The Corruptionist

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Sometimes blind luck makes a man look a lot smarter than he really is.”

  “I remember asking Montri if he expected any farangs tonight, and he said there wouldn’t be.”

  “I invited myself,” said Calvino. “What does it matter? You heard him. I’ve got a right to be here. I should ask if you followed me here. I thought I’d lost your tail, but here you are. Proof of how one of us suffers from delusions.”

  “That seems to be a very bad habit you’ve formed, Mr. Calvino.”

  “What habit’s that?”

  “Playing the stupid farang doesn’t fool anyone.”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “This false absence of ego makes you dangerous.”

  “Zhang, relax. This room contains my heritage. It’s where I come to worship my ancestors,” said Calvino.

  “You’ll appreciate the importance of temples built for ancestor worship.”

  Calvino turned away, his back to the painting and focusing his attention on Zhang.

  “What do you want?” asked Zhang.

  “Money. And to have enough luck to live long enough to spend it,” said Calvino.

  Zhang smiled, slowly shaking his head. “You already have a great deal of money from the sale of these paintings.”

  He gestured with his hand, pointing at the walls of Chini nudes. “And the length of a man’s life depends on many things.” Then he paused as if a thought had struck him. “And some men have more luck than others.”

  “Colonel Pratt had some luck. What do you think? Did the men who shot him intend to kill him? In which case he had some luck managing to survive. Or did they only intend to wound? In that case luck wouldn’t have anything to do with his surviving.”

  “The destiny of some men is to bring bad luck to their friends.” The purity and mystery of the sadoh kroh ceremony no longer pulled at him. Once again he was proud, imperial, in control.

  “It could have saved a lot of time if you’d told me about your relationship with the general.” Calvino decided that he didn’t need to use the general’s name.

  Zhang produced a silver cigarette case, removed an unfiltered cigarette, and tapped it against the case before drawing it to his lips. He lit the cigarette, blowing smoke at the nude painting. A ring of smoke hit the woman’s thigh.

  He looked away in disgust. The reaction was intended to rattle Calvino, throw him off balance, force him into making a stupid mistake or move and fall flat on his face.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Zhang.

  “You got yourself a good little racket. Packaged with a private militia and a general. But it’s not that original. Your general models himself on another former Thai cop who parlayed some smart business moves into political power. The formula isn’t that difficult—the right monopoly plus connections to men in uniform. You find a man with strong family ties to China. He agrees with your ideas about power. He clears the way for licenses, tax concessions, permits, and contracts. But I don’t see you stopping at weapons. Not when there are so many other profitable businesses, from transportation to mining. One problem. The general can’t get elected alone; he needs mountains of money, and that’s where you come in. It’s not exactly a trade secret that China has money. If you were to seriously invest in Thailand, owning the government is a good solution. Call it the Mongolia or Tibet model.”

  Zhang sucked on the cigarette, looking hard at Calvino, the way a Chinese judge looked at a political dissident.

  “China is the future. Everyone wants to do business with us. We don’t need to own anybody,” he said.

  One factor that could be counted on to come into play was Chinese nationalism. “And the inside joke is that the future is in for a shock. In my old neighborhood in New York, no kid could’ve found China on a map. No one gave a shit about China. Overnight everyone cares about China’s intentions. Whatever it is, it’s way above my pay grade,” said Calvino. “I’m more comfortable following bargirls to see if they’re two timing their sugar daddy.”

  “Mr. Calvino, you have caused me a great deal of trouble. And this meeting tonight wasn’t an accident.”

  “An accident? A van blindsides me on a hairpin turn near where I live. An accident? A close friend starts my car and is killed by an electrical shock. An accident?” Calvino was careful to maintain eye contact with Zhang, watching for a reaction. Specks of gold leaf from the ceremony had dusted his eyebrows and nose. He looked like a Hindu icon mask.

  The maw doo must have sprinkled him with the gold dust, confirming Zhang as the golden Yunnan boy, seeking the release of his long-dead brother’s spirit.

  “Even inside the trouble department, Mr. Calvino, you stand out from the faceless crowd. In Asia that is never a good thing. In the trouble department, you want to be small, hard to see, impossible to be heard.”

  “I want you to help me understand something,” said Calvino. “Something I can’t figure out. It’s bothering me. Keeping me from sleeping.”

  Zhang glanced at his watch. He dropped his cigarette on the marble floor and crushed it under his shoe. “Understand what?”

  “Why Achara didn’t go along with it?” asked Calvino.

  “You had everything and everyone else lined up. The multimillion- dollar loan was in place, the paperwork signed to authorize payment of the funds to the general. My guess is Achara had some second thoughts. Maybe he thought what you had in mind was a raw deal for Thailand. He made a choice that wasn’t Chinese enough. And Brandon refused to sign, because he wanted part of the money based on some crazy five-year earnings forecast. Brandon I can figure out. But Achara not going along with a Chinese deal, that I don’t understand.”

  Zhang nodded, shrugging his shoulders, for a moment weighing Calvino’s words, but his emotions and ego cut short the process. “Achara was more Thai than Chinese. He said the weapons violated Buddhist principles. He wanted nothing to do with financing any political candidate. He said, ‘We’ve been down that road before. It didn’t work out. You don’t create another monster to get rid of the monster that haunts you.’ If he were truly Chinese, he would have set aside his personal opinion. Instead he acted selfishly, thinking his private views were more important than the interest of China.”

  “And how much did Brandon want?” asked Calvino.

  “He wanted a ten-million-dollar commission. Very Thai, don’t you agree?” Zhang’s lips spread into a smile of contempt. “He said China is rich. This was, as he called it, ‘walking-around money.’ ”

  “Brandon was an accounting detail you deleted from the balance sheet,” said Calvino.

  “He was greedy. Farangs lack patience. They want everything quickly. No trust. No harmony. That’s my experience. Men who rush often fall down before they cross the finish line.”

  Brandon had said it was okay, though, because in Thailand it was a tradition for everyone to get a little cut from the gravy train.

  What Brandon didn’t know—or if he had, he’d done an incredible job of keeping it to himself—was that behind Zhang’s rice screen, the Chinese had secured a technology base, one that would allow them to develop, manufacture, and finance an entirely new category of weapons. And the game-winning ticket: They would be the bankers of the new politics. It hadn’t taken long before a handful of powerful people in China realized that if agriculture and guns were already in their shopping bag, what else from Thailand could they fit into the cart? Rumors had been around for some time that Zhang had a role in financing the general’s political party in the next election.

  “Brandon’s demands were foolish. He would have been a never-ending source of demands in the future,” said Zhang.

  He was testing Calvino.

  “He told me about a commission he was expecting from the financing, but he said he’d had some problems collecting it.”

  “Oh, that. Did he tell you that he threatened me?” said Zhang.

  “He must’ve been drunk.”

  “He was
sober.”

  “Brandon once was a comedian.”

  Zhang cared nothing about Brandon’s background. All that had mattered was the present Brandon who threatened trouble. “Brandon told me that he had friends in the news business. And they might like a story about me.”

  “Basically that he’d expose the sham loan to the general unless you paid him.”

  “You said he was a comedian. But I don’t find that very amusing.”

  “What Brandon would have found rolling-on-the-floor funny was giving a member of the general’s family shares and a seat on the company board. But it gets better. You get a monopoly for your new generation of weapons and the exclusive right to export them. Next thing, Thailand’s riding alongside Sweden and Israel in the weapons-selling business. Your general has enough money to buy an election. Your man becomes prime minister. And you own him. And there we are with history repeating itself, only this time China has found a way to offer a guiding hand to its little brother.”

  Calvino grinned, thinking what Zhang was trying to say in his fortune cookie way was that the colonel wasn’t smart enough to be evil but intelligent enough to know he’d have a brilliant career as a tool of evil.

  Zhang was reasonably sure that he hated the grin on Calvino’s face, though he didn’t dwell on the reason behind his hatred; he just struggled not to physically assault Calvino. He controlled himself, prided himself on remaining absolutely cool, his face a blank. It hadn’t fooled Calvino.

  No question in Calvino’s mind that Zhang would act on his hatred. He’d made a mental promise to himself, as if to say, I’ve pushed a pin through the eye of the Calvino voodoo doll.

  “A hand provides stability. Something that Thailand needs,” said Zhang.

  “Stability is, if you look at the history, highly overrated by the Thais.”

  “I’d ask the real Thais if they agree with you.”

  “Achara seemed real enough to me. He lived in harmony and stability as far as I could tell. But the way he died was barbaric. Your ancient emperors buried ladies-in-waiting and court officials alive, but as far as I know, they never fed them to lions.”

  “That was an accident,” said Wei Zhang.

  “That word again, Zhang. Like Brandon had a heart attack. And I nearly missed having one myself. These weapons are tailor-made for guys like you. It’s bad karma murdering people and then calling it an accident. People won’t like you if you keep doing that.”

  Zhang raised his hands, palms out. “Now who’s the comedian?”

  “With the way your men have screwed up, who wouldn’t be?”

  “The Thai crew wasn’t professional. What they did was frankly stupid.” Then he stopped talking, dropping his hands to his sides, looking at the floor. “I was told that Khun Achara was unconscious when he was put in the cage.”

  “A guy docks his boat and then darts Achara. Ties up the boat, gets help to throw Achara to the lions.”

  “I loved him like a brother,” said Zhang, as if Calvino had made him defensive.

  “Like a dead brother.”

  Zhang averted his eyes. “We’ve talked enough. Return the weapon you took from the van.”

  “And in exchange what do I get?”

  “To realize your desire to live a long life.”

  Calvino smiled, nodded, hands in his pockets rattling loose change. “I’ll see that it finds its way to you.”

  Zhang had been through an exhausting spiritual ceremony. The weight of the evening had worn him down. He stared at Calvino without returning his smile. “I’ll send someone to your condo to pick it up tonight before you leave for the airport.”

  “The usual people you’ve been sending around to wish me good health?”

  “You want money?”

  Calvino didn’t make an immediate response, leaving the offer in the air.

  “How much?” asked Zhang. “Ten million, like your friend?”

  Calvino shook his head, touching together his thumb and forefinger to form a zero. “That’s what it all comes down to in the end. How much? General Suchart’s already talking about how the government should borrow billions from the Chinese government. Good plan. You get him elected with seed money, and he kicks back, what? Twenty percent of the loan for research and development, along with the usual third-rate Chinese tanks and planes? But first you’ve got to finance him so he gets power.”

  “Watch the faces of any politicians and ask them about how they’re going to raise money for the next election. You will see worry. Insecurity and fear.”

  “That means you’ve got General Suchart trembling in his jackboots?” asked Calvino. He scratched the side of his face, shaking his head as he stared at Zhang.

  “The general understands our reality.”

  “If he doesn’t get the picture, you’ll fine-tune him until it’s clear in his head.”

  Montri returned with a bottle of Château Latour 1966. He showed the bottle, waiting for a sign of appreciation. He looked disappointed at the lack of reaction; what did a farang private eye and a Chinese businessman know about fine wine?

  “Let me show you my library,” said Montri. “And we can drink this outstanding wine and toast Mongolia.”

  A flash of irritation crossed Zhang’s face as he glanced at his watch.

  “I’ve got to go back,” he said, waiing Montri, who, juggling the expensive bottle, made as elegant a return wai as possible.

  “I’d like a few minutes for a last look at my great-grandfather’s paintings,” said Calvino.

  Zhang walked a couple of steps, turned around, his hand touching the side of his cheek as if brushing away an insect. He stared at Calvino as he took away his hand. A smashed piece of white lotus petal touched with the flecks of gold leaf lay on his fingers.

  “That’s good luck,” said Montri. “But it seems luck is on both sides. Vincent, I like your new BMW. It’s nice what money can buy.”

  “I’d like a couple more minutes with Khun Vincent,” Zhang said.

  Montri sighed, glanced at the bottle, sucked his teeth, and strolled out of the gallery.

  “Dismissing the host in his own house is an art,” said Calvino after Montri closed the door. “The True Sons of The Soil is financed by Chinese money. I like the irony of that arrangement.”

  Zhang smiled, his attention moving from the petal to Calvino. “My associates will go to your condo. And one last thing: If you don’t return the object we discussed, you will cause a big problem. I collected on my collateral. Colonel Pratt and his family might have less luck in the future.”

  “Something’s been bothering me. Tanny told you about the meeting with the general’s wife at Government House. You’re the one who set it up, right?”

  Zhang smiled. “You really thought it was Colonel Pratt’s wife?”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Calvino, exhaling.

  “Tanny asked me for a favor. To help her mother.”

  “And in return you asked a favor of her,” said Calvino.

  “More than one.” His face was smug, the glint from his eyes arrogant and hateful.

  “You said, ‘Why not take Calvino along to the meeting,’ ” said Calvino, flexing his jaw, thinking of the size of the wall that billions of dollars would build. High enough and long enough to rival the Great Wall of China, keeping out the barbarians and expanding the writ of the Chinese.

  “And your secretary. To be strong, you need to turn men who are fearless into men who are afraid. And that has always been easy. Pinpoint the man’s family and friends. It works like a charm, I think you stay in New York.”

  Calvino watched Zhang walk away, laughing as if he’d heard one of Brandon’s jokes—not the one about the demand for money from a Chinese money launderer—but a punch line from some Chinese parable about how the stupid foreigner falls into the trap of being held hostage.

  FORTY-NINE

  CALVINO SWITCHED ON the reading lamp beside his computer screen and settled into the chair behind his desk. The
only sound came from the low hum of the air-conditioner compressors on the balcony. The kind of white noise that wound through the consciousness an hour before the first patch of pink was smeared like cheap lipstick against an inky sky. At this hour the street was a dead zone, a space without people or cars. Bangkok was mostly still and quiet, asleep at four in the morning. The drunks, no longer able to bring their mouths to the rim of the glass, had rolled over for the night, and the hookers and their customers slept in the fitful way of strangers sharing a bed. Bars, restaurants, knock shops closed, offices, banks, massage parlors yet to open. It was the time when people talked to themselves because there was no one else to listen. It was the time when a man drank alone and thought about the past, about the people he’d loved, the people he’d killed. The full weight of those memories rode him hard. It was also the time when the full weight of loneliness that had no counterweight settled on him. Outside his window the neon sign for One Hand Clapping was dark and the soi as quiet as a cat stalking a house lizard.

  A soft rain slanted against the window, blurring the streetlights mirrored on the wet pavement. He worked to edit himself out of the images. It was painstaking. He rubbed his eyes, sitting back and looking at the screen filled with Wei Zhang’s face, his great-grandfather’s nude painting a blur in the background. He’d given up his last Chini and started to wonder if it had been worth it.

  He’d told Zhang that chasing down bar yings and deadbeats hadn’t cut him out for unwinding complicated deals involving government officials, military officers, bigmoney types, regional gangsters, and powerful Bangkok families. He tried to list every category that Zhang had on his checklist. But the Chinese businessman failed to believe him. Blowing up the whole edifice, now, that was a possibility, and it focused Zhang’s attention.

  Calvino fought back a yawn, thinking how looking at someone on a computer screen was like looking at the TV. You never saw anyone you knew on the screen, just celebrities, politicians, models—that is, ignoring the thousands of faces of demonstrators or those in refugee camps. Wei Zhang’s angular face, full lips, and high forehead might have belonged to a movie star. Zhang appeared to look at the camera as he talked. It was unnerving to see how perfectly the image had been captured.