“I think you know way too much about way too many things.”
Anita grinned and brushed her lips quickly over mine, then she swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself off the couch. The graceful way she did it took my breath away.
“Don’t go away, big boy. Got to pee. Then I want to hear the whole story about your little honeys before I go over and scratch their eyes out.”
I would have married Anita in a moment, but she had never mentioned marriage and there was something that made me hesitate to ask. To do that would risk changing everything that made life so good right then, particularly if she said no, and that was a chance I was not prepared to take.
After Anita came back from the bathroom we leaned against each other on the couch and made small talk for a while but eventually, of course, I got around to telling her about the man who called my cell phone and claimed to be Barry Gale.
“That’s shocking, Jack,” she said when I’d finished.
The word took me aback a little. It sounded quaint and outdated somehow, out of place in a world that now had little room and less time for people who were shocked by anything. Yet it was a word that Anita wore well. I liked it on her.
“Do you think it really was him?” she asked.
“Well… maybe.”
“Then whose body was that in the swimming pool?”
“Got me.”
“Why would he fake his own death?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is this man calling you now?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Well, Mr. Laconic, thank you for clearing everything up for me.”
“Hey,” I said, opening my hands in the universal gesture of coming clean. “You know what I know. It’s just not much.”
Abruptly, Anita pushed herself away from me and stood up. She walked to the window and stood there looking out at the city, her arms folded around herself as if the air had suddenly turned unexpectedly cool.
“Are you going out tonight to meet this man?” she asked without turning around.
I hesitated. I knew where this was going and it wasn’t anywhere good, but I couldn’t think of any way to bob and weave.
“Yes, I thought I would.”
“Why are you going to do that?”
“To find out what the phone call was all about.”
“You don’t have any idea what you’re getting into, do you, Jack?”
I could have told Anita about the background I had dug up through Darcy. I could have even told her about Darcy offering to get Mango Manny to go with me. On the other hand, Anita didn’t like Darcy much and, even if she had, the idea that Darcy thought I should have a semi-retired Cockney hit man for backup wasn’t going to do much to ease her concerns. I kept quiet about all that.
“You’re going alone?” Anita eventually asked when I said nothing.
“Yes.”
“All by yourself?”
“That’s what ‘alone’ means.”
“I’m not stupid, Jack.” Anita whirled around and fixed me with a hard stare. “But sometimes I think you are.”
I would have thought that diplomacy would come naturally to someone who was half Italian, half British, and born in France; but in Anita’s case, it didn’t.
“Meeting this man alone is really stupid, Jack. You could be killed.”
“Oh, Anita, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous? Didn’t you just tell me that the embassy had been warning Americans to keep a low profile and to be alert?”
“The embassy does that all the time, Anita.”
“Do they? They warn Americans in Thailand to be careful all the time?”
“They warn Americans everywhere to be careful all the time. Look, the embassy’s just covering its ass. Nobody really pays any attention to these things.”
“Well, maybe you should.”
“Now don’t go getting-”
“You Americans are all alike, aren’t you, Jack. All a bunch of tiny John Waynes at heart. Well here’s a flash for you. Life is not a movie. You’ve got to have the sense to know when to be afraid.”
“Look, come over here and sit down.” I patted the cushion next to me with my open palm. “Let’s start over.”
Anita stayed where she was just long enough to make it unmistakable that she was sitting because she chose to, not because I had asked her to. Then she walked over and perched on the couch.
“I didn’t see any danger in going tonight or I wouldn’t go, Anita.”
“You didn’t see any danger in going to a dangerous part of town and waiting for some nut who called out of a clear blue sky claiming to be a dead man? You really don’t see any danger in doing that in the middle of the night?”
“It’s not a dangerous part of town, it’s a supermarket. And midnight isn’t really the middle of the night.”
“Don’t pull that lawyer crap on me, hot-shot.”
“Look, Anita, when was the last time you heard of a foreigner being assaulted by anyone in Bangkok?”
“The week before last.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That French photographer. It was in all the papers.”
Come to think of it, Anita was right. A couple of weeks before, a motorcyclist had shot to death a middle-aged Frenchman walking back to his apartment after an evening spent drinking at the Crown Royal in Patpong. The foreign community had fretted about that for a few days, but the whole incident quickly slid off their radar when the Bangkok Post reported that the Frenchman’s Thai wife and her nineteen-year-old Thai boyfriend had hired the shooter.
“I figured I’d be safe,” I said, “since you were out of town.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
“Look, Anita, I wouldn’t go if I’d thought it was dangerous. And besides, I promise to be very careful.”
Anita folded her arms again and drew her mouth into a tight line.
“If it’s not dangerous, why are you going to be careful?”
She had me there. Never argue with an Italian woman who was born in France, I reminded myself for not the first time.
“I’m very tired,” Anita suddenly announced in a voice that made it clear my sins would not be forgiven anytime soon. “I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Good night, Jack.” And with that she stood up and left the room.
I still had a couple of hours to kill before I had to go out to meet Barry Gale. With no prospect of peace on the horizon, I got another beer and went back to watching the Redskins.
NINE
About two dozen high-backed wooden stools with gray seat cushions faced the narrow, L-shaped counter. I slid onto an empty stool and looked around. A small vase of flowers sat on the counter next to a stainless steel water pitcher and a bottle of chili sauce. The flowers were plastic, but somehow they still looked tried and bedraggled. I knew just how they felt.
Took Lae Dee is really nothing more than a little food-service counter stuck up at the front of an all night Foodland where a lot of foreigners shop. Its name translates from Thai as “cheap and good.” At least, it does if you pronounce it right. Since few foreigners struggling with Thai can manage the tones, Took Lae Dee sometimes comes out with a rising rather than a falling tone, turning the translation of its name into “sorrowful and good.” Took Lae Dee is a major hangout for the Bangkok nightshift so I always thought those two dueling translations framed the place pretty accurately.
Behind the counter a Chinese-looking woman in a white cap scraped fried rice from a wok onto a plate. A plastic ID badge with a tiny picture was clipped to her apron and made her look more like someone employed in a defense plant than a counter girl at an all-night diner. Another cook was showing off, flipping a wok full of noodles into the air and then slapping the wok smartly with a long-handled ladle before catching them again. When he saw me watching him, he flashed me a big grin and bowed slightly from the waist.
On the other leg of the counter three Arabs in white robes sat drinking tea and whispering quietly among themselves. Beyond them, two sweating, middle-aged men spoke German to each other and halting English to their young Thai companions. The older of the two men was with a girl who was round and dark with a pleasant face and a nice smile, probably not long out of some upcountry rice field. The other had a stunner draped all over him.