Of their victories and of my cares,
Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden.
— Bertolt Brecht
Flynn calls her attention from the wall and begins to point to cabinets and end tables. “A Vile-Cobb George III mahogany bombe commode. A James Lamb veneered mahogany sideboard out of Manchester, probably around 1875. And that there, that’s a satinwood cabinet with ivory handles designed by E. W. Goodwin.”
“E. W. himself?” Ronnie says, lifting up her eyebrows, playing a parody of some impressed tourist. But she loves the show. It’s so unexpected, a real curveball. She would’ve expected Flynn to be all yuppie contemporary or franchise Scandinavian.
And he likes the fact she’s kidding him. He finishes up by swirling some brandy around in his snifter and says, “The floors are pure maple, walls are covered in canvas with basrelief borders, ceiling’s Adams plaster.”
Ronnie is shaking her head slowly and smiling. “And you know what all that crap means?” she says.
“More or less. Had to find out just enough to know when I was getting taken by the dealers.”
“G.T. Flynn getting suckered,” Ronnie says. “Tough to picture.”
“You should see what they gouged me for a carved oak four-poster bed.”
Ronnie steps up to him and runs a hand up into the hair over his ear. “Yeah, but I’m about to increase its value tremendously.”
From a back room deep in the apartment a phone rings once and stops. Flynn leans in, kisses her forehead, and says, “Hold that thought. That’s the business line in the study.”
Ronnie squints at him. “You get business calls at three in the morning?”
He starts to move out of the room, saying, “That’s part of the deal when you handle people’s money for them.”
He walks through the den and then through a small ante-room and stands before a pair of varnished-wood doors on tracks that slide into the wall. He unlocks the sliding doors, steps inside the study, rolls the doors closed again, and relocks them. He turns around a little hesitantly. The contrast between the Victorian decor of the rest of the apartment and the cool minimalism of the study always makes him a little queasy, like he’s stepped off a carnival ride before it’s completely stopped.
The study is so absolutely different from the rest of the building that it might as well exist in another space and time. This is the way Flynn wants it. The study has a specific and definite purpose. It houses a distinct, unique vein of his life. He wanted the room to be a small world unto itself. He wanted it to feel like every time he rolled open the sliding doors and stepped inside, he was crossing an enormous threshold, darting through some cultural membrane and into a vault of secret, hidden yearnings.
He crosses over the soundproof carpeting to the end section of black metal shelving and grabs the cordless phone and says, “Hello.”
“Flynn,” a woman’s voice says, “it’s Hannah Shaw.”
He’d expected Wallace or maybe Hazel. “Detective Shaw,” he says, “it’s a little late—”
She cuts him off, clearly annoyed. “Yeah, I’m not doing so good with time these days. And I figured you’d just be getting in from Wireless.”
“I didn’t make it to the bar tonight,” he says. “I’m entertaining some guests here at home. What can I do for you, Ms. Shaw?”
There’s a pause, then a sound that’s part breath and part laugh. “Do for me? Look, Flynn, you’re the one who asked for a favor. If I got you at a bad time—”
His sales instincts kick and he changes his voice and says, “No, no, I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. Sometimes the phone can just jangle you, you know? Especially at this time of night. You expect to hear there’s been some sort of accident or—”
“Yeah, fine,” Hannah says. “Look, I checked up on your little friend and it looks like she’s trying to make a move.”
“My little friend,” Flynn repeats.
“The woman is not what she seems, Flynn. And her allegiances are definitely not to you. You’re being set up. I’d have thought you were a better judge of character.”
“Listen, Hannah—”
She makes it clear she doesn’t like the familiarity. “In the future I’d be more careful who I associated with, Mr. Flynn. Man in your position should really take precautions. My advice at this stage of the game would be to get some distance from the woman. She’s a disaster. She can’t be trusted.”
“Detective,” Flynn says, “I wonder if we could get together tomorrow for—”
“It’s late, Flynn, like you said. I did you a favor. Mainly because you were a friend of Lenore’s. Now, I’m extremely busy right now. You can either take my advice or forget it. Really doesn’t matter to me.”
Before Flynn can speak he hears the click of her hang-up.
He stands still in the. darkness for a minute, then brings the phone up to his mouth, taps it against his lips.
Okay, he thinks, we’ve lost Hazel.
He moves to put the phone back on the shelf and flinches. She was talking about Hazel, right? Why didn’t she mention the name? Why didn’t she say “Hazel”?
He tries to replay Shaw’s words, wishes he’d taped the call, wishes he could just hit the toggle on his reel-to-reel and rehear everything that was said. But it’s like the conversation mutated into a vague dream as soon as Shaw disconnected. And now all he can bring up, the only words that he feels sure he heard are the woman is not what she seems.
And then, from the living room, comes Ronnie’s slightly muffled voice calling, “Hey, Flynnster, I’m getting lonely out here.”
33
The Tribal Drum Noodle House sits down on Watson Street, at the very border of Little Asia, one of the last outposts before the ways of the Orient dissolve into the glossy and sulky exhibitionism of the Canal Zone. As a matter of fact, the restaurant shares a common wall with a slick new hip-hop joint called Propa Gramma, run by a mulatto Casanova named Jerome LaCroix.
The Tribal Drum’s proximity to the Zone has altered it a bit, set it far apart from the dozens of other Asian eateries in Bangkok. More often than not, the majority of the clientele come from over the line, semihungry artistes and poseurs drifting from the red brick galleries and smoke-clogged cafes, slim books clutched in hands, looking for some decent wonton and maybe a communal plate of moo shu vegetables.
Because of this fact, the Drum’s owners, a holding company called Sozhou Limited Trust, tried a faddish motif that clicked and held. Some regulars believe the invisible company stumbled on an unknown designer crazed enough to bring back seventies kitsch. An opposing faction maintains that the joint’s owners are brand-new to the shore and their sense of American style, and maybe even language, was born while religiously studying seventies TV sitcoms day and night. A third, slightly cocky group holds that the decor has more to do with the fact that the holding company botched a warehouse job and somehow got saddled with a gross of pastel-colored Princess rotary telephones.
Whatever the case, having some Beijing ravioli at the Tribal Drum is like dining in a museum of the tacky and synthetic. There are Lava lamps on the tables and beanbag chairs in the lounge. The floors are covered with lime-colored, heavy shag carpeting. The bartenders dress in mint leisure suits and qiana shirts opened to the navel and equipped with long dagger collars. The waiters and waitresses wear zip-up velour jerseys and bell-bottom pants made from a shiny material that no one can put a name to. Lately, the manager has been pushing Thursdays as Polyester Night.