“He act like a, like a, what’s the word in English? In Khmer, they say he got taken by a
neak ta,
you know, a tree spirit, a ghost. They say he became possessed, start hitting all the villagers, hitting the driver, he spit at them. He bit villager on the hand, break the skin. You know what the villagers said? The driver, all of them, they say his teeth turn bright black. Black teeth. Violent. He hit everyone. The villagers said he make a bonfire burn up into the sky, like a building, and the man, his name is Phan Van Duong, he went crazy. Hitting everyone, arguing. At night—before it happened—at night before his teeth go black, he sleep, yelling, talk in sleep, speak what sounds like Chinese to the villagers. Next day, he’s attacking everyone. The driver, the boy, Munny, got his gun and shot Phan Van Duong in the head. Killed him. All the villagers say the same thing. They say, ‘The boy saved us. The boy saved us.’”
Nana pursed his lips, looked at Moisey to confirm that he was listening.
“The problem for me is that Phan Van Duong comes from a big family. They control port in Haiphong, very important. You know that?” He dropped his voice to a whisper, “Very important seaport. Important place. And their son get killed in jungle. Killed by Cambodians. You know what kind of
problem this is for me? I have to talk to everyone like a peacekeeper. Smooth everything. Very diplomatic. Vietnamese mad, Cambodians scared, Burmese become nervous. You know? Same week.”
Nana cast his eyes down at his hands. He seemed to be thinking about what he was going to say next.
“The same week, now I get a call from Sukhontha that he has a telephone conversation with a detective from Royal Thai Police. Moisey, I tell you all of this about the jungle to show you a complicated thing: They have ghosts out there, bring bad luck, get cursed. They have spirits make a man become crazy, teeth turn black. But for you—you don’t have those kind of ghosts in Bangkok. You’re a farang. Only ghosts you have are the drugs you use, the ice you smoke, make you go crazy. I am honest with you. I think maybe the same ghost attack Phan Van Duong in the jungle. Maybe he smoke too much ice, too. But this little problem you have brings a much bigger problem for me. It makes Sukhontha and his Burmese clients very upset. That detective you had in your house has ties to American DEA officers. When they hear that a farang is able to call Mr. Sukhontha, have him wipe up the problem for you, maybe they become interested in you, maybe they start to wonder, ‘Who is this farang who can place a call and get himself out of so much trouble?’ Maybe they start to think, ‘We should begin to watch this Jewish one, see who he is friends with.’”
Moisey, depressed and petrified, stared at Eugene Nana.
“I told you a long time ago, you must only call Sukhontha in an emergency. Only if you are stopped during a delivery, right? Not if you get in trouble with a Thai boy, not with
police detective looking for bribes. How much could they have wanted from you? Why not pay them little bit money?”
The memory of Thong Kon’s smile passed through Moisey’s mind. “They wanted to look at my computer,” he said.
“So? What could they see there? What would you have on your computer? Pornography?” His eyes narrowed; his voice dropped. “You’re not saying you have any of our business on your computer, are you?”
“No.”
“Then what? So what if they look at your computer? They see that you what? Watch a movie? Maybe pirate a movie? How much trouble would that have made for the group?”
Moisey’s mind spun. Why hadn’t he planned what he was going to say?
“I didn’t like them nosing around,” he said. “I wanted them to stop. I thought it would be bad for all of us.”
Nana, the two fingers of his right hand supporting his head at the temple, stared at him, blinked. Seconds passed.
“We all have pressures, my friend,” he said. “But we put ourselves where we are with the strict understanding that we will not tumble over with the first sign of wind. You know this? You have background in military. You are supposed to be trained to handle stressful situations. If you get stressed, you have to breathe into your diaphragm. You know this?” He took a deep breath to illustrate. “Breathe in deep to calm your nervous system.”
“I’m sorry,” Moisey said. He bowed his head. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.” He took a deep breath, to show he was learning.
“Sorry is good, but Mr. Sukhontha has decided that you—you personally—cannot continue moving the stuff here. Too dangerous. I tell you in secret: some of the Burmese said you should be killed. I said, ‘No, not Segal, he is a good man who made a certain mistake.’ I told them, ‘He has been working for us for a few years now, never a problem.’ They say your association too small. They say these Jewish in Miami take too small of an order. They decide it’s not worth it to continue with your group. They said doing work with your group is like throwing peanuts to a lion.”
Moisey’s forehead began to sweat.
“Picture a shoe factory,” said Nana. “Lots of shoes being made, Nike, Adidas, all models. Now picture the factory make shoelaces, and they only sell a few to a certain person. Should they continue? What if person decide to buy more than a few, say thousands of shoelaces? Maybe that start to make sense to the factory. You understand what I’m saying?”
“You’d like us to buy more?”
“They want you to buy more. Not me. I don’t care what you do. But the Burmese say maybe it is the way to fix the problem. Your problem.”
“I’m not the one who—who …”
“You introduced us to them. You are great friends with the one, Mr. Isaak Raskin.”
Moisey stayed silent.
“Perhaps he would be willing to make more money to help his friend? Everyone happy. Everyone win.”
“How much more?”
“Ten. Ten times more. Same price per unit.”
Moisey felt his face turn sour. Nana shrugged.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Moisey said.
“If I were you, I would begin in Miami.”
Three days later, Moisey flew to Miami. A gray depression filled his head and chest during the flight. His mind danced between memories and fantasies of the future. What, he wondered, would happen if he failed? His life in Thailand would be over. Miami felt too close to all of his problems. Maybe he’d resettle in Mexico, or Argentina.
If it were only Isaak he had to convince, it would be one thing. But Semion, little more than a stranger to Moisey, presented more of an issue. They’d had their fun in Bangkok, but even then he could sense a certain kind of arrogance in the man, a stiffness. Perhaps he’d get better results if he told him:
Under no circumstances should you consider increasing the order.
He’d met Isaak in Haifa when they were both eleven years old. Moisey had been sulking in the shade of a palm tree in the middle of a roundabout, near the Kiryat Yam beach. He lived with his mother, father, and two older brothers in a small beige apartment down the block. Isaak, with two of his sisters in tow, had seen Moisey sitting there and called out, “Beggar, which way to the beach?”
Moisey chased him down the block, but when he caught the boy, Isaak broke out in such carefree laughter that Moisey was forced to forgive him. They all went to the beach together that day. The sisters, rich girls, tan and long, seemed like movie stars, and Isaak, joking constantly, made
it easy to be friendly. They hung out together for the rest of the summer.
A year later, their relationship briefly turned romantic—in a teenaged, dry-humping way—but that soon petered out. They remained close through graduation. Moisey often slept at the Raskin house; it seemed like a palace then. Isaak’s mother grew Jaffa oranges in the backyard.
Moisey began sniffing glue the summer after they met. A Russian boy, not even Jewish, had shown him how. He and Isaak took ecstasy for the first time the summer after that. He could see the pills in his memory: circles stamped with a Nike swoosh, eggshell white flecked with brown. The pills were speedy, and inspired endless proclamations of undying love. They’d been in Isaak’s bedroom; he had set up red lights to make it look like a disco. They had their own private rave in there, the stereo pumping out techno.
I love you, I love you, I love you,
Isaak had said, dancing like a girl.
After graduation, the two men did their military service on different sides of the country. Moisey moved to Bangkok after that. It wasn’t until Isaak contacted him about a connection that the two men saw each other again.
By then, sometime around his fifth year in Thailand, he had begun working as a low-level go-between for a group of Israelis and Russians in Trat. They were moving Burmese meth to Australia. When a shipment was ready, he would drive a tour van complete with bikes on top of bike racks up north to a rice plantation in Lampang Province. There he would be given large sacks of rice, which contained smaller sacks of crystal meth. He usually moved around fifty pounds a trip. It was on one of those runs that he first met Eugene Nana.
Moisey didn’t tell Isaak he was coming to Miami. Better to do it in person, he thought. He rented a car and checked into a cheap motel just north of the airport, far away from the beach, the sand, the sun. It wasn’t what he was there for. He spent the first two days in his room, watching American television and drinking beer. He told himself he wanted to be well rested when he first saw his friend, but in reality he was simply procrastinating.
He finally called him on the third morning. Isaak didn’t pick up, but he called back within minutes.
“Surprise,” Moisey said. “I’m in Miami.” He told Isaak he had to speak with him. “No, not an emergency,” he said, “but issues, yes.” Nobody else needed to know he was there, he said.
Isaak knocked on his door forty-five minutes later. Moisey arranged his face into a pained smile and opened his arms to hug him.
“Brother,” he said.
“What the fuck?” Isaak said. “What is this?”
Moisey sat him down and told him the whole story. He told him about the boy, the drugs, the cops, all of it. Calling Sukhontha, he said, was one of the stupidest things he’d ever done. Isaak waved that off, but his expression suggested that he knew there was more coming.
“So? So what? So what does it mean?” he asked, sounding calm, almost bored.
Moisey told him about the meeting with Eugene Nana. He explained that the man had demanded they increase their order by ten times.
“My fault, I know,” he said. “I am prepared to disappear if that’s what you say. I can move away, but I didn’t want to make anything worse.”
Isaak, apparently thinking the problem through, stayed silent for a long moment. Moisey waited for him to suggest getting a new partner. It would be easy; they could go to China. “Did they threaten you?” he finally asked.
“Nana said members of the group thought I should be, you know, taken out of play.”
“Killed?”
“Yes, but—” Moisey waved his hand like the topic was distasteful. “But it’s just talk, you know. Stupid tough-guy talk.”
“Shit.”
“Yes, shit.”
“Ten times?” asked Isaak.
“Ten times.” He sniffed, breathed, waited. “Ten times, same price per unit.” He felt like he’d snuck the last bit in.
Isaak winced. “Semion will never go for that,” he said, his voice rising. “We should get a lower price. Simple market rules. It’s bullshit. They’re pushing us into a corner.”
“I know.”
“How did you leave it with Nana?”
“I told him I was going to come here and try to sell it to you. He said I should be in touch with Mr. Hong.” Moisey tried to read his friend’s reaction. “He said Mr. Hong will help with whatever we need.”
Isaak rubbed his hands in front of his face like a man blowing on dice. “That’s how you do it,” he said, pointing. “He’ll never say yes to me, or you—but Mr. Hong, maybe.” He stared at Moisey.
“You fucked up everything this time,” he said, a cold smile on his face. “I hope that Thai boy was fucking worth it.”
The next day, following Nana’s instructions, Moisey dialed a Miami phone number. An American woman answered the phone by saying, “Lannan, Evans, and Loftus.” Moisey asked for Mr. Hong, and was told he could leave a message.
Six minutes later, his cell phone lit up. The same receptionist asked Moisey if he would please meet Mr. Hong outside the Four Seasons Hotel on Brickell Avenue, tomorrow at three in the afternoon. Moisey said he would. She told him a car would be there to pick him up. Moisey said that Isaak Raskin would be accompanying him.
“I will inform Mr. Hong,” said the woman.
The following afternoon, Moisey and Isaak stood sweating under the porte cochere of the Four Seasons in downtown Miami. Both men wore sunglasses and rocked back and forth on their feet. At five minutes past three, a shiny black SUV pulled up. The window lowered, and Mr. Hong nodded to the men. It was the first time Moisey had ever seen him. He looked older and gentler than he’d imagined—more an uncle than a fixer. His hair shined as though he’d put Vaseline in it.
The interior of the vehicle was cool and smelled minty. Mr. Hong rode in the front, next to the Chinese driver. He seemed to be in a pleasant mood. They headed north, past palm trees and empty sidewalks.
Moisey introduced himself first, and then, not sure of the exact state of their relationship, asked if Mr. Hong knew Isaak. Mr. Hong turned in his seat, smiled, and said, “Yes,
yes, of course I know Isaak Raskin. Longtime friend. I know everything about him, actually.” His eyes turned up for a moment, as though accessing a memory. “Born in Haifa, May twenty-ninth, nineteen eighty-seven. Son of Benny and Daphna. Brother of Nina, Esti, Avraham—and, and, and—David. Oldest brother is Sergey.”
Isaak and Moisey remained silent.
“My memory is too strong,” said Mr. Hong. He tapped his temple, smiled again. “I have photographic memory. You tell me something, I never forget, remember forever. Too much memory.”
Moisey felt sick. The vehicle’s interior seemed to shrink.
“I hate my family,” Isaak said, his voice perfectly mild. “Do me a favor, don’t mention them again unless you plan on killing the entire lot. After you do that, we can go out and drink vodka together, okay?”