“Really big hitters? What are you telling me? What kind of database is this anyway?”
Nata felt silent, then glanced toward Darcy again. Darcy sighed and folded her arms.
“Don’t put me in a bad spot here, Jack. Let’s just say that it is a comprehensive summary of…” Darcy paused, weighing her words, “nonpublic U.S. intelligence data concerning foreign organized crime activity. If there was any real connection between your man, the Texas State Bank, and the Russian mob, it would be in here.”
“In other words,” I said, “you’ve hacked the FBI.”
“If we had, you wouldn’t want us to tell you, would you?”
I had always thought the expression about someone’s eyes twinkling was pure poetic exaggeration, but right at that moment Darcy’s actually did.
“So what
“My gut says you’re about to step into it here, Jack,” Darcy said. “I’d back off and let it go if I were you.”
That wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting to hear.
“Don’t you think that’s sensationalizing this thing a little, Darcy? How can it hurt just to meet a guy at Foodland and talk to him?”
“He may tell you something you’re better off not hearing,” she said.
What the hell was
“Do you want some help?” Nata asked.
“Help? Doing what?”
“If you’re really going to meet this guy, it might be a good idea to have somebody throw a loose net over you. That way you’d pick up on any surveillance that might be on you or any other funny business that might be going on.”
“I don’t like the sound of this very much.”
“You asked for our advice and I’m giving it to you.”
“Look, if there’s really something nasty going on here, the last thing I want is to get you two involved.”
“Oh, not us,” Darcy jumped back in. “You know my policy about avoiding operations. But we could find somebody to cover you without much trouble.”
“How about Mango Manny?” Nata asked, looking at Darcy.
“That’s a good thought,” she answered. “You know him, Jack?”
“I don’t think so. I imagine I’d remember meeting anybody with a name like Mango Manny.”
“His real name is Emmanuel Marcus. He’s a Brit. Used to be a top hitter in London, but he made a couple of silly mistakes and had to relocate on short notice.”
“Mistakes?”
“Oh, you know. Hit the wrong people a couple of times. That sort of thing.”
Darcy made it sound like the fellow had done nothing worse than misdirect a few Federal Express packages.
“Manny’s been in Bangkok… oh, four or five years now, I think. He owns Q Bar, that place on Soi 11 where the hipper-than-thou crowd hangs out. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
“Nope. Too expensive for me. I’m more a Cheap Charlie’s kind of guy.”
“Manny’s very well connected. Plays golf with all the right generals and government ministers. But the important thing is that he’s got a really first-class organization.”
“You mean at his bar?”
“No, not that. Manny brought the marijuana business here into the twenty-first century. Really made it fly, so to speak.”
“He’s a
Darcy looked down and kicked her toe at the carpet. “He’s more of a… management consultant. Besides, he won’t touch anything but grass. The man’s not a criminal, Jack.”
I took a deep breath.
“Just let me be sure I understand what you’re telling me here,” I said. “Just because you can’t find a couple of references to Barry Gale in your magic machine, you’re seriously proposing that I get some screw-up cockney hit man turned godfather to the Thai marijuana trade to work security for me when I go to the Foodland tonight to meet a dead guy. Have I pretty much got it?”
“Manny’s not a cockney,” Darcy said. “He went to Cambridge.”
“Oh well, that changes everything.”
“He’s really a pretty good guy,” Nata put in. “I think he just watched too many Bob Hoskins movies when he was young and never got over it.”
There was a little silence then and Darcy and Nata both watched me expressionlessly. In the quiet, I thought I could feel something stirring around me. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt large and unpleasant.
“What do you think I should do, Darcy?” I finally asked.
Darcy placed one hand gently on my back. She had the sort of look on her face I imagined a mother might give a son who was going off to war, a look that said there wasn’t a thing she could do but wish him luck and hope for the best.
“Be careful, Jack. Be very, very careful.”
EIGHT
When I got home I found some chicken in the refrigerator and leftover rice in the cooker. I heated them both in the microwave while I opened a Heineken, then I doused the chicken and rice in hot Sriracha sauce and took it into the living room so I could watch a replay of yesterday’s Redskins game on ESPN while I ate.
Anita got home around ten. As soon as she closed the door behind her she took a couple of quick little hopping bounds across the room and dived over the back of the couch. Then she rolled into my lap and hung one arm around my neck.
“I missed you, darling.”
I tilted my head down and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I missed you, too. How was London?”
“Cold. Wet. Dark. Like always. Am I interrupting your game?”
“Not really. I wasn’t paying much attention.” I groped for the remote control and pressed the mute button.
Anita and I had been together for a little more than a year. She was a true child of the world, having been born in Paris to an Italian mother and an English father and then moved to Hong Kong by her parents when she was ten. Later on she went to high school in New York and then graduated from UCLA with a degree in film.
Now she was a painter of considerable note, although I had to admit somewhat sheepishly that I’d never heard of her when we first met at a Sotheby’s auction in Bangkok. Actually, I suppose that I had never heard of many painters, except for a few who died in the fifteenth or sixteenth century and all of them had beards, but it wasn’t long before I discovered that Anita had a huge reputation in Europe as a young artist to be watched. I, too, thought she should be watched, although I was pretty sure what I was watching and what the European art critics were watching were completely different things. At least I hoped they were.
A few months after our meeting at Sotheby’s, Anita had simply packed up her whole studio and moved from London to Bangkok and it wasn’t very long after that she became white-hot in European art circles. She always said that it was the sensuality of Thailand that had given her work the push it needed to make that happen, but I naturally held to the theory that I might have been at least partially responsible.
Anita was much in demand among the art set in Europe these days and she traveled there frequently to do publicity for galleries that sold her work. Of course, she was also much in demand by me in Bangkok, and it pleased me beyond reason that she made such an effort to strike a balance between those two tugs on her life.
“So what have you been up to?” Anita asked me as maroon-and-gold uniformed giants silently smashed into blue-and-white giants on our television screen.
I hesitated before I answered, not entirely sure what to say about the call from the man who claimed to be Barry Gale. It was just a beat, but Anita jumped all over it.
