Big Mango (9786167611037) (36 page)

***

SHORT
Time maneuvered the
bike skillfully through Bangkok’s narrow streets for a few
kilometers then, after making a sudden left and an equally sudden
right, powered up a short, sharply-inclined ramp and emerged on
what looked to Eddie exactly like the sort of nondescript
interstate highway that looped around most American cities. All he
had to do was squint slightly and he might have been back in San
Francisco wheeling onto the Bayshore Freeway from the Van Ness
onramp and heading south toward San Jose. On the other hand, if he
had been in San Francisco, he seriously doubted he would be hanging
onto the back of a Suzuki driven by a middle-aged Thai whore who
had just used a sawed off shotgun to rescue him from two heavily
armed Chinese thugs. That was an important point to keep in mind,
he figured.

Eddie bent forward and shouted into Short
Time’s ear over the noise of the bike. “Where are we going?”

Short Time didn’t respond, so Eddie
cautiously unhooked his right hand from the handle on the seat and
wiggled it in front of her. “Where are we going?” he tried again,
speaking as distinctly as he could into the powerful
slipstream.

Short Time shot a quick smile over her
shoulder, a rather nice smile Eddie noticed, gave a brisk nod, and
then returned her full attention to piloting the bike. As they
slalomed around the tailgate of a dark blue van moving very slowly
in the middle lane, Eddie decided that she was probably making a
sound choice. But he couldn’t help but wonder what the nod was
supposed to mean.

***

THE
man walked to a dusty
road near the
wat
and stood patiently until an old bus came
rattling along and lurched to a stop. The bus was crowded, as it
usually was, people pressed into every crevice of its interior; but
if that bothered the man, he gave no sign. Climbing the steps, he
dropped several coins into the driver’s out-stretched hand and
worked his way back along the aisle until he found a spot that was,
at least comparatively speaking, unoccupied. One or two of the
other passengers glanced at him, wondering for a moment if the man
was a Thai or a
farang
, but because of the way he was
dressed and the likelihood that no foreigner would ever be on such
a bus they soon lost interest.

As the bus bounced away, the man made himself
as comfortable as he could, rocking forward slightly and shifting
his weight directly over his center of gravity, the way a man stood
when he was accustomed to standing. And he remained that way,
hardly moving, during the entire two-hour trip into Bangkok.

After they reached the city’s Eastern Bus
Terminal, the man climbed down from the bus and slapped the
circulation back into his legs. Then he set off up Sukhumvit Road
walking steadily. A little less than an hour later, he turned right
and almost immediately left again, entering a short
soi
from
which traffic had been blocked off at both ends.

Neon tubing outlined many of the buildings
along the
soi
and huge signs stuck out from most of them.
Names like LOVE SCENE, TOY BAR, AFTER SKOOL, LONG GUN and SUZIE
WONG hinted at the delights to be found inside these shophouses,
but it was still early. A smoky, mango-colored sunset washed the
little street in a wan light, and the neon was dark and
motionless.

Here and there, small groups of Thais lounged
at broken tables or on the curb eating and chattering among
themselves. A girl who looked like a teenager sat sidesaddle on a
parked motorcycle jiggling a sleeping baby in the crook of her left
arm while she smoked a cigarette. A man in rubber boots wielded a
garden hose against the accumulated grime around the entrance to
one of the closed bars and, when the stream of water splashed too
near, the girl shouted at him in machine-gun Thai. He grinned and
kept sweeping the water over the concrete. The baby never
stirred.

The man in the clothes of a Thai farmer
seemed to be well known in this little village and he acknowledged
each greeting with a small smile or a nod. After he had passed,
some of the girls laughed self-consciously as if they were
embarrassed to have been surprised by the man at such a mundane
moment. When he reached the shophouse that was apparently his
destination, a gray bunker-like structure wedged between two
darkened bars deep in the
soi
, he ducked quickly into it and
disappeared.

The occupants of the street returned to their
eating and chattering, all except for two young Thai men who stood
slowly, picked up their bowls of noodles, and moved to a pair of
metal chairs flanking the door through which the man had just
passed. Neither young man was particularly imposing physically,
both being small and slightly built, but the way they moved and sat
conveyed an unmistakable message to anyone who might have been
watching: to pass through that door would mean dealing with them,
and dealing with them would not be easy.

***

IT
was the third time they
roared past a Holiday Inn before Eddie got the idea. When he
finally did, he kicked himself that it had taken so long.

He was just thinking how odd it was to find
three Holiday Inns on the same stretch of road when he suddenly
realized that there weren’t. It was the same Holiday Inn and he was
seeing it for the third time. Apparently they were on a freeway
that looped the city, and they had been circling around and around
it for nearly an hour.

Before Eddie could think of a diplomatic way
to ask Short Time if she had any idea at all where she was going,
she swung behind a bus, shot diagonally across three lanes, and
blasted down an exit ramp. From the angry chorus of car horns that
broke out immediately behind them, Eddie gathered that Bar and
Winnebago were sticking close.

Back in the rutted streets of the city, Short
Time slowed to an inconspicuous speed and drifted along with the
evening traffic. She still seemed to be riding without any clear
direction, Eddie thought, and it was starting to make him fidgety.
Finally, he put one hand on her shoulder and pointed to the curb in
an obvious suggestion that they stop and talk things over. She
shook her head and kept going.

Before long, however, Short Time was forced
to slow the bike to a crawl and edge it through a narrow bottleneck
where a fruit vendor was jostling for sidewalk space with two blind
men selling lottery tickets. Eddie saw his chance and he took it.
He reached around Short Time and flipped off the bike’s ignition.
The motor died immediately and, palming the key, Eddie jumped off.
Short Time had to drop her feet quickly to balance the bike; then
she twisted around on the seat and held her hand out to Eddie for
the key. He shook his head.

Winnebago and Bar caught up and stopped just
behind Eddie who was standing with his arms folded across his
chest. Beyond Short Time, a crowd of Thais had already started to
gather, sensing that something interesting was about to happen.
When the attraction was a
farang
arguing with a Thai, the
dog packs formed fast.

“You give,” Short Time said, her hand still
extended.

“First, tell me where the hell you’re taking
us.”

Bar nervously eyed the gathering crowd. His
skin had never in his life seemed quite so pale as it did at that
moment.

Winnebago glanced around. “Where are we?” he
asked Bar.

“I’d say about a mile from where we started,”
Bar whispered.

“You mean we’ve just been riding in circles
for two hours?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“You think she’s setting us up, Eddie?”
Winnebago called out, giving Short Time a hard look.

The crowd momentarily shifted its attention
to Winnebago and Bar tried to make himself as small as
possible.

“I save your ass!” Short Time snapped.

“Yeah, but maybe just so you can hand it over
to somebody else,” Eddie said.

Short Time’s eyes blazed. “What you want we
do after Little Princess? Check into Sheraton maybe and go for
swim?”

“I want to know where you’re taking us,”
Eddie repeated, his voice even.

“After we leave, other girl call someone meet
you. I keep you move until he get there. Seem smart to me, but you
fuckers smarter maybe. That right? You smarter fuckers than me?”
Short Time’s voice rose to a scream. “Maybe you just told me your
better idea we all be happy now!”

The crowd continued to grow, drawn by the
spectacle of three white guys who looked to be picking a fight with
a Thai girl. A few of the young toughs started edging toward the
front, spoiling to be the first to take on the
farangs
. Four
of them split away and slipped behind Eddie.

Bar recognized the signs all too well.

“Either make up fast, partner,” he called out
to Eddie, “or we better get the fuck out of here right now.”

Eddie glanced at the boys behind him and saw
Bar’s point. After a second’s hesitation, he flipped the key back
to Short Time. She caught it, and Eddie cut his eyes behind him and
then back to her. Short Time grinned and snapped at the boys in
Thai. They immediately went quiet and shuffled around elaborately
until their backs were to Eddie. As far as they were concerned, he
had just ceased to exist.

“So you scared of few skinny Thai boys, huh?
And I think you big, tough marine.” Short Time shook her head in
disgust. “Shit.”

“Where are you taking us, Short Time?”

“You no tust me?”

“I no tust anybody.”

And for some reason that seemed to mollify
Short Time completely.

“Okay,” she said. “No problem.”

Short Time returned the key to the ignition
and fired the starter. The Suzuki turned over immediately and
settled into a gentle rumble.

“I take you see someone fix everything.
Someone you tust.” Short Time goosed the bike a little and raised
her voice just enough to be heard over it. “Another five, maybe ten
minute. No more.”

Bar and Winnebago looked at Eddie.

“You go with me or you go fuck yourself,” she
snapped. “Same same to Short Time.”

Eddie briefly considered the alternatives,
then he let out a long sigh and climbed back on the Suzuki behind
Short Time.

“We’ve come this far,” Eddie called back over
his shoulder to Bar and Winnebago. “A little further can’t hurt
anything.”

“The fuck it can’t,” Winnebago mumbled, but
he was firing up the bike when he said it and no one heard him.

***

SHORT
Time rode steadily for
another ten minutes, then coasted the bike to the side of a quiet,
tree-lined street and stopped. She killed the engine, hopped off,
and locked the Suzuki to a metal ring cemented into the front wall
of a shophouse. With everyone trailing behind her, she walked
briskly along the side of the building until they emerged on the
sidewalk of a wide, crowded thoroughfare. The pavement was lined
with vendors’ carts and piles of dented metal chests, all of them
pushed against the curb and covered with plastic sheeting.

“Where the fuck are we?” Winnebago whispered
to Bar.

“Soi Asoke, off Sukhumvit Road. Up that way…”
he pointed in the direction Short Time was walking “is Soi
Cowboy.”

Winnebago lifted an eyebrow and gave Bar a
long look.

“No, really, that’s what it’s called,” Bar
said. “Tourists go to Patpong, locals come to Cowboy.”

“Then at least maybe I can get laid before
anybody else shows up to kill us,” Winnebago muttered.

Short Time turned left, slipped through a
scattering of folding tables and chairs set up by a sidewalk food
vendor with ambition, and walked quickly down the same narrow soi
along which the man from the
wat
had walked not long
before.

About halfway down, she approached the
doorway through which the man had disappeared and spoke quietly to
the two boys sitting beside it. One nodded immediately and reached
over to open the door, while the other watched the
farangs
suspiciously as they trooped in behind Short Time.

There were no lights inside the building and
it took a few moments for their vision to adjust enough to the grey
dimness for them to see clearly. When they could, they realized
that they were in an abandoned go-go bar and, from the dust and
grime everywhere, it had apparently been abandoned for quite a
while. There were tables and chairs shoved around; a darkened stage
ringed by flaking chrome poles; stacks of cardboard beer cases
along the wall; and a long bar with a dirty mirror behind it.

It wasn’t until Eddie started slowly across
the room that Bar and Winnebago saw the man sitting alone on a
stool, studying them in the mirror behind the bar. Eddie stopped
directly behind him and they held each other’s eyes in the mirror
for a long time. When the man on the stool finally spoke, it was
without turning around.

“It’s been a long, strange trip, hasn’t it,
Eddie?”

The man studied Eddie in the mirror a little
longer, drank deeply from a bottle of Singha cradled loosely in one
hand, then pushed around on the stool until the two of them were
face to face. Winnebago and Bar waited silently, their eyes
shifting back and forth between Eddie and the man at the bar.

“You look pretty good for being dead.”

The man seemed to consider that for a
moment.

“I’ve looked a fucking sight worse, I guess,”
he nodded. “Yeah, I sure as shit have.”

Then he reached back and put his beer bottle
on the bar behind him. The slapping sound it made against the worn
wooden surface added a kind of exclamation point to what he had
just said, and that seemed to please Captain Harry Austin quite a
lot.

CHUCK
McBride spent most of
the afternoon just up the road from the Little Princess sitting in
a white Volvo that he checked out from the embassy motor pool. He
watched the place carefully, waiting for something to happen, but
nothing much did. McBride didn’t notice anyone he recognized going
in or out, and by the time it began to get dark, he was
fidgeting.