Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn

by Christopher G. Moore

  “No way. For one necklace?” asked Calvino. “You can buy an airforce for a Third World country with fifty million bucks.”

  “This is no ordinary necklace.” “Obviously,” said Calvino.

  “It has a history attached. Legends, wars, and ancestors.”

  “Not to mention enough face to cause a total eclipse of the moon,” said Calvino.

  “You might put it that way,” said Pratt, smiling. He liked it when farangs tried to understand the meaning and use of face. Usually they got it wrong. But this time he couldn’t find much fault in Calvino’s assessment of what was involved with that diamond-studded strand of jewels.

  “Fat Stuart was in the jewelry business,” said Calvino. But Fat Stuart had been in many businesses which attracted the petty grifters. He had never put much weight on the jewelry angle, figuring Fat Stuart had probably helped some locals offload some phony opals on an Aussie tourist.

  “We know Khun Stuart L’Blanc had farang friends in the gun-smuggling business,” said Pratt. “Philippe had connections in the stolen jewelry business.”

  “He was the fence?”

  “We’re not sure and can’t ask him.” “Excuse me, but he was trying to kill me.” “No one is criticizing your actions.”

  “You’re saying Hatch and Patten were mixed up with the Saudi necklace? And the check Patten wanted me to deliver to Hatch was for the damn necklace, wasn’t it? It had nothing to do with guns? And that explains why Canadian intelligence people sent Alice Dugan to my office.”

  “We suspect the Saudis may have asked their Canadian counterparts. L’Blanc was Canadian, after all.”

  Pratt sat with an expressionless look as the power came back on, the lights, fans, and air-conditioning kicked in with a loud rumble and whine.

  “Fat Stuart involved in the Saudi jewelry case? No one would believe it,” said Calvino.

  “That’s why he was perfect. Khun Stuart was a master jeweler who looked unemployable.”

  “Christ, it’s probably true. He was a master jeweler. It was a brilliant idea, Pratt.”

  Pratt agreed. “L’Blanc was a craftsman, Vincent. Someone trained in the art and technique of jewelry. But unfortunately he was also a crook who couldn’t avoid temptation. He knew the value of what he had been given. If anyone else had seen the necklace they would have thought, yes, this is a beautiful piece. But Stuart L’Blanc knew the value. He understood the Windsor Factor. And he couldn’t resist a chance to cash in.”

  “So they killed Fat Stuart? And Hatch and Patten. Are we talking about the same guys?”

  “I’m afraid so. It all started with L’Blanc. He had the talent to copy any piece of jewelry,” said Pratt.

  “And the grifter’s talent to pass off the fake as the original.” The last vision of Fat Stuart was his body slumped to the side and a division of ants marching between his teeth. He was a Bangkok original and his death had been no fake.

  “We have good reason to believe that someone with influence asked him for a favor. Asked him to make a fake of the necklace the Saudis want returned.”

  An influential person was someone above the law; someone no one could touch without getting their fingers burnt. You didn’t mention the name of people like that. You left others guessing amongst a list of possible candidates. Even Pratt in his private conversation could not bring himself to use the name. And he knew Calvino had been around long enough to not ask him to breach this unwritten code.

  “And what the Saudis have is Fat Stuart’s fake copy,” said Calvino.

  “We think L’Blanc made several fakes. He tried to cheat a high-ranking person. An extremely influential thief. That often proves to be a dangerous business, Vincent.”

  There was an old Western saying, “There is no honor among thieves.” Calvino’s law had a different, Eastern twist: Forget about honor—you can steal, murder, lie, and cheat as much as you like but never cause an influential person to lose face. Or cause him to lose his money, which amounts to breaking his rice bowl. He will kill you for that, too.

  The restaurant was starting to fill up with lunchtime trade. Mainly local gangsters with mobile phones, smoking cigarettes, spitting on the floor, and showing their yellow teeth as they laughed and joked around.

  “I’ve been thinking about the way Hatch died,” said Calvino.

  “We can assume one thing. He didn’t know. Think about the pain he must’ve suffered,” said Pratt. “No man endures such pain if he has the information they’re looking for. Unless he is trying to mislead us.”

  “Hatch would have given them the crown jewels of England if it were possible,” said Calvino.

  “Sure, they still would have killed him. But they would’ve done it quick.”

  “They killed Patten for that necklace,” said Pratt.

  “And they killed the man who started this enterprise—Fat Stuart.”

  “Who is left?”

  “The man looking for the necklace. Just like us.”

  “Why don’t we ask Kim?” asked Calvino.

  “Patten told me about him before he was killed. He said he owed me one. Anyway, this Kim is an influential person’s contact in Phnom Penh.”

  “Whoever Kim is, this person has rank and protection at the highest levels,” said Pratt.

  Calvino had been wondering about one man. “Do you think that Shaw is tracking Kim?”

  Pratt leaned forward over the table. “Do you?”

  “Why would he have saved my life that first night we arrived?” asked Calvino.

  “Maybe he thought you might lead him to the necklace,” said Pratt. “He’s not a stupid man.”

  He had thought about that possibility as well. Had Shaw chanced on the scene or had he followed him? Why would he have taken the trouble to follow Calvino who had taken off from the Lido with a Vietnamese whore on the back of a motorcycle? If Shaw was part of the problem, then the interview Shaw had been pressing for inside T-3 was another plan, per- haps a set-up for Calvino to take a very hard fall behind prison walls where no one would ever know exactly how far he had dropped before the noose closed tight against his neck.

  “I don’t know what side anyone is on any more. Fifty mil- lion dollars is just too much money. I can’t believe guys like Hatch and Patten ever got involved in something so far out of their league,” said Calvino.

  He had slammed into a dead end as far as Shaw was concerned. His only advantage was Kim had stalled out in a dead end, too. Whoever else was looking to recover the jewels was spinning their wheels, killing people, but had nothing to show for their efforts except a pile of bodies. Suddenly he felt very alone and isolated in a way he had never experienced in Bangkok. To be influential meant something terrifying—the influential person was never accountable for his actions. Someone might defeat him with more influence and power but no one could ever tame his lawless conduct or make him pay for his crimes. People of influence never committed crimes. They lived, worked, and died behind a series of cut outs. Fall guys like Hatch and Patten had slipped below the surface of events and purposes larger than themselves, never quite understanding what role they had played and why they had to die. Cut outs had no more value than paper dolls, and much the same purpose, they distracted children from the more serious activities of adults. The mastermind might have run dry with his cut outs. If that were the case, then he, too, was alone.

  “If we recover the necklace, Vincent, Thai relations with Saudi Arabia will be restored. That would be good for Thailand’s image. And for a lot of workers who want to go back there and can’t.”

  The storm waves would flatten, the surface calm restored. Harmony was the co-existence of influential persons, which followed the return of each other’s stolen goods and the healing of wounded pride.

  “The image I’m seeing is Mike Hatch’s body strung up from the ceiling,” said Calvino.

  Cambodia had seen much worse than Mike Hatch’s body, thought Pratt. Centuries of murder and plunder marked the region and its people
. Hatch was a foreign mercenary who had got in the way of powerful local forces he only vaguely understood. Local merchants made similar mistakes on occasion and died as well. Merchants and peasants served their lords. To disobey a direct decree was dangerous; to cheat a lord of his wealth was a death penalty. Hatch had been executed.

  Cambodia was like the Wild West. More Doc Holidays than Wyatt Earps. One hundred twenty years ago Kansas was more dangerous than New York. People forget that, thought Calvino. People forget a lot of things and that’s why the same things could so easily repeat themselves without anyone ever noticing.

  ******

  WHEN Calvino returned to his hotel room Thu was in bed with her back turned away from the door. She turned her head as he shut the door. “It’s okay, Thu.”

  She gave him a narrow-eyed once-over.

  “I have bad dream,” she said, her teeth chattering in her skull.

  “Sweetheart, Phnom Penh is a nightmare. Bad dreams I can live with.”

  He immediately regretted having snapped at her. But most of all he hated his own stupidity in taking money from Pat- ten in a Washington Square bar. All he had to do was find a guy named Hatch and deliver him a check. It was simple and he fell for that sucker punch, sticking his chin way out and saying hit me, hit me hard. He was on edge as he took off his jacket and slung it over a chair. Patten was dead. He didn’t have a client. He didn’t have a case. He paced like a boxer in the dressing room before a title fight. Why not go out to the airport, get on the next plane to Bangkok, and forget any of this had ever happened? He didn’t give a damn about a necklace or international relations between Saudi and Thailand. Why should he? If he had been staying because of Dr. Veronica, the shoot-out at the hospital reconfirmed his total lack of judgment about women. Had she saved his life by killing the Russian? Or had she killed someone who might incriminate her? He wasn’t certain if he had the stomach to find the truth or to live with the truth once he had found it.

  Thu watched him walk over to the balcony and look out over the street. He poured himself a drink in a dusty glass and drank it straight down. Then he poured himself another drink, looked at it and threw it out the window, watching the amber liquid descend the three stories to the street.

  “Sorry, Thu.”

  She smiled. Here was this woman with only one leg smiling at him as if she could get out of the bed and walk over and kiss him. She had this smile full of forgiveness and compassion, which made him regret that he had ever called her a whore.

  “You hungry? You want something to eat?”

  She didn’t say anything. He picked up the phone and ordered rice, pork, chicken, salad and a large bottle of whiskey. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and took Thu’s hand between his own. It was small and unblemished like a child’s hand. He kissed the knuckles, lifted his head, and brushed his hand against her chin.

  “You knew Mike Hatch well?” She nodded.

  He wanted to stop the questions there. But he had one more question that had been bothering him. He had put off asking it before. It was a question about sex.

  “You ever meet Mike’s friend? A big, fat man. His name was Stuart.”

  Her eyes didn’t blink.

  “Stuart. Yes, I know him before.”

  He was going to ask a question he wished someone else would ask but there was no one else alive with enough information to ask it.

  “Did Stuart stay in this room before?”

  “He stay here,” said Thu.

  “And did Mike Hatch come here to see Stuart?”

  She looked remote for a second as if she were thinking. There had been so many rooms and men a computer search was needed to locate the point in time when Hatch and Fat Stuart’s presence had come together. Finally she gave a small nod.

  He swallowed hard, thinking how cold her hand felt in his.

  “You ever see a necklace?” She didn’t know the word so he had to find a piece of paper and pen and draw one for her. His drawing could have been a noose.

  “This is a necklace,” he said.

  “Did Fat Stuart show you something like this?” He could see Fat Stuart trying to impress a pick-up with a piece of jewelry.

  “He never show me,” she said. “Did you make love with him?” She looked confused.

  “Did you fuck him?”

  This she understood. “Yes, boom, boom.”

  “I want you to think real hard, Thu. Mike came to this room. It was Stuart’s room. Stuart went in there,” Calvino said, pointing to the bathroom. He watched her eyes follow his finger to the bathroom door.

  “Stuart stayed in the bathroom a long time. And you fucked Mike here. In this bed.”

  “He fuck me,” she said straight out.

  “What did Mike and Stuart talk about?”

  There was a long silence born from a failure of education, a lack of understanding, and maybe exhaustion from losing a leg and having killers burst into your hospital room.

  “Money,” she said. There was no conviction in her voice. It was like she was guessing or saying anything that might please him.

  He pressed his forehead against her, listening to her breathe for a couple of seconds. “This is important. Try and remember. Do you remember anything Hatch and Stuart said to each other?”

  “Stuart, he say: ‘You trust Philippe? You stupid, man. No way he not fuck you good. Hurt you good. Pull you apart good.’” This sounded like something Fat Stuart might have said slouched over the toilet, reading a racing form.

  Indeed this may have been both the wisest and dumbest thing Fat Stuart had ever said. It ranked right up with the same thrust of total conviction that Fat Stuart had brought to the racetrack the day he laid down a bet on a tipped horse named Saddam. Listening to Fat Stuart talk was like being tuned into a radio caught between two stations populated with careless talk.

  “You ever meet someone called Kim?” asked Calvino. She didn’t know.

  “You trust this Kim?”

  “No, I don’t trust,” she replied.

  There was no contradiction in her mind. Kim was someone you didn’t have to know to distrust.

  The way Calvino figured the angles—there were a couple of possibilities. The first was that Kim already had found the necklace and had killed off the cut outs who might connect him to the crime. Cut outs were rendered up as offerings—a kind of self-defense, fail-safe ritual—whenever one influential person found the fan blades of power blowing on his neck from another influential person who had more influence. Killing Patten, Hatch, and Fat Stuart confirmed that Kim was doing a job without a great deal of success. The fact that Calvino had killed Philippe fell in the realm of cosmic justice. The second possibility was Kim had been double-crossed by his cut outs. That guaranteed a death sentence. Fat Stuart had the necklace and stashed it. Kim was looking for the neck- lace like everyone else and eliminating people like a grand master taking a couple of key pieces before checkmating his opponent.

  ******

  AN hour later Pratt and Calvino got out of Shaw’s Land Cruiser at Phnom Penh police headquarters. The colonial style building was the usual dusty, rundown relic that could have passed for a boarding house. T-3 was the prison but there was also a jail in Phnom Penh. Behind police HQ, the municipal authorities operated a jail and it was easier getting into the jail than into T-3. Outside the front gate leading to police HQ there were, set up near the road, several rows of wooden tables which were occupied by plainclothes police officers and neighborhood people.

  “I know the Chief,” said Shaw. “But I have an idea we might take a short cut.”

  The gravel crushing under his feet, Shaw turned and walked through the gate and went straight to the first table. All the people at the table looked heavily armed. Shaw shook hands with each of them. Everyone at the table seemed to know him, calling him by name. Then he waved to Pratt and Calvino who walked over and they all sat down. Shaw made the introductions. A vendor in plastic sandals and apron brought three more plates filled with brown,
lumpish hunks of meat. The Khmers watched as Calvino opened his mouth and stuffed a piece of meat inside. They nodded with approval and raised their glasses in a toast.

  “They like you, Mr. Calvino.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Not many foreigners like dog curry.” Calvino stopped chewing.

  “Yeah? What kind of dog?” He had never wanted to spit so much in his life. Finally he swallowed; it was like downing a battleship.

  “Street mutt special. You acquire a taste for it after a couple of plates,” said Shaw.

  “Is that so?” asked Calvino.

  Pratt started with the rice, putting a thin strip of meat on his fork.

  “This reminds me of New York,” said Pratt.

  The fork slipped into his mouth like a knife into butter. They had the approval of the table. One of the officers ordered blood-filled dog intestines.

  “Maybe Chinatown,” said Calvino.

  “It’s the current fad in Phnom Penh,” said Shaw.

  “Eating dog and democracy,” said Calvino. “It could be a TV program.”

  “Brain is very good,” said the woman police officer. “Make you smart.”

  Her colleagues laughed and poured whiskey into the glasses on the table.

  “Dog nose better,” said another officer in broken English, touching his own nose. “A little chewy like taffy but sweeter.”

  “During the last war the Japanese ate prisoners of war,” said Shaw.

  “They bad people,” said one of the cops.

  “We never eat people in Cambodia. Dog, yes. Cow, yes. People, no can eat.”

  Shaw waited a beat, sliding some dog-meat onto his fork with his knife, English style.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where we can find a prisoner named Nuth?”

  One of the officers burped. The air hung heavy with dog-meat breath. “Nuth? Not sure. Maybe. You want to look?”

  Calvino’s law—Sometimes you are forced to eat man’s best friend to track down the friend of a murderer.

  As they walked back to the jail, the Assistant Police Chief passed them, driving a new Mercedes. He scraped by on twenty-five bucks a month. The thing about the Third World was how men in uniform could handle their money well enough to buy such a car. The wonder of it. A dog in every pot; a new Mercedes in every garage—democracy promised so much. That is, for a man who knew how to manage money. They had no trouble walking straight into the jail. Prisoners stripped down to shorts sat against the concrete walls, vacant-eyed, arms loose at their sides, cheeks sunken in. Most prisoners were in their early twenties with a couple of old guys curled up on mats smoking cigarettes and red-eyed with sorrow. The holding rooms were large dark concrete bunkers filled with peasants; men without rank, family connections, or power. The kind of men who would not have had surnames in ancient times. Slaves had only first names. The plainclothes officers asked around for Nuth, explaining how he worked out at the airport in customs. After a few minutes one of the prisoners rose to his feet. He turned out to be a cousin. Shaw gave the man a pack of cigarettes. As the prisoner counted the cigarettes, he spoke in Khmer.