Noble Lies (5 page)

Chapter Eight

   

Not counting the two diners that sold beer and the one restaurant that had a three-bottle wine list, there were fourteen bars in Canajoharie, New York.

They all fit a pattern—dimly lit, a pair of TVs mounted on either end of the bar, a jukebox that hadn't changed since the seventies, template sports posters from Budweiser and Miller, a vinyl banner announcing that TK 99 was The Home of Classic Rock!, and an interchangeable clientele that knew theirs was the best bar in town. The music was better at the strip club but the beers were more expensive, the same girls everyone had seen naked since high school, the stretch marks hardly visible in the half-light. He hadn't been back since the late nineties but he knew that it was still the same. And they wondered why he left in the first place.

Despite what the locals like to think after a night of pounding back dollar drafts, there were no tough bars in Canajoharie. There were bar fights and once or twice a month the cops would be called when some drunk pulled a knife or fired off a few rounds in the parking lot, but in every bar on any night you'd find retirees, sipping away their pensions, the other patrons stepping out of the way as they shuffled past with their walkers.

Mark knew more than a few tough bars. Back road juke joints a day's ride from Camp Lejeune, after-hours hip-hop clubs in Dar-es-Salaam, back alley opium dens in Pakistan, a Kingston rum shop far off the tourist track. There was something about them, something primal, something that told you that this was no place to fuck around. They never had bar fights—at least not in the Hollywood sense—and the cops would never be called, never show up if they were, the crowds staying in the shadows, nobody watching the drug deals go down, nobody jumping up to stop the three-on-one beating, nobody saying nothing when a backhand flattened a mouthy hooker.

The Horny Monkey was one of those bars.

Unlike the wide-open bar-beers on Bang-la Road, Vegas-bright and Carnival Cruise-naughty, the windowless walls and steel door of the Horny Monkey kept the casual tourists away, drawing only those who knew what they would find. A tight spring yanked the door shut behind them and Mark felt the muscles in his arms twitch.

Inside, a couple dozen people leaned on the bar, slouched in a dark booth or clumped around the pool table, the hanging low-watt lights giving form to the blue-white bank of cigarette smoke. The men in the bar—Thais, Chinese, a few Europeans—either ignored them or stared straight at them, looking for a reason to start something; and Mark knew he was standing taller, sending a clear message.

There were fewer women than the other Phuket bars but more than he would have found in any bar in Canajoharie, and there was no uniform at the Horny Monkey, the women dressing to please themselves, not some Western tourist's fantasy, all jeans and black tee shirts, baggy and unrevealing. And where the bar-beer girls were sweet and bubbly, the women of the Horny Monkey didn't play that game—no flirtatious bullshit, just business. They were older, harder and, pound for petite-little-spiked-heel pound, the most dangerous people in the place.

“Two-drink minimum, each,” the barmaid shouted over the music, a high-pitched Thai pop singer and a drum machine squealing through a cover of last year's number one. She held her arm out straight, two fingers pointing level at them like a forked stick. “You pay now.”

Mark peeled off a five-hundred bhat note and set it on the bar. “Four Leos,” he said, pointing at the beer light on the back wall.

“You think this a cheap dump?” the woman shouted, her voice cutting through the din. “Twelve-hundred bhat. You pay now.” She popped the tops off the four beers to seal the sale.

Mark added more multi-colored bills to the pile, and when the woman reached over to grab them he covered the bills with his hand and said, “I'm looking for a girl named Pim.”

If he hadn't been watching for it he wouldn't have noticed her hand stutter when he said the name. Chin down, the woman raised her hooded eyes, trying to read something in Mark's expressionless face. He moved his hand an inch to the right, revealing a pair of thousand bhat notes. The woman glanced down at the bills, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, glancing from side to side to see who was watching. With one hand, Mark passed two warm beers back to Robin, leaning in as the woman's sweaty palm slid across his hand, dragging the bills down under the bar. He waited, wondering if it was him that made her so nervous. The woman turned to look up at the TV, a cricket match live from Lahore, and rubbed her nose with her knuckles, the gesture obscuring her lips. “Back of the room, by dance floor. White dress. That Pim.”

Mark took a long pull on his beer before turning around, Robin handing him an empty bottle to set on the bar. Despite the surroundings, her hips moved with the music, a sway that was subtle and instinctual.

“Well?”

Mark took a minute, draining his first beer as he let his eyes adjust to the light. “She's here,” he said, Robin looking at him as he spoke. “But something's not right.”

“Not right? How do you know?”

He could tell her about the darting look in the bartender's eyes or about those two guys at the end of the bar, the bad actors who were pretending to be watching the cricket match but were watching them, or how everyone near the pool table all held a cue even though no one was playing. Instead he said, “I've spent a lot of time in bars.” He set the empty on the bar, taking a swig of his second beer. It reminded him of an Odenbach lager but too warm to enjoy. “Things might get difficult. If you're not comfortable with that…”

“I can deal with it,” she said, her thumb peeling through the green and white beer label as she spoke.

“You don't even know what ‘it' is,” he said and, ignoring the strange looks, he led Robin to the dark end of the room.

A row of high-backed narrow booths hugged the wall and above each, a dim-bulbed lamp hung down from the ceiling, spilling a feeble pool of yellow light on the table. Cigarettes glowed red in the darkness and a low-hanging bank of wispy gray smoke rolled overhead with each exhale. Some of the booths were empty, a few others appearing empty, their occupants pushed far back into the shadows. He was sweating in a featherweight sport shirt but there were plenty of jean jackets and leathers in the room. In the corner, the lamp over the table a bit brighter, a girl in a white dress worked through a word-search puzzle. She didn't look up as they approached; and as Mark and Robin stood at the end of her booth and sipped their beers, the girl ran her pen diagonally across the page, putting a tight loop around Pandorasbox.

She wore her hair like every other Thai woman, long and straight, parted in the middle and pushed back behind her ears; and, like countless other Thais, she was naturally thin, with tiny features and bee-stung lips, narrow hips, and a small chest. He watched her scan the rows of letters of the Mythic World! puzzle, her painted nail gliding under each line, her measured pace never changing. Later that night, as he stared up at the slowly turning fan in his hotel room and thought about all the things that should have made her so average, he couldn't decide what it was that made her so much more beautiful than the others.

“Excuse me,” Robin said, her voice apologetic and sweet this time, “we're looking for someone named Pim.”

The girl clicked shut her pen, setting it in the fold to mark her place before closing the magazine and pushing it to the side. She took a moment to compose herself, her shoulders rising as she took a deep breath, then looked up at Robin, smiling an unforgettable smile.

“My name is Pim. Perhaps you are looking for me. Please, have a seat,” she said, her English, stilted but perfect, clicking in the back of Mark's mind.

“Thanks,” Robin said, sliding in tight against the far wall. “I'm Robin, this is my friend, Mark.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Pim said, shaking first Robin's hand, then Mark's with a firm and practiced three-beat business grip. “You are drinking Leo beer? Please, allow me to get you Heinekens.” She made a slight waving motion to catch the barmaid's eye, then turned back to Robin. “So what brings you to Thailand? Business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure,” Mark said, cutting in before Robin could say otherwise.

“You have picked a good place for that,” Pim said, watching the barmaid sprint across the room. She lifted the Heinekens off the tray, dismissed the barmaid with a nod and set the beers in front of them. “Here is to new friends.” She held up her can of Coke Lite. The beer was shockingly cold and Mark drained half the bottle in three gulps.

Pim dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin and looked across to Robin. “I think people tell you all the time that you are a very attractive woman.”

“Don't joke like that when I'm drinking,” Robin said, coughing, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she set her beer back down, “I might choke to death.”

“But it is true,” Pim said, turning to Mark for confirmation. “Your pretty hair, your tan…you have a very nice body. Are you an athlete?”

Robin shrugged. “I hit the gym now and then…”

“And you are a very handsome man as well,” she said, her fingertips tapping the back of his hand. “Which hotel are you staying at?”

“Near the ocean. Phuket Inn by the Sea.”

Pim thought for a moment, her lower lip rolled up between her teeth, the glossy red vibrant against her straight white teeth. “I am sorry, I do not know that hotel.”

“Well there's a lot of hotels here,” Robin said. “You can't know them all.”

Pim smiled. “I just want to make sure that there will not be a problem, that is all.”

“A problem?” Robin looked to Mark. “What sort of problem?”

Mark set his beer down and looked at Pim. “I think you have the wrong idea.”

“Oh no,” Pim said, smiling back at him. “I understand. This is not that uncommon at all. I am just lucky that you are both so attractive.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Robin said, her hands off her beer and out in front of her. “What the hell are you talking about here?”

“Oh, she does not know,” Pim said, looking at Mark. “You should have told her first. It is best that way.”

Mark reached over and held down Robin's wrist. “As much as we are intrigued with the offer—”

“What?”

“—we really came to see you for another reason.”

Pim's smile dropped, and he could see her jaw tighten. “Who sent you here?”

“A friend at the Super Queen.”

“Won,” Pim said, her lip curling as she spoke.

“She said you might be able to help us find someone.”

“I do not know anyone. Now you excuse me,” Pim said, gathering up her word-search magazine and her empty Coke can. Mark's hand shot out so fast she didn't have time to react.

“Sit down,” he said, two fingers holding her arm tight.

Pim looked up, her eyes narrowing, her small nostrils flaring. Mark waited, guiding her back into the booth with a twist of his wrist.

“Please,” Robin said, leaning in. “I need your help.” She said it the same way she had said it back at his room, her eyes rimming with tears.

Pim yanked her arm free and looked at Robin. She let the anger pass. “If you are coming to me for help then it is already too late for you.”

“All I need you to do is look at this picture,” Robin said, taking the photo out of Mark's shirt pocket. “Just look at the picture and tell me if you've seen him, that's all.” She set the photo down, turning it so it faced Pim, and slid it across the table.

With an annoyed sigh, Pim picked up the picture, holding it so Mark couldn't see her reaction. After a long moment she set the picture back down and pushed it back to Robin. Elbows on the table, she interlocked her fingers, tapping her chin with the back of her thumbs as she looked at them.

“They are going to be following you when you leave here,” she said, as if pointing out the obvious. “At least two, maybe more. You need to go back to Bang-la Road. Go to the bars, the big ones. Show the bar-beer girls the picture, ask the bartenders if they have seen him.”

“We did that,” Mark said. “That's how we found you.”

“They need to think that you are still looking. And that I did not help you.”

“So far you haven't.”

Pim lowered her arms, her elbows pushing out along the tabletop, her slight fingers intertwined in a tight knot. “Tomorrow is Sunday. There are Christian services at the Holiday Inn. We can talk there.” She looked over Mark's shoulder into the dark area at the far end of the room. “You must go now,” she said, the smile back in place, bigger than before. “Try to look not happy.”

“Just tell me,” Robin said as they maneuvered out of the booth. “Do you know the man in the picture?”

“Yes,” Pim whispered as she gave a theatrical shrug, shaking her head no. “He is my husband.”

 

Chapter Nine

   

Mark checked the map in the lobby of the Phuket Inn by the Sea one last time before pushing open the glass door and stepping out to join Robin in the early morning sun.

“Couple hundred yards down the beach road,” he said, pointing to the south. “Then left on Ruamjai. JJ said there's a dive shop on the corner.”

“That's a big help. There's a dive shop on every corner.” With both hands, Robin flicked her hair off her shoulders and for reasons he never questioned, Mark found it sexy.

He paused to put on his sunglasses. The sun was still hidden behind the forested hills of the island but, backlit, the trees along the ridge-tops stood out in sharp detail. The sky was powder blue and cloudless. Other than a few restaurants and a Cinnabon, the stores were all closed, heavy metal doors rolled down and padlocked to hasps set deep in the concrete sidewalk, a rare business lull that wouldn't last till ten. At the corner, an elderly Thai woman sipped on a Starbucks coffee as she stood waiting for the bus. Across the street, committed sunbathers staked out their territory, determined to get the most out of the daylight hours, while tuk-tuk drivers in their white shirts and jeans, cigarettes sticking straight up, stretched out on the low wall that separated the beach from the road.

Did it look like this that morning, he wondered. This beautiful, this perfect? Did anyone notice how quiet it was, how the air smelled of orchids and baking bread and cut pineapples? Did anyone notice when the last lapping wave pulled back from the beach, drawn out to deep water by forces miles below the seafloor? And when they saw it coming in, just a black line on the horizon at first, did they know what it was? Did they run for the high ground, hoping to outrace a wave that came in like thunder? Or was it like watching a hand grenade arching through a busted window, the release lever springing free with a tiny metal ting, everything then in slow motion, like running through mud, knowing you'd never get away in time?

“Ready to go—or did you change your mind?” Robin said.

He turned and looked at Robin. “I'm making sure our friends from last night are gone.”

“Those two? Don't worry, we lost them at that knock-off Hard Rock Café.” She flicked the thought away with the back of her hand.

Mark pointed at the cement bus stop bench across from the hotel. “They sat out there till just before three, then they went up the beach road to that all-night 7-Eleven. The tall guy, the one with the basketball jersey, got a Coke Slurpee, the other one pocketed a couple of candy bars when the clerk wasn't looking. Then they spent ten minutes trying to jimmy open the lock on a scooter on the other side of Bang-la Road and when they got tired of that they went home. The tall guy lives with his parents above a vegetable market, two miles up that way. And when you stand there with your mouth open like that you look pretty stupid.”

Robin started to say something, then snapped her mouth shut.

“Let's get going,” Mark said, motioning her along. “We don't want to be late for church.”

She fell in beside him, careful to watch her step on the uneven sidewalk, risking a glance up at him as she spoke. “Did they see you?”

“Please.”

Her eyes grew wide. “But how?”

“Camouflage.”

“Like Rambo?”

“Like Ralph Lauren. I changed my shirt, put on a pair of shorts, and stuck a beer in my hand. I looked like every other guy on the streets.”

“You shouldn't have told me,” she said. “For a moment I was impressed.”

Mark shrugged. “The truth's usually disappointing. Sort of like last night.”

“Ugh. Her.”

“You don't like your new sister-in-law?”

“She's not my sister-in-law.”

“She seemed pretty sure to me,” Mark said, stepping around a mangy dog curled up in front of a dark souvenir shop.

“She's not Shawn's type. He likes girls that are not so…so…”

“Beautiful? Sexy? Hot?” Mark said. “Stop me any time.”

Robin glared up at him. “Not so slutty.”

“You'd be surprised at the number of guys who'd be able to overlook that.”

“That's fine,” Robin said, “as long as Shawn's not one of them.”

“Whether this Pim is or isn't married to your brother—”

“She definitely isn't.”

“—she may know where we can find him. So don't piss her off.” Mark gave her tee shirt sleeve a tug, nodding at the dive shop on the corner before turning down Ruamiji Road and into the entrance of the Holiday Inn.

 

***

 

“She's a liar,” Robin said, looking into Pim's eyes as she spoke, a cobra staring down a mouse.

It had been easy to find Pim. Although the hotel lobby was filled with Thai women, many of them gorgeous—maids heading into work or higher-end hookers heading home—Mark spotted Pim as soon as they walked through the sliding glass doors. She was dressed conservatively for Patong Beach, a flowered print dress that hung below her knees with a neckline that refused to plunge, her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail, held in place with a large flowered clip, worn leather sandals on her feet. Yet despite her plain appearance—even the uniformed maids were more fashion conscious—there was something about her, something that Mark couldn't explain, something that made her the most attractive woman in the room.

“They let me come here on Sundays. For church,” Pim had explained as they found a table at the hotel's indoor café.

“Are there many Thais at the service?” Mark had said, watching as a pew's worth of Nordic-blond tourists asked a bellhop where the Christians were meeting.

“I do not know,” Pim had said, no trace of curiosity in her voice. “I have never gone. I spend my hour sitting in the lobby.”

And now, not even two minutes into her story, Robin was calling the woman a liar. Mark knew that she might be right, that she might be making it all up as she went, her accent masking her assured command of the language. But he also knew enough about women to know that calling her a liar wouldn't help. He tapped Pim on the forearm until she looked across at him, breaking free of Robin's hooded stare.

“Let's hear it again, this time with some details.” He kept his voice soft and tried to smile just enough so that she would trust him.

“Why bother?” Robin said, tossing a balled up napkin down on the hotel café table. “I told you. She's lying.”

Mark held onto Pim's gaze a moment longer before turning to Robin. “Take a walk. I'll meet you at the hotel in an hour.” He didn't know if it was the way he said it or the look in his eyes as he spoke, but, teeth clenched, Robin stood up and walked out toward the lobby. Mark waited until she passed through the main doors before turning back to Pim.

“As I said,” Pim continued, “my husband is alive. And I can take you to him.”

“Yeah, that's what you said. Now tell me why I should believe you.”

Pim's eyes widened and she rocked back in her chair. “Why would I lie to you?”

“Why would you tell me the truth?”

“I want to find him.”

“There's no money in this. Even if you take us right to him, we're not paying you a damn thing.”

“I want to find my husband. This is all I want.”

This is all I want. Mark leaned back and waited, wondering how many times he had heard that line.

“Yes,” she said, shifting in her seat as she spoke. “This is all I want.”

He waited, one arm draped over the back of the chair, the other stretched out onto the table, a finger tracing the condensation trails down the side of his iced tea. “What's the catch?”

“The catch?”

“What are you going to tell me after you say but? As in this is all I want, but…”

Her expression changed though her eyes never left his. “It is all I want. But it will not be easy.”

“Why?”

“It will be hard to leave Phuket.”

“Because?”

“They will not let me go.”

Chin down, Mark looked up at her. “And they are…?”

“Jarin's men.”

Mark nodded, flicking water droplets off the glass. “Tell me, Pim, how long does this church thing last?” He motioned toward the meeting room across the lobby.

Pim shrugged her narrow shoulders. “One hour, sometimes more.”

“Then we don't have time for me to pull every answer out of you.”

She looked at him, and for a moment Mark was sure she was going to storm out. Instead she hitched her chair forward and leaned in.

“Jarin controls this part of Phuket,” she said, her voice so small Mark pulled his chair in to join her. “Drugs, gambling, prostitution, smuggling. He controls it all. The police do nothing—he pays them to do nothing—and everyone else is afraid of him. The bar you came to, the Horny Monkey, that is his, but all the bar owners on Patong Beach pay him something.”

“All right, so why is he holding you?”

She paused, her lip trembling as she drew in a deep breath, tilting her head back to look up at the ceiling, blinking to fight back the tears that came anyway. She wiped them off with the back of her hand. “I do not know.”

“Some local hood is keeping you captive and you don't know why?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Tears didn't mean the truth. He had learned that more than once. And he knew nothing about this girl. Nothing she was saying made sense, but for now he was willing to assume that these tears were real. “How long has this been going on?”

Pim sniffed and caught her breath. “Right after the tsunami. We were living on Koh Phi Phi.” She pointed out the hotel doors as if the small tourist island had just pulled up on the curb. “They came looking for Shawn. I thought he was dead and I told them. The next day they brought me here. They told me that I could never leave, that I had to pay them back.”

“For what?”

She shook her head. “I do not know. But last night at the bar,” she said, eyes still wet but looking deep into his, “you saw how I work for them.”

Mark tapped the long spoon in his glass, kicking up a cloud of undiluted sugar and fruity spices that made the iced tea too sweet to drink. That's what happens when you stir things up, he thought. Across the table, Pim added a packet of NutraSweet and an extra mint leaf before sucking her iced tea through a bent-neck straw.

“Last night, when we met you,” Mark said. “You thought we were there to hook up with you.”

“I thought Jarin had sent you. He sends men to have sex with me. At first it was men he was making a business deal with, foreigners mostly, but sometimes Thai men in the government. Some of the men were kind to me and a few even gave me presents, but Jarin's men took them from me later. Sometimes there were women, too. Now the men are not as nice—men who work for Jarin. They are not supposed to hit me but some of them do, not where you can see.” Pim pushed the mint leaves down with her straw as she spoke, her casual tone adding an icy acceptance to her words.

“When you and that pretty girl—Robin?—when you and Robin came to my table I thought that perhaps Jarin had changed. You both looked so kind. No one has been kind to me for a long time.”

Watching her as she spoke, seeing the tiny spark in her dark eyes and the wistful smile that appeared as she remembered emotions half forgotten, Mark knew what he would do. Her story made no sense, but for some reason that made it easier.

“When you go to the hotels with the men Jarin sends, do the guards come too?”

Straw in her mouth, Pim shook her head. “No. Jarin's men, they only follow me sometimes.”

“Did they follow you here?”

“No, they never do.”

“So they're not outside waiting for you?”

She shook her head, her black ponytail bouncing from side to side.

Mark dropped the spoon back into his iced tea. “Do they watch the bus lines, the port area?”

“Perhaps. I do not know.”

The wicker and wood chair creaked as he leaned back and wondered if she understood his question. “Have you ever tried to get away, just get on a bus and head out? There's a bridge to the mainland you know.”

“Yes, I know. I think it would be easy for me to go that way.”

“Do you have family in Thailand, somewhere you can go?”

“Most of my family was killed when the tsunami came.” Pim turned to look out the hotel's glass doors. “My parents, my sisters and my brother, my auntie and my two uncles. My grandmother. They are all gone.”

It had taken years for Mark to lose his family. It started with a divorce, then a brother running away, a sister moving to Utah to find God, then a gunshot to the head that the police called a self-inflicted hunting accident, a heart attack, an overdose, distant relatives he hardly knew fading away. Long before the war he was alone. Pim had lost them all in an instant. He wanted to tell her how lucky she was but he knew she wouldn't believe him. Instead he said, “Who's left?”