The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  The ceremony would be held in the prayer room at Montri’s mansion. Ajarn Veera was specific in his request for the appropriate place to perform the ritual.

  Zhang was at first suspicious, obliquely asking what Montri might expect to gain from such a meeting—the idea of someone helping him without a hidden reason wouldn’t have been believable. Montri replied that he had a business proposal he thought Zhang would be interested in. Zhang asked for details. Montri said the deal was a robot-manufacturing opportunity with a famous Japanese company, and he thought the investment might fit Zhang’s portfolio. The Japanese company, though it had world-class technology, had been driven into distress by a couple of less-than-prudent financial investments. The chairman of the board would accept terms that were too good to pass up. Montri had the cash for the deal, but, like all good businessmen, like a bookie making big bets if he could lay off part of the risk, he’d have more resources for other deals. Montri used a shorthand that Zhang understood: The Japanese company was wounded, and Montri wanted someone else to help him make the kill. “We’ve always talked about doing business together, and now is our chance,” said Montri. “After you and the ajarn finish, that is.”

  Calvino had to get Zhang into line, a huge challenge, and at the same time bring Montri in—that would cost something even larger. Without a convincing answer to the question of what was in it for Montri, his plan would fail. But there was something that Montri wanted badly enough to justify the risk of getting on Zhang’s angry, vindictive side. The man, after all, had collected a ballroom of powerful Thai allies.

  Calvino had told him that Zhang would owe Montri forever after the good ajarn performed an exorcism ritual. He’d give Montri whatever he wanted. That should have been sufficient, but it wasn’t for Montri. He wanted something more. He couldn’t help but negotiate the best deal he could. With a farang there was always the possibility of unpredictable emotions coloring the business, and that was fundamentally dangerous. It was a question of judgment. If the terms were sufficiently in his favor, even a deal with a farang might be worth the risk. Calvino had caught his attention by making him an offer that was difficult to refuse—the one Chini painting that Calvino had withheld.

  It was different from the others. The subject was a young nude woman turned away from the painter; her buttocks tight, firm, the curve of her spine in shadow, and her head turned to a profile, revealing a half smile, eyes flashing hot with passion.

  He knew Montri’s price, and Montri knew his.

  Montri hovered for a while near a floral arrangement, filling his lungs with the scent of orchids and roses. When at last he moved across the room, he carried a glass of wine. Two maids trailed behind like pendants in the shadow of a holy man, a holy man with a tan, smiling face, a god incarnate who loved wine and women, dual forces driving the dogma of his personal religion. He was a cautious man, too. Standing on the wrong side of history’s highway worried some men with large investments on that side; equally distressing was getting on the wrong side of those who engineered the lanes that history followed. Montri weighed the risks, deciding that the money involved would let him build his own highway.

  Calvino sat at the table. Montri stopped behind him, placing both hands on his shoulders.

  “Am I going to regret this favor?” Montri asked.

  Calvino smiled, looking at him over his shoulder. “What do you have to worry about?”

  “You might shoot Wei Zhang. But you won’t?” He’d started as if making an order, but before he’d finished, it ended up as a question.

  “That would be ungrateful of me,” Calvino said.

  “Besides, I’m not armed.”

  “He might have a gun.”

  “If he shoots me, I’m certain you’ll be able to handle the paperwork.”

  Montri laughed. “You, my friend, like to joke too much.”

  Calvino was conscious of Montri’s dread, his position, the risk he was taking. Montri tapped him several times on the shoulder. Montri had converted the fist bump into the fist into the shoulder bump. The little taps felt like a man with lockjaw trying to gnaw off a piece of bread.

  “Violence happens even when you don’t expect it,” said Montri. He’d told himself this same thing on the night of issuing the invitation, when he’d been crazy enough—unable to elbow away the pull of greed—to finally agree to go along with Calvino’s request. Calvino had sweetened the bargain, making it irresistible to a businessman. Montri still owed Calvino twenty percent of the purchase price for the paintings. A deal made before the great financial crisis had collapsed the most secure of empires. Montri’s own empire was leveraged like a pair of silicon breasts on a katoey, something he hoped to clear before there was a close examination. Meanwhile, the jaws of the credit crunch had clamped down like the business end of a garbage truck compacting trash. Forgetting the entire amount outstanding, though, wasn’t enough. There was that one Chini painting that Calvino had kept back. Nothing had moved him to include the painting. Montri wanted that painting.

  Calvino made it sweet by agreeing. Montri in turn agreed to invite Zhang to his mansion, escort him, alone, into the exhibition room where the Chini nudes hung from the walls. Calvino also asked Montri to leave them alone in the exhibition room, to lock the door, and not to let anyone in or out until an hour had passed.

  “I never got a chance to say good-bye to my greatgrandfather’s work,” Calvino had said.

  “But I told you that you were welcome to visit anytime,” Montri said.

  The elastic in Montri’s voice stretched under the weight of his polite lie. No one could be excused from believing that such an open-ended visitation right, as in a childcustody case, ever worked out in practice.

  “Wei will understand why you invited me.”

  “These paintings explain everything.” Montri grinned, sipping the wine and looking at the nudes.

  “Your ass end of the elephant is fully covered.”

  “He asked about the other guests,” said Montri, tapping Calvino’s shoulder with another rapid series of light punches.

  “You told him it was a small party.”

  Montri nodded. “And he asked if I’d invited any farang.”

  “And you said no.”

  “Technically you invited yourself,” said Montri. “I didn’t send you an invitation. You came out to see your great-grandfather’s exhibition. What could I do? It was in our contract that you had access whenever you chose.”

  “You could be a lawyer,” said Calvino.

  “Not a lawyer.” Montri pulled a sour face as a maid refilled his glass. “I feel more like one of the naked women your great-grandfather painted.”

  “And you’re afraid of Zhang?”

  “Why should I be afraid of him? Besides, it is, as you say, only a friendly talk. How can he complain?”

  Had Achara asked himself the same question? Calvino wondered. This wasn’t the time to raise questions about Achara or Brandon, the rice fields or the weaponsmanufacturing operation. He suspected that Montri, with his sources, knew about Zhang’s businesses in Thailand; he made it his business to know where the Chinese and others were investing.

  Montri saw something in Calvino’s eyes and grinned again. “You don’t like him very much, do you?”

  “Let’s say we have a few issues.”

  “Okay, okay. It’s a done deal. Just don’t make him unhappy. At least wait until you’re someplace else.” Montri laughed, flashed a crooked smile, and punched Calvino’s shoulder. “Can you do that?”

  “I can,” said Calvino. “Depending.” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  Montri looked stricken. “Depending on what?”

  “If he insults my host, I’d be forced to act out of honor. And the same in case he insults my great-grandfather’s art.”

  “In that case, of course, you should kill him.” Montri roared with laughter. He checked his watch, made a finger gun, which he aimed at Calvino’s chest, then clicked his tongue before blo
wing on his finger and lowering his arm.

  “Ajarn Veera has set up everything. Our guest should be here any moment.” And he left the room, having dispensed Thai-style justice between business associates.

  The sun had set, and hundreds of kerosene lanterns were lit to mark the switchbacks as walkways twisted with the increased elevation. Far below, a river ran toward the horizon. Montri’s vast estate created its own world, with jungles and rivers and lakes, forests and swamps. Calvino stood in near darkness. From the trees, cicadas sounded like a vast symphony with all musicians playing the same highpitched stringed instrument. They consumed the silence, shredding the night with noise as sharp as a knife.

  Calvino sheltered behind a large wooden boat with its several cabins gutted and turned into a guestroom suitable for a sultan and his harem. With one arm hooked over the bow, Calvino watched as Zhang emerged, illuminated in a pool of lantern light as he walked one step behind Montri. Zhang had not disappointed, arriving a few minutes before the auspicious time. The two men stood talking on a path leading to the sala, Montri gesturing, his hand sweeping along the horizon. Zhang nodded and walked the rest of the journey along the narrow walkway to the sala, a wooden pavilion with Khmer spires and a multi-tiered roofline rising like rows of pyramids. It was like a miniature Thai temple with the signature copper-colored wooden panels, gables and pillars, decorated with lacquer, gilt, gold leaf, motherof-pearl. Large windows opened on all sides. The sala had a wraparound terrace from which orchids in pots hung over the lake. The door was open, and Ajarn Veera sat on a golden silk pillow in the lotus position. Frangipani graced a small teak ceremony table. Incense sticks burned. White lotus petals had been strewn along the floor leading from the doorway to the table. The voice of the maw doo rose above the roar of cicadas, his words forming into a singsong chant. Calvino could see the profile of Ajarn Veera, dressed in white, and kneeling at the table before him was Wei Zhang. The maw doo rocked back and forth as he burned pieces of colored votive paper, the ashes drifting out the window and across the lake.

  Calvino hadn’t hesitated to use the information about the unborn brother of Zhang as the bait to drag him to Montri’s estate. There might have been a simpler, more humane way, but Calvino didn’t have time to worry about such a moral dilemma. People used what they had available and made the best of it. Most of the time, the sharpest and most gruesome instrument was something personal, but not just any old personal thing—something black and deep and haunting that hammered in the background of waking moments and broke through the walls inside dreams. Tanny had lost a sister, Zhang a brother. Neither one had ever known the lost sibling. Maybe this had created some kind of bond that let them work as a makeshift team, put that hurt deep inside to some goal other than suffering. Something that had happened had made them see the other as if for the first time. Calvino had started to understand how little he’d known Tanny. Some say knowledge of that personal kind was better left unexplored.

  After the chanting had stopped, the maw doo lit three candles, the light splashing across the lake as each candle was placed on an altar at the center point of the three windows. He burned more scraps of votive paper. Then the two men sat in the silence of people speaking their own privately coded language, one rich in the vocabulary of the night, and it filled the void. The deep bass from a gong broke the silence. The maw doo struck the paddle against the gong eight times. Each time, the sound cannoned off the surface of the lake like thunder, rolling through the forest before disappearing. Then Calvino saw Zhang’s spiritual adviser stand, clap three times, wet his hands and rub them through Zhang’s hair. Then he quickly moved to blow out each of the three candles before sitting back on his golden pillow.

  Zhang opened a leather briefcase, working the brass latches with his thumbs, then reached in and took out two thick bundles of notes. He laid the money on the table and waied the maw doo. Their whispered conversation was masked by the sounds of the night, but that didn’t much matter. When Zhang had pulled out the money, Calvino worked his way back to the Chini gallery. The lights illuminated the inside. The silence was total. Airconditioning from the vents chilled the room. It wouldn’t be long before Montri delivered Zhang to the gallery.

  Zhang had brilliantly planned the company takeover, all the details—the contracts, the share transfers, everything done flawlessly. Tanny had made her contribution to the effort. It was clear they’d been using each other, but the more he thought about it, Calvino realized that they saw themselves in each other—damaged, used, haunted people who glimpsed their own reflection in the other. She had her own ghosts to bury. Calvino had been a good and proper shovel. Dumb as a dull blade when he should have seen the setup from the start. Coming out of his bathroom wearing a towel and holding Siriporn’s lost earring. It had been too good to be true.

  Both of them had had their lives bent in profound ways by the weight of personal tragedy; whether the loss warped them into greed and ambition and double-dealing or whether it was a smoke screen for how their minds worked, it all ended up the same. They looked for ways to offload their loss, and never quite succeeded in the task.

  What was it about tragedy that corrupted one person to the core but turned another into a saint? Standing before the gallery of naked women painted by his great-grandfather, Calvino asked himself where he stood in life, how much the accumulated losses in his own life had bent him. It wasn’t the kind of question that invited messy, evasive answers; those were the kinds of answers politicians practiced in front of a mirror, because without practice the unease would be all too obvious.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  CALVINO WAITED IN Montri’s gallery, half hidden behind a double helix fabricated from chrome, mirrors, and glass that spiraled from the floor to the ceiling. It looked like the space-age leg of a giant robot spider, a predator, hunting the women on the walls. The mirrors captured the nude images from the oil paintings and created a new expression, as they appeared to disappear into infinity, like reflections in a hall of mirrors. Calvino had stood in front of the sculpture the night Montri had opened the exhibition and turned to him, asking him to say a few words. Achara had been in the gallery, as had Brandon Sawyer and Colonel Pratt. Two of them dead, one of them shot. Zhang had also been in the audience, applauding with the others after Calvino talked. And Ajarn Veera, the maw doo, had been watching him with those small, unblinking eyes, alert and curious; calculating eyes, the eyes of a hooker assessing the benefits from a possible trick. His fame would only increase after holding an emergency session with Zhang. His bank account had been fattened. Just like a hooker, after all the ritual and ceremony, he got paid, too. Calvino had paid, and in ways that troubled him to think about. Taking down Zhang meant playing by the local rules. Feet, knees, elbows, fists—throw all of them, muay Thai, and aim for the throat. Calvino had found Zhang’s weakness. And the main imperative was to convince Zhang that their meeting was accidental, a coincidence.

  Calvino studied a public-gallery-size Chini painting of a woman, arms held out in supplication, legs together, with a timid smile. Her small breasts, slightly extended belly, curved hips suggested not just simple vulnerability but a more complex defenselessness, as if she’d been stripped and placed on display. Someone had told her not to move, and she’d complied except for the fingers on both hands—they curved so her fingernails brushed against the back of her hand. He examined her features and could find almost nothing in the face or body that existed in modern Thailand.

  But that had been the point; Montri was a traditionalist, a man who saw the beauty in the past, one that had gone extinct, but nevertheless its essence had been captured. And he owned that essence.

  Montri and Zhang talked as they entered the room. Their conversation ended when Zhang saw Calvino. He suddenly looked like a submarine officer who had survived a depthcharge explosion, his combat-weary, agitated face housing two dull, dead eyes that looked at Calvino but somehow didn’t see him. Zhang’s mind remained inside the sala with the burning pape
rs and the incense sticks, the bronze gong still echoing in his mind. Here was the same man who had been stalking in a hotel lobby when he was with Tanny. A man who was supposed to be dead; but wasn’t.

  “Vincent Calvino,” said Montri. “When did you come in?” His timing was perfect, and he had mastered the shocked look of surprise from a thousand negotiation sessions and gambling tables, where such an expression could force the other side into a mistake.

  “About half an hour ago. I’m missing a special painting. I wondered if you’d had time to hang it.”

  “Impossible to forget, isn’t it?” said Montri.

  Calvino smiled, glancing at Zhang and thinking that he seemed to be buying into the setup. But it was too soon to know for certain. “It looks good on that wall.”

  Zhang stared at his watch. “I will leave you to discuss paintings.”

  “Don’t rush off. We need to talk,” said Calvino.

  “Good idea. I’ll be back with a nice bottle of wine in half an hour.” Montri waved and left them alone. Calvino and Zhang faced each other, surrounded by paintings. It was one of those moments when silence became the loudest voice in the room.

  Zhang walked ahead and stopped in front of a nude, a dancer, her belly round, her face clownish and sad. “Your grandfather made her ugly.”

  Calvino stepped back from the painting. “My great-grandfather found her beautiful.”

  Zhang showed no surprise. “I read where Galileo Chini once said, ‘Siam is like a curse.’ ”

  “Just think what he’d have said if he’d seen the van with the fireworks,” said Calvino.

  “This is a characteristic that runs in your family,” said Zhang. He stared at the nude painting, for the moment ignoring what Calvino had said. “You knew I was coming here,” he continued, a blade of steel flashed in his voice.