The Ambassador's wife

husband’s ship to return. He glanced back at August, but August’s eyes were still closed.

It seemed unfair to Tay that he was apparently the only person taking an active interest in the conversation so he leaned back, folded his arms, and began counting the palm trees. He had gotten up to nine when Cally abruptly grabbed her chair with both hands and turned it until she was facing both of them. Then she leaned forward and rested her forearms on her knees.

“If you two boys want to have it out, why don’t you both just unzip and do it. I mean, just go on ahead and whip them out. I’m sure I must have some kind of measuring device in my purse and we ought to be able to settle this once and for all right here and right now.”

She looked from one man to the other.

August kept his eyes closed. Tay kept counting trees.

“Come on guys. Who’s going first?”

When the silence continued, Cally came out with a snort so resonant that Tay wouldn’t have thought she had in her.

“A couple of real pussies, aren’t you? Well, if neither of you have the balls to step up to the plate, let me suggest an alternative. Just shut the fuck up about me and let’s get back to what really matters here.”

August cleared his throat, but he didn’t say anything. Tay had long since run out of trees to count, but he didn’t say anything either.

“Tell us what you know, John,” Cally went on. “You’ve got something, I don’t have the slightest doubt about that, but I’m not going to beg for it. I want you to tell us because telling us is the right thing to do. If you don’t, and more women die, it will be on your head.”

“This has nothing to do with me,” August said.

August hadn’t spoken in so long that the unexpected sound of his voice startled Tay.

“I can make it have something to do with you, John. You know I can, but it really doesn’t have to be that way.”

August suddenly opened his eyes and pitched forward, his face close to Cally’s.

“Don’t threaten me, darling.”

“Oh, John,” Cally waved a hand dismissively. “Skip the melodramatic horseshit. I’m way too old for that these days.”

Tay could see August’s jaw working, then abruptly his face relaxed into something that must have been a smile. Just as suddenly as he had leaned forward, he leaned back again and roared with laughter.

“Damn, girl. You’ve turned into a real pistol, haven’t you?”

“You don’t know the half of it, John. You really don’t.”

August lifted his hands above his head. “Okay. Enough. I give up.”

“Good,” Cally said. “Now what have you got that I can use?”

The breeze had moved around while they were sitting there and now it was coming off the ocean. It smelled of brine and fish and made Tay think about places he had never been and probably would never go.

“Your lady ambassador was gay,” August said.

Tay suddenly stopped thinking about the breeze and sat up a bit.

“Are you sure?” Cally asked. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

“Of course you’ve never heard anything like that,” August said, and then he closed his eyes again. “If the ambassador had been a man, the rumor mill would have had him cruising schoolyards years ago. But you’re all so fucking careful now that nobody wants to be the one to hang an ugly rumor like that on a woman, even if they’d collar a man with the same story before breakfast.”

“What’s ugly about it, John? Are you saying there’s something wrong with being gay?”

August rolled his head until he was facing Cally and opened his eyes.

“Not unless you want to get to the top of the State Department or the CIA or even the FBI. No, nothing at all, little girl. Some of my best friends are…” August chuckled instead of finishing his sentence.

There didn’t seem to be a great deal of humor in the chuckle, at least not that Tay could hear, but maybe that was because he was listening to something else now, something he was remembering from a few days before.

There were rumors that Elizabeth Munson was having an affair with a woman and that she was going to leave her husband, Lucinda Lim had told him.

Elizabeth Munson was gay? he had asked her.

Gay? Samuel Tay, I told you nothing of the sort. I said there were stories that she was having an affair with a woman. A lot of women have affairs with other women at various points in their lives. It doesn’t mean they’re gay.

Tay looked at Cally and at August, but they seemed to have forgotten he was there.

“What’s any of that got to do with Susan Rooney’s murder, John? Are you saying it was some kind of hate crime because she may have been gay?”

“Not may have been. She was. Gay, dyke, lesbo, kiki, carpet muncher. Take your pick.”

“You’re disgusting, John.”

“Look, darling, you asked me to give you something and I did. You don’t like it? Give it back. Makes no difference to me.” August closed his eyes again. “Anyway I’m retired. Remember?”

“Yeah,” Cally snorted. “Right.”

“I really am, darling. You should believe that. Still…” August paused and wiggled his bare feet in the sand. “If things get a little too hairy for you, send up a flare and Uncle John will come running to save your beautiful butt just like he always has. You hear me, girl?”

Cally stared at August in silence for what must have been a minute or more, which Tay thought was quite a long time to stare at somebody without saying anything. Then she did say something.

“I don’t need you for that anymore, John.”

Cally took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. Then without another word she stood up and walked away. When she reached the sidewalk along Beach Road, she stomped the sand off her feet, turned left, and kept walking. Not knowing what else to do, Tay stood up and followed.

The breeze was freshening and the light had turned gray and murky. A thick bank of clouds had formed off in the distance and just as the sun slid behind it the wind rose from the south and the palm trees began to bend and whip against each other with a sound that reminded Tay of something, although he couldn’t remember what it was.

But it was going to rain. That much, at least, he knew for sure.

TWENTY-EIGHT

It didn’t rain. Instead the breeze vanished and a dense, soggy haze settled over Pattaya, a cloud of ripened moisture and carbon monoxide that glowed with a filmy yellow light for reasons Tay didn’t even want to think about.

They left around noon. The traffic was light and Cally quickly found her way back to the motorway and turned toward Bangkok. Tay noticed that she was driving far more sedately than she had on the trip down. Imminent levitation of the Volvo no longer appeared likely. Cally didn’t talk much and Tay gathered she was probably still thinking about August, although exactly what she was thinking about August was another question altogether.

It didn’t matter really. Cally’s silence suited him just fine since he had enough of his own thoughts to deal with. Half a world away his mother was about to be put in a hole in the ground and here he was riding around Thailand in a fucking Volvo as if he didn’t have a care in the world. It didn’t seem right. It just didn’t. If he had only tried harder to get in touch with Rosenthal before his mother died then perhaps…well, no, he didn’t have the slightest idea what might have happened. In the rational part of his mind he understood that, but still the question stayed with him and he couldn’t banish it no matter how hard he tried.

Was it possible that he could have at least talked to his mother one more time? Maybe, but what would he have said if he had? What could he possibly have said that might have brought comfort to her in the last hours of