“No problem, pal,” he eventually said, “but I need a favor in return. There’s an FBI guy named Morrissey who is either attached to the embassy or in town on some kind of temporary duty. You know him?”
He listened for a moment, then said, “Yeah, that’s right. His first name is Frank.”
Bar glanced at me and I nodded quickly.
There was a pause, then Bar said, “No shit,” followed by a long, low whistle. “Hang on a second Barney.”
Bar lowered the telephone, slipped his hand over the mouthpiece, and looked at me.
“He says Frank Morrissey used to be one of the legats all right, but he’s been retired for three or four years. Lives somewhere in Florida, he thinks.”
“So what’s he doing back here now?”
Instead of answering my question, Bar asked me one of his own.
“What did this man in Dollar’s office look like?”
I described the man as well as I could, including his natty dress and cool demeanor.
Bar lifted the headset back to his ear. “Barney, let me ask you something. Is Frank Morrissey a middle-aged guy of average size and weight who’s a sharp dresser and comes across as serious and intense?”
I could hear the laughter coming from the other end of the telephone without Bar taking it away from his ear.
“I see,” he said after listening for a moment longer. “Well, I’m sure it’s all some kind of mistake. Thanks a lot, pal. I owe you one.”
Bar pushed the disconnect button and lowered the heavy headset to the table.
“He says Frank Morrissey is probably older than I am. He also says he’s a fat slob who looks like an unmade bed and never stops talking shit.”
“This guy showed me his ID, Bar. And both Jello and Dollar knew him. He had to be legit.”
Bar sat impassively, saying nothing.
I pointed to the telephone. “You’ve probably got a secret weekend number for Jello, too. Call him. He’ll tell you.”
Bar shook his head. “Not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
Bar shook his head again and looked away.
“Oh, come on, Bar,” I said. “Tell me you’re not about to say there was a conspiracy between Dollar and Jello to pass this fellow off as an FBI agent just to fool me.”
“Okay. Then I won’t tell you that.”
I was starting to get a headache.
“Look, Jack, think about it. Somebody doesn’t just kill this poor bastard you knew, they dangled his body off a prominent landmark where all sorts of people could see him twisting up there in the wind. Now doesn’t it strike you as a pretty clear message of some kind?”
I said nothing. Bar was obviously right.
“Then some guy masquerading as an FBI agent shows up before the body’s cold,” Bar went on. “And a few minutes later, Jello walks in with enough manpower to turn the whole place over.”
“But then Jello just left. He didn’t do anything.”
“You scared them off when you threw your fit.”
I thought back to the empty look in Dollar’s eyes on Saturday morning and wondered again why I had been so protective of him.
“But if you’re right, wouldn’t that mean Jello and Dollar know who killed Howard?”
“Sharp as a fucking cue ball, aren’t you, pal?”
The busboy materialized and began quietly gathering dirty dishes. Neither of us said anything else until he had wiped down the table and withdrawn.
“You sure you’re not a player here, Jack?” Bar asked quietly when the boy was well out of earshot.
Bar produced the metal tool again and started poking at the bowl of his pipe, narrowing his eyes in concentration. He looked like a plumber examining a jammed toilet and unhappily contemplating what he had to do next.
“I’m just a teacher now, Bar. I’m not a player in anything anymore.”
“They don’t always ask you if you want to play, Jack. Sometimes they just stick you in the game.”
And with that Bar pushed himself up from the table with surprising nimbleness.
“Got to go,” he said grabbing his bag. “Good luck.”
As I watched Bar walk away, it occurred to me that he had stuck me with the check, but I didn’t mind. I figured it was pretty good value.
It was early afternoon and the dazzling shimmer of the sunlight on the river just beyond the windows made the table where I sat seem like a good place to think about what Bar had said and let some time pass. I ordered another Heineken and watched the river. The beer was rich and thick and time and possibilities swirled around me as if my thoughts were no more than pieces of flotsam floating on the river’s currents.
Then they passed, and they were gone.
TWENTY SIX
There were a lot of things I could have done with the rest of my Sunday afternoon. I could have gone to my office and prepared my lectures for next week’s classes. I could have headed over to Lumpini Park and pounded around the lake until I sweated out the sense of foreboding rising within me. I could have retreated to my apartment, locked the door, and gone back to bed. That’s probably what I should have done.
Instead, I drove out to Dollar’s house. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to see Dollar, but he and I were going to have a serious conversation pretty soon-that seemed absolutely inevitable-and I figured there was nothing to be gained by putting it off. I could have called first to see if he was at home, but of course I didn’t. The trip might turn out to be a waste, but I figured I would take that risk. Catching Dollar by surprise would make for a far more compelling conversation than letting him know in advance that I was coming.
Dollar lived on the river north of the city, not far from the international school where a lot of the city’s foreign residents and a few wealthy Thais with pretensions sent their children. I had been there four or five times for parties but had never actually been inside the house. Dollar’s parties always took place on the lawn, a sprawling, close-cropped expanse of grass impenetrably walled with towering banyan trees and rolling as smoothly as a putting green down a gentle slope to the Chao Praya River.
On party nights the lawn was bathed in white light from powerful floods tucked discreetly in the trees and a string quartet from some university was usually out there floating Mozart and Bach off on the heavy night air. Dollar’s smartly-dressed guests generally represented more nationalities than I could name and, as they wandered among linen-draped tables engaging in pleasantly ambiguous conversation, they generally made certain that they were noticed by everyone else who was there. The first time I had gone to one of Dollar’s parties, I remembered standing quietly at the top of the slope and looking down across the lawn for a long time. The illumination was so white, so flat and colorless, and the people and the table settings looked so faultless, so perfectly formed, the whole scene made me think of a tiny diorama atop a really expensive wedding cake.
Dollar’s house was a rambling two-story affair of no particular style, but it was large and comfortable looking, the kind of a place in which you had no difficulty imagining a man living. The story around town was that Dollar had been married three times-once to a Japanese woman, once to a Chinese, and once to an Indonesian-and each woman had in turn left him. Dollar had no children, none that anyone had heard about anyway, and as far as I knew he lived alone except for the Thai couple that cooked and cleaned for him.
I pulled the Volvo to the side of the road and parked close to the high concrete wall that pinned Dollar’s house against the river. You couldn’t see the house from the street because there was only one opening in the wall, a black metal drive gate that slid open like a huge peephole. Set into the larger gate was a door for any callers who had the misfortune to be on foot.
I’m not certain exactly how long I sat there looking at the gate and doing nothing else. I kept asking myself if I really wanted to do this. I didn’t, but I was going to do it anyway. I got out of the car and pressed the intercom button quickly before I had a chance to change my mind.