Noble Lies (2 page)

Chapter Two

   

The bartender pulled the tall tap back and let the beer slide down the side of the pint glass. She angled the glass, letting a thin head build on the top of the Singha lager, leveling it as the last drops disappeared into the foam. Behind her, hidden among quarter bottles of Mekong and Sang Thip whiskies, a Fosters bar clock read two minutes after five, its hands super-glued in place. Outside it was ten till noon, but here it was always Happy Hour.

She rubbed the bottom of the glass on a damp towel before setting it down in front of the bar's only patron and said, “You should never drink tequila. It makes you stupid.”

Mark Rohr picked up the glass and took a long sip. He ran his tongue along his top lip, feeling for the foam trapped in the mustache he had shaved off weeks ago. He wanted to say something clever—not smart-assed, just clever—but the moment passed and he knew it, so he said nothing.

She picked up the five pound note next to the glass and punched open the cash register, looking up as she did the math, tossing a short stack of Thai bhat back on the bar. She hadn't changed much since he had seen her last, divvying up the take after an all-night rave, miles out in the Jordanian desert. She was younger than him but not by as much as she claimed; still petite though, her burgundy-red hair a wild mess of frizzy natural curls that bounced just off her shoulders. Her hazel eyes sparkled in the neon light and when she smiled—which she did often—it was beautiful. He didn't ask Frankie Corynn how she came to own a run down bar that fronted a whorehouse on the roughest street in Phuket City, and she didn't say. He had known her too long for those kinds of questions.

“You went too far, Mark,” Frankie said.

“You hired me to be a bouncer. So I bounced.”

“Sawatdee krup,” a raspy voice said behind him, and in the mirror over the bar Mark watched as a greasy-haired Thai with a pencil-thin mustache strolled into the bar and over to the pool table.

“Sawatdee kaa, Ronnie,” Frankie said without turning around.

The man pinched a cigarette tight to his lips and sucked as if he was trying to finish it off in one drag. He moved around from pocket to pocket, rolling the balls to one end of the table, then stood there counting and recounting, going back to double check the pockets, the cigarette held in place.

“See, Mark? I told you not to use a pool ball, but did you listen?” Frankie said, her back still to Mark as she organized the cash register, separating out dollars, pounds, bhats, dinars, and rupees.

“I was busy at the time,” Mark said, curious now, wondering if the man had noticed that the rack was missing too. “I figured it was better to use a pool ball than to put him through the window.”

“Neither was an option you know.”

Mark shrugged. “Maybe.”

Using his fingers, which seemed freakishly long for his stubby hands, the man grouped the remaining pool balls into a rough triangle, the cue ball sitting in for the missing striped fifteen. He held them in place then tapped the cue ball free, chalking up a cue he slipped from the rack. He bent down and lined up the shot, drew the stick back but then closed his eyes and turned his head away, pausing for a moment before finishing the stroke, breaking the balls in every direction. He kept his eyes closed long enough for the balls to stop moving, then turned to survey the damage.

“Why does he do that?” Mark said to Frankie's back.

“Close his eyes? He says it makes it more interesting, creating all that mess and then trying to figure a way out of it.”

“The same thing would happen with his eyes open.”

“Probably,” Frankie said, slamming the drawer shut, turning to rest her thin forearms on the bar. “But then where's the surprise? And speaking of surprises, you do realize you're fired, don't you.”

Mark nodded.

“Suppose that one guy's knife didn't get stuck on the chair? Oh yeah, you smile now, but you wouldn't look so cute with one ear.”

“And what was I supposed to do, let them go on like that?”

“Okay, they were getting a little out of hand, but once you had them down you didn't have to keep hitting them. And now I'm out a pool ball.”

“It seemed like the best thing to do at the time.” He took a long drink of his beer. “Still seems like a good idea.”

“It's funny.”

“See? It was a good idea.”

“Not that,” she said shaking her head. “When Mahmoud told me you were coming to Thailand part of me wanted to hide. You know I love you, Mark, but you can be a real pain in the ass.”

“That's not what you said in Nairobi.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, but that was different. They were armed.”

“And Jaipur?”

“That was totally your fault. I had everything under control so don't even think of blaming me for that one. Besides, I can always bring up that little incident in Alexandria…”

He winced. “I wish you wouldn't.”

She picked up a wet rag and ran it across the bar. “Did I tell you I Googled your ass a few months back?”

Mark looked up but didn't smile. “Now why would you do a thing like that?”

“I wanted to see if you were still alive. Interesting stuff.” She tilted her head and gave him a knowing look. “How long have I known you?”

Too long, he thought but said nothing.

“You were a Marine.”

“Don't hold that against me.”

“You were in the first Gulf War.”

Mark focused on finishing his beer.

“There was a nice story online from your hometown paper. Canajerry?”

“Canajoharie. It's in New York.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Nobody has.”

“Anyway, the paper there had a nice little write up about you, about a big firefight in Kuwait, how you got a Bronze Star—”

“Less talk, more pouring,” Mark said, waggling his empty glass.

Frankie picked up the glass held it under the Singha tap. “Some other things came up on that search too, something about a warrant for you in Ankara?” She filled the glass and handed it to him, slipping a hundred-bhat note from the stack. “Then there was a blog entry from this woman in Macedonia…”

“Is all this going somewhere?”

She punched open the register and slipped in the hundred, pulling out three tens which she dropped in the tip jar. “I figured that with all your experiences you could handle a simple job like bouncer.”

“I handled it. It's over.”

“Yeah, well if the cops come in here looking for a fat bribe to keep it all quiet I'll tell them the Marine said it's over.”

“Speaking of jobs,” Mark said, trying to change the subject, “why'd you send that girl up to my room this morning?”

Frankie leaned on one elbow, propping her head up with her hand, her fingers lost in the red curls. “She came in as soon as I opened. Some cab driver dropped her off right out in front. Totally ripped her off. The kid was a wreck—jet lagged, crying, obviously lost. She said she's never been overseas, never been out of frickin' Ohio if you can believe that. She tell you about her brother?”

He nodded. “Is that why you sent her up to me, to help her find her brother?”

Frankie smiled at him. “I knew you were out of a job and didn't have a place to stay—”

“What about the room upstairs?”

Still smiling, she shook her head. “It goes with the job.”

“Damn. And I was gonna make curtains.”

“I think the hotel her brother worked at is over in Patong, but I don't go over there much anymore. I know a guy there, owns a hotel. It's cheap but it's close to the beach. You can start with him, he might know some people to talk to, then you can—”

“I told her no.”

Frankie dropped her hand to the bar. “You said no?”

He could feel her staring at him as he drank, waiting while he set his beer back down and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “It's not the kind of work I usually do. You know that.”

“Who cares?” she said, her voice rising an octave. “It's five thousand dollars. And in case you haven't noticed, that's a lot of money around here.”

“That's if we find him.”

“Plus she's willing to pay all expenses. Food, shelter…beer. That alone ought to be enough. Take the job.”

Marked looked across the bar and into her eyes. “There is no job. A guy missing that long is either dead, or he doesn't want to be found. Trust me on that.”

“She says she's got proof that he's alive.”

“She hasn't got proof. What she's got is some guy in a video that she's convinced is her brother. A lot of guys have tattoos, a lot of guys have a certain way of walking. It's all coincidence.”

“Then help her,” Frankie said, leaning in as she spoke. “Take her around, let her look. It might do her a lot of good, help her bring some sort of closure.”

“I told her she was wasting her time and that she should go back to the States and get on with her life. Coming all the way over here just because she thinks she's going to find her brother, it's stupid.”

Frankie stood up and pulled a clean glass from the dish rack below the bar. She shook out the excess water and poured herself a Coke. She watched the foam settle and said, “That's a real bastard thing to say.”

“Well that's me. A real bastard.”

Frankie looked up. Her face was soft but she wasn't smiling. “This girl, Robin, she's got reason to believe her brother is alive. Okay, it's not much, but she's got something. She's got hope. If I thought my brother was alive somewhere, if I had half the proof she's got, I'd be there in a second. I wouldn't care what it cost or what it took to find him or what people thought about me. If I had that hope, that's all I'd need. But I don't get that hope. I watched my brother die. I went to the hospital every day and watched him get worse. At the end he weighed less than me.” She took a small sip of her Coke. “But as you say, I got on with my life.”

A pool ball clattered into a corner pocket. Cue stick in hand, the man moved around the table, rolling the balls all to one end, arranging them into shape. He stepped back and balanced the stick against a chair and from his shirt pocket he drew a loose cigarette. He flicked open a Zippo and lit the cigarette, pinching it to his lips as he considered the possibilities of the lopsided formation.

“You don't do these kinds of jobs, you apparently don't need the money and you don't owe me shit,” Frankie said, and she waited until Mark met her gaze before she continued. “Help this girl.”

Behind them, eyes closed, the man snapped the pool cue forward, the balls scattering across the table.

 

Chapter Three

  

The old woman with the chicken got off at the fifth stop.

She waited until the subcompact pickup came to a complete stop, listening for the ratcheting of the emergency brake before setting the chicken on Mark's lap, smiling up at him until he wrapped his hands around the bird's scrawny body. She stooped as she stood but was still far below the curved roof that covered the bed of the pickup. She inched her way down between the facing wooden benches, pausing to catch her breath halfway along. One hand on the railing, she eased herself down the two steps that hung below the bumper and onto the packed dirt along the pavement, pausing again to check her balance. She reached up, and Mark handed her the chicken, smiling first at Mark and then to the driver who hung out the window of his door.

The driver tooted the horn and drove off and got the pickup up to five miles an hour before slowing to a stop twenty yards away where five grade school students waited at the end of a narrow trail. Giggling, they climbed aboard, the boys in their white shirts and blue shorts sitting on one side, the girls in their matching shirts and blue jumpers on the other, all of them heading back for afternoon classes. They passed small coins up through the open window and pointed to a pair of their classmates a hundred yards back up the trail. The driver turned off the engine, ratcheted down the break and watched the boys approach, hanging an arm out the window to flick the ashes from his cigarette.

“This is going to take forever,” Robin said, turning to check on the tardy boys who had stopped to throw rocks at a tree stump.

Mark stretched his long legs out the open back of the truck. “What's your rush?”

“No rush, it's just that on the map it looked like it was only about ten miles to Patong Beach. At this rate it'll take an hour.”

“They always do,” Mark said.

“I thought you said you've never been to Thailand?”

“I haven't. But these kinds of cabs, they're all the same. Matatus in Mombassa, jeepneys in Tuguegarao, tuk-tuks in Lahore, auto-rickshaws in Hyderabad. They're a great way to test your patience.”

Robin sighed. “I seem to be getting a lot of that.” Done with their rock throwing, the boys were wandering toward the pickup, kicking an empty beer can ahead of them. Robin set her backpack on her knees. She looked up at him, smiled. “Thanks again for agreeing to help me.”

Mark smiled back. “I never agreed to help you.”

It took a second to sink in, then her shoulders sagged and her mouth dropped open. “But…but you said…at the hotel…”

“I said you could hire me.”

“What's the difference?” She shook her head, her hair shimmering in the light.

“The difference is five hundred dollars US a week, plus expenses and a five grand bonus if I find your brother. Dead or alive.”

“And if you were helping me?”

Still smiling he said, “I'd just expect the bonus.”

With a final kick of the can, the boys jogged the rest of the way to the truck. “Hello sir, hello ma'am,” they both said, smiling blinding white smiles as they squirmed past Mark and Robin to squeeze in beside them on the wooden benches. The driver held a hand through the open window and the boys passed up their coins. The driver glanced at the coins before tossing them in a wooden box on the dashboard. He started the truck and continued down the road at a walking pace. The boy next to Mark settled in, pulling a wrinkled and incomplete homework sheet and a chewed stub of a pencil from his book bag. He jumped right in on question two while down the bench the schoolgirls looked at the paper with unveiled disgust.

Robin zippered open a large pocket on her backpack. She reached inside and took out a manila envelope, yanked the pocket closed and dropped the backpack to the floor. She slid a small stack of photos from the envelope. “This is my brother.” She handed Mark several of the pictures. “They're from a vacation a couple summers back.”

The photos could have passed for candids from a Calvin Klein shoot—the dark-haired man, muscled body glistening with sun block and sweat, grinning at the camera. She picked up the third shot, a close up, looking at it for a long moment before handing it to Mark.

“You sure this is the guy in the video?”

“I'm sure. On this one you can see his tattoos. He's got one like this Celtic chain on his upper arm. And you can see part of the one on his shoulder, the dragon.” She reached up and patted her own back to show the area. “He was a little thinner in the video and his hair was longer, but yeah, it was Shawn.”

“That's your brother's name? Shawn?”

“Yup, Shawn Keller.”

Mark tapped the edge of the photo. “I thought your name was Antonucci?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “It is,” she said. “I got married.”

“When?”

“A few years ago. Didn't last a year.”

Mark looked at the picture. “How much older is he?”

“Five years. He just turned thirty last month.”

“Why's he in Thailand?”

Robin opened her mouth to speak, and the way she held her chin high and stared up at nothing, Mark could tell she was debating what she would say, how she would spin it. When she closed her eyes and gave her head a slight shake, a deep breath starting as a sigh and ending in an ironic laugh, Mark decided she would tell him something close to the truth.

“Shawn was the classic stoner. He smoked a lot of dope. Hash, too. Thai stick, sinsemilla, Santa Maria, Afghan Gold. Never got into the hard stuff but with as much as he was smoking it probably didn't make much of a difference. Before school, between classes, after school. He was all into that High Times lifestyle, saw himself as a real connoisseur, even got snobby about it. You know the type?”

Mark knew the type. There were a lot in high school, not as many in the Marines, but more than their squeaky clean image implied. He didn't know as many now. The stuff was still around but the people he encountered were more interested in moving it than using it. “Thailand's a long way to go just to catch a buzz.”

“He went for the drugs, but not how you think. Shawn's been clean and sober for over five years but he likes to test himself, prove how committed he is. He hangs around stoners and party people, waiting for someone to pass him a joint or a pipe just so he can smirk and pass it on. He's like a recovering alcoholic who still keeps a stool at the bar.”

“Dangerous, isn't it? Easy does it, one day at a time, one hit away from addiction, that sort of crap?” Mark said, trying to remember how that bumper sticker put it.

Robin shrugged. “That's why he does it. It's dangerous. He swapped one high for another.”

“And the biggest highs are in Thailand?”

“That's just the latest stop. He's been to Colombia, Mexico, all these little Central American countries. Haiti. Some place called Marrakech,” she waved her hand, the gesture suggesting dozens of forgotten drug filled locales. “He liked it in Thailand. Had a job with a hotel, they gave him a little place to stay. He took groups out for dives, scuba lessons, snorkeling.”

“You didn't approve?”

“All I know is that if he didn't have that stupid job he wouldn't have been there when the wave hit.” There was an edge to her voice that he didn't expect, and he could see her clenching her teeth as the pickup slowed to a crawl.

A lanky teen stood at the side of the road, his arms somehow crossed behind his back. It looked painful and the pose accentuated every peak of his angular frame. He smiled a gapped-toothed smile when the driver waved him over to the passenger seat, young enough to enjoy the thrill of riding shotgun, old enough to twist around to check out Robin's legs. Mark followed the boy's gaze. The kid was young but he had a good eye.

“I know it's stupid to blame the hotel,” Robin said, “but I can't help if that's how I feel. That tsunami really screwed things up for me.”

“How inconsiderate,” Mark said, knowing how it sounded and saying it anyway.

“The good thing is that he's still alive,” she said, missing or ignoring his tone. “All we've got to do is find him.”

“I told you, he may not want to be found.”

“I heard you.”

“Besides, living through something like that, watching all those people die, everything just ripped away, it affects people, screws with their heads. Why did they survive, why didn't they do more, what are they going to do next…”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to say.”

“There's a lot of drugs out there.” He was going to say more, tell her about the Golden Triangle and the opium trade, about uncut heroin cheaper than Jack Daniels, and amphetamine-laced caffeine pills, tell her about the bands of strung-out Westerners, the hepatitis, and AIDS, but by the way she looked at him he could tell she knew.

“First we find him,” she said.