The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  He couldn’t help but think of Tanny. The look of respect on her face as she’d glanced at Wei Zhang.

  “You’re thinking of her,” said Siriporn.

  Women seemed to know when a man was thinking about another woman. “I was thinking about the fireworks,” he said.

  She knew he was lying but said nothing, a little sigh escaping from her throat. “What kind of fireworks?”

  “Roman candles and rockets.”

  The man he’d pulled from the van had been beyond a state of pain. He’d looked like a man who had been wrapped in barbed wire and rode an avalanche down the side of a mountain. His eyes had stared at Calvino like the eyes of a man who knew he was already dead. Calvino wished Tanny had seen those eyes.

  THIRTY-NINE

  SCULLY PASSED A row of whitewashed buildings, slabs of concrete with barred windows, shabby shophouses uniformly desolate, like a project or a prison. He wore blue jeans and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt, and a thin line of sweat covered his upper lip. Nothing about Scully said ex-FBI, and he was happy to pass as another late-middle-aged farang out in the boiling heat, his path flanked by massage parlors and bars. He used the back of his hand to wipe off the sweat, cupped the same hand over his eyes, scanning the lineup of parked cars. Halfway down, Scully spotted Calvino’s white Honda with a bashed door and front fender. He continued walking, shaking his head as he assessed the damage the closer he got to the Honda. The daytime traffic in the Washington Square was light—a delivery van, a pickup unloading large bags of ice, another one unloading crates of soda, a taxi, motorcycles—and he grinned, catching the eye of a massage girl who sat with several others in the street near a vendor’s cart. She looked up from her bowl of rice noodles and blew him a kiss. His smiled widened.

  “Later,” he said.

  “I wait you,” she said, giggling, covering her mouth with one hand.

  Having exchanged lies with her, Scully continued walking until he stopped beside the Honda and rapped his knuckles on the window. Calvino opened the passenger door, and Scully walked around and climbed inside. The engine was on, keeping the air running. It was cool inside. Calvino was parked in front of the muay Thai school.

  “Watch the guy in the red trunks,” said Calvino, looking at a couple of men—one of them a foreigner—on the other side of the window, circling each other in the ring. The Thai boxer’s right foot came off the mat, and he executed a perfect front knee kick. “That kick is called kao drong. And that one is dtai kao.” The Thai boxer landed a kick to the side of the farang’s left knee. It struck home, the pain registering on his face—just as the pain had registered on the face of the guy who, the night before, had pulled a knife on Calvino.

  “You said you had something to show me,” said Scully.

  Calvino glanced at him, smiling. “Yeah, I’ve got something to show you.”

  Scully looked around, admiring the location that Calvino had chosen for the meeting. But it wasn’t obvious what Calvino had in mind. “Kick-boxing moves?” asked Scully.

  Calvino continued to watch the boxers. “To watch men in hand-to-hand combat is to learn something about how to stay alive.”

  “I’ve learned just about all I wanna know about my fellow man. In battle or peace, you never know who will stand his ground when you have the need.”

  “You know the Thai word chok?”

  Scully shook his head.

  “You should, as a married man. It means ‘to fight.’ I’ve got a fight I can’t run away from. I could use a little help.”

  “I’m retired, Vinny. The fight’s pretty much gone out of me.” Scully paused, searching carefully for the right words.

  “But I’ll do what I can. Though I can’t see how, with the connections you have in the police department, I’d be of much help. You must be desperate.”

  It was a sobering moment when Calvino was forced to admit he was locked in a world of danger and had no choice but to reach out in order to limit the damage.

  “Like a lot of people,” he said.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Scully sat in the car watching the boxers throw punches, kicks, circle the ring, sweat dripping down their muscled bodies.

  Calvino had parked in the open, in a public place. As long as they stayed inside the car, he thought the chances were good that no one was listening in. It was possible someone had a directional microphone rigged up from one of the buildings in the square. But it wasn’t likely they’d have guessed that Calvino would park in front of the gym when his habit was always to park in front of the Lonesome Hawk. His parking was an advertisement for the staff hanging around the smokers’ deck outside, who opened the door and leaned inside shouting an order to get Calvino’s usual drink and lunchtime special.

  “What have you got?”

  “A possible murder weapon.”

  “Brandon.”

  “You remember the two marks on his chest. I may have recovered the weapon, or one just like it.”

  Mike Scully raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you hand it over to the police? You got your colonel friend. Give it to him. If you’re in a jam, he’s the man to get you a free pass out of the tiger’s cage.”

  Lions’ cage, thought Calvino. He thought about what had been left of Achara after the lions had finished. There was no time to explain that Colonel Pratt was locked inside the same cage. “Mike, if you don’t have the time, that’s okay.”

  Scully eye-rolled Calvino. “Whatcha got?”

  “Open the bag in the back. You tell me what I’ve got,” said Calvino, glancing over his shoulder.

  Scully turned in his seat, reached over, zipped open the gym bag on the backseat. Calvino looked straight ahead, watching the two fighters. They wore red head protectors and plastic teeth guards, the combination distorting their features, turning them into alien-like creatures who danced barefoot around the ring, kicking and punching.

  “I’ve never seen one like this,” said Scully. He held the weapon low, resting against his lap.

  “It’s not one of yours?”

  Scully shook head. “Not any weapon I remember ever seeing. Technology changes.” He turned the weapon around, examining the grip. A raised lightning bolt was etched through a full moon on the side. He ran his fingers down the ribbed surface, slipped his finger against the trigger guard and eased the trigger back. Nothing. It was a dull, lifeless grayish blue, but a shade darker than a Taser. The barrel ended not with a hole for the bullet but with a stubby cube, blunt and ugly, the pug-nosed end that passed the current. “The heft is different. This weapon’s got a Taser design, but it’s something else. Some kind of knockoff is what it looks like to me. Where did you get it?”

  “From a crashed van,” said Calvino.

  “Interesting weapon.”

  “If it’s not a Taser, what is it?”

  “I’ve got no idea. But it looks like it was professionally manufactured. I don’t remember seeing anything like this. I’m going to have to report it.” Scully had taken his sense of duty into retirement.

  “You do that,” said Calvino, reaching into the backseat for a plastic shopping bag. He opened it and showed Scully the contents. “A spent cartridge and a half dozen unused ones. “Take ’em.”

  Scully pulled out a cartridge. His eyes widened far enough to showcase the white all the way around the irises.

  “The cartridges aren’t regulation.”

  “Looks like the Taser’s got some local competition,” said Calvino.

  Scully nodded. “You gonna tell me where you really got this stuff?”

  “Mike, you’re forgetting one thing.”

  Scully looked confused, racking his brain for what he’d forgotten.

  Calvino reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Mike, you work for me.”

  McPhail approached Calvino’s car and slammed both hands on the rear window. Scully swung around with the electroshock weapon. Calvino had drawn his .38 from his shoulder holster. When they saw that it was McPhail, b
oth men lowered their weapons. Calvino pushed the “down” button on his side window, and McPhail stuck his head in. “Baby Cook said she’s put the special at your usual table and a double whiskey with ice. And she told me the soup is getting cold. The ice has already melted twice. And what do I get but two fucking guns pointed at me. Fuck you. Eat cold soup. Drink watered-down whiskey.” McPhail weaved back and forth as if ducking punches from an invisible boxer.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Calvino.

  “I’m a little fucked up. Started drinking at ten. Hey, Mike, how you doing?”

  Scully got out and shut the door. Calvino locked the car, and together they walked into the Lonesome Hawk and straight to Calvino’s booth. McPhail crawled into the side facing the kitchen. Baby Cook came out with a bowl of soup for Calvino. She set it before him, looked him up and down. “Someone say they see you boxing. Muay Thai. That’s why you late.”

  All eyes in Washington Square were public eyes, watching and reporting on who came and went; police CCTV cameras added another layer of watchfulness. No private eye could blend into the woodwork. The only way to work it was to become just another ordinary fixture nailed on the daily wall of life.

  “I didn’t start the rumor, don’t look at me,” said McPhail.

  “Guilt by association,” said Scully.

  “You’ve got a good point. Exactly who are his associates?” said Calvino. He was thinking about Wei Zhang. Who were his associates? He thought of them as a weyr of fire-breathing dragons setting up their nests in Thailand. Not a pride, a swarm, or a flock, but a weyr. Dragons came in weyrs, even in Thailand. Calvino picked up his spoon and stared down at the soup. “Wei Zhang,” he said, looking up as one of the waitresses circled to the booth behind McPhail.

  “Whose associates we talkin’ about?” asked McPhail.

  “Hey, honeybuns, scratch my back.” He bobbed and squirmed under the pressure of Jum’s fingernails running up and down his back. McPhail had forgotten his question.

  “You see what’s missing from the Ghost Wall?” he asked as he sent Jum off to get a lady drink.

  Calvino, head bent forward as he ate his soup, looked up.

  “Old George’s photo.”

  “What happened to it?” asked Scully, scratching his chin.

  McPhail lit a cigarette as Jum came back with a shot glass filled with Mekong and a water glass filled with cola. She swallowed the Mekong, shuddered like she’d been harpooned, and washed away the blowback with the cola.

  “Baby, massage my shoulders. Baby Cook said when she came in this morning, it had fallen down on the table over there. The frame and glass had shattered and were scattered on the floor. Freaked her out. She thinks it’s Old George’s ghost.”

  “What do you think?” asked Calvino.

  “I told her it was Bill. He kept me moving the frame this way and that. It must have loosened the screw enough that the whole thing came down.”

  Calvino nodded, looking at the blank space where Old George’s photo had hung on the Ghost Wall. “What did she say?”

  “She said I had a loose screw.” McPhail’s eyes were halflidded, as if he had gone into a transcendental state under Jum’s experienced hands as she kneaded his shoulders like fresh dough. Soon he moaned with the kind of pleasure that only men of a certain age experience at the firm touch of a woman’s hand unknotting old muscles. “You ever notice that no one ever sees a ghost during daylight hours? They only see ghosts at night. And why is it they only see one ghost? They never see a half dozen ghosts ring the bell at noon. I ask them these questions, and what do they say? ‘Farang doesn’t understand how Thai people think.’ ”

  Scully smiled and looked away just as McPhail caught a flash of his grin.

  “At least I’m not pussy-whipped,” said McPhail.

  Scully had heard this barb before. “If a man’s gonna getting a whipping, he’d be wise to choose a pussy as the weapon to use. It doesn’t leave any visible mark.”

  “Not like a fifty-thousand-volt jolt,” said Calvino.

  “That’s the pussy I’m looking for,” said McPhail.

  Baby Cook arrived with the special—roast chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, greens and stuffing—and scooped up Calvino’s soup bowl to set down the hot plate of food in its place, executing the move in one graceful motion. Hands on her hips, her flabby upper arms covered in faded tattoos glistening with sweat, she flashed a crooked smile at Calvino. “I heat up twice already, Khun Winnee,” she said. This was a woman who understood that some men were late for lunch, some men couldn’t tie their own shoes, and some men plain and simple had a screw loose. Baby Cook had served them all and knew them for their true natures.

  A German named Richter came into the bar dressed in a cheap Sunday-market pair of baggy shorts hung low on his waist with only his T-shirt covering the crack in his ass. He moved slowly from booth to booth, shaking each table. His clothes looked slept in for a couple of days. Round-faced, with green eyes, Richter had a bow-legged walk, feeble and bent over. He muttered to himself, sighing as he approached Calvino’s table.

  “What you do, Richter?” asked Baby Cook.

  “Trying to find a table that doesn’t wobble,” he said.

  “Go back to Germany,” said McPhail. “The tables don’t wobble in Munich.”

  Richter’s eyes looked wild and slightly crazed. He had the look of someone the heat had tackled and knocked to the ground. A stream of sweat rolled off the end of his nose, leaving a trail on the tables and the floor.

  “After a couple of drinks, they all wobble,” said Richter.

  He stared at Calvino. “You need anything?”

  Calvino shook his head. “I might have something for you. I’ll give you a call.”

  Richter fished a cell phone out of his pocket. “You got my number?”

  “Got it.”

  “Man, even your phone wobbles, Richter,” said McPhail.

  Richter shuffled off, testing tables.

  The regulars at the Lonesome Hawk underestimated men like Richter. Calvino had taken some time to get to know that he was an electronics-surveillance expert. His crazy walk, sweaty clothes, and eccentric gestures led everyone to discount him as a crank—and that was his passport to hidden places.

  McPhail had a point, thought Calvino. If you wanted to really understand a man, you had to go to where he came from, and the answer to who he was slowly emerged from his family, his neighbors, his school friends, his teachers, and his first love.

  “You’re suddenly quiet,” said Scully.

  Calvino sipped the Mekong and Coke. “I’m going to China.”

  “Take Richter with you,” said McPhail. “Dump him over the side of Three Gorges Dam.”

  “Ah!” shouted Richter from the back, where he’d been listening to their conversation. “Chinese dam will wobble for sure.”

  McPhail somehow never got the emotional reaction from Richter he’d wanted. No outburst, no face red with anger. Like a lot of men who’d fallen, from time to time, into the gutter, Richter had managed to pick himself up and start again, happy-go-lucky. Falling into the gutter was one thing, falling into the abyss meant never hitting bottom, giving up any chance of starting over. Richter stared at Calvino for a minute or two, trying to figure out if his going to China was being dropped into the gutter or the abyss. It could go either way.

  FORTY

  TANNY CRAIG HAD been in New York a couple of weeks. Calvino had had no response to e-mails he’d sent her. His phone calls to her office went unreturned. He had thought about flying to New York and going to her office, sitting in the reception area, and waiting for her. But that wouldn’t solve his main problem in Bangkok. Calvino turned his attention to Zhang’s China connection. A Google search advanced his investigation to the edge of something promising about Zhang’s business empire, but the searches always came up short. Gaps in the data and information meant that not even the Internet had made using shoe leather on the streets obsolete.

&nbs
p; Colonel Pratt also had been skeptical about the ultimate usefulness of Internet research. The colonel was a traditionalist. The most useful information about a case was inside people’s heads, not on a computer screen, and the challenge was getting inside those heads. “You scratch the scalp, but you never find the flea,” he said.

  “You’ve never heard of cyber warfare?” asked Calvino.

  “I have other wars to worry me,” he said.

  Calvino understood that Colonel Pratt had taken considerable criticism over his protection. Though Pratt hadn’t complained—he had said nothing—Ratana confirmed that the colonel had been given an order to put Calvino on a plane out of the country. If the Thai police decided to take a farang to the airport, it was highly likely no one would stop them from executing their plan. Calvino knew he had only a few days—enough time to fill in the blanks about Zhang’s background and his burning interest in investing in Thailand—before he’d have to leave Thailand.

  Twenty-four hours after Calvino had returned from China, he sat with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, the sound of Chinese still ringing in his ears, behind the desk in his office, hovering over his computer. He inserted his thumb drive and opened a file containing his field notes. For the first time in years, he was technically client-free. Meaning that only Brandon’s ghost still visited him, asking for a drink from the bottle of Scotch in the desk drawer and needling him over why it had taken Calvino so long to connect the dots.

  He read through his notes, the dots beginning to connect themselves. He leaned back in his chair, hands stretched behind his head. The bone-tiredness of the journey had started to wear off. He looked out the window. It was too early for the yings at One Hand Clapping, and their plastic stools were stacked next to the building. If the rain didn’t stop, they’d be forced indoors for the afternoon.

  Calvino’s presence in Bangkok hadn’t made it easy for Pratt. Now that he was back, Calvino was aware that the problems would again emerge. He’d not phoned Colonel Pratt to let him know he’d returned. He found excuses to delay making the call. That the call would restart the chain of events troubled Calvino. Under the circumstances, he decided it was better to tell some lies, keep some secrets.