Big Mango (9786167611037) (33 page)

Okay, McBride thought, he would have to give
Dare that one. Maybe he had underestimated him, at least a little
bit; but if Dare was thinking he could handle Lek on his own, he
was still one dumb son of a bitch.

McBride glanced again at the boats passing on
the canal and then sadly tilted his head up toward the taxis
flowing over the bridge.

Damn, he thought. That boy could be halfway
across Bangkok by now and I have no fucking clue where he went.

TRYING
to get back to the
Sixty-Nine, Eddie made a wrong turn and wandered the side streets
around Soi Nana for an hour before he finally spotted a familiar
building and straightened himself out.

Wonderful, he thought to himself. I’m hiding
out from the Secret Service, a Vietnamese assassin, the CIA, and
Christ only knows who else, and I can’t find a whorehouse in broad
daylight. This ought to be good.

Bar and Winnebago were waiting for him when
he finally got there, sitting on a pair of molded plastic stools in
front of his room. Winnebago smoked two Camels while Eddie told
them about his conversation with Chuck McBride and Bar just sat and
listened without doing anything at all.

Bar glanced at his watch when Eddie was
finished.

“The boys have probably let Lek go by now,”
he said. “What are you going to do about her?”

“Let’s see what she does first.”

Bar wasn’t sure exactly what that was
supposed to mean, but he nodded anyway.

Winnebago flicked his cigarette butt away. “I
always had a bad feeling about that woman,” he said.

“You never mentioned that before,” Eddie
said.

“Every time I started to, I’d see you looking
at her with those big old cow eyes and I figured maybe I’d better
keep my mouth shut.”

“Bullshit. Never happened. You were seeing
things.”

Bar and Winnebago just looked at each
other.

“Don’t start,” Eddie warned, raising his
right forefinger and pointing it first at Winnebago and then at
Bar. “Neither of you.”

Bar fidgeted in his chair, glanced at Eddie,
and then looked quickly away. “You think maybe you should let this
slide, partner?” he asked. “You haven’t really gotten anywhere. You
don’t know any more about Harry Austin now than you did before you
started. All you’re sure of is that he’s dead.”

“Why do you think the Vietnamese and the
Secret Service want to give me millions of dollars to tell them
where Austin stashed the money, Bar?”

“Because they’re desperate and stupid?”

“Because we’re closer to it right now than we
think.”

Eddie’s voice sounded confident, whether he
was or not, so Bar contented himself with a skeptical grunt and let
it go at that.

“We have to find out who the foreigner was
who grabbed Austin’s body.” Eddie tapped the side of his leg
impatiently with his open palm. “We’ll hit that massage parlor as
soon as it opens tonight.”

Winnebago’s eyes lit up. “I’m good with
that.”

Bar shook his head a couple of times and then
consulted the backs of his hands. “You don’t have to wait until
tonight,” he said. “There’ll be somebody at the Princess by noon,
maybe sooner.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Eddie nodded. “There’s
one more thing. Can you get us some hardware? That’s not too
difficult around here, is it?”

“Hardware?” Bar looked genuinely puzzled.

“Nothing heavy duty. Just some handguns, .9
millimeters or .45s would probably do it, and a hundred rounds or
so. Also a few grenades if you can find them.”

“Actually, I’d recommend at least one
bazooka,” Bar said. “That’s generally what well-dressed folks in
Bangkok are carrying this year.”

“Just the small stuff will be okay. Can you
do it?”

“You are kidding, yes?”

“I am kidding, no.”

Bar started to get a queasy feeling and
glanced sideways at Winnebago. “Is he serious?”

“Don’t ask me. I can’t tell anymore.”

“It’s no big deal,” Eddie said, keeping his
tone casual. “I just want to be prepared.”

“The way I see it,” Winnebago mused, “keeping
a box of rubbers around is being prepared. Getting some .45
automatics and a pile of grenades is more like jumping into deep
shit.”

“You’re way out of my league here, Eddie.”
Bar looked down at his feet and folded his arms across his body. “I
can’t believe this.”

“Sure you can. You know what we’re up
against. Besides, you handle a gun pretty well yourself. I’ve heard
the stories.”

Winnebago looked interested. “What
stories?”

“He sent two guys to the hospital a few years
ago with some pretty fancy shooting. Some disagreement about
freedom of the press.”

“It was self-defense.”

“They cornered you in an alley in Patpong one
night, didn’t they? You only fired two shots, the way I heard it.
Put one in each guy’s kneecap. That’s pretty good
self-defense.”

Bar looked over Eddie’s left shoulder and his
eyes flickered briefly. “That was a while ago. I’m a lot older now.
Smarter, too.” He rubbed at his face. “Or maybe not. There’s a guy
I know who lives a couple of blocks from here. I’ll see what I can
do.”

Eddie glanced at Winnebago. “You okay with
this?”

“Oh sure,” Winnebago said. “I can hardly wait
to have my ass shot off by a bunch of Vietnamese assassins. I’m
fine. Great.”

Eddie decided to quit when he was ahead, and
abruptly changed the subject. “Do you know how to get to the Little
Princess from here?” he asked Bar.

Winnebago grunted. “Does the Pope shit in the
woods?”

“It’s not far,” Bar said. He reached into his
shirt pocket and came up with paper and a pencil stub. “I’ll draw
you a map.”

“Will you see what you can do about that
stuff while we’re there?”

Bar nodded slightly and drew in silence. Then
he passed the map to Eddie.

“By the way,” he said while Eddie studied it,
“you didn’t mention the Little Princess to Lek, did you?”

“I don’t…yeah, I think I may have.” Eddie
looked up. “But she’d know about it anyway since that’s where
Austin was killed.”

“You might think so. On the other hand, she
didn’t know anything about what happened to the body. Maybe she
didn’t have anything to do with Austin getting killed.”

Eddie looked doubtful and Bar shrugged.

“Anyway,” he finished, “she’s sure as hell
going to shake the place down now that she knows you’re interested
in it.”

“Okay, I see your point,” Eddie nodded. “How
long will it take you to get those weapons together?”

“Not long. It’s not like I have to search
Bangkok for an honest man or anything.”

“Just put together whatever you can quickly
and don’t worry about the rest. Meet us with whatever you’ve got at
the Little Princess in an hour or so. Can you do that?”

Bar tipped his chair back against the wall
and stretched out his legs.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said.

***

A
thick, nearly opaque
blanket of heat and humidity hung over the city like a shroud. By
the time Eddie and Winnebago made it to the Little Princess it was
well after noon and they were both sweating so heavily their shirts
were soaked through.

A chrome stool sat in the tiny sliver of
shade thrown by the door canopy and on it a bony-kneed woman in a
dirty green miniskirt was swinging her legs like a little girl.
Next to her three tuk-tuk boys, their vehicles abandoned in the
otherwise empty parking lot, were eating something at a wooden
table so low it looked like it had been made for children. A few
stray dogs circled the boys, darting in and out and lunging at the
crumbs on the ground. The dogs scrutinized Eddie and Winnebago
warily, but the tuk-tuk boys ignored them. The girl in the green
skirt pasted on a smile and pushed back the heavy red curtain
hanging over the doorway.

Inside, Eddie and Winnebago stopped and
looked around. The room was large and surprisingly pleasant, but it
smelled like stale cigarette smoke, fish sauce, and spilled beer.
In the center was a rectangular bar with stools around all four
sides. There were a few shabby chairs and two old couches scattered
along the walls, all angled to provide a clear view of a glassed-in
area to their left that looked something like a huge aquarium.
Eddie knew it was where the girls waited: sitting on carpeted
risers, watching television, and listening for the numbers pinned
to their dresses to be called by customers. But it was still early
and the aquarium was empty.

Eddie and Winnebago slid onto stools at the
bar and a tired-looking woman in a shapeless smock of indeterminate
color pushed bottles of Singha in front of them without being
asked. Winnebago pulled out a handkerchief and rubbed the sweat off
his face, then he downed half the bottle in one pull.

“Where’s the pussy?” he asked.

Eddie inclined his head toward the stool on
the other side of the bar where the girl who had brought their beer
was now perched. Her legs were doubled-up under her and her head
rested against thin arms folded on the damp, wooden counter. Then
he inclined his head the other way, indicating the back of the room
where there were a few scattered Formica-topped tables. A woman of
thirty or so was sitting alone at one of them, shoveling noodles
into her mouth with a big spoon. She wore wrinkled black shorts,
fluorescent purple flip-flops, and a dingy, white T-shirt with
bright, red lettering across the front that said TOO DRUNK TO
FUCK.

Winnebago looked dubiously at both women.
“You’re shittin’ me. Right?”

“Nope, but come back tonight. There’ll be a
hundred of them and they’ll all be that 17-year-old at your senior
prom who wouldn’t give you the time of day.”

Winnebago gave Eddie a sour look. “Indians
didn’t have no fucking senior proms,” he muttered.

Eddie made a sympathetic noise and sipped at
his beer. Neither girl paid any attention to them and nearly a half
hour passed in relative silence. When Eddie got tired of waiting
for something to happen, he reached for the plastic cup on the bar
where the girl had tucked their check. He folded a purple note end
to end, pushed it into the cup, and left it protruding just far
enough above the rim to be seen. Then he sat back and waited.
Almost as if an alarm clock had just gone off, the girl slumped on
her arms at the bar jerked upright, slid off her stool, and
shuffled over.

As she reached out for the cup, Eddie covered
it gently with his hand. “Speak English?” he asked her.

“
Nit noi
.”

“You the mamasan?”

The girl snorted and shook her head.

“I need to talk to mamasan,” Eddie said. “Get
mamasan and I give you the money.”

“No problem.” She pointed at TOO DRUNK TO
FUCK. “She there.”

“What’s her name?” Eddie asked.

“She called Short Time.”

“What kind of a name is Short Time?”
Winnebago asked in a voice that suggested he could guess.

Eddie lifted his hand away from the cup and
the girl scooped it up. She gave him a graceful little inclination
of her head, pocketed the note, and returned to her stool.

When Eddie crossed the room and sat down at
her table, Short Time ignored him at first. Then he pulled out his
money clip and laid two purple notes on the table. She glanced up,
continuing to chew her noodles, and looked him over.

“You come back tonight,” she mumbled through
a mouthful. “Better then. More lady.”

“The money isn’t for a girl. It’s for
information.”

Short Time put down her spoon and smiled
slightly. “Information cost more than that, baby.”

Eddie pulled his clip out again and peeled
off three more purple bills, dropping them on top of the other two.
He put the clip back, covered the stack with his left hand and held
Short Time’s eyes. “There was an accident out in the soi a couple
of months back, right in front of this place. A
farang
was
hit by a car and killed. Do you remember?”

Short Time blinked at that and slipped away
like a submarine settling beneath the waves.

“Look, you’re not going to get into any
trouble,” Eddie soothed, keeping his voice low. “The body was
brought in here by another
farang
. I have to know who that
was. I need to find him.”

The girl went back to eating with a slight
smile on her face and Eddie knew exactly what that meant. He
recognized the particular smile that Thais used when they received
confirmation, if any was really needed, that
farangs
really
were as crazy as they thought.

“You’re not going to tell me anything, are
you?” Eddie said.

“Tell you anything you want.” Short Time
looked up from her noodles, but didn’t quite catch Eddie’s eye.
“But know nothing about
farang
killed in soi. Want me make
up story? Then you be happy and let me eat without your bullshit
maybe?”

“You ever heard of Harry Austin?”

Short Time’s manner changed abruptly. Eddie
wasn’t sure exactly what it was he saw in her eyes, but he knew
immediately that it was something.

“He was an American. Did you know him?”

When Eddie asked the question, he expected
guardedness, some continued reticence in the woman’s response
regardless of the money on the table and the look in her eyes when
he mentioned Harry Austin. He expected what always happened when
farangs
in Thailand tried to deal with locals. He expected
that almost ritualistic closing of ranks against the intrusions of
foreigners that had been the hallmark of Thai culture for hundreds
of years.

That was what he expected. What he got was a
girl who wouldn’t shut up.

“Khun Harry? You want give me 5,000 baht tell
you I know Khun Harry?” Short Time seemed to balance herself
somewhere between disbelief and laughter. “Why you give me all that
money just talk about old man? What I know about Khun Harry worth
5,000 baht? I think I know nothing worth all that money about
anybody. What can I know worth 5,000 baht to you, mister? Anybody
tell you about Khun Harry. Maybe 100 baht. Maybe nothing. But you
want give me 5,000 baht tell you.”