Paying Back Jack (46 page)

“That was some crazy shit Casey tried.”

Jarrett eased the cell phone back into his pocket.

“Change of plan,” said Jarrett. “We're leaving the country.” He got up from the chair and looked at Tracer.

“I like that idea.”

Together they walked toward a Thai International sales counter.

“Fuck Mooney.”

“Fuck Waters and the Colombians.”

“The car's in long-term storage. In a couple of months they'll find it.”

Each of them carried, strapped around their bodies, a pouch with credit cards, cash, and passports. They had enough cash to buy business-class tickets and fly out in style. Training had taught them that where they were going the first order of business would be to acquire new passports, new identities; that would take some money and time, maybe forty-eight hours. Making a new life, that would take a lot longer. They would be cut off from the company, friends, and family. It wasn't clear how long they'd have to stay in the shadows.

“Waters will come looking for us. He has to. You know that,” said Tracer.

Jarrett smiled, head to the side, looking at the departure schedule. “We'll find him before the cops find the car.”

Tracer liked that. “It reminds me of a blues song: ‘Take me down the road where I've done wrong. Take me back to a place we used to go. I don't blame you, baby, 'cause I had it coming.'”

Jarrett's phone rang as they reached the counter. It rang until the ying behind the counter asked why he didn't answer the phone. She wondered if he might be hard of hearing. When he finally took out the phone he heard a voice with a familiar Brooklyn accent.

“I'm at the airport. Where are you?” the voice asked.

CALVINO FOUND THE TWO MEN inside an airport coffee shop, sitting far back in a sea of untidy passengers and even untidier tables. The self-service restaurant served greasy half-cold noodles prepared by a staffer with that startled, unsettled look of someone who'd been stabbed. The two passed for average tourists killing time until their flight was called, their hands wrapped around large cups of coffee. Tracer drank it black, stirring it with a spoon as if something inside hadn't dissolved. Jarrett dropped two sugar-loads from tiny paper pouches into his cup. He was, after all, a man with a sweet tooth and a love of honey. At the tables around them were Thais and foreign travelers sitting with their carry-on bags in clusters of twos or threes, the cattle-class passengers who had no access to the VIP lounge.

Jarrett and Tracer sat in silence, blending into the crowd. What set them apart was a degree of alertness that people waiting for planes don't usually possess. From the tension in their bodies and the way they scanned everyone around them, Calvino could see they were still pumped up—on full-alert and looking for another shoe to fall. A couple of young farangs, one white, one black, looking like the weight of the world was perched on their shoulders. Calvino lowered Casey's carry-on suitcase onto the table and eased himself into the chair next to Tracer.

Calvino's face was puffy and discolored from Casey's beating and nicked here and there. There were small tears in his clothes, and his
knuckles were raw from crawling on the balcony. He might have passed as a farang who looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Or he could pass as a geezer who had been mugged by a katoey in the shadows of a walkover.

“How did you get through the front door?” asked Jarrett.

“I told them I had a fight with my Thai wife. She won. I'm leaving the country. They waved me through. I think they get a lot of that,” said Calvino.

“What do you want?” asked Tracer.

Calvino searched his right pocket and then, shifting his weight, searched the left one. Digging deep, he pulled out the laser pen and pointed it at Tracer's head and depressed the button on top. Then he laid it on the table. “Funny what kinds of gadgets can end up saving your ass,” said Calvino. Then he opened the carry-on case, pulled out Casey's cell phone, and laid it on the table. “Casey had your numbers in his cell phone.”

Jarrett picked up the phone.

“He had you listed under Sniper and Spotter,” said Calvino, watching him scroll down the list of names and numbers.

Jarrett found Waters at the very end. That was the name he wanted. He showed the phone to Tracer. “Lots of numbers,” he said.

“He had me listed under PI, but I didn't take it personally,” said Calvino. He didn't mention that Casey had Nongluck's buried under Whore #3 and Cat as Whore #2. That had left him guessing who Whore #1 was.

Casey had a reputation for planning his missions meticulously. There was nothing half-cocked about the man. His training included counter-surveillance teamwork where he watched over high-value friendlies. That required an eye for detail. Hunting for a high-value target required one set of skills; another set was needed to find that one person in a crowd, an assassin, whose sole mission was to take out the person you'd been assigned to protect. Anyone in the crowd might pull a gun. Casey had the advantage, but this time it had failed him. If you did the numbers, you could see it was bound to happen. While talent and preparation minimized the risk, it didn't eliminate it. In Casey's case, he had been undone by a private investigator with no training but who came up, when it was needed, with one lucky move. Both Jarrett and Tracer marveled at how Casey had made the
mistake of thinking he had it all figured out, that he was in control of the situation.

“Take down all the numbers you want,” said Calvino. He watched Jarrett erase his number and Tracer's from the address book.

“What else you got inside that case?” asked Tracer.

“Casey's passport, showing immigration had stamped him out two days earlier, and a return ticket to London. The Bangkok-to-London leg has been used.”

He'd booked the same flight that Jarrett and Tracer had bought tickets on. Tracer smiled as he looked at Casey's ticket.

“He planned it well,” said Calvino. “If you look at the whole package, Casey isn't in Thailand. He's somewhere in London. One more thing, I parked his car in the long-term parking with a ticket issued two days ago.”

Tracer and Jarrett looked at each other. “How'd you do that?” asked Jarrett.

“I switched tickets with another car I found one level up.”

“So Casey's in a pub drinking warm beer,” said Tracer, sipping his coffee.

“Although there is a mess to clean up.” Calvino held out the keys to Casey's apartment. “I don't do housework.”

Both men stared at the keys. “What's in this for you?” asked Jarrett.

“I don't like being set up. And I don't like cleaning up someone else's mess.”

Calvino dropped the keys on the table and pushed them across to Jarrett.

“You're not listening to what I'm asking. What do you want?”

Calvino nodded, grinned, and put a hand on Jarrett's shoulder. “Someone fucked with me. I'd like some payback. And I'd like some help.”

Jarrett smiled and Calvino removed his hand.

“You got your payback. Casey's dead,” said Tracer.

“He's right,” said Jarrett. It was a moment that reminded him of MacDonald blinking back tears as he stared at the two dead men on the floor. The absurdity of standing and breathing flooded over MacDonald. Jarrett saw something similar in Calvino.

Rumpled, bruised, with cuts on his face and hands, Calvino
looked like a supervisor at a glass factory whom angry workers had fed through a machine. “It's not finished. Casey was no lone gunman. He had to be working for someone. Maybe you've figured out who that is. And that's why you're leaving in a hurry. You know they aren't going to let this go. I don't see why I should take the blowback alone. You hear what I'm saying?”

“Roger that,” said Tracer.

Jarrett pressed his lips together; he still wasn't convinced. “Why don't you tell us what you were doing hanging out with Casey?”

Calvino shrugged, looked down at the blood-matted sleeve of his sports jacket, thinking there was no way the dry cleaner was going to get that out. “He came to my office with a job to do.” A tone of unease entered his voice. “Well, it seemed like a normal investigation at the time. He paid me to follow a Thai businessman's mia noi and report her movements. His son had been killed in Thailand. The businessman was implicated in the murder. Casey had a legit beef. But it seemed his beef was with you guys. And as hard as I try, I can't understand the connection.”

A smile crept across Jarrett's lips. “I hear you loud and clear, but there's a problem.” He said it in a way that a Thai might say it, meaning a mountain stood in the way of getting across the road. “We're not sure why he had a beef with us.”

“I don't see that as a problem. I see it as an opportunity.”

“You don't want to get involved in this,” said Tracer.

Calvino cocked his head, nodded his head for a moment. “I am already involved. And I've got a bad feeling none of this ends with Casey. Tell me I'm wrong.”

Jarrett tapped a finger on the set of keys. “Casey's condo might be a problem.” He looked around and, in a half-whisper, continued: “You have to understand that a .308 may have gone through the wall and hit something else. Maybe it hit someone across the hall. Someone may have called the cops, and they might be crawling all over Casey's place now. We walk in and the first thing the cops are gonna say is, welcome boys, thought you might like to explain what you're doing here and how Casey's head isn't where it should be, and his neighbor next door has a gaping hole in his chest.”

“Except it was a soft-nosed round,” said Tracer. “That doesn't keep on going for a mile and a half.”

Calvino, hands on the table, looked at the two men. “The round didn't go through the wall. Once it hit his head, it must've gone into ten thousand pieces.” Casey had just taken his eye away from the scope and looked up when the .308 slug passed through his skull at a point just above his ear.

Jarrett and Tracer exchanged a look, with Jarrett leaning over and whispering something to Tracer.

“If you're fucking with us, understand that that is a mistake,” said Jarrett.

“I've made mistakes with Casey. I don't intend to repeat them,” said Calvino. “And from your situation, I'd say you two made a couple of mistakes along the line, too.” Jarrett and Tracer exchanged an uneasy look, part alienation mixed up with some serious anxiety. Calvino later told Colonel Pratt that at that moment, he saw something in Jarrett; something that convinced him, this was a man who wanted to go back and deal with the problem. Tracer had been the one who'd have been happy to close the books on Casey, but he did what Jarrett wanted. The three of them shared a bond: Casey had carefully worked to put them in a position to kill them and someone had paid him for the job.

“How do we know that you aren't a fuck-up?” asked Tracer.

“You don't. I suggest we start by going to Thong Lo. You stay in the car a soi away,” said Calvino. “If the cops are there, you won't get a call. If the floor is clear and Casey's room is the same as I left it, I'll phone and we'll deal with it.”

Jarrett exchanged a glance with Tracer, who nodded. There'd been something else, something from Reno's bar, that had been bothering Jarrett. He decided it was best to get it out in the open. “What's your connection with Wan?” asked Jarrett.

Somehow it always came down to a ying. “I don't have one. If it's sex you're thinking about, forget it. She helped us get that kid out of Cowboy. Wan knew the backdoor escape and led us out. I never saw her before that night. You see this?” He'd opened the palm of his hand and showed them the laser pen. “You saw the kid. Later, she gave it to me. One of those things you don't think too much about.
Maybe going through the window would've been enough to draw your attention. Or, again, maybe you'd have missed it. Somehow I have the feeling if she hadn't given it to me, then you'd both be dead. I'd be dead, too. Does that answer your question?”

The men waited, heads down, thinking, hands around their coffee cups. Then they looked up to study the private investigator sitting on the opposite side of the table. What did they know about this guy? Going back to town was taking one huge risk. Everything they knew told them to go straight through immigration and into the business-class lounge and forget this had happened. Calvino had run into their car in Washington Square, he'd run away with Jarrett's ying, and he'd used a laser pen and a back flip through a balcony window to save their lives. But who was he?

“Give us an hour. If we decide to board the plane, thanks for the signal. If we don't get on the plane, we'll meet you outside the arrivals terminal. And we can take a taxi back into town.”

Calvino nodded, got up, and left the table. Jarrett checked the time and then dialed Harry Jarrett. He had a few questions about Casey that he wanted to ask his father. When the old man picked up the phone, Jarrett said, “I'm in a situation.”

Harry knew exactly what that meant. He had about one hour.

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS were required to fluff the premises; precision slicing, cutting, and cleaning left Casey's condo clean—on the surface, that is. If a forensic team had gone through the place, they'd have still found all kinds of evidence. But the work was good enough for a condo with the rent paid up for three months and a tenant who'd punched out of the country, according to immigration records.

As they'd worked, removing glass fragments from the balcony, stuffing the shards into a large black plastic bag lined with newspapers, Calvino had held up a mango-shaped piece of glass, turned it over, and dropped it in the bag. “You did the right thing,” he said. “Not shooting Somporn.”