Paying Back Jack (15 page)

The response from Somporn had been a smile and a wave of the hand. “Don't think too much,” he'd been told. But Joel didn't get it. He was warned a couple of times to forget the issues when writing his audit report. That wasn't Joel's style. He believed that audit reports should reflect the true state of affairs of the company. Joel's murder was a lesson that respecting cultural differences translated to a different set of working principles for accounting. Joel had seen his duty in simple terms: an auditor's responsibility was to report what was found, not what the company big shots wanted found and reported. Somporn had seen the report as mindless paperwork for outsiders who should trust him, and so long as he made them money, why would they care if there was leakage here and there? He was running a commercial enterprise, and not some non-profit rescue-the-children project.

After a long struggle with the police, prosecutor, and courts, Casey felt that there had been no justice. Nothing but a man dead because he tried to do what he thought was right. Joel was the kind of man Jack would have liked. They could have shot pool together, talked about walking with your head up high because you lived to honor your principles. To square the outstanding debt owed Casey for his son was something Jack would have understood.

“Are you in?” asked Casey.

Waters fingered the photo album. “I'm in for the payback,” he said in Colonel Waters's New York accent.

Casey looked across the table at Waters, with his movie star looks and clothes.

“But there's going to be blowback,” Waters added. “You're living here. You're the first person they'll look for.”

“I've already thought that one through,” said Casey.

Waters looked at him, thinking of course Casey would do that. He'd use his special skills to divert attention. Casey was good at the basics. Waters had talked with a couple of people who knew Casey from the prison system in Baghdad. They'd said Casey started with mild pressure before turning up the heat, stroking, beating, knocking heads, backing away—relentless, determined, and patient. He was a planner who never missed a detail. He'd have a plan to cover his back, his front, and his sides.

CASEY HAD HIRED Vincent Calvino to tail Somporn's minor wife, a Chiang Mai woman named Meow—Thai for “Cat.” The investigation had lasted two weeks. Each day, Calvino shadowed her, keeping a detailed diary of Cat's movements, whom she saw, where she went, what she ate for lunch and dinner, where she had her hair and nails done. Somporn owned a fully furnished condo on Thong Lo—the unit was registered in the name of one of Somporn's companies. Cat occupied it. Twenty-three years old, tall, white-skinned, long-legged, Cat was Somporn's favorite side lady. She'd been a nightclub singer and, during the day, a presenter—one of the beauties who appeared at shows selling new cars, high-tech gadgets, or the latest condo development in Phuket. She towered above the other yings in her hot pants and tank top. Her fingernails were painted like tiger claws on the day Somporn had met her, and she'd persuaded him to buy a Lexus. She had a smile that triggered a man's reflex to reach for his wallet. She'd sealed the deal by draping her body over the floor model of a red Lexus, licking her lips slowly with her tongue.

Before the deal was completed, Cat had talked him into buying every accessory available, including air bags, a high-end stereo system, and a GPS monitoring system. If there had been a mini-helicopter pad for the car's roof, he'd have bought it. He couldn't take his eyes off her for a minute.

Somporn finally found the courage to joke about whether Cat herself came with the car. She wondered why it had taken him so
long to ask. She joked that she wasn't an accessory. To sweeten his proposition, the next day he invited her to the condo and handed her a set of keys to the front door along with a second set of keys for a new Camry parked downstairs. He was a businessman and she was a businesswoman. With the business out of the way, each pretty much got what they wanted.

Calvino's report also included dozens of photographs of Cat. There she was in her new car, parking at Siam Paragon, shopping for shoes, lunching with several of her presenter friends in an upscale restaurant on Silom Road. He had photos of Cat and Somporn together, but nothing compromising. No down-and-dirty shots of naked, sweaty bodies. Cat could have passed as his personal assistant or his daughter. They never held hands or showed affection in public. Cat was a professional, turning off in public, turning on in private; a combination that had seduced and hooked Somporn. He used the Lexus, which he neither wanted nor needed, each time he had an appointment to meet her. He showed no regret in buying the car. He had the ying who turned heads and moved cars from the showroom to the garage with the flicker of a smile.

Casey had passed copies of Calvino's report to Waters, who'd handed it down the chain of command until it reached Jarrett and Tracer. Now photographs of Cat and Somporn were laid out on a coffee table near the balcony window. Occasionally Tracer glanced at one, picking it up, studying the features of the woman and the man like a hangman measuring a prisoner for the noose. Tracer pulled the binoculars to his eyes and focused on Cat's balcony three hundred and twenty-five meters away. He stood just to the right and slightly behind Jarrett. Neither Jarrett nor Tracer had any idea that the foreigner who had hit the Benz was the same man who had done the report. That made it a level playing field, since Calvino was unaware that his report had ended up in their hands.

Somporn arrived in his new Lexus for an appointment with Cat every Wednesday. He arrived between ten and eleven in the morning, stayed through lunch, and left around two in the afternoon. His visits had become predictable, routine. As Calvino had noted in his report, Somporn's world was without surprises, and that made him vulnerable.

What Jarrett and Tracer were waiting for was Somporn's weekly love-in with a ying who understood that, like her lover's new Lexus,
sooner or later she'd be traded in for a new model. On the surface Cat appeared devoted to Somporn. Her habits were only slightly less predictable than his, and she was no more careful to cover her tracks than he was. Both of them were a private investigator's dream. They lived in worlds they thought they controlled—more than that for Somporn, who lived in a world he thought he owned.

Jarrett folded his hands behind his head and sat back in his chair. The Jack Malone Foundation in Hong Kong had confirmed that Casey's money had received. Tracer had turned on his iPod, hooked up to two small speakers. The words poured out: “Just get it done. Don't matter how you do it.”

Jarrett checked his watch. They had an hour to wait.

As Calvino climbed the stairs to his office, he heard someone calling his name from the street below. He leaned over the railing toward the massage yings sitting in front of the massage parlor. One of the yings called up, “Tell Ratana—Noi come to office late.” Behind her was a customer. Evidently, she was going out for a short time. It wasn't the first time Noi had dumped her kid on Ratana for an additional hour to turn a trick. Strangely, Ratana no longer complained about working in an office above a massage parlor. The ying would eventually come into the office and collect her daughter. Which one of the babies was hers? He couldn't keep straight the shifting combination of babies who lurked along the edges of the playpen any more than he could identify fish in an aquarium. Little kids were like old people in that way; their features blurred into a generic rubbery face; hairless, jug-eared, wet-mouthed. It was difficult for him to remember how the office ran before Ratana had given birth to a dead man's child.

He hadn't been expected; as far as Ratana and everyone on the soi knew, Calvino had left town. As soon as he opened the door, the whiff of babies hit him like a wall of freshly fertilized soil. Then came the sound of their blubbering and incoherent babbling, their armorpiercing cries, their shaking of rattles, and their bouncing against the sides of their small, caged world.

The space had been transformed from an office into a community daycare center. Ratana's desk had been pushed aside to make space for a playpen with see-through nylon mesh for tiny little fists to grasp, squeeze, pull—the basic exercise program for a six-month-old.
Mouth open, Calvino stood frozen on the spot, surveying the wreckage that the children had unleashed. Ratana sat behind her desk, earphones from an iPod on, sipping coffee, looking at her computer, and singing out of tune. On the screen, she read about how to be a perfect parent on a working mothers' website—actually a blog written by a Thai living in Los Angeles—adorned with teddy bear logos and pictures of two small snotty-nosed babies whose every movement was caught on the web cam.

He walked to her desk, reached over, and pulled out an earphone.

“Noi's going to be late picking up her kid,” he said.

She jumped. “I wasn't expecting you until later.”

“She was just leaving with a customer.”

Ratana shrugged, turning away from the computer screen. She had dressed casually in a pair of black slacks and a white blouse stained with baby slobber and bits of baby food. Her hair fell across her face. She pushed it back, twisting around in her chair as she scanned Calvino from head to toe. She had already talked to Colonel Pratt the night of Calvino's detention, confirming that she'd never heard Calvino mention the woman who'd fallen to her death.

“I'm sorry about Pattaya. What a terrible thing!”

“Pratt told you?” He wasn't surprised.

She nodded. Calvino's best friend and his office assistant had long ago established a line of independent communication. “I thought you'd be in this afternoon.”

“I wanted to finish up on Beckwith's case.” He showed her the pictures on his digital camera. The babies stirred in their sleep. Ratana put a finger to her lips. Sometimes he forgot the new rule of the office: talk in a whisper. “I had a minor accident in Washington Square.”

“Anyone hurt?” Her hand instinctively touched her throat.

“The car I hit was parked. No one inside.”

She sighed. “That's a relief. I'll handle the paperwork with the insurance company.”

“The owner's handling it.” The attitude of the two men irritated him, made him shake his head. But compared to the lockdown in Pattaya, the incident made little impression. As he stepped back, he brushed against a pram, which rolled into the playpen. The reception area had become a minefield of car seats, buggies, toys, piles of
disposable diapers, bottles, and bottle warmers. Getting through to his office had become an ordeal.

One of babies in the playpen started bawling. The others soon joined in. Ratana leaned over her desk and made some of those cooing noises interspersed with tongue clicking that mothers use to soothe infants. The language of comfort, an ancient, borderless language.

“Colonel Pratt asked you to phone,” she said.

Calvino had switched off his cell phone, but there was no way to avoid messages filtering through to his office. He didn't want to talk with Pratt or anyone else. He wanted to forget the dead ying falling past his balcony.

“They're hungry,” said Ratana, reaching out for the bottles. “Let me know when you want me to phone Colonel Pratt.” Babies sucking on their bottles, their tiny legs in the air, had suddenly become individual forces to reckon with. “Why don't I phone the Colonel now?”

“Not now. Later.”

He found a path into his office and collapsed at his desk. He had needed the vacation from the office, from the babies, from Ratana, from Colonel Pratt, from the clients and chaos of Bangkok. No one could handle Bangkok full blast very long without a break.

“You're upset,” she said. “Tell me what's wrong.”

“Telling you what's right would take less time.”

The Pattaya police had put him through the chili-grinding machine, she thought. That accounted for his flushed face, hot temper.

“I'm curious about one thing,” he said.

That made her happy for a moment. “What thing?”

“How many babies are out there?” He nodded in the direction of her office. “I thought there were three.”

“Four,” she said.

“Some investigator,” he said. “I can't even keep track of the number of babies in my reception area.” He thought he'd correctly counted the babies in the playpen—three, four, five? Perception sometimes failed to attach the right number. It was the same with time passing. How long had it taken the ying to fall to her death? Two, three, four seconds? The police had asked him. Time did strange things too, getting tangled up like a clump of babies, hampering judgment.

“Colonel Pratt said the Pattaya police don't consider you a suspect.”

“They told Pratt what he wanted to hear. It's the Thai way.”

“So there is no problem. That's good,” she said, confirming that the Thai way had followed him straight to his desk.

Snuggling a cooing baby against her chest, she returned to Calvino's office and sat in a chair opposite his desk.

“John-John's sleeping,” she whispered, swaying the child from side to side, making a clicking sound with her tongue.

Every time he looked at the baby, he asked himself whether the
luk-krueng
farang kid looked more like his father or mother.

The baby's father, John Lovell, had been murdered and cremated a year and a half earlier. Ratana's mother had counseled her to get an abortion; so had her friends. Until the baby was born, Ratana's mother had insisted that farangs in Thailand were all scam artists, con men, grifters, or dangerous criminals. Since John-John's birth, her mother phoned a half a dozen times a day with advice, worried that Ratana was giving the baby insufficient attention, telling her to quit her job and devote herself to the baby full-time, and instead of campaigning for an abortion, now campaigned for Ratana and John-John to move back to the shelter of the ancestral home. The old lady would have made a perfect Thai politician.