“AK47s are in a different league from microwaves,” said Ravi Singh.
“For a grifter like Mike Hatch, he would think in terms of merchandise. What is the market? What can he sell fast? AKs are something else to steal and turn a profit.”
“A man totally without morality,” said Robert Burke. As the ranking officer, the Chief of Operations, it seemed about right to Calvino that Burke would take the moral high ground on a grifter like Mike Hatch.
“Why was he always broke?” asked Shaw.
Calvino started to understand why the police and wise guys never understood each other. There was a barrier as wide and deep as any cultural difference between people. “Hatch would score, and then he would go through Patpong and ring the bell at a couple of bars filled with punters, then he’d go to the private clubs and buy out expensive girls, rent a suite at a hotel, and order booze and food sent up. Twenty-four hours later he couldn’t pay the rent for his room in a rundown hellhole. But for the twenty-four hours, he was a god. He had people’s attention. They applauded him. Mike was the man. He was like a movie star. The girls would be all over him. People patted him on the back. He wasn’t thinking about saving for his pension. He was making himself a celebrity and stealing to finance his addiction to stardom.”
After a few minutes, everyone had relaxed. The initial awkwardness had been overcome and the UNTAC Civ Pol were looking at each other as if to say the Thai cop was right—Calvino was probably all right.
“Stealing AK47s and smuggling them out of Cambodia might be one among several enterprises. Seeing our Mr. Hatch is a jack-of-all-trades criminal,” said Robert Burke in his Chief of Operations voice.
Calvino had been thinking the same thing. “Hatch is likely just a cut out,” said Pratt.
“That’s Bangkok talk for saying there is a mastermind who is in deep cover and using Mike Hatch and others like him for the dirty work. Hatch is a front-line soldier in a criminal army. The one who takes the fall. The one who goes to jail. The report doesn’t mention that Hatch and L’Blanc served some time in jail together. Sloppy. A few months in a Bangkok prison. I wonder how that information got lost?” asked Calvino.
Pratt felt anger swelling up inside. Someone in the department had meddled with the information. Calvino was right. Only Calvino didn’t know what ends these people would go to in order to bury anyone trying to connect Fat Stuart L’Blanc to them or their friends.
Calvino’s law said—There’s always sufficient evidence to convict a cut out but never enough evidence to put away the mastermind. That’s how the system worked. Those above the line of influence stayed rich, free, and influential. And those below the line? They were like paper dolls in a whirlwind; they could end up just about anywhere and torn in a thousand pieces. They were as expendable as an elderly wet nurse. They never quite reached the status of human beings, a status that was reserved for masterminds.
“That’s why this team is here, Mr. Calvino,” said Robert Burke. “We want the person or persons who are able to competently control the operation. The people who are responsible.”
He said ‘responsible’ the same way he said ‘morally’. The reference was clearly directed at Calvino’s actions the night before. Criminals made a good living because cops like Robert Burke were so decent, fair, and just that they could not adequately understand the difference between the rules the bad guys played by and the rule of law to restrain them. Inside the world of someone like Mike Hatch violence was the only restraint on greed. To catch a Mike Hatch was to throw out the rulebook, and to enter a world where honor and fairness were liabilities.
“The big fish,” said Ravi Singh. “This is the man we want.” No more wasting time about what anyone had really wanted.
“And what do you want from Mike Hatch?” Shaw asked Calvino.
Calvino looked a little embarrassed, as he pulled out Patten’s wrinkled and stained check. The paper had buckled from the mud and rain that had seeped through his jacket pocket the night before. It no longer looked like a check. Patten’s blue ink had run from the water, leaving the names illegible. “I was hired to give him this.”
He laid the check on the Chief of Operation’s desk. All eyes focused on the check and then on Calvino.
Pratt spoke first. “The check is hot, Vincent. Before we left Bangkok, I checked with Standard Chartered Bank out of Hong Kong. Someone’s secretary ran off with twenty-eight blanks. They tracked down eleven checks. The rest are still . . .”
“In circulation,” said Calvino. He was trying to figure out Pratt’s angle and he hated the idea of causing a scene in front of all that UNTAC Civ Pol brass but he was getting steamed thinking about how he’d almost been killed the night before. He saw himself in the mud with Thu who was shaking with fear and had nightmares throughout the night. What disturbed him even more was how Pratt had known of the check. Ratana must have told him. Before he knew what he was saying, it was out. “If you and my secretary knew, why didn’t one of you tell me in Bangkok? And save me from a load of trouble?”
“‘Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds . . . Revenges burn in them for their dear causes,’” replied Pratt, quoting from Macbeth. This recital registered a mixture of surprise and admiration on the faces of the two Irish policemen, and Mr. Singh was not unmoved by the unexpected performance from the Thai cop.
Calvino took this display of learning as normal. Pratt had been reciting passages from Shakespeare since the first day in the 1970s when they had met in Washington Square in New York City. It was something he did and did well. He used Shakespeare to get himself out of a tight spot. So long as he could shift into the mind and spirit of Shakespeare he entered a realm that protected him from loss of face. To lose face was to appear a fool; to quote Shakespeare allowed one to mask one’s foolish friends or one’s own folly. Shakespeare knew about troubled hearts and revenge and the difficulty finding a safe path through the fields of danger and intrigue.
“That was Shakespeare,” said Calvino. “They know, Vincent,” said Pratt.
“Okay, they know. And they also know that Hatch is a New York wise guy and they think I can find him.” He looked around the room.
But Calvino couldn’t leave it alone. “It was Ratana.”
“She was worried Patten was setting you up. She didn’t know the checks were hot. I didn’t tell her.”
Thank God for that, thought Calvino. She was doing her job; looking after business, thinking one step ahead of the criminals like Patten who came through the door. It had been Pratt who had tried to save Calvino’s face by not telling his secretary he had taken a dirty check.
“We are confident that you can be of assistance,” said the Chief of Operations, Robert Burke.
Calvino snapped out of his fugue. “Mikey is a popular guy. Patten wants him. You want him. Probably a lot of other dangerous people want him. He seems to attract bad elements, the police from multiple jurisdictions, and . . .”
“And Vincent Calvino,” said Robert Burke.
“Me, too. I’m thinking that maybe Mikey got careless enough to pass a hot blank check to Patten. This might have caused him some problems he didn’t wish to tell me about. So he decided to get me to find Hatch. Then without telling me, he’d have him whacked.”
“Like Mr. L’Blanc,” said Robert Burke.
“You know I’d like to know if Fat Stuart and Mike Hatch ever exchanged jewelry, too,” said Calvino.
“We have confidence that you can help us find Mr. Hatch,” said Shaw.
“Vincent can find Mr. Hatch,” said Pratt. “Make no mistake about that.”
“And when you find him, Mr. Calvino. Then what?” asked Ravi Singh, smoothing his beard with one hand and smiling beneath his blue turban.
“I’ll paint him a picture,” said Calvino.
The Chief of Operations arched an eyebrow. “What kind of picture, Mr. Calvino?”
“Nothing too abstract. A Norman Rockwell picture that s
hows him a standup guy who’s still alive. And a second showing him dead in a Phnom Penh garbage can . . . if they have garbage cans in this dump. Guys like Mikey never have any trouble picking which art appeals to them,” said Calvino.
“If you find him, I must emphasize how important it is that we have a chance to talk to him,” said Robert Burke.
“If you find him alive,” said Ravi Singh, a smile cracking a large hole in his beard.
******
THE press conference had already started by the time Calvino walked in and took a place in the back of the open pavilion. The UN spokesman was English, in his early fifties, and wore gold wire-rimmed glasses low down on his nose, a blue button-down Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and tan trousers that broke at the top of his brown leather shoes. He had white hair, the soft, white face of a priest with a drinking problem in a tough ghetto neighborhood. There were about sixty people wearing their pink UNTAC press cards around their neck or clipped to their shirt. Half of the reporters were women. Calvino sat next to one with her laptop balanced on her lap, taking down the Brit’s prepared statement. He spotted her right away as someone who didn’t need to be taking down notes at a news conference in Phnom Penh.
She was early thirties, short auburn hair, nice figure (though a little on the heavy side), and slender legs in cut-off jeans. A Jodie Foster twenty-five pound overweight was the general impression. What would leave red lines on her lovely legs was a five-thousand-dollar laptop. She had more memory in her laptop than was in Cambodia. She wore a Rolex watch on her left wrist and a gold and diamond bracelet on her right wrist. The one, two punch of the rich. Hand- displayed wealth; she knew the hand power game. Nice knuckles that looked like they’d never been scraped in a fight or any other of the rough edges that life routinely threw at most people.
She never looked up from her computer keyboard as the spokesman said, “The Chief of General Staff of the peacekeeping force has appealed to the Khmer Rouge to remain calm and respect the cease-fire.” There was more. Priest-like talk about the need for support from the international community in the constitutional process. Calvino read from the screen of her laptop. “The meetings of various political factions were being held in a positive atmosphere. The parties were working to create and maintain a unified command system. The three factions were working to unite into one army. The next meeting would take place next week at 14.30. The military situation over the last 48 hours was calm; some isolated incidents. In Battambang and Kompong Cham. But nothing of great significance is attached to the incidents. In Kompong Cham two soldiers were killed on Route 5 and Route 16. Unescorted movement of vehicles by the UN is prohibited. And some asshole is standing behind me and reading my screen.”
The press conference had ended and the reporters started milling around and talking to each other. A couple went up to the podium and talked to the spokesman like school kids trying to butter-up the teacher after class.
“You got all that down. Except the last part about an asshole. I thought in America they said behind every great woman stands some asshole guy.” Calvino watched the woman reporter as she saved the file on her computer. Her eyes moved up to Calvino’s press card pinned to his suit.
“New York Free Press? Never heard of it,” she said in an American accent. He read her name off her press card. Carole Summerhill-Jones, San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s a new Murdoch newspaper, Carole. He buys newspapers like bagels,” he said. “I was sent to cover the UNTAC pullout story. Put in the lox and cream cheese.”
“You’ve got mud on your jacket, Vincent,” she said, reading his press card in return.
She had an eye for the small detail; he had to give that to her. In the case of his suit, the mud was less a detail than either a punked-out fashion statement from the lower east side of Manhattan or he had spent some unfashionable time on his hands and knees drunk and crawling around in the mud. She guessed it was the latter.
“I fell off a motorcycle,” Calvino admitted.
She studied her computer screen, pushing a scroll key and pretending that she was looking for something.
“How long have you been in Phnom Penh?” she asked.
He looked at his watch, a bottom of the line Casio. “About twenty-seven hours.”
“Enough time to unpack and find the mud.”
“Something like that.”
Calvino lowered the photograph of Mike Hatch onto her computer screen. She stopped typing and looked at it.
“You ever see this guy?” he asked.
“What are you, a cop?” she asked. “Do I look like a cop?”
She stared at his clothes, his press card, and tried to make out if he was concealing a gun under his muddy suit jacket. “Cops look like anyone else,” she said. “Usually a little cleaner than you. But it could be a disguise to throw people off.” “Well, I’m not,” he said. “See that picture? Ignore the numbers under his chin. Mike never had a picture taken by anyone but the cops. He used to get copies made and handed out to his friends. His mother has one framed and hung over the fireplace.”
“Are you hitting on me?” she asked. “Not yet. But I haven’t ruled it out.”
The openness of his response relaxed her, taking off the edge. She smiled and passed back the photo of Hatch.
“I’ve seen him several times at the Gecko Club. He came over to the table last week and bought a couple rounds of drinks.”
I bet he did, thought Calvino. The gold, diamonds, Rolex, and state of the art laptop computer would have had Mike Hatch drooling, and all the time Carole Summerhill-Jones would have thought he was impressed with her country club polished personality.
“Anything wrong with that?” she continued.
“Not that I can see. But why don’t we talk about it over lunch?”
She switched off the laptop and closed down the lid with a click, looking him up and down at the same time, as if trying to come to one of those man–woman verdicts.
“I’m going to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club,” she said. “Good choice.”
“I didn’t say I was going with you.”
Calvino nodded. “But you didn’t say you weren’t, either.”
******
THE Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Cambodia was on the second floor of a newly renovated shophouse that overlooked the spot where the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers converged. The bar with stools was on the left-hand side and the dining room off to the right. The walls had been freshly painted yellow. Calvino didn’t like the color. This kind of yellow did nothing for the appetite. Maybe it was a joke about yellow journalism, or a statement about cowardice, or the hue of a hepatitis patient. Calvino’s law—A restaurant dining room the color of nicotine is for people who drink their lunch and dinner.
Carole settled into one of the brown cushioned chairs with a menu. A TV was on in the corner, tuned to CNN. Calvino imagined Carole growing up in an exclusive San Francisco neighborhood where the most dangerous part of childhood was learning how to avoid a sudden attack of tennis elbow. Jazz boomed from a set of speakers behind the bar. Large ceiling fans rotated overhead. Below on the sidewalk, a woman was hanging laundry—towels, jeans, dresses, and underwear. The woman wiped her face with an apron and disappeared. All the shabby clothes baked in the sun—odd sized, faded and drab, as Carole read the menu.
“You can’t eat the salad and live,” she said.
“Death by salad. Sounds like a California headline,” said Calvino.
She looked up from the menu, ordering a salad.
“That’s the second risky chance I’ve taken today,” she said. “And I have this feeling it doesn’t stop at two, Mr. Calvino. So I ask myself, why should I help you? Maybe you have an answer.”
“Like what’s in it for you?”
She lit a cigarette, turned her head, and blew the smoke toward the open verandah. He followed her eyeline outside. Across the street from the Club large billboards carried beer and cigarette ads—O
scar, Tiger, Foster’s, 555. Beyond the billboards, dozens of sampans with Vietnamese fishermen laying out their nets. Where the rivers joined there was a slender ribbon of green painted against the horizon. Pedicab drivers pedaled along the Quay. A boy riding a bike towed a toy car on a plastic string; it hydrofoiled through the puddles of brown water.
“What if I could arrange for you to get exclusive photographs inside T-3 Prison?” he asked.
Looking back from the window, her eyebrow was still arched. He had managed to get her attention and now it was her move. He let her think over the possibilities. The overhead early afternoon sun evaporated the last of the rainwater. In a few hours the rain clouds would form and it would rain again for hours and the boy would patiently wait until the sun broke free before taking out his bike for a ride along the Quay and working through his fantasy—that the toy car is a real car, and that he is behind the wheel, driving through the water, splashing the sides of this car, feeling the sun on his face.
“Whose cock do I have to suck?” she finally asked. Calvino grinned.
“Is that the usual deal you cut?” He was curious.
“The days of Kipling and Masonic handshakes are over. Now you give someone a tip on a Jardine Fleming fund or a blow-job.”
“Next you’re going to tell me you miss the funny handshakes?”
“Depends on what arm the hand is attached to,” she replied.
All he had to do was convince Shaw to let Carole into T-3 Prison—overcome the tight internal security—and allow her to photograph the prisoners who had been making Shaw’s heart bleed in the Monorom Hotel restaurant earlier that morning.
Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn Page 12