‘The boys on the far side of the river, as Prophett would say,’ Cody remarked.
‘So what happened? How did Taisung get back into the act?’
‘We had this kid. Kilhanney, Ted Kilhanney. That’s when all the trouble started.’
‘Taisung tried to buy us, Hatcher,’ said Pai. ‘To make mules of us.’
‘Blackmail?’ Hatcher asked..
‘Of the worst kind,’ Cody- said. ‘He threatened to expose me, Gallagher, Riker and Kilhanney unless we turned mule for him. That’s what he was doing for Fong, recruiting dope carriers. And Kilhanney was the most vulnerable.’
‘Who’s Kilhanney?’ Hatcher asked.
‘A real Greek tragedy,’ Cody answered. ‘A Catholic priest — how do they put it? — fallen from grace. Somewhere between Saigon and Bangkok, he lost his religion. He was giving some GIs last rites and the position was counterattacked. In the camp he lost what little faith he had left. When we got here, he fell in love with the wife of a Thai politician. You think we’re screwed up? He was really screwed up. He couldn’t face the World, and he was torn up with guilt. Naturally he was the most vulnerable and the first one Taisung went after.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘All Kil was supposed to do was take a plane down to Hat Yai and drive a truckload of women to the Malaysian border. He didn’t know their babies were all dead and stuffed with heroin. When the guards discovered what was going on, Kil panicked and made it up here to Max. Two days later he took the bus over to the Phu Khat beach, swam out, and didn’t come back. What was left of him floated up a week or so later.’
‘That’s when we resurrected Thai Horse,’ Earp said.
‘We made a deal to run twenty kilos of heroin to Amsterdam, and when the courier delivered it, I killed him and dumped the twenty keys in. the Chao Phraya River. Then I sent a message to Tollie Fong and Wol Pot that Thai Horse was taking over. I couldn’t do it as Murphy Cody. I couldn’t do it as an American. So — I became a Thai, Pai became a Thai. I married a Thai, killed as a Thai; as far as everyone is concerned, I am a Thai. Murphy Cody doesn’t exist anymore.’
‘And we spread the word on the street through Sy that Thai Horse was Taisung’s operation,’ said Earp.
‘Killed two birds with one stone,’ said Cody. ‘Fong lost face and put the finger on Taisung. The only edge we had was that Taisung never told Fong who we were.’
‘The whole deal was done with phone calls,’ Earp said. ‘The little creep never showed his face.’
‘He was watching you, though,’ said Hatcher. ‘Up until the day Windy Porter was killed. Were you behind that?’
Cody shook his head. ‘Tollie Fong.’
A silence fell on the room for a few moments. Cody seemed out of talk. Hatcher picked it up. ‘I can guess what happened after that,’ he said. ‘Fong thought Wol Pot had double-crossed him, so the little bastard had to get out of the country. That’s when le blew the whistle on Murph.’
‘And Sloan sent you in to find me,’ said Cody.
‘Look, forget Sloan,’ Hatcher said. ‘He’s out of it. He took Porter’s body back to the States.’
‘Bad guess, soldier,’ said Earp. ‘Sloan is in Bangkok right now. In a place called the House of Dreams in Chinese Town.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ Hatcher said.
‘He’s an opium head,’ Cody said. ‘The House of Dreams is an opium house. We’ve been watching him since the Wol Pot contact. He sometimes goes there for days a time.’
‘Sloan!’
‘Want to see the place?’ said Earp. ‘It’s a Chinese junk used for moving produce into the city.’
A Chinese junk, thought Hatcher, remembering the address on Wol Pot’s passport that had been an empty pier. And his profession: produce sales.
‘I appreciate your loyalty,’ said Cody, ‘but the man is a junkie, no better or worse off than Johnny Prophett.’
‘And guess who owns the junk?’ said Earp.
‘Tollie Fong,’ Hatcher said.
‘Correct.’
‘So you think Fong is blackmailing Sloan?’ Hatcher said.
‘It makes sense. We’ve seen him go there half a dozen times. And we’ve seen him leave. We’ve got a pretty good little intelligence network, Hatcher. You think it was luck, walking into the Longhorn and tumbling on to the regulars. The only thing lucky about it was that you hired Sy. He was supposed to be following you.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s one of the regulars.’
‘He makes good tips bringing tourists to the Longhorn,’ said Cody. ‘He’s also one of the best drivers in Bangkok. He was helping out.’
‘So you knew where I was every minute,’ Hatcher said.
‘Tucked you in, got you up, said Earp. ‘Tumbling on to Wol Pot was a real stroke, though.’
‘And you were following me?’ Hatcher said to Cody.
Cody nodded. ‘We didn’t know for sure whether you knew where Wol Pot was or not. You could have been meeting him.’
‘Why didn’t you kill me, too?’ asked Hatcher. ‘You thought about it.’
Cody nodded again. ‘You’re right. I just couldn’t do it. We decided when Max called about the tiger to get you down here and check you out.’
‘And what if you had decided I ‘was here to kill Murph?’ Hatcher asked.
‘All of us would have put a bullet in you,’ Wyatt Earp ,and emphatically.
Hatcher appeared troubled. ‘There’s something missing here,’ he said. ‘Tollie Fong never had trouble recruiting mules before. Why would he suddenly be relying on somebody like Wol Pot?’
‘He’s moving a lot of junk from the hills to Bangkok and from there to the States,’ said Earp. ‘He’s got at least a thousand keys of ninety-nine pure hidden in Bangkok right now. He needs to move it — a lot of it, and fast.’
‘And we know where it is,’ Cody said.
Hatcher shook his head slowly. ‘If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, forget it. It’s not your problem.’
‘But Fong is,’ said Riker.
‘Forget Tollie Fong,’ said Hatcher sternly. ‘The triads’ll hound you until they kill all of you. Stop now. Just let Thai Horse vanish into the ‘woodwork. Fong won’t bother you anymore.’
‘You don’t really believe that,’ said Cody.
‘Look, you say he’s involved in something big. He doesn’t have time to look for you or Thai Horse. And if you kill him, it’ll never stop. I killed Fong’s father in 1976 and he’s still after me.’
‘I say we hit him, take him out once and for all,’ said Earp. ‘Solves your problem and ours.’
Hatcher shook his head.
‘Listen to me, when I said I was done with killing I meant it. I came on this trip thinking I was performing a simple humane act. Instead I’ve had to fight practically every day to stay alive. The hell with it, no more killing. The sooner I get out of Bangkok, the better.’
He turned and walked out of the house.
‘You think he is right, Cody?’ Pai asked. ‘You think Tollie Fong will forget?’
‘Sure,’ said Earp. ‘And next season the Pope’s gonna play second base with the Mets.’
Melinda was sitting on the porch when Hatcher walked out. She looked up and for the first time she smiled at him.
‘Do you understand now?’
‘Most of it,’ he said. ‘I’m a little confused on details.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you and Prophett.’
‘I’d like you to understand about Johnny and me, maybe it will explain what holds us all together. It’s not fear of being discovered.’
‘I know it isn’t fear. I’m a fast read.’
Hatcher looked at her and thought about all the passion that had been in her pictures. She had been to able to predict the perfect moment on the faces of the victims of war, the soldiers, the enemy, the innocent bystanders who seemed always to get the worst of it; to capture the fear and frustration and the awful confusion of the young and the despair and the awe and the agony of the old when faced with the obscenity of death, And almost as if she were reading his mind, Melinda went on, ‘Johnny was something. Not afraid of anything. And dreams — God, did he have dreams. But he wasn’t prepared for Nam. It overwhelmed him, and he was like, I don’t know, a little boy in closet who needed somebody to reach out and hold him. He really needed me. He’d cuddle up against me at night, curl into all the right places, tell me how much he loved me. I was drawn to his poetry. And I guess to his weaknesses, too. But Indian country was like a magnet to him. And so was the needle. When he didn’t come back that last time, I waited and waited. I knew he wasn’t dead.’