Jones and I look at each other and shrug. I don’t think the Khmer have understood a word, now that we’re speaking so fast, but they’ve seen Elijah’s shift of allegiance. A dangerous moment. I stand up and start to shout angrily. I rip off my shirt to show them the long ladder of stitches on the left side of my rib cage, from just under my arm all the way to my thigh. “Did you do this?” I’m yelling. “Did one of you do this?” The man with the knife stands up to take a closer look while Jones makes for the door. He jabbers at his friend in Khmer, and they burst out laughing. Suddenly the man with the knife is hugging me around the shoulders. “It wasn’t us,” he explains. “The guy who did it had to go back to Cambodia, he could hardly walk.” He glances at Jones as she opens the door to leave, but makes no move to stop her. He’s fascinated by my stitches and runs a finger up and down them, shaking his head. I am looking at him with clairvoyant vision now: the elongated snout, the leathery wings. He poisons my wound as he prods.
“Nice work,” Elijah says, nodding sagely. “Maybe you and I can do business. You being such a switched-on denizen of these parts, maybe you’ve got some idea how I might get rid of these goons without bringing the ghost of Pol Pot down on my shoulders?”
“Pay them off.”
“Now why didn’t I think of that? Would you like to do the negotiating? I’m tired of hand signals.”
I explain that the black farang wants to do business alone with the Royal Thai Police Force and would like to thank them for their help and assistance. The one with the Uzi plays with it while he talks about the risk of carrying a firearm in Krung Thep, which needs to be compensated for. Maybe they’ve been out of the jungles longer than I thought, their sense of an itemized account is surprisingly advanced. The final figure is four hundred dollars, which Elijah pays in hundred-dollar bills. We watch them go and Elijah says, “Let’s get out of this museum. How about a walk in a street?”
Kaoshan is hopping as usual while we walk side by side. Elijah doesn’t draw more than a glance or two, despite his size. Except for his eyes, he could be an overweight middle-aged American on vacation. His eyes never stop scanning. We stop in a bar halfway down the street and he shakes his head as I order two beers.
“That’s quite a street. I ain’t seen a street like that since the sixties. Harlem is real quiet in comparison. See the two dope deals? What was it, ganja?”
“Probably.”
“Both those dealers were cops, right?”
“How did you know that?”
“Too relaxed, too complacent to be ordinary dealers. Every dealer ever worked for me had to suffer from controlled paranoia or I wouldn’t use him. Those guys had protection. Do the cops have a bust-and-bribe scam and resell the dope?”
“It’s a cottage industry.”
The beers arrive and Elijah turns his up and pours it into his mouth until the bottle is empty. He burps and shakes his head. “My next incarnation I’m gonna put in for Thai cop. Pal, you gotta have the best job in the world.”
I think of my hovel, my yard-long scar and the snake in Pichai’s eye. “Yes,” I agree.
33
“Brother Bill was different. He and I shared the same dad, so there ain’t no rational explanation how we ended up like oil and water, and I’m not talking about him being a soldier and me being in the pharmaceutical industry. I’m talking about soul. I don’t wish to bad-mouth my dead kin, but I have to tell you, since we’re talking so intimate here, and you got me so damn drunk, Bill’s soul was not the biggest you ever come across. Great souls are great sinners, like me. Small souls commit small sins and become sergeants, mayors, presidents. When he was a kid about fifteen I took him under my wing and tried to educate him. I would walk him down a street just like we did tonight and test him afterwards. ‘Did you see those two crack deals go down?’ I would say. ‘Did you see the iron that wop was packing? Did you notice, brother dear, that members of the Boyz Love Money gang were mingling on the corner of 115th and Lexington, which is the sovereign territory of the Hoover Crips gang? Some serious violence about to go down tonight. And did it even occur to you, Mr. Universe, that the cute nigger bitch who was coming on to you outside that hamburger joint and massaging your fantasies till the whole world could see your erection was a smack fiend and after your dough, not your cock?’ Young Billy never saw anything in other people except the effect of his amazing body. He was neat and tidy, a Goody Two-shoes, which is always a cause for concern. A born peacetime soldier. A born sergeant.”
I cast my eyes over the ten bottles of Kloster all lined up around the table and order another. I stopped drinking about an hour ago. “He was brave under fire.”
“You talking about that thing at the embassy in Yemen? He called me afterwards, about the first time in ten years. He was shaking and could hardly talk. Frankly, he was scared shitless. Sure, he acted brave, but it was his training took over. Why d’you think they put marines through that kind of torture in boot camp? Exactly so as they’ll react like robots. I was proud of him, so was Mother, but he was frightened. That was the only time I heard him talk about getting out early. I think he kind of traded his medal for a long-term posting out here. He had his eye on your town for a long time before they finally consented to let him come.”
“Why?”
“Why does any man want to be posted here? Billy was all about sex. That was his thing. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t no prude, I just don’t think it’s appropriate for a middle-aged man to have it on his mind all the time. With Billy it was a kind of sickness. Somehow it went with him being so neat and tidy, so damn perfect. Know what I mean? I told him, ‘Billy, in this world money has got to come first. Put anything you like second, but if you don’t master dough, it sure as hell will master you.’ He saw the light about five years ago, when he first started thinking about life after retirement.”
“With a girlfriend like that, a lot of men might have it on the mind full-time.”
Elijah eyes me sideways. “Fatima, she turn you on?”
“That’s really her name? Fatima?”
“That’s the one she gave.” A slow, careful nod. “Too exotic for me. I like a more earthy mama, someone you can drink beer and watch TV with, who don’t care if you fart. She kind of spooked me.”
“He must have talked about her a lot.”
Elijah downed another bottle. “Nope, not once. I guess he knew I thought he was kinda weird about that sort of thing. I had no idea who she was or what she looked like or even that she existed. All I had was a mobile number he sent me over the e-mail one time. I called it from New York after they told me he was dead. It was his mobile, but I figured someone might be using it. She answered and told me she’d meet me at the hotel after I landed. It was her idea to go to the boxing.”
“You don’t have an address?”
“Not even a phone number. I tried calling her again before you guys showed up, and there’s a Thai voice telling me in English that the number’s no longer available.”
“First you were with her, the next thing you’re with some Khmer?”
“She called them when I freaked a little at the boxing. I knew that friend of yours was wrong, Miss FBI. I have street instinct. Three of them arrived on bikes. She goes off with one of them and leaves the other two to mind me. They weren’t such bad fellas. Maybe a little undisciplined.”
“I can guarantee no problems for you if you want to talk a little about what your brother was up to. It might help find his killers.”
“Been waiting for you to say that. Actually, I don’t have a problem because I wasn’t involved, whatever Miss Hot Pants might have insinuated. These days I work in a hermetically sealed environment. I don’t risk contamination from anyone, not even blood relations. I sure don’t risk doing business with a beginner, which was what Bill was. I just gave him some advice, that’s all, the kind I hoped would keep him out of trouble. Guess he didn’t take it, huh?”