“Hell, the beggars in this place drive you nuts,” said Patten.
“No good for who?” Calvino asked the woman.
“For my cousin, me, you, and Patten. Why not buy some vodka? I give you a very good price,” said Sitha.
Calvino reached down for her notebook and folded five twenty-dollar bills inside, wrote down his room number and the telephone number of the Monorom Hotel.
“Give me two bottles of the vodka,” he said.
She slipped her fingers inside her notebook and brushed them against the twenty-dollar bills.
“What’s your cousin’s name?”
“Nuth,” she said. “You go now. Please.”
On the way out of the Russian market, Patten looked tired. It was dark and hard finding a motorcycle. They hadn’t said too much after leaving the market stall.
“These people are scared, Calvino. You can’t get nothing out of them. But I told you that I’d try so I figure now we’re square.”
They walked past a few tables where people were eating. An oil lantern burnt on each table. Calvino saw the strain in Patten’s face, and he wondered how guys like Patten ever lived beyond nineteen.
“Yeah, you figured it right, Patten. We’re square.”
But Patten’s attention was already distracted by four men standing over a wooden box on one of the tables. They were exchanging bets. Calvino took a couple of steps and looked inside the box and saw a python. “It’s the Vietnamese influence,” said Patten. “The Vietnamese love this blood sport thing.”
Inside the box was a big fucker, thought Patten. A chill went down his back as a waiter brought over a fat rat, laid it on the table, and broke the rat’s front legs with a wooden stick. The waiter grinned at the bettors, dangled the crippled rat over the box, and dropped it inside. Everyone knitted together around the table, wide-eyed as they watched the rat and python squaring off inside. The python slowly wrapped itself around the rat, which tried to drag itself away on its hind legs. But it was a one-sided match. The Khmer diners started sniggering as they listened and counted the cracking of every bone in the rat’s body as the python squeezed the loop tight.
After it was over, Calvino started to walk away.
“Hey, that’s nothing,” said Patten. “I knew some Vietnamese in the war, and they had a six-meter python. Once I saw one of the locals throw a live chicken in with that motherfucking giant python. The chicken fucking froze. You could feel the heat of fear sweat off that bird. It shot straight through you. There was no way out. The chicken was gonna die. One hundred percent fucked that chicken was. It made you kinda sick to watch. The python was so fucking enormous it didn’t even bother to wrap itself around the chicken. Its fucking head came forward, mouth open about two feet wide and took the chicken whole in one goddamn bite. I still have nightmares about that fucking chicken. Seeing it going into the gob of that motherfucking python like some kind of marshmallow with feathers and feet stuck on it.”
TWELVE
SHOPHOUSE WHORES
LT.COL. PRATT and Calvino slowly circled the neighborhood of streets that ran east off Monivong Blvd. The tension had been increasing between them. Calvino had felt betrayed, and so had Pratt. Calvino had insisted they go to the airport first and inquire about this Nuth before looking for Hatch again. It bothered him that he had been used to find Hatch. Now it was his turn to find out something about the other person looking for Hatch, the one who wanted to whack him. Going to the airport first was a small revenge and Pratt let him have it, and supported his request with Shaw. But neither of them had a good feeling as they rode together after the airport stop.
“You shouldn’t have let Hatch go. That was a mistake,” Pratt had said.
“A mistake? Am I working for you? Besides, what was I supposed to do? Arrest him? Shoot him?”
The hint of anger in Calvino’s voice was disturbing. Pratt allowed several minutes to pass before he spoke.
“He has no idea how much danger he’s in,” said Pratt.
“He knows. He’s not stupid. And he knows that someone in your department was sent here to kill him. You kept that piece of information to yourself,” said Calvino.
“I was under orders,” said Pratt.
“What? To put your best friend in the line of fire? Or am I under some delusion about our friendship?”
“I’m sorry, Vincent.”
“At least you could have told me the guy you were tracking had a contract on Hatch.”
“We didn’t know who we were looking for. But we had information that someone in the department wanted Hatch dead and something of great importance returned to Thai- land. If we can identify and interrogate Kim we have a good chance of getting enough evidence to isolate the men in the department behind him.”
“Sufficient evidence to transfer them to an inactive post.” “You’d be surprised how effective a punishment that can be to a ranking career officer,” said Pratt. “It cuts them off from their power. Without power rank has no meaning. This, I know, is difficult for a farang to understand.”
“It’s not that difficult for this farang to understand you’ve got me mixed up in some internal police department politics.”
“For which I have conveyed my regret.”
For the first time since they had arrived in Phnom Penh Calvino had the upper hand. He was owed a debt since he had been assigned point duty without knowing it. He had done his job and tracked down Nuth.
Shaw had stayed at the airport questioning some UNTAC officers he knew who worked as security at the airport. He had given the keys to his UNTAC Land Cruiser to Pratt.
“We’ll find him,” said Shaw. “These official s always turn up. Not always in the best condition, but they turn up. Given this one’s connections, I wouldn’t want to place any bets on what we end up finding.”
His assessment concerned the health of a Khmer named Nuth—the Russian market vendor’s cousin—who had information about Kim and had disappeared from his job at the airport nearly ten days earlier. They did not come up empty-handed. The day before Nuth’s disappearance, a farang by the name of Scott had come to the airport and had signed a number of forms to process the entry of one Harley Davidson motorcycle that had been imported from Thailand.
“Why didn’t Hatch clear his own motorcycle?” asked Pratt, as he turned a corner.
“He might not be Richard Scott’s best friend after all,” said Calvino.
“Meaning?”
“If you knew someone was going MIA would you want your name on the paperwork?” replied Calvino.
Pratt slammed on the brakes as a 50cc Honda driver appeared out of nowhere like a zombie from a 50s Hollywood B-movie, cutting directly across his path. The Khmer driver didn’t blink. Getting hit by an UNTAC vehicle was a paycheck opportunity that many of them dreamed about. No one got paid for stepping on a land mine and the damage was much worse.
“The way to find Hatch is through Richard Scott,” said Calvino.
“Then we find Scott.”
Calvino smiled. “That may not be all that easy.”
“Given your skill it shouldn’t be that hard,” said Pratt.
“Are you going to get a promotion out of this?” asked Calvino.
Pratt flinched. He didn’t like that kind of direct question.
“My superiors in the department aren’t the kind of men who make backroom promises to anyone.”
“Did I tell you that Patten fired me? I don’t have a client. So I ask myself, why am I staying in Phnom Penh?” Pratt knew the answer and it made him smile.
“It wouldn’t happen to be a French doctor?”
“Do I look like an NGO groupie?”
“I saw the way you touched her hand.”
“What are you talking about? I was all beat up, I didn’t touch her hand. I was trying to hold myself up.”
******
AFTER searching for nearly an hour—the directions given by the owners of the outside bar where Hatch and Scott often drank were suit
ably vague—they discovered the location of Scott’s rundown shophouse; it was tucked away among a long row of semi-derelict shophouses. Weeds sprouted from stained fissures, which ran like malignant wounds deep in the foundation; rusty drainage pipes spilled a grayish liquid onto the pavement in front that looked as if metallic boll weevils had chewed through it. This was one section of Phnom Penh that few foreigners voluntarily chose to live in unless they were like Scott—unaffiliated and working the shadows of business enterprises where the principals used post office box numbers and kept in the deep cover that only impoverished housing could afford. Like the slums around the lake, at night the shophouses in the area serviced foreigners who came looking for Vietnamese girls. The darkness of the dimly lit shophouses on a rainy night worked a magic that daylight could never sustain.
As Pratt parked the car, Calvino leaned out of the window to speak to a half-dozen Vietnamese girls in wrinkled pajamas. He was looking for his old friend, he said. He wondered if they might know where Scott was staying. Some of the girls sat on bamboo mats inside the open shophouse, smoking cigarettes and putting on make-up. Others sat at a table talking. None of them expected customers at this hour, intruding into their private, daylight world. He had caught them off guard. If any one of them knew Scott’s whereabouts, they weren’t saying. Calvino waved a ten-dollar bill out the window. This caught the attention of the girls, heads jerking around at whiplash force. One girl blew smoke out of her nose, walked over to the car, grabbed the ten dollars, inspected it closely, held it toward the sky and raised her eyes upward.
“It’s real money,” said Calvino.
“Sometimes not real,” answered the girl.
“This is beginning to sound like another of your existential conversations, Vincent,” said Pratt, leaning forward to catch a glimpse of the girl.
Calvino watched as she stuffed the tenner into her pajama pocket, turned her head and nodded at an upper floor.
“Why do existential conversations end up as run of the mill betrayals?” asked Calvino, glancing back at Pratt. They got out of the car, went through the ground floor of the shophouse and up the staircase.
Scott’s room was on the second floor of the building. Calvino pulled back the beaded curtain and found Scott and three girls lying together on a bamboo mat, legs and arms wrapped around each other, curled up like kittens who had climbed on the mat and fallen asleep. Pratt glanced at Calvino.
“This is Khun Richard? The marathon man?” he asked, using the nickname that Calvino had given to Scott.
“In his training mode,” whispered Calvino.
One of the girls coughed in her sleep, rolled over, her arm falling over another girl’s waist.
“Richard,” said Calvino, with a snap in his voice.
Scott’s eyes flicked open like a reptile that had spotted a fly. “Vinee and a Thai colonel. This must be my lucky day,” he nudged one of the girls. “Please run out and buy a lottery ticket, take the number off the UNTAC car outside.” The girl ignored him. It was unlikely that she understood more than two words of English beyond the essential phrase—pay money. But his speech was less for her benefit than for his guests. “Now that you’ve invited yourselves in, please, make yourselves at home,” he said, trying to look at his watch but his watch arm was under one of the girls.
“What time is it?”
“Nine fifteen,” said Calvino.
Scott pulled his arm free, checked the time, shook his head and yawned—one of those full-mouth yawns displaying silver fillings going all the way to his throat. “Aren’t they beautiful? But you don’t want to hear about beauty. Beauty is not in the line of duty, is it? And you’ve come around on what they call official business. A two-word combination as ugly as toad warts and hemorrhoids. Don’t you guys ever just want to play?”
“That depends on the game we’re playing,” said Pratt.
The tone of his voice caused Scott to have a chill up his spine. He leaned on his elbows and found a cigarette to light.
“In the countryside, the peasants have a nightly ritual. Before they go to sleep they ring land mines around their houses. Land mines are cheap in Cambodia. They use them against bandits. Bandits are the armed factions. Or cops. But if you become too drunk, you might just forget exactly where you left the land mines. Step on one. Blow off a leg. But I like the basic idea. It keeps out late-night strangers who might want to harm you or steal your clothes. As a reason to stop drinking, it is about the best one I’ve heard.” He yawned again. “But now that you are here, would you mind plugging in that coffee pot behind you?” asked Scott.
“Richard, we want to ask you some questions,” said Pratt.
“Then we will leave.”
“Can I mail you the answers?”
Calvino turned around, found the pot, which had oxidized into a coppery color, and plugged it into a wall socket. The girls continued sleeping as if the conversation between the three men in the room was some kind of white-noise fuel system hurling them into the deep space of sleep.
“You don’t happen to know a Khmer named Nuth? He worked out at the airport, handling cargo,” said Calvino.
“Nuth? Is that a New York lisp?” “It’s a Khmer name. Nuth.”
“Funny name, isn’t it?”
“Funny thing isn’t the name but that he’s disappeared. From a lucrative job.”
“Maybe he was promoted.”
“Maybe he was demoted,” said Pratt, glancing over at Calvino who returned his smile.
“Nuth. Doesn’t ring a bell. But as you might have gathered I was sleeping. And he wasn’t in my dreams, in case you’re interested.”
“I didn’t ask if he was in your dreams. But if you remember him,” said Calvino, testing Scott to see how far he might go in lying about the missing Khmer.
The water started to boil in the coffee pot. Scott did a couple of quick push-ups, got to his feet, and walked over and unplugged the pot. Scott seemed to pick up Calvino’s thoughts. It didn’t take a genius to understand that they had already linked him to Nuth and denying knowledge could only end in grief.
“Nuth, yes, I seem to remember a petty criminal by that name at the airport. A small-time crook who got too big for his sandals. But you probably already know that. How many scams was he running out of the airport and for whom? I wouldn’t like to say. All I know is that the bugger tried to rip me off. Nasty little bastard. I had gone out to clear a Harley. Everything had been—shall we say—prepared in advance. Then Nuth says he needs another thousand. Not riel, mind you. Another grand. American dollars. That was rather greedy of him. So I talked to someone else, I think it was his boss, and suddenly the Harley was released. What happened to Nuth? He’s missing? Maybe he’s gone upcountry to see his mother. Or he’s got another job. Or he’s in prison. It’s rare, but sometimes they do throw a criminal in prison; sometimes they let criminals escape from prison. Cambodian prisons seem to work on a different system. In Cambodia, people go to prison for all kinds of reasons. Or for no reason. At least no reason they can figure out. Some even die there.”
Scott had finished mixing sugar and tinned milk into his coffee and was blowing the steam off the top before taking the first sip.
“The Harley was for Hatch?” asked Pratt.
“In Cambodia the communists say all property belongs to the people,” said Scott, his eyes shut, sipping his coffee.
“That probably includes Harleys.”
“Why didn’t Hatch clear his own bike?” Scott wrinkled his nose.
“This coffee smells stale.”
“Why didn’t Hatch . . .”
But Scott cut off Calvino.
“Not go to the airport himself? I’m waking up but not retarded. Hatch asked me as a favor. We are friends. Friends do each other favors. I think he had a meeting the day the bike came in. I don’t see what’s the big deal. The bike came in legally. A conman named Nuth created the usual one-hour delay required to perform a shakedown. But it was straightened out. I left with
the bike. I rode the Harley around Phnom Penh the rest of the day. It’s really a very good bike.”
“Do you remember if his boss threatened him?” asked Pratt.
“He might have. I don’t speak Khmer. So I can’t really say. In Asia a boss has to threaten or why else would his slaves work at all?”
“Did you threaten him?” asked Calvino.
“Nuth?” He laughed. “I probably said I’d have his balls cut off. But somehow I had the feeling that his English was substandard.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” asked Pratt.
Scott cupped his coffee mug in his hands. He smiled at Pratt. “Believe it or not, they don’t all look alike to me. Yes, I would remember him. You never forget the face of someone who is trying to rob you. Especially if they’re not wearing a mask.”
Before the interrogation continued Pratt received a call on his walkie-talkie. It was from Shaw.
“They’ve found a body and a motorcycle,” said Shaw over the walkie-talkie.
Shaw gave Pratt an address and directions where to find them by the lake. He wrote them down on a pad. All the time Calvino was watching Pratt’s face; it revealed no emotion but the words rang clear with meaning—“They’ve found a large foreign motorcycle in the lake. Deputy Superintendent Shaw thinks it might be a Harley.”
“Pretty girls. I know that place,” said Scott, looking at Pratt’s scribbled note on the pad.
“Tiger beer for a dollar a can. Nice mamasan, too.”
He looked over at the three girls who were curled up together.
“And nice girls.”
“Why don’t you come along?” asked Calvino.
“Good idea,” said Pratt.
“I never drink before ten,” said Scott. “I use the time to think about peasants laying down land mines.”
“Make an exception.” Calvino smiled as Scott reached down and put on a running shoe, then the other, without bothering to do up the laces. Scott was the kind of man who looked at home with loose ends.
Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn Page 22