The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  Ratana had proudly printed out her research—while phoning a few friends and her mother—and put it on Calvino’s desk. It wasn’t that difficult. As in one large high school, everyone in Thailand seemed to know who had married into which family—at least any family with rank and privilege. Achara had said at a meeting that lineage, and ancestor worship, defined Asians. He’d been right: It sculpted Chinese identity, gave the living meaning, a sense of duty and obligation, and a composite, sober self they could live with.

  Lineage was their religion. Not to know the connection of people was to miss the transmission lines that carried the power from the generator into the field and beyond.

  The company seal fixed to the signature page left a faded image of a dragon with bolts of lightning held in its talons.

  As John-John’s book had taught Calvino, dragons appeared in weyrs, and he’d stumbled into their nest.

  “I told you that I had some good news for you. What if I told you that we’d won?” Baker asked.

  “Depends on what you think you won.”

  “E-Dragon (Siam) agreed to scrap the rice project for the next eighteen months until more research can be conducted. The contract came in from England by FedEx yesterday. That’s why I called and arranged the appointment. I thought you’d be over the moon,” said Baker, his mustache and beard parting for a smile that emerged as a gaping hole in a thatch of red hair. “They’ve seen our position and gone out of the genetic-alteration business. That is a victory.”

  “Do I look like I want to take a victory lap?”

  “I personally spoke with Wei Zhang, and if you don’t mind my saying so, I think my arguments persuaded him,” Baker said. “He was far more reasonable than Brandon Sawyer. Not that I wish to speak ill of the dead.”

  “I’m picking up a bad smell.”

  “It’s the water from the beakers. Klong water. You get used to it after a while,” said Baker.

  Calvino shook his head. “There’s something wrong.

  There must’ve been a problem using the land for growing rice.”

  “It tested as a perfectly good paddy.”

  Calvino had hired Baker to go upcountry and carry out environmental testing on the two thousand rai of paddy. Achara’s connection had been instrumental in obtaining the licenses necessary to plant genetically altered rice. A test patch of rice had already been planted and harvested. It crossed Calvino’s mind that Achara or Brandon had paid to get the results cleared. He counted on Scott Baker returning with contrary findings. Calvino expected a scary report documenting a case for massive contamination if the altered rice entered the food chain. What he was handed instead was a contract between Baker’s NGO in England and the Thai company to voluntarily limit future planting.

  “You checked the groundwater?”

  Baker had started to put the contract back in the file.

  “Make me a copy of the contract,” said Calvino.

  Baker hesitated. “It’s confidential.”

  “Then you can refund the money I paid you.”

  Scott walked a couple of feet to the copy machine. He lifted the lid and slipped in the first page. “Let’s say you genetically alter the rice so the paddy that has groundwater pollution leaching into the plant can be made to break down the chemicals and use them as a substitute for fertilizer. Good if it works.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Baker stapled the copy and handed it to him. “You’ve got people eating nitrogen, mercury, zinc …” His voice trailed off as he watched Calvino study a clause in the contract. “The stuff you can build cars out of,” said Calvino, looking up from the paper.

  “Yes, I guess you could say that. And that’s what I expected to find. But the tests were negative. The groundwater is clean. Well, maybe not clean, but as close as you’ll find in Thailand.”

  “You double-checked the results?”

  “I triple-checked. Like you, I figured I might have overlooked something.”

  “When you talked with Wei Zhang, did he say what he was going to do with the land?”

  “Funny you should mention that. He said they were putting in an industrial park—manufacturing, but clean and environmentally friendly. Nothing dirty like coal-burning plants. No activities that would harm—I mean, pollute or destroy—the soil or groundwater. It was more like research and development and testing of electronic systems.”

  “Electronic systems? A fridge is an electronic system.”

  “Fridges destroy the environment. You can be certain I checked there were no plans for fridge assembly.”

  “Any idea what is planned for the assembly line?”

  “Electronic equipment.”

  “As in electroshock weapons?”

  Baker’s eyebrows did a red butterfly dance. His assistant, who sat across the room pretending to work, had been listening to their conversation. “He means like a Taser.”

  Calvino turned and saw her look up and focus on Baker, rolling her eyes. “And you are?”

  “The brains in the lab.”

  “Don’t go away. I may need to come back to you again.”

  “Zhang was quite open about manufacturing electronic crowd-control devices,” said Baker. “Given what’s been going on in the streets, God knows something to control crowds without injuring them would be an advancement.” The sad part was that Baker appeared to believe what he was saying, or he wanted to believe so hard that it amounted to the same thing.

  Calvino turned back to the contract. “It says here that you will post on your Web site and send out a newsletter telling the world what a good corporate citizen E-Dragon (Siam) is and how they have contributed to your research into genetically altered rice.” Calvino put the contract on the lab table. Zhang had successfully turned Scott Baker; he had successfully adapted the time-honored blueprint used by a pro who wanted to bar-fine a ying on her first day on the job, making her feel special, using soft, gentle words and throwing out big promises about tomorrow so she wouldn’t feel like a whore once the money changed hands.

  “That company is an example that will be used by a new generation of Chinese businessmen. It means that we’ve won,” said Baker.

  “That’s the problem with intellectuals.”

  “What is?”

  “You declare victory just as you’re about to suffer a major defeat, one that you don’t see coming. I should’ve seen what was going on.”

  “I told you what I found. Tell me what’s wrong with my findings?”

  Calvino pulled out his wallet and counted out the fee. He stacked and evened the edges of the notes, laid the stack on the table. “I pay you to answer my questions. It doesn’t work the other way around.”

  On his way out, he stopped and gave his card to the assistant. “You ever get out to Sukhumvit Road, give me a call.”

  She took his card, while Baker, hands on his hips, the cash laid out on the table in front of him, waited. The money from Zhang had disabled his moral compass and his critical faculties. The funny thing about big money was its capacity to buy and use perfectly good minds. The magic was, it had bought Scott Baker without his even knowing he’d been bought. Zhang’s money had also likely bought Tanny Craig.

  Calvino walked out of the building, picked up his ID from the security desk, and crossed the parking lot to his car, thinking as he put up his umbrella how it had been that night at Government House. He’d seen a transformation in Tanny’s mother—her body language, her eyes, even her posture changed. The regal, distinguished woman at the table had been like a god, a being who could part the sea of injustice that Mem had been drowning in most of her life, and let her walk through free, her head held high, the burden of her daughter’s murder lifted. The fix had been in from the moment they’d walked through the door. Only none of the people except the general’s wife understood the game and the hand that was in play. Calvino thought about phoning Tanny and asking her what her price had been. But he had a good idea of what she’d sold out for and wondered if sh
e thought it had been worth it.

  FORTY-FOUR

  SOME WOMEN DEPART from a man’s life within twentyfour hours after the first entanglement of limbs and mouths, exchanging bodily fluids like limpets; others lingered for days or weeks before falling to the wayside. Now and again there was a survivor who stumbled back from the front lines after years, knocking on the door and pleading to be let in. Siriporn, his broker, had all the earmarks of a survivor who was in for the long haul. The evening he opened the door, she stood smiling in a white spaghetti-strap dress, cleavage lifted from a push-up bra engineered like a suspension bridge. As an afterhours stockbroker, she knew how to influence a bull market.

  The plan had been to return to Calvino’s condo and discuss information she’d collected and saved as an Excel file. Calvino saw how much work she’d put into the job he’d assigned her. Siriporn had researched two-dozen listed Thai companies with earnings to justify the risk of a buy. She’d starred each strong buy recommendation and added columns spelling out book value, payout ratio, debt, P/E, and retained earnings. She’d also researched the three companies Calvino gave her; he didn’t say they’d been listed on the shareholders’ list of E-Dragon (Siam).

  “There are three companies that aren’t listed on the exchange. What did you find out about them?” Calvino asked her.

  “Shareholders have big-shot names. And some Chinese names. Do you want to buy into a private company? That is quite risky,” she said.

  “You’ve got the names.”

  She nodded, turning on her iBook. “They’re on my database.”

  He filled her wineglass and sat back on the sofa to watch as she opened the database and scrolled down an Excel file of names, ages, and addresses. She looked quite proud of herself as Calvino read down the list. She sipped wine and waited until he had finished. It was all there: The names of the people whom Zhang used to front for his companies.

  “This isn’t about investments, is it?” she said.

  “Does it matter why I want the information?”

  She brooded a little over his reply. “I have a sister who does weird things.”

  “Like what?”

  “She finds private things about the people she needs to work with. She says it is profiling. Film says people leave evidence about their real intentions everywhere. If you look hard enough, you can follow their tracks and see what they really want. But she’s looking at names of people she may decide to work with.”

  “Someone named Gaffer or Best Boy?” asked Calvino. Siriporn pinched his hand. “You’re making fun of my sister’s nickname.”

  He read the information on the screen of her iBook again, absorbing the names.

  “What was the nickname of that Craig woman’s sister?”

  Calvino looked up from the screen and found her smiling. “How do you know she had a sister?”

  “You said that she had problem about a younger sister.”

  Women remembered everything. He had only a vague memory of a phone call with Siriporn and that he’d mentioned in passing he was helping Tanny with a family problem. It might have been a throwaway conversation for him, but Siriporn had stored it away for a rainy day. And it was raining outside now. It didn’t end with the sister. Tanny’s Thai name, the one on her birth certificate, appeared on the share registry of E-Dragon (Siam). Siriporn boldfaced the type just in case Calvino might miss it.

  “You saw Tanny’s name. But I’m certain she told you.”

  There was no point in arguing what he’d been told. Calvino shrugged it off. But Siriporn wasn’t letting him off so easily. She enjoyed his discomfort in dealing with the help he’d extended to Tanny while all the time she’d been working to get the deal done with Zhang.

  “She did tell you?” Siriporn pressed him.

  “It didn’t come up.”

  Siriporn smiled, savoring a small victory. “What kind of help did her sister need? Or maybe that didn’t come up.” Siriporn sat back, thinking he would let it drop. She assumed it was the usual family matter of hurt feelings and misunderstandings that occupied eighty percent of Thai domestic misery.

  The price for associating with smart, educated women was that they saw through the evasions faster than a bat tracking a moth. “Her name was Jeab. She was shot. Tanny was after her killer.”

  “Oh.”

  The big “Oh” that registers just as you find you’ve stepped into something ugly and ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes.

  Jeab was nearly twenty-three years old in February 2003 when she borrowed her friend’s red Honda 150. She was running late for an appointment with a school inspector from Bangkok. The head teacher had assigned Jeab the duty of showing the inspector the premises and introducing her to the other teachers. The Honda belonged to Jeab’s best friend from school, a woman named Moo, who had received a letter from the police station asking her to report. Moo had asked Jeab to go along, because a proper Thai woman would never go to a male-dominated place like a police station alone. It was only going to take a few minutes, Moo had promised. She asked the police why they thought she had anything to do with drugs. A neighbor had informed them that he’d seen Moo and her brother Dum deliver drugs.

  The neighbor was a man named Vira, who had propositioned Moo and she’d refused to sleep with him. This happened as Vira’s two friends looked on. She told the police that Vira lied and that he had tried to force sex on her. She had no friends at the police station. Vira did. Moo’s interrogation took nearly two hours. They threatened to arrest her brother if she didn’t sign the confession. They threatened to make trouble for her mother and father if she refused. They told her they could keep her in jail for as long as they wanted. So Moo signed. When she emerged afterward, Moo looked as pale as a TV soap ghost after signing a statement acknowledging that she was guilty of selling a small quantity of yaa baa and being told that by admitting her guilt, along with giving her promise never to sell drugs again, she was free to go.

  Jeab waited patiently in front until Moo came out fighting back tears. Outside the police station, Moo said she was too upset to drive, that her head spun with black feelings, and she suggested going to the wat to make an offering. The spires inside the wat compound were visible from the police station. Jeab said she had a very important appointment to keep, telling Moo she should go to the wat on her own. Moo felt all the more dejected that her friend might be in trouble at school, so she insisted that Jeab take the red Honda. She was seven kilometers from the school. Too far to walk, and it was hot and sticky weather, threatening rain.

  Two kilometers from the school, the road wound through open countryside. A pickup truck with two men in the back approached from behind. The driver rolled down the window and motioned for Jeab to pull over. He followed her until she had stopped then parked the pickup truck level with her motorcycle. One of the men in the back of pickup shot Jeab twice as she raised her hands. A witness working in a nearby field saw the pickup speed away and the red Honda motorcycle tipped over on the roadside. He ran across the field, his heart in his throat, and found Jeab dead beside the motorcycle. One of his relatives ran up a couple moments later and phoned the police to report the killing.

  At the hospital the dead body was examined and the cause of death recorded. The results of an autopsy showed that two bullets had ripped through Jeab’s brain. “Very professional,” the doctor had written, as if to admire the marksmanship of the shooter. Jeab’s clothes had been examined and recorded as personal effects. The following day, Jeab’s mother was at the hospital, along with other relatives, looking at her dead daughter’s body. Three police officers arrived and cleared the room. Fifteen minutes later they asked everyone to return, and displayed a small plastic pack of yaa baa pills and demanded to know why the attending doctor hadn’t recorded this evidence when removing the clothing from the deceased. The doctor, nurse, and orderly all said the same thing: They hadn’t seen the pills before. The police became irritated and asked if they might be covering up drug-dealing in the
district. That shut everyone up. Except for Mem, Jeab’s mother, who swore that day on her dead daughter’s spirit to get justice.

  The blue plastic packs were “found” by police officers on victims in every province in which people were killed during the period after January 28, 2003, when the prime minister signed what was called Order 29/2546. It morphed into a death warrant for suspected drug-dealers. The official name was firm but gentle: The “Concerted Effort of the Nation to Overcome Drugs.” The reign of terror officially ended in April 2003, and a victory in the war against drugs was announced by the government and rewarded by the Americans.

  In September 2004 the Bush administration removed Thailand from the list of major drug-transit or major drug-producing countries.

  After Calvino had finished with the facts of the unsolved murder case, Siriporn said nothing for a couple of minutes. “My father told me about the terrible things that happened then,” she finally said, looking down at her wine.

  Calvino refilled her wineglass to the brim, making her lean forward to sip the first inch; her throat felt constricted, and she looked up at him.

  “I did what I could,” he said. “It wasn’t much. Tanny Craig did what she had to do, but it didn’t work out the way she and her mother thought.”

  Siriporn didn’t answer and turned back to her iBook.

  “Why didn’t it work out with her?”

  “I don’t know. It just didn’t.”

  “I should go,” she said.

  “You’ve done good,” he said, leaning over her and kissing her on the forehead.