Cambodia Noir (33 page)

I shake my head. “They got it backwards. Koroshi's an opportunist. He wouldn't be here at all except for June. Some West Coast triad boss had big plans for this place, June found out and tried to get involved. Koroshi came looking for her and saw the chance to screw over a rival.” I smile. “See, there's something for your troubles. Use that knowledge carefully.”

“I'll keep it in mind.” I don't much like how he says it. “But there's more to this. Fucking
French Connection
shit. All those three-letters get their hands in things, they don't like it when the situations change. Koroshi's playing tough chess, and it could bring him down. And everyone who's close to him—which right now is a list that starts and ends with you.”

Hah—wheels within wheels. “Koroshi can take care of himself. I told you, all I care about is finding the girl before they do.” He's silent. “I tipped those DEA assholes to June's boyfriend from the paper. Just let me know if they find him. It's the fastest way to get me out of your hair.”

“I could give you some advice, not that you'd take it.” He sounds as tired as he is angry. “Girl, drugs, whatever. If you're half as smart as you think you are, you'll get out. Now, before they find some reason to stop you.” He pauses. “It's Kabul, Will. Kabul all over again.” I light a cigarette. “Oh, what does it matter? I'm talking to a dead man.” He gets up and stalks out to his car.

I finish my beer in silence.

A drier kind of heat marks the beginning of November. The festival grounds are crowded—families with eager children buying cotton candy, watching the tumblers and pointing and shouting at the boats on the river, eating roast chickens from the hot carts. Young men in pompadoured gangs, shirts like peacock feathers. Gangsters parking their tricked-out bikes to laugh at the comedians or hear the gamelan players. Whores looking for a mark; pickpockets and beggars and hustlers with their stuff strung up on bamboo poles; hopeful young lovers dreaming this day will change their fortunes.

Nothing like a holiday.

Channi takes my hand in hers as we walk. She's eating a big blue ball of polyester something, and chattering in Khmer about some book she read. Like most Cambodian stories, it's a romance, all separated lovers swooning over each other from afar—along with monsters, bloody duels, and man-eating demons. Hallmark by way of Hieronymus Bosch. I can only understand about a quarter of what's going on.

“Stop, stop,” I say, at last. “I don't know all these words.”

“But you speak so well!” She squeezes my fingers.

“Only about some things.” Drugs and deal making, violence, sex: my vocabulary is specialized.

“I can try to tell it in English, but it won't make any sense.”

“No, go on. I like listening.”

“I was just at the part where the uncle takes the girl to the temple, not knowing that her lover has become a monk and is making his pilgrimage at the same time. So they can be reunited, as long as the abbot can put the river spirit at peace.” I'm watching the sun on the water, wondering if it's always looked like that. Did I just never notice? “Listen.” She smacks my arm, carefully avoiding everything already broken. “You might learn something.”

They've put up a big tent for the puppet show—they need the shade. It'll go on all night and well into the morning, but Channi has to be at the bar at five, so we'll only catch the first hour or so. That's still a lot of puppets. Inside, the crowd is sparse. It's hot. Channi's brought a blanket and a huge basket of food she made with her mother—“I gave good advice”—and she spreads it out on the ground and we sit down. There's two Cokes, carefully packed in plastic bags of ice and old pieces of packing-box foam, and I sip the cold drink gratefully as she sets all sorts of things I can't identify on the blanket.

I try to ask her about her family as she does it, but she shushes me ferociously, pointing at the show.

The puppets are elaborate contraptions of stiff leather and paint, operated with narrow sticks. Despite the bright colors, they're only seen as silhouettes cast on a white screen.

“You know story?” Channi whispers to me, in English.

“No idea.”

“Is old story, like Angkor.” She points at the big fellow with a head full of feathers. “He is prince and love beautiful girl. But demon steal her and take her to island.”

“Is that the demon?”

“No, demon before!” I should have known. “That monkey god, prince friend. Prince is also god. So he and monkey go to island, to rescue girl from demon.”

The tent seems to grow darker: I do know this story. On the screen, the shadow prince swings his arms, dancing some dance to get the monkey king to come with him. What lies does he tell, what screws does he turn, to drag his friend along on this suicide mission?

“What's wrong?” Channi asks, in her own language. Doesn't give me a chance to answer, just puts her hands to my face. “You live in a shadow. Will you tell me the story, someday?”

“I'm a lousy storyteller,” I say, in English.

She doesn't laugh or look away. “But you will tell me.” It's not a question.

“Yes. But not today.”

Channi leaves me in the field where the food vendors have set up, and we say good-bye wreathed in sweet-smelling meat smoke. Khmers don't do public displays of affection, so I'm surprised again when she stands on her toes and kisses my cheek before walking away. As the light hits her, I see her slim figure silhouetted through her dress. My face burns.

I don't know what's happening to me. I feel like someone dropped two hits of acid in my Coke. My head buzzes; the colored lights shift and burn, the paper lanterns dance in the red sun. I wander through the crowd, letting it all wash over me, the smoke and the incense and the far-off thrum of drum and gamelan.

But as the sun gets low, the feeling is replaced by another, a pins-and-needles sensation that starts in my thumbs and spreads quickly upward. Something's wrong. I buy a roast chicken and haggle with the seller, eyes roving. Scan the crowd.

To my left, a face: Khmer, young, nondescript clothes. Watching me close. Another to my right. I don't know them, but the list of people who want a piece of me is as long as my arm. The crowd is pressing in on all sides. Laughing faces, swaying lights. I try to push through. A little girl in a purple tank top swings her cotton candy like a mace. A string of firecrackers pops. Shove against the bodies. Cheers and explosions.

Corner of my eye: that hard face, coming closer. He knows he's been made, but he's not backing off. He's not here to watch—or to talk.

I edge deeper into the press, blood pumping. The crowd surges and I think of stampedes, people crushed on their feet in the O-Bon celebrations, angry mobs beating thieves to death. I can't risk a fight, not here. I'm moving as fast as I can, waiting for the bright feeling of a knife in the back. On the river, Roman candles split the air as the boats go by. A burst of static from an amplifier. I see something glint through the crowd, a flash of blond hair. I shove my way toward it but there are too many people—they're gathered in front of a giant screen showing one of the king's movies from the sixties.

As I turn, one of those shadows is right behind me, just feet away, glaring over the heads of a family pushing between us: a little girl up on her father's shoulders, boy laughing, waving a toy gun.

I can't get lost in this crowd—too tall. I wedge my way around two young men of Senn's crew. They give me little waves and I grin back at them as I push on. Make a break around the side of the screen. The FCC isn't far now; it'll be packed with foreigners. Cover. I dash past the food sellers. Don't look back. Don't think how close they are. Footsteps, coming hard. I tear around the front and dive into the ornate colonial lobby.

The place is heaving, tables crowded with drunk journalists. As I reach the midpoint of the stairs, I glance down, see my shadows pushing in the front door, looking for me. Hurry up and into the hall, pass the bathrooms and the storage closet. I put my shoulder to the door at the end, and it busts open onto a first-floor balcony. Below, empty green fields, the museum in the distance. I take a deep breath and go over the railing, clinging to the rotting wood, white paint peeling away under my fingers. Hang low, praying the grass is soft.

Falling takes forever. The balcony drifts away like the stern of a ship pulling out of harbor, and for a moment I think I see someone with blond hair framed in the hallway door.

Pain shoots up my leg and I'm rolling through the grass. I ignore the sting, running as fast as I can across the park to the corner by my house. Prik is still there, lounging on his bike, my first luck in days.

I almost scream as I run up, “Norodom Street, now! Don't be followed.” He guns the starter, and then we're racing like skiers, dodging motos and sliding between fruit carts, and I'm looking over my shoulder at nothing but dust.

Channi,
I think,
they saw me with Channi.

I can't go back, I'll lead them right to her. I huddle in the bathroom stall at the InterCon, whispering every prayer I once knew, as Gus's phone rings on and on.
Pick up, goddamn you, pick up.

Seven rings. Eight. It cuts off. Dial again.

Two. She's got to be safe in a bar full of expats.

Three. They could have got to her already.

Four.

Five. Click.

“The fuck, man, where are you?”

“Gus, listen, I need a favor.”

“Don't you always? What are you doing, I've got guys in suits running all over me! Did I mention—” He breaks off. Fuck, fuck.

“Listen, please, it's not me, just help—I need help. There's a girl, works at the new bar across from the FCC. Name's Chantrea, Channi, Channi! Find her. Watch out for her, call—call some of the guys you train with, get them in, but watch her. Keep her safe.”

“All right,” he says, cautious. “I'll make sure they meet deadline.” They're listening. “You okay?”

“Just do this one thing for me. For God's sake, keep her safe.” I think I'm crying—

I can't do this again. I won't survive.

I have no choice.

“I'll make sure,” Gus says. “You look after yourself.”

I hang up, breathing hard, bang my head slowly against the side of the stall. Look down at the message that's appeared on my phone.

Unknown number.

CHRISTOPHER G-R STAYING AT GRAND ANGKOR HOTEL, SIEM REAP, STREET 17. ONE NIGHT.

Good to have friends in high places.

Spray hits my face as the fast boat races over the water.

I barely remember getting here. Caught the last boat on a Saturday, and the cabin was half-empty. An old couple leaning back and trying to sleep. Crew of strung-out backpackers. Two Asian men in suits. Everyone looking at their books, at the floor, at the fancy food in molded-plastic trays. Still, I couldn't take the eyes, so I came up to the deck.

Every few minutes I take the phone out and look at the messages, just to make sure they're still there.

SAFE: HAVE EYES ON. G
. Every time I read it, my breath stops all over again. But my pulse is pounding, on and on and on: it hasn't slowed in hours.

CHRISTOPHER G-R STAYING AT GRAND ANGKOR HOTEL
.

When I put the phone away, the drumming eats at me until I have to look again. I don't know how this happened—how it got its fingers in me so fast. I should go back. Find Channi, convince her to come with me, get the hell out of this country before it's too late for both of us—

I can't—and it is like being torn apart.

Gus saw this coming.
“Try not to let it get to you.”
I didn't listen.

The moonlit river ripples, bound by marsh trees dripping moss. Beyond, pools and half-flooded fields: water country. I look for temples shaped like demons.

And in their shadows, June.

The Grand Angkor Hotel is a ramshackle guesthouse on a back street. Old, wood-frame, two stories. A tiny garden out front, fenced in by partitions splashed with green Heineken ads: no one there. Little whitewashed houses to the left, tall grass to the right.

Past eleven when I arrive. I make the moto drop me at the head of the street and walk down. New backpack over my shoulder, stuffed with beer cans for weight. I don't have much of a plan. No one makes a break for it as I come up the drive and into the lobby, so I get a room.

I don't go to it.

Up the stairs; a landing, rough brown boards. A military-style cot lying in the corner. Roach corpses. Real wooden doors, painted red long ago and trying to forget it. I go to number four and knock, hard. No answer. No sound inside. He's out getting drunk.

I walk to the end of the hall, where a dust-caked window looks down on the gravel drive. Now I wait.

He comes up the path at half past two, face flushed with booze. He's cut his hair down to a blond stubble. I move fast, and quiet.

His steps are heavy on the stairs, and he walks right past me: on the cot, shoes off, shirt over me like a blanket. Just another backpacker, sleeping cheap. Then he's at his door, key in the lock. I hear it click and I'm up, behind him, arm around his throat and shoving him into the dark room.

Gasps. Not loud. I realize I've got him dangling, face going crimson. Loosen my grip. “I just want to talk, but I promise if you scream, the conversation will be unpleasant.”

A weak nod.

Less than two days back, and it's come to this.

I squeeze until his head will be spinning, then let him drop. Take the key from the lock, ease the door shut. Turn back and he's got a hand in his bag. I drop my knee into his throat, catch the gun as he fumbles it up.

“Here I thought we were friends,” I say, and take the gun. Then I hit him with it.