Calvino ordered her a second lady drink and she opened up, answering a few questions about Scott Baker. She admitted he’d bar-fined her three or four times (she couldn’t remember the exact number but said the mamasan probably knew better than she did), and she thought Baker was a chump. He fell in the class of farangs that should have been required to apply for a pleasure permit before going out on the street. An official would first examine him, give him a test for his aptitude to find, experience, and appreciate pleasure, and if he passed, then he got a one-year permit. A pleasure permit was like a work permit, except for having fun. She said, “Scott not like fun. He thinks too much. He talk, talk. Make me have headache. Make me too bored.”
Taengmo might not have been educated, but she was far from stupid. She knew the score.
She had gone with Baker back to his apartment on Soi 71 Sukhumvit, where he switched on a fan but not the air conditioner. He lived in a building where most of the occupants were bar yings. Taengmo felt immediately at home, and not a little disappointed. Farangs were supposed to live in expensive luxury units, not in a place where her fee equaled one month’s rent. Rather than dragging her into his bedroom, he took her into his small living room and put on a DVD about a water recycling system that he’d help build upcountry. She had fallen asleep ten minutes into the video, and he sat eating potato chips from a bag, watching the entire ninety minutes alone. The water plant had been built near her home village. The local officials had all bought new cars for their mia nois from funds earmarked for the project, so by the time the plant construction was finished, the concrete had started to crack and the machinery broke down. It had been abandoned four months after it had been opened.
As Calvino was going out the door, Taengmo said, “You think I am ugly?”
Calvino looked back, shaking his head. She looked small, young, no makeup, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on the sofa between her two friends with her legs crossed.
“You’re not ugly.”
“I don’t believe you. Scott, he not want to make love with me because I am ugly.”
Calvino shook his head. “It’s because he’s in love with himself. And all he wanted from you was an audience to listen to his theories about water.”
She knew that look on the face of a farang, the look that said the man had gotten what he wanted, he was done, and she was dismissed. “I dancing now,” she said, finishing her drink, sliding off the seat, and disappearing around the back of the stage.
Getting information required a certain mind-set. The key was to cultivate indifference as a means to filter out the strangeness of the person or situation. He’d concentrated instead on what he had to do to get what he needed from Taengmo. Pay what was required. Anything else was a distraction. It wouldn’t have mattered if Taengmo picked her nose with the end of her little finger, yawned and coughed up bad breath, had a bronze pin stapled to her lower lip, because all he wanted from her was a name, a time, a place. The rest of who she was hadn’t mattered.
There was no need on either side to inject any emotion into the situation; emotions could backfire, and an investigator might lose what he’d come after in return for something he had no use for. Keep it cool, he’d told himself. Remember the reason you’re talking to her. Get what you need and walk away. Forget the strangeness as if it never entered your mind. Deep down Calvino suspected that Tanny Craig had done the same thing to him.
Calvino had a certain hunger for the truth. Something real and genuine from the lips of Tanny Craig.
THIRTY-FIVE
FROM THE PHAYA Thai Skytrain Station, Calvino waved over a motorcycle-taxi driver who was parked under a pedestrian bridge with his seven-year-old boy seated on the bike, his face half covered in shadow, listening to his father tell him a story. It was a moment that every man wished he’d had with his dad. The driver lifted his son in his arms and slowly eased him over the front tank. Calvino climbed on the back, listening to the boy’s father talking about planting rice upcountry and getting stung by a yellow jacket. Calvino told the driver to take him to Government House.
Once they reached the entrance, Calvino got off the bike and reached for his wallet. The fare was normally seventy baht. Calvino gave the driver two hundred and told him to use the tip to buy sweets and a book for his kid. The driver looked shocked, and so did the boy. As Calvino walked away, he thought that for one hundred thirty baht he’d given that kid a good impression of a foreigner, and this was a part of Bangkok that didn’t have many farangs. It was one of those gestures aimed at the future. A man couldn’t claim to have any sense of hope for the future unless he believed that such a gesture was an investment, one that created a lasting impression on the mind of a young boy. When, later in life, he came across the assholes, he could dismiss them as the exceptions to the rule.
As Calvino walked through the gate, two security men who wore ski masks with only their eyes showing frisked him in an unfriendly way, asking what he wanted at this time of night. Another couple of security guys wore bandannas wrapped around their faces. No one wanted to be recognized. Calvino figured these men, who had added sticks and slingshots to the golf clubs, had returned from the fighting that had started at six in the morning around Parliament and lasted through the day. The demonstrators had been bloodied and security increased. The smiles had vanished behind ski masks and bandannas, leaving in their place a trail of suspicious, hostile glares. Calvino saw the beginning of a standoff as a couple of the men started cursing farangs for writing and saying bad things about the demonstrators. The mood had changed. The time had come for Calvino to drop the general’s wife’s name. When he did, as in the Bible story of Moses parting the Red Sea, a gap opened and he was waved through.
Several demonstrators he passed on the pavement reeked of tear gas, and tears streamed down their cheeks. Most of the people had gone to hear speakers on the stage or back to their tents. Otherwise, the few who were out walking around avoided Calvino; one old man tilted his head to the side and spit. “The police, they tried to kill me,” he stammered. “We were peaceful. We did nothing, but they want to kill us.”
“You take care of yourself,” said Calvino.
“They’ll shoot a farang. Then the world will see the police for who they really are.” He huffed, sucked his teeth, and walked off toward the platform in the distance. Calvino watched him leave, a frail, angry old man with a silver buzz cut. Someone’s grandfather had joined pitched street battles.
It took a great deal to push a man to such extremes when he could be home bouncing grandchildren on his knee. But there he’d been all worked up, railing and spitting and full of energy. Demonstrators had told him before that farang couldn’t understand how they felt or thought, that you had to be Thai to understand. Calvino thought how, at the end of the day, all cults and true believers sounded pretty much alike.
The voices of the speakers on the stage echoed in the distance. The stage itself, cloaked in a hazy golden light, seemed to float in the night sky. A chorus of yellow hand clappers exploded through the crowds. The applause followed a point scored against the government, the police, the old prime minister, his family, and his cronies. It was unlikely the speakers were addressing the news reports about the three cops who’d been shot trying to break up the demonstration outside Parliament. No one wanted to talk about who had guns among the demonstrators or had used them against the police. There had been no point arguing in the dark with an old man about who was right or wrong, or who had guns, or who had the intention to kill. No one on either side would ever agree on what had really happened or who was responsible. The speakers onstage reinforced their own version of the facts. The words gave comfort to thousands. The crowd voted on the facts, and making it unanimous meant their facts must have been real.
Calvino understood the situation; for a foreigner there was no winning side—each group had its farang haters. Farangs had been billed as the evil demons. It might have been a professional wrestling match. The crowd knew whom to boo
and whom to cheer. Like the old man who’d hobbled away said, “They’ll shoot a farang.” Calvino thought the old man was wrong, but looking at the distant stage, listening to the emotion of rage in full bloom, it wasn’t hard to believe that the time had come when attention centered on the evilness of the outsider.
In most people’s lives, there was a moment of realization that they had come to a fork in the road, a divide, and they had to make a choice. Tanny made her choice when she decided to spend the night on a cot near her mother on the grounds of Government House. Other people had made their own choice and fought the police. That fighting had left two people dead and four hundred injured. The ones who had lost a leg or an arm or a lot of blood were rushed to hospitals, but other wounded demonstrators limped or were carried back to Government House, where Tanny’s mother worked through the night wrapping bandages, setting broken bones, stitching up wounds. Tanny pitched in, working alongside her mother.
Calvino found Tanny and her mother stretched out side by side on cots, sleeping. He pulled up a plastic stool next to Tanny and touched her shoulder. She sat bolt upright, her hands balled into fists. “Slow down,” he said.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I thought you said that you’d wait.”
She looked away. “My mother phoned.”
“I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t turned off your cell phone.”
She looked for her handbag, reached over and opened it, taking out her phone. She turned it on and dumped it back in her bag, as if that solved the problem. She was becoming more Thai by the day. And night.
“I’ve been fielding calls for you nonstop.”
“My mother couldn’t cope with all the injured.”
“Marshall phoned. Seems you are in popular demand.”
She dropped her hands to her lap, her legs crossed as she sat on the edge of the cot. “It’s been crazy here.”
He pulled a fistful of phone messages from his jacket.
“I took down these. You can go through them later. I told Marshall that you were busy at the embassy getting documents processed.”
She reached up, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. “Thanks, Vinny,” she said, kissing him on the forehead.
“I’ve been working on Brandon’s death. But I’ve hit a dead end. And figured you might be able to answer a couple of questions,” he said.
Tanny’s mother sat up on the cot, hooked her legs over the side, rubbing her eyes and yawning, her hair unruly, wild, spiked out from her head so she looked like a Zulu warrior after a fierce battle. “How did you get through security?” she asked.
He told her the story, whispering Tamarine’s name, saying how he was her friend and a friend of her husband.
The weight of his connection to it worked like magic on the guards. No one had the guts to test whether the farang was lying.
Mem said, “They’re worried about undercover police coming to spy on us. That would be a big problem,” she said.
“But I’m a foreigner,” said Calvino. “No one’s ever mistaken me for a Thai cop.”
“People are tired. They’re not thinking straight. I can hardly remember anything.”
It turned out that Mem hadn’t slept for more than two hours out of the last twenty-four. She was in better condition than most people would be after so little sleep. Her time with the communists in the jungles had prepared her to function without much rest.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said, standing up. He reached out for Tanny’s hand.
She looked expectant, hopeful, waiting for her mother like a teenage daughter seeking approval. “Go ahead. I’m going back to sleep.”
They walked around to the east side of Government House, stepping over puddles of rainwater and soggy signs that had slid down from the walls and collapsed into the mud. Tanny looked back at her mother, settling back on the cot. “You won’t believe what she’s been through.”
“You admire her,” said Calvino.
“A mother like this, who wouldn’t? She’s doing this work because she believes she can find justice for my sister. I’ve lived my life without ever facing the problems she’s had to face daily.”
“Justice,” said Calvino, as if it were a foreign word.
She stopped on the pavement and let go of his hand.
“Are you mocking her?”
“Never,” said Calvino. “You ought to know justice is a personal thing.”
“Isn’t it everywhere?”
“You don’t get it. Have they stopped teaching American kids that justice is universal? They don’t throw you on some invisible social scale to see how much you weigh in the larger scheme of things.”
“You’re romanticizing America. You forget that you left a lifetime ago,” she said.
“In some places you can’t find justice with a flashlight. It’s buried underground. And don’t tell me that isn’t true in America. Powerful people get their chops busted all the time and their asses hauled off to jail.”
She’d never questioned the universality of justice. She’d never heard of anyone else questioning the idea either.
“That’s what you came out to tell me? To talk about the meaning of justice on the dark side of life?”
“I came to talk about us. Then decided that’s another conversation. What I did come for has to do with Brandon Sawyer. It’s business.”
She looked confused. “Business.”
“Business, justice, Brandon, your sister.”
“What’s Brandon got to do with justice for my sister?”
Tanny had folded all aspects of justice, as her mother had, into tracking down and punishing the gunman who’d killed Jeab. Her tone was consistent with letting the others find their own way, sort out their own problems, and make the compromises that required.
“What if I told you there’s evidence Brandon was murdered? And it’s being covered up. That’s got something to do with justice.”
“And you have evidence to show he was murdered?”
He withdrew the printouts of his digital photos, showing the two small wounds on Brandon’s chest. He moved to a pool of light coming from a nearby tent. But it was still too dark for her to examine the marks. They walked far down until they came to a light shining from an open doorway, and stepped inside the door. Tanny looked up from the three printouts. “What caused them? And what do they have to do with his death? I thought it was a heart attack.”
“That’s the official version. I don’t know. My theory is Brandon found himself on the wrong end of a Taser.”
“And you’ve found such a weapon?”
“Not yet.”
This was the same woman who had walked out of his bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. “The photos will help you remember how much you believe in justice. That’s why you’re here, right? And why your mother’s here. Tamarine’s husband promises to nail the hit man who killed your sister. Those are facts. Personally, I’d like to see Sawyer’s killer found and put away. Murders of friends that go unanswered leave me with a bad feeling. What about you?”
“What do you want from me?” She tried to read his intention as they stood in the doorway, people walking past looking at the farang.
“Alice in Wonderland you’re not. You still don’t get it. The people who killed Sawyer and your sister aren’t afraid. Ask your mother where that road leads.”
She shoved the photos into Calvino’s jacket pocket. “I don’t need this. He was your client.”
“A case can be made that you represent the family. It’s your case. Not mine.”
“I’m certain that Marshall—”
“Forget about Marshall. You can tell him I’m no longer in business. And what he does about Brandon is his business.”
“You’re finished?” she asked.
“I should ask if we’re finished.”
“Nothing personal is ever that simple.”
“Justice is personal. You want it for your sister’s death.
“I will think about it.”
“You think like a farang.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“In between my taking your calls, one of Tamarine’s close friends—or at least he said he was a close friend—called. He said I was making trouble and I should lay off questioning Brandon’s autopsy report.”
“He threatened you?”
Calvino didn’t reply at first, wondering if he ought to spell out the obvious: He could be written off as the unfortunate victim of an accident. But he decided to leave the nature of the threat vague, hanging in the air. Leave the words as markers to be sniffed around the edges. “It’s all in the way you interpret it.” The threatening phone call confirmed that his status was closer to that of a helium balloon drifting toward the sun.
Marshall had told Tanny to manage the details of the deal to sell shares in the joint-venture company to Wei Zhang.
“When I said you were spending the day at the embassy getting the paperwork done for repatriation of Brandon’s remains, you know what he said? ‘Tell her Wei Zhang isn’t happy. He wants to close the deal quickly. Tell her to get her butt over to his office.’ I asked myself why you didn’t tell me Brandon’s shares were being sold before they cremated him. Even by New York standards, that’s a rush job.”
“I didn’t think you’d understand,” she said.
“I’m thinking you’re right. There are a lot of things I don’t understand. Such as getting me to tag along to the meeting with Tamarine. It was a good cover. Going to help with your sister’s murder. I was the hero, right? Wrong. The plan was to compromise me. I have to admit, it was brilliant. I’m thinking, ‘This woman knows nothing about Thailand or the culture. She’s scared. Help her get through it.’ Involve lifelong friends like Pratt and Manee, turn them into hostages of Marshall Sawyer’s business deal. I join the ranks as another corruptionist working the system, keeping his head down, protecting himself and his friends.”
The Corruptionist Page 29