it at that. Calvino staying on the case, Patten protesting that he was a businessman with a problem. After room service delivered a pot of coffee that smelled like something withered and green had crawled inside and died, he phoned up to Pratt’s room.