The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  They looked at each other, silently calling forth the shared memory of another man who’d been killed by an animal. His name was Oxley. It wasn’t a lion but a German shepherd named Joy that had ripped out Oxley’s throat.

  Something about the lions didn’t look normal.

  “What’s wrong with them?” asked Calvino.

  Achara’s lions were sprawled with their paws stretched forward, claws extended on the concrete, parts of the remains a few feet away. They gave every indication that they’d eaten all they wanted. One yawned, shook its head, then lowered it, looking drowsy, bloated; the other raised its head skyward, tongue arching out of its open mouth, shaking its mane before settling in for a long post-banquet nap.

  “They’ve overeaten.”

  Their bloated stomachs heaved under the dark, rainy sky—a couple of gluttons, their breathing slow and labored.

  A cop came up and whispered in Colonel Pratt’s ear.

  The colonel nodded and gestured to the squad with the tranquilizer gun to approach the cage. The other cops pressed in to watch as the gun was aimed and fired, then fired again. The lions flinched, convulsed; they let out nerve-jangling roars, licked the air, yawned, and after a couple of minutes slumped over, looking like rugs covering a hunting-lodge floor. The ambulance attendants, with some reluctance, escorted by several cops, entered the enclosure and recovered body parts. Bones and meat were loaded into black plastic bags. Neither Calvino nor Colonel Pratt said anything as the men collected Achara’s remains. The lions had left a trail of gore splattered across the concrete floor of the enclosure. The attendants efficiently stepped over broken coils of greenish-brown intestines, severed limbs with shredded flesh attached, working as if they’d had experience in such cleanups. Flies, ants, and a United Nations’ worth of tropical insects gorged on the remains.

  Clinging to the body parts were bits of clothing. A shoe.

  More like a slipper than a shoe, the kind Chinese men wear in the house. Or used for tai chi. Mud was caked on the upturned sole. It was under the roof of the enclosure, which served to keep the rain off it. Calvino had seen bodies that had been shot, stabbed, run over, blown up, and drowned, but whatever had cut down those victims, in death they remained recognizably human in form. As in life, in death the image meant something; it carried a coded message of the transformation between the living person and the lifeless form that was no longer living. What remained in the enclosure looked more like tailings dropped on the floor as a butcher worked inside a slaughterhouse. The usual human structure was gone, making it difficult to identify as a human being.

  “He was proud of his lions and gave them Chinese names,” said Calvino. “He showed them to Tanny and me before our meeting.”

  “Bad meat, he told you?” asked Colonel Pratt, making a mental note. “You said they’d been sick.”

  “Looks like they recovered their appetites.”

  Calvino would have done anything to extinguish the smell from his nostrils and mouth. The bitter taste of his own rising bile mixed with the whiskey caused him to cough and spit in the dirt.

  “We found this,” said Colonel Pratt, handing Calvino a business card.

  “Did you find any other business cards?”

  Colonel Pratt shook his head, watching Calvino examine the card.

  “Strange.”

  “ ‘This was strange chance,’ ” said Colonel Pratt, quoting Cymbeline.

  Calvino turned it over in his hand; the middle of the card had been perforated. He guessed it was from a large tooth, leaving a hole underneath his name. It was his, all right. He’d exchanged business cards with Achara the night of the Chini exhibition. Pratt had been beside him as they’d studied the card for signs of rank and importance. Calvino had had new cards made. Only his name and phone number, in keeping with his retired status. The old cards said private investigations. Calvino’s new card invited an investigation.

  Achara’s card was gold-embossed and included his CEO title and the name of a listed company. When the stock exchange opened tomorrow, the shareholders could expect a bumpy ride once the news broke that the CEO had been collected into a series of black plastic bags.

  Calvino handed the colonel the card, shaking his head.

  “Any idea why, of all the people he knew, he’d have your card on him today? Did you have a meeting or an appointment with him?”

  Calvino shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

  “His staff said he was in the garden for his daily tai chi.”

  Calvino figured Achara for someone disciplined enough to never miss his Chinese exercise. “Until he had a reason to go inside the lions’ enclosure.”

  “Strange,” said Colonel Pratt. “ ‘They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?’ ”

  Calvino paced around the perimeter of the enclosure with Pratt’s Shakespeare quotation ringing inside his head. He stopped to think about it, using a pen to nudge the large Yale lock. The same one he’d watched as Achara slipped his hand inside his shirt and fished out a chain that held a key he inserted into the lock, opening it. The chain and key had dangled around his neck. Funny thing about the lock—the key and chain had been left in it. Achara—or someone—had removed them from around Achara’s neck.

  Calvino was careful not to touch the lock as Colonel Pratt stopped a couple of feet ahead and glanced back.

  “You coming?” asked Pratt, waiting on the path.

  “Achara’s key is in the lock,” said Calvino.

  Colonel Pratt doubled back for a look. He pulled the key out of the lock.

  “He unlocked it, left the key inside the lock to save time when he came out.”

  “He wore it on a chain around his neck. I saw him lean down and open the lock without taking off the chain.”

  “What are you saying, Vincent?”

  “It’s an observation. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe he pulled the chain off most of the time, but with me around he was worried I’d steal it, so he left it around his neck.” Calvino told himself that many things in life happened without a reason; patterns didn’t necessarily repeat themselves; evidence of intention was mostly blurred and inclusive.

  “Was Achara having problems with Brandon Sawyer?”

  “I know that conflict of business interests is a leading cause of death, but I just left Brandon telling me how important it was to keep his agreement with Achara. It doesn’t make sense that he’d kill his partner.”

  “People kill each other over business issues.”

  “This isn’t Brandon’s style,” said Calvino.

  “I’d like your help, Vincent.”

  Two uniformed officers interrupted before Calvino could reply. He was glad for the chance to wander off and look around. He crouched under the awning, inspecting a sheltered spot on the gray concrete surface where the blood had pooled. The rain hadn’t washed it away. A dozen feet from that spot, the lions’ rib cages softly expanded as the drugs sent them racing inside their dreams across the Serengeti, chasing an antelope. The sharpshooter with the tranquilizer gun sat on a plastic stool, keeping the rifle pointed at the lions in case they might need a little booster shot. As he touched the concrete, Calvino had a feeling that Achara was the kind of guy who turned in for bed at night with the chain and key around his neck. With Achara’s neck and head gone, it was impossible to determine if force had been used to remove the chain. Once Achara was inside the enclosure, the gate hadn’t been locked. The day Calvino saw Achara in the enclosure, he saw a cautious, careful, and calm man, not guided by sentimentality. He had known the power of lions. Calvino tried to make sense of why Achara had removed the chain and left it in the lock. What did the key in the lock prove?

  “Pratt, have you asked the staff if their boss ever took off the gold chain?”

  Colonel Pratt turned away from the two officers and nodded that he’d include the question when it came time to interrogate Achara’s household staff.

  Calvino rose to his feet, s
tretched his arms, strolled past the police to the back of the enclosure, overlooking the canal. The water, the color of mud, ran swiftly in eddies and whirls, the current carrying leaves and branches. As he looked down at the canal, Calvino saw clothing, bloody and torn. Achara had been reported as going into the garden to do tai chi. The cloth might have been a tai chi outfit—black cotton—the rough remains a faint echo of baggy, loosefitting Chinese pants with a cord tied and knotted at the waist; it had become a bloody lump, like a piece of cartilage chewed and spit out by one of the lions.

  Why would Achara have been wearing a tai chi outfit and going into the enclosure? To perform a ritual to honor his ancestors? Was it an impulse to check on the condition of his lions? Achara was a man of honor and not a man of impulse, though, as far as Calvino knew, there was no dances-with-lions routine in tai chi.

  Colonel Pratt found him studying the blood-soaked remains of the tai chi pants. “It might have been an accident,” he said.

  Calvino nodded, squinting at the pants. “Or it was made to look like one.”

  There were always other explanations, and Colonel Pratt understood that in policing it wasn’t feasible to follow up every possibility, or the investigation would never end. But he also understood that keeping an open mind was no bad thing. “What have you got?”

  “What’s left of his workout pants.”

  Colonel Pratt squatted down and had a look, pulling his walkie-talkie out and ordering someone from forensics to bag the pant fragment. Calvino pointed at the length of pant leg. “Mud.” He looked around the enclosure. “I don’t see any mud. I’m not an expert on tai chi, but I don’t think it’s done in the mud.”

  Two lab men, hands covered with thin white gloves, arrived and took charge of the pants. Colonel Pratt watched them salute before they disappeared like ghosts. “It wouldn’t hurt to look around,” Colonel Pratt said.

  “It wouldn’t do any harm.”

  Enough cops had stomped on the grass to churn parts of the lawn into fresh mud. Given Achara’s status, the brass had dispatched a full team. Those in the upper echelons had substantial experience in covering their asses. Whatever was left of the crime scene had turned into a crowd of staff, police, ambulance attendants—no body snatchers for the likes of Achara—and some people who’d walked in from the street to see what was going on, simply stepping over the yellow crime-scene tape. It wouldn’t be long before the noodle and fruit vendors arrived and the lions woke up.

  “The canal,” said Calvino, extending his arm, “runs through his property.”

  A maid showed them where Achara performed his tai chi sessions.

  He’d chosen a lovely, uncluttered spot no more than five meters away from the canal bank—his little piece of paradise near the water, his lions, the green gardens with manicured palms and banana trees. Colonel Pratt discovered evidence of a struggle ten meters from where Achara conducted his exercises. Several sets of footprints were pressed into the damp ground. Calvino slipped down to the canal bank, where he saw several half-washed-away footprints in the mud.

  “Looks like someone landed a boat over here,” said Calvino.

  Soon the rain would remove any sign of the footprints—there were several sets of prints left by running shoes.

  Colonel Pratt directed a man in his group to photograph the prints he’d found and the ones that Calvino had spotted on the canal bank. Calvino thought that it looked like Achara had been grabbed. They had docked their boat and rushed him while he was doing his exercises. One of Colonel Pratt’s men found the spot where the boat had been docked. The bow had left an impression in the mud, half filled with brown canal water. The police snapped more photographs.

  “Doesn’t look like Achara had an accident,” said Calvino.

  “People are up and down this canal all day long. Prints on the bank could mean anything. Unless we find a witness who saw strangers with Achara, we’ve got nothing. These footprints aren’t telling us anything except that some people walked on the bank. But we have no evidence of what they were doing on the canal or their reason for walking on the bank. It’s like looking at a tarot card—you get different readings from different people.”

  By the time they’d walked back to the house, Achara’s staff had been herded into a group alongside the enclosure. Colonel Pratt received the report from the officer who had led an interrogation team. Three members of staff—a woman and two men—had fled the compound. One member of the staff had a stunned, surprised expression like a man who’d shaved with a straight razor for the first time and survived.

  He was the one who had ratted them out—said they were illegal Burmese workers. The remaining staff huddled, terrified, drained of words. Only whimpering and wailing sounds came from their mouths, as if they were waiting to be taken out and shot or transported to a concentration camp in a jungle location. None of the staff had admitted to being near the enclosure. Or to having seen Achara go through his daily tai chi exercises. Nor could they explain why there would have been mud on one of Achara’s slippers and on his pants.

  No one in the group stepped forward when asked by Colonel Pratt if anyone had seen a boat dock and strangers enter the compound from the canal. They were too frightened to swallow their own spit, and in no condition to give information that would single them out from the others. They had no idea who had fed their master to the lions. Colonel Pratt threw up his hands and walked away. Calvino stayed back for a moment, looking at the gardener who had sung like a bird about the illegal Burmese; he had the kind of prison-trustee mentality, and Calvino made a note to himself that the gardener should be put on the short list for further questioning. If a man rats out those he works with, then betraying the boss is an easy hop, skip, and boat jump onto the bank away.

  A uniformed cop came out of the house and walked straight over to Colonel Pratt. The cop, flashing the warm, sincere smile reserved for impressing senior officers, held in the palm of his hand an electronic bug. He’d found it crawling under the long teak table in the banquet room.

  They followed the officer into the room, and Colonel Pratt had the officer show precisely where he’d located it. The cop rested his hand on the table right in front of the chair that Tanny had sat in at their meeting. Achara had made a big deal about seating arrangements. Being a trusting soul, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to sweep the room for electronic devices after the meeting.

  “Any idea where this might have come from?” Colonel Pratt asked.

  Calvino smiled, looking at the black listening device the size of a bullet.

  “ ‘It’s like reading tarot cards, you get different readings from different people.’ ”

  He had a good hunch that Tanny had left it behind, but he had no proof. Achara would have used the room for any number of meetings, and any competitor wanting to get an edge could have placed it under the table. Anyone wanting him to divulge his true intentions would have an uncensored log to monitor. The same wheels turned inside Colonel Pratt’s head as the black bug was bagged, labeled, and taken away. Pratt checked the time. “You don’t have to stick around,” he said.

  “What about dinner tonight? I miss Manee’s cooking,” Calvino said, knowing that Colonel Pratt’s wife prepared a full Thai meal every evening.

  Colonel Pratt cracked a smile. “I’ve stopped asking.”

  “Because I came into a little money?”

  “I didn’t say that. But it happened around that time.”

  “Walk me out, Pratt. I want to run something past you.”

  Calvino looked around at all the cops in the area, making it clear he wanted a conversation without a group of ears tuned in for content.

  As they walked to the front of the house, Calvino told Pratt about the death of Tanny’s sister during the war on drugs. He explained how the mother had made a physical examination of the body. “Civilians don’t know what they’re looking at,” said Colonel Pratt, his tone dismissive.

  Clearly he’d been disappointed, thinking that Ca
lvino had some further insight about Achara’s death. But he’d already moved on. Maybe he was moving just a little too fast, hitting the New York accelerator.

  “I know that. But she’s got a medical background.”

  “A doctor?” asked Colonel Pratt, eyes narrowed. Calvino was stepping onto his turf, and the colonel wasn’t all that happy having Calvino’s footprints where they shouldn’t be.

  “She’s a nurse. And she’s an expert on treating gunshot wounds.”

  Colonel Pratt stopped dead in his tracks and cocked his head. “A combat nurse? Was she in the army?”

  “She worked in a medical unit.”

  “Vietnam,” he said with some confidence.

  “Northern Thailand. She was involved in the communist insurgency.”

  Colonel Pratt raised an eyebrow, slowly shook his head. It wasn’t what he’d expected to hear; it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. It gave him an unsettled feeling, considering that he had a good idea where Calvino was trying to lead him—down a trail from where people rarely returned. Tanny’s mother hadn’t been the only one to lose a daughter or son. Her daughter had been shot in the head twice. The chances were that shooter was likely either a cop or a local acting under the cops’ authority and protection—subletting the hit to professional gunmen. She’d have been one more of those whose names had been crossed off the blacklist. There’d been an unofficial quota. Those who eliminated the most in their district stood to gain promotions and benefits. It had been a kind of competition to show efficiency and loyalty. The police wanted to forget about the war against drugs. There’d been no arrests. Not one. He glanced over Calvino.

  “She was a communist?”

  “The murdered daughter?”

  “No, the mother.”

  Calvino shrugged. “Don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “For some people.”

  “That’s why I asked you. You’re not ‘some people.’

  You’d go strictly on the merits. Murder is the same thing. It doesn’t matter about the mother’s politics.”

  “It’s not the mother’s politics. Murder on the scale we’re talking about is politics.”