Cambodia Noir (18 page)

“Why would June be arguing with someone like that?”

“That, my friend, is your job to figure out, not mine. Unless you have more questions, I'm done with this shit.”

Exhausted, I shake my head.

“Then I'll be going. I'll pretend this never happened, but we have a deal. If you really need to talk, then come to me in the office, say you gotta buy me that drink you owe me. I'll find you someplace quiet.” He pauses, breathes deep. “Please, don't follow me. Don't make me do something neither of us will regret.”

I pull the makings from my pocket; start rolling another joint. He backs away, into the darkness of the stairwell, the gun still pointed at me.

Then he's gone.

Moon's risen by the time I leave: nearly full, throwing long shadows in front of me as I walk. Brain full of hornets. Barry lies, but if his story isn't true, why would he talk at all? Where's he trying to lead me?

It's the Khmer he saw June arguing with that bothers me most. Military, Barry said, or police. June was working the heroin story—maybe the guy was a source? Feels like a long shot that one of those guys would talk, and I can't see them going to an American intern. Definitely not a woman.

The cops who hang around foreigners have another agenda. Mostly they're looking for work: You pay a few bucks, buy a few drinks, get your own pet policeman. He'll buy your coke, fix your traffic tickets, make trouble for your enemies. I don't like to think what would get June within miles of a guy like that—but if she's buying guns off Barry, she's in deep. And I still don't know what started it. A con gone wrong?

I can probably find out. There's a particularly unpleasant police lieutenant who hangs around the Heart, Pisit Samnang. Lots of bent cops out there, but Sam's a rare breed: works with foreigners because he likes to fuck with us. He'll jump through hoops for you, and you think you own him—then one day you realize he owns you. The kids from the paper stay miles away from him, even talking to the guy is enough to get you fired—but if June was playing around with the police, Samnang would probably know. I won't go to him unless I'm desperate, but I'm not sure that's very far off.

By the time I've climbed the stairs to my room, I can barely stand up—but June is so loud in my head, she's practically screaming. Again, I open the journals.

I can't sleep. When I close my eyes, all I see is the girl in the photograph.

It was taken in Kabul, in the early nineties. The Taliban hadn't come to power yet. Gus says they called that period the war of warlords. The country was in the process of regressing from the twentieth century to the seventh, where it would remain for the foreseeable future, and this was the image that captured it.

It won't come out of my head . . . so I will put it here:

The girl is lying in the street, surrounded by a crowd of people who appear to be cheering. She's crying, but you can still tell that she's beautiful. Her hand is to her neck. It's not a gory image at all: only when you look closely do you see the blood on her hands, the pool of red spreading under the feet of the crowd. What you see is the faces: the unholy joy of the onlookers, the sorrow of the girl in her last moments, as she realizes all she's about to lose.

The caption is “Girl killed by her family for being pregnant out of wedlock.”

Gus says it should have won the Pulitzer. It was short-listed, but got edged out by something more America-centric. The Cold War was ending, no one wanted to be reminded about Afghanistan falling apart.

You've guessed who the photographer was, of course. Gus says he was great, once upon a time: the guy everyone looked up to. William Keller would go places other people wouldn't dare. He knew how to keep his mouth shut, he didn't judge his sources, and he could get along with anyone. He was patient, waiting days, weeks, for the right opportunity . . . and when it came, he got right up close.

I'm pretty sure Gus was trying to tell me something . . . about being a journalist, or living out here? I don't know. I wonder if he suspected why I want to go to Koh Kong, after all. . . .

He has a whole book of Keller's old stuff hidden away in his apartment. There's a series of pictures of the girl in the street: the crowd cheering and chanting, a woman in a burka who I think must be her mother, waving the bloody knife in the air.

Scenes from a village in the countryside, where a man beats a boy to death with a metal pipe for talking to a different militia.

In the hills with mud-caked warriors in sandals made of old tires, cigarettes welded into their faces until they died. They all died.

“Afghanistan changed him,” Gus says.

I think he was trying to tell me something with that, too.

Some days I wake up crying, and I don't understand why. Other days I stand on my balcony, and the shining river and the palace roofs and the wet grass and the palms in the distance are all so beautiful I think I won't actually be able to stand it, that my heart will burst and I will die right there. I don't understand that, either.

I thought that by coming here, I could be someone different. It seems I was right . . . but I don't know who she is.

It's spring in Kabul, and roses bloom outside the empty windows of the old villa where we'd meet. A hidden castle in a secret garden: its walls cracked and overgrown, reminders of this city's bright days, before the Russians came. Warm air blows through the sun-bleached sheets we've strung to hide us from the world. I'm waking from a doze with the soft weight of her head on my chest, her arm thrown over me, and I reach down to take her face in my hand—

“Fatima, baby, you wouldn't believe what I dreamed.”

She smiles up at me: “Are we home?”

“Soon.”

And her lips light me up, her mouth sweet and warm and my whole body is on fire with her—

Something's wrong.

“I have something to tell you,” she says. “A surprise.”

“Baby, you know I hate surprises.”

“This is a good one. We are leaving soon?”

“Just two weeks, that's all I need. Everything will be ready.”

You're dreaming. She's gone—

she's gone, and I'm alone in the villa, looking at the cobwebs spun in dusty corners and the sheet flapping in the wind, but it's as if I can still feel her presence: she's here, invisible, but she's lying on top of me, her weight—

her body

—bearing down on my chest and I can't breathe, she's crushing me, cold and heavy as lead, cold hands on my face, cold lips on mine, pulling the air from my lungs into her dead mouth—

And then I'm running: running through the street, body on fire and brain trailing ash, until I get to her house and I see it all again: the men shouting, the cheers, the bloody knife in the air—

This is where I live: forever and ever. This moment when I want so much to run to her, to cradle her and kiss her and pull her away, but there's nothing I can do, she is seconds from death and they're pouring gasoline and they'll kill me if I go to her so I don't, I stand frozen, a statue, a cheap and unconvincing replica of humanity, set here as a memorial—

I do the only thing I know how:

I raise my camera.

Broken glass everywhere.

Torn paper, ash. Shelves overturned, shattered chair. Blood on the sheets from the cuts on my hands.

What the hell happened?

It's red behind my eyes and all I want is a shot, but there's none, I'm clean and I light another goddamn cigarette.

It almost helps.

Bats outside the windows, rattling out of the eaves of the museum. Nearly night.

Scan the wreckage, trying to remember. Yesterday was a million years ago. I left Two sleeping, came home, still puzzling over Barry's story. Then the journals. Sitting at the desk as the sky went gray, then blue, poring over the pages trying to listen for her voice. There was something important, violent—I can't remember.

Look again around the ruined bedroom.

I know what happened.

There are rules. Things I don't think, names I never say. I have to guard my thoughts: it takes so little for the past to drag me back. But last night, somehow, I let my guard down—

Enough.

There are rules.

I go to the kitchen, make coffee. I know from the state of the place there won't be any booze—I'll be lucky to find a fucking aspirin.

To the shower. I step into the lukewarm water, let it chill me. Bandages for my hands. I've got to hurry, it's getting dark already.

I'm so close to June, but for tonight she'll have to wait. I have a job to do, and hell to pay if it goes wrong.

When I come downstairs, Gus is waiting. “Nice look. What's that about?”

I'm dressed in new khaki cargo pants and a brown T-shirt, sunglasses slung at the neck. Lightly scuffed knockoff Skechers. Camera stuffed in a big gray camping backpack. Hopefully the outfit says tourist. I've bought cover-up at the grocery store and put a ton on my face. Far from perfect, but the bruises don't stand out so much. I'd like to not be noticed.

“Work to do.” I reach into the backpack, pull out a carry bag: June's journals, her photographs, the sheaf of her photocopied news stories. I've been carrying them around with me, but I don't want them on this job.

“Can you put these somewhere safe? Preferably not in your apartment—always a chance someone might come looking.”

“Brilliant,” he mutters, but he takes the bag, slouching back to set it on his coffee table. “I thought we were getting out of the missing-girl business. Did you learn anything from the sister?”

“Not much.” I can't even begin to think how to summarize that meeting for Gus. “Got any Dexedrine?”

He sighs as he fishes a prescription bottle out from between the sofa cushions. Holds it without giving it to me. “You remember last night?”

“Course I do.”

“What do you remember?”

“Do you know anything about a Khmer guy June was hanging out wi—”

“Fuck that shit, and fuck her. You know what I mean.” His eyes flash. “I saw your room.”

“Bad dreams.”

“Mrs. Mun will shit when she sees that, I'll have to iron things out—”

“Do what you gotta do.”

I turn to go and he shoves his way out onto the landing, putting himself between me and the stairs. “That is not the point! You're off the deep end here—”

“You threw me in.”

“And
mano de dios
I am sorry now, but—”

“But what?”

We stand inches apart, hands trembling.

“Do what you're good at,” he says. “Walk away.”

I walk west all the way to Monivong, then south—don't want to risk getting a driver who knows me. Grab a moto out of the crowd, head for the Russian Market.

Narrow halls, jammed with tourists in every shade of the rainbow. I slip inside, let my body take their rhythm: someone drawn and distracted by the million things on display, traditional clothes and scarves and souvenirs and jewelry. I look and fondle and wander.

I let myself disappear.

Stroll through the stalls until I spot the guy Senn has picked out for me: youngish, blond—a backpacker type with bleached-out hair and the too-skinny look that suggests both exercise and chemical assistance. The gay mafia never lets you down. He's standing at one of the long counters, browsing through stacks of ripped-off American DVDs. I let myself drift down the hall until I'm standing next to him. Hands shuffle nameless films, not looking at the covers.

“What'ja see today?” I ask.

“Went to some temples, mate, pissed about.” Aussie, then.

“Anything you like?”

“There was this one place, it had an elephant. That was cool.”

Everyone loves the elephant: damn thing is on more drugs than me. I lean in to pick up a stack of CDs and set my ancient
Rough Guide
on the counter. “Take that when you go. It's your front end.” Twenty crisp $100 bills, carefully stuck between the pages.

“Okay.” He sets a hotel-room key next to it. I pick it up.

“Get yourself a plane ticket. For tomorrow: noon at the latest, early morning is better. Don't go back to the hotel until after the party. Once it's over, get out quick as you can. The rest of your money will be under the door of my room; grab it and go. If you gotta sleep, do it in a different neighborhood—or better, just get the hell out of here.”

He nods. “Bali's brilliant now.”

“Good. You leave the lights on?”

“Like the man said.”

I turn to go.

“Seeya, mate,” he says.

“If you do, we're in trouble.”

The Crane Hotel is across town, a bit away from the usual tourist hangouts. A big 1950s building, now run-down and scummy, it's favored by the discreet. The lobby is cupboard-sized, done in white glossy tiles and pale blue paint. Looks like a bathroom. Smells a bit like one, too. The proprietor, a squat Cambodian dressed in various shades of nylon, is chewing some mix of betel and tobacco. He doesn't look up from his paper when I come in.