The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Yes, better than you imagined. I know. But good for who?”

  “I look for people. It’s what private eyes do. Study patterns, because people can’t help repeating themselves. They might try to disguise who they are, but sooner or later they stumble back into the old pattern and get entangled.”

  “You’re right. Look, I want to show you something.”

  She pointed at one of the Thai names on the screen. “Does it look at all familiar?”

  Calvino studied the name. It meant nothing to him. “I don’t recognize it. Should I?”

  “She’s a shareholder and director. Her family name is Craig.”

  He’d been prepared to accept that Tanny would move heaven and earth for her mother. But he asked himself if her side deal with Zhang came before or after the discovery of her mother and dead sister. She had needed a patron, and she knew that Calvino wasn’t in a position to meet that need.

  Once that fact sank in, had she gone to see Zhang to shortcut an obstacle or two and in return gain the patron who could guarantee to catch her sister’s killer? Calvino checked the date on the share-registry document; it was dated after the meeting with the general’s wife at Government House. It could have been backdated. There was no way to know. He decided that whatever had happened along the way, Tanny had made a choice, and he’d like to think it hadn’t included knowledge of what was planned for Achara and Brandon. “It is easy to judge her, but what would I have done if it were my sister? What would you have done if it had been Film?” Calvino asked.

  “Whatever I had to do,” Siriporn said.

  Calvino nodded, grinning. “I suspect that you would.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “This is very good work,” he said, staring at her computer screen. His mind was already working out how to trace Tanny’s Thai identity. How far back had this happened? What were the chances that she had set him up from the very beginning?

  “You really liked her,” she said.

  “She was good, really good at what she did,” he said.

  “Skillful.”

  “Was she better than me?”

  He had invited the comparison. “Tanny Craig may have turned out to be a better man than me.”

  Siriporn’s frown easily slipped into a clownish pout. She brushed her hand against his cheek. She had won a clear victory and knew it. It showed in the way she held her wineglass, her firm confidence, and the glow of accomplishment in her eyes, like sunlight through a passing cloud.

  “That means you won’t be investing in these companies. Or am I wrong about that?” A warm smile opened as she took another drink from her glass, touching her tongue to the rim.

  “I’ve been wrong about a couple of things. But that’s all it takes to get blindsided.”

  Siriporn tapped her fingernails on the keyboard, shutting down the iBook. She had the cryptic look of a woman stranded in a no-man’s-land between girlfriend and professional adviser. A look of sadness crept into her face, as if she realized there was nothing else she could do or say.

  “I’ll e-mail you the file tomorrow. Nice music,” she said, listening to the music.

  “Herbie Hancock.”

  “I like it,” she said, closing the iBook. She finished her glass and started to stand up when Calvino pulled her down and kissed her.

  “Why don’t you stay?”

  He felt sick deep in his soul, and somehow having her at his side would stop it from leaving his body and fleeing to another place. The place where Miles Davis went to compose music, thought Calvino.

  “You still think about her?” she asked.

  In the background Herbie Hancock’s “Riot” drifted across the room; it filled the pause in conversation, kept her question unanswered. He looked over her shoulder at the rain falling.

  “You’re right, I’m being stupid. I need to go over some files. We can talk tomorrow,” he said, kissing her on the forehead once more.

  Pratt had always looked up to jazz greats like Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, said these were men who took risks, never stayed in one place musically, men who were always experimenting, looking to break out of what everyone said was already a perfect, accomplished body of work. Mostly men who didn’t live that long.

  She stroked his cheek. “Are you okay?”

  Calvino nodded.

  “Bullshit,” she said. “I want to stay. Are you blind?”

  “Yeah.” He raised an eyebrow. “As a bat.” He listened to Herbie Hancock as the notes, bending and sharpening, blotted out the self-indulgence and foolishness he felt over Tanny. And in that moment he felt a pure moment of insight—he’d fallen into one of the oldest traps, and he could stay inside wallowing in self-pity or he could find a way out, turn things around before Zhang figured out that he had fitted the pieces of the puzzle together. That could wait until morning. Tonight he wanted to be with a woman who cared for him, had delivered him from that place no man wishes to find himself—in a state of confusion fueled by self-delusion. He liked to think that somewhere John Coltrane was smiling down on them.

  Calvino waited to find the right words, but they weren’t to be found, and he did the next-best thing—he said nothing as he took her hand and led her to the window. Outside, the rain was falling hard, runoff water swelling Asoke into an ankle-deep klong, traffic speeding up across the flyover, spraying a wall of water high in the air. Siriporn slipped an arm around his waist. The monsoon rains after dark had defeated their dining plan, or conspired with desire to the same end.

  He put his arm around her, stroked her hair. She stared out at Bangkok, at the slanting rain washed in the golden glow of lights from the convention center across the road.

  A driver lost control of his car and it spun out, snapping the front end of another passing on the left. The two cars collided.

  “Accident,” she sighed. “That’s what I call bad luck.”

  “Before I left for China, I was in an accident in the same spot,” said Calvino, watching steam come out of the engine of the damaged car below.

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No. I was lucky. As I said, it was almost a month ago. It’s a dangerous corner. Sooner or later someone’s gonna get hurt.”

  He told her about the damage to his Honda but glossed over what had happened to the men inside the van. There was no point in sharing the information. It was too remote from her life. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the connection between private militias and what was uncoiling in Bangkok.

  “It happened there?” She looked at the cars below. Her hands touched his face. They watched as the drivers climbed out of their cars to inspect the damage.

  He pointed at the blind corner in the distance. “See that condo building at the fork in the road?” Raising her hand, he said, “Make your finger into a gun barrel. Point and fire. That’s the blind spot.”

  “I had a dream a few nights ago that you were in a terrible crash. Ratana told me you’d been out of the country but that you were on your way back. She said your car was wrecked.”

  “I haven’t driven it much since I got back. I’ll get around to having the body work done.”

  She smiled, kissed his neck.

  “Body work.” He ran fingers along her neck.

  “That feels good,” she said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Wait, I have an idea. I know where to take your car,” she said. “It’s near where I work. They do a good job and not so expensive if they don’t see your farang face.”

  They were halfway into the master bedroom, holding hands. He halted at the threshold. “Stop. Yellow line.”

  She looked down, frowning. “Where?”

  “No yellow line and a green light.”

  Calvino slipped the spaghetti straps down over her shoulders, led her forward, and they fell into bed. He kissed her forehead. He worked his way slowly from the bridge of her nose to the side of her neck. What was it about a farang face that set off this tribal reaction? H
e was starting to trust her judgment. Not even Ratana had made the connection between Tanny and her Thai name on the record of Zhang’s companies; and he’d also missed it. Overlooking something so basic troubled him. It made giving in to Siriporn easier than it otherwise would have been. Siriporn had her own agenda, but she’d earned a full tank of credibility. How was she going to use it? Getting his car repaired? That seemed simple and harmless enough, but there was a risk—she was using the little job as the next step on the road to a domestic, intimate relationship, doing stuff for each other the way couples did.

  The fact was she was in his bedroom, asking to help him. What was he going to do as she took off her clothes? Say the banged-up car that needed repair was out of bounds? Looking at her body, he didn’t much care at that moment if she kept the car. He agreed she could take the car in, and that made her happy. It was a little decision, a reversible one, he thought. He was happy to have her in bed; he thought of letting her help as a bonus payment. He was entitled to a celebration of life, for having returned from China or just for being alive. By all odds he should have been transported by the Chinese police to another place, the place of nightmares, the last frontier, where he’d find Achara and Brandon talking about the future and their plans.

  A place of tracer rounds, a place where, in the shadows, Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis’s music drifted from empty streets, a place filled with a rich tonality and emotion that delivered on the promise.

  A strange noise entered his consciousness, and at first Calvino couldn’t place the source. He opened his eyes and listened again. Someone was jamming his doorbell. He reached out for Siriporn and grabbed at an empty space.

  He sat up alone in bed, rubbing his eyes, feeling sore all over. Light leaked through small openings in the blinds. He reached for his watch on the headboard. The doorbell rang again, this time longer, more frantic. It was about seven in the morning. Calvino told himself that Siriporn had left something behind. An earring, a bracelet, a necklace, a piece of clothing, or maybe it was finally time to go through that Excel file, looking at listed companies who were looking for his money. He pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of tan trousers and walked barefoot to the door, thinking that he was going to find Siriporn standing on the other side, having locked herself out.

  He opened the door, his arm coiled, ready to pull her close and kiss her. Instead he stared at a uniformed security guard, his face pale and drawn, eyes twitching as he shifted from one foot to the other. “You have a problem,” said the guard through a bucktoothed smile that wasn’t so much a smile as a smirk burned on a fright mask.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “You come with me,” said the guard.

  “Where do you want me to go?”

  “We go parking lot fifth floor.”

  “Is something wrong with my car?”

  The guard nodded, his nervous grin twitching at the corners of his mouth like butterflies drinking nectar.

  Calvino grabbed his keys and followed the guard to the elevator. They stood in the corridor waiting for it to arrive.

  “Tell me what this is about.”

  The guard’s head bobbed on his shoulders as if an invisible wire were pulling it. When he stopped shaking his head, he shuddered like a boy who’d tasted his first bad oyster. The elevator arrived, and the guard pushed the button for the fifth floor. When the doors opened, the guard bolted out, ran around a corner, and stood pointing at Calvino’s car.

  The front left side of the Honda had taken a direct hit, as if a giant fist had smashed it. Calvino walked around the car, and on the right side seated up front, he saw a motionless body slumped forward, leaning against the wheel, the weight of the body against the steering column. The position of the body had drawn the guard’s attention. When he saw that whoever it was wasn’t sleeping, panic set in, and he’d raced upstairs to find the farang, the one who’d have to take responsibility.

  Calvino opened the driver’s door, knelt down, and slowly pushed her body to the side. Siriporn. Her eyes were no longer dreamy like the night before. Now, open and dull, they looked without seeing. He drew in a deep breath, reached out and pressed his finger against her neck, trying to find a pulse. He rested his ear against her chest and held his breath. He heard nothing but cold, stony silence. The smell of cooked meat in the confined space made him retch. The fingers on her left hand were black, swollen, the ring on her finger melted into the flesh. He looked back at the security guard, a young kid in a uniform two sizes too big.

  The current had gone straight from the ignition through her hand and into her body. Popping the latch, he climbed out of the car and was about to lift the hood when he thought better of it. What might be booby-trapped other than the ignition? He had no desire to find out. He walked around the car, rubbing his hands, the guard following his every move.

  “She needs a doctor?” the guard asked, eyes wide, his hands shaking.

  He was looking for reassurance that a doctor was the answer, but Calvino didn’t give him any. He drew fresh air into his lungs. Then he leaned inside. The ying who’d found Brandon had reported a similar smell. He touched her wrist, and the skin felt clammy, cold. On the passenger’s seat were her briefcase and handbag. And on the seat was her iBook.

  He grabbed the computer, glancing over his shoulder.

  “Call an ambulance,” he said to the guard.

  Carefully he raised Siriporn’s hand. The fingertips were burned, the plastic part of the car key dissolved and melted into her fingers. Calvino sat on the parking garage’s cement floor, raised his knees, shook his head, looking at his car and then away. He should’ve sent her home last night, and now she’d be alive. At the same time, he knew that more likely than not, if she had gone home and he’d gone out to his car, he’d have been dead. Some dreams a man follows, and some nightmares follow a man, crawling out of his sleep and setting up a base camp to attack where he lived and worked. Tanny was back in New York. He decided it was a good time to call her and put a question to her: Was the pact she made with Zhang really about justice for Jeab? Whatever game she’d come to play was not much different from the one her sister had been caught up in. There was no time to call Tanny now or to weep for Siriporn. In a few minutes, others would notice and stop to gawk.

  The security guard stood behind the car, waiting. He was no more than a kid in a billed cap trying to look as cop-like as possible. Only it wasn’t working. He wasn’t certain if he should stay by the car or do as the farang said.

  “Go to the office and phone an ambulance. I’ll wait for you.”

  The guard nodded, walked over to the elevator, and punched the “down” button. He disappeared into the elevator, and the doors closed. Zhang’s electroshock technology had shown no lack of creativity in its ability to mimic an accident. The man had resources, he had a firm commitment, and he had accumulated enough power to light up a city. When Calvino looked at the car, he understood the message Zhang had sent—he had no intention of backing off. The car had been parked, waiting for him to get in and turn on the ignition. The Chinese had patience. They could plan an ambush that would take days, weeks, or months to execute. It would be much easier to have Calvino killed with a bullet. Zhang, though, was going out of his way to finish him off in a fashion that not just eliminated the man but gave immense satisfaction in how it was done.

  Calvino asked himself what he had to bring to the battlefield. Not much, he thought. The question was biblical—one asked by every David as he stared down and suddenly realized he was armed with only a wooden slingshot. But the answer was practical: Do whatever was necessary to surprise the opponent with overwhelming firepower. And remember that not all firepower came from the barrel of a gun.

  Whatever the practical solution, Calvino knew he wouldn’t be found in the parking garage sitting on the concrete waiting for the ambulance and the police. Colonel Pratt had been right. As every Thai understood, when faced with a greatly superior force, there was only one option—go underground,
undercover, and under the protection of someone powerful. It was Calvino’s car; the custom was to flee the scene and think about what could be done in order to one-day rise to surface again and breathe air as a free man.

  FORTY-FIVE

  BEFORE THE POLICE arrived, Calvino slipped into the elevator, stepping off on his floor. He stashed Siriporn’s iBook in a closet and laid a stack of New Yorkers on the top. He returned to the fifth-floor parking garage from the stairs, emerging from the elevator as the body-snatcher’s pick-up, blue light flashing, angled to the back of his Honda. He walked over to the pickup and looked into the back. It was empty. The attendants waited, arms crossed, for the police.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Two police cars, red lights flashing, powered up the ramp and screeched to a halt near his Honda. The officers piled out of both cars. He recognized two of them from the accident scene—they’d marveled as the black van delivered such an impressive, unscheduled fireworks display. One of the men getting out of the police cars was dressed in civilian clothes. He glanced at Calvino as he directed a uniformed cop to approach.

  “Calvino,” said the cop, his large hands hanging loose at his sides.

  “I remember you, too.” The line between being on the payroll of a militia and working on the force had blurred.

  Calvino couldn’t be certain who was their boss.

  They eyed Calvino suspiciously. Several more officers came over to him, as if to confirm that a miracle had occurred. Having satisfied themselves the farang was the same man they’d interrogated some time before, they set to work. They opened the car doors of his Honda. They checked the body for a pulse.

  “She’s dead,” said Calvino.

  The cop looked up. “You touched the body?”

  “You find a dead body in your car, what would you do?”

  Calvino reached inside the car, brushed his hand against Siriporn’s cold cheek.

  “Don’t touch the body,” said the cop.

  “Don’t touch the ignition,” said Calvino.