Hatcher shook his head.
‘Listen to me, when I said I was done with killing I meant it. I came on this trip thinking I was performing a simple humane act. Instead I’ve had to fight practically every day to stay alive. The hell with it, no more killing. The sooner I get out of Bangkok, the better.’
He turned and walked out of the house.
‘You think he is right, Cody?’ Pai asked. ‘You think Tollie Fong will forget?’
‘Sure,’ said Earp. ‘And next season the Pope’s gonna play second base with the Mets.’
Melinda was sitting on the porch when Hatcher walked out. She looked up and for the first time she smiled at him.
‘Do you understand now?’
‘Most of it,’ he said. ‘I’m a little confused on details.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you and Prophett.’
‘I’d like you to understand about Johnny and me, maybe it will explain what holds us all together. It’s not fear of being discovered.’
‘I know it isn’t fear. I’m a fast read.’
Hatcher looked at her and thought about all the passion that had been in her pictures. She had been to able to predict the perfect moment on the faces of the victims of war, the soldiers, the enemy, the innocent bystanders who seemed always to get the worst of it; to capture the fear and frustration and the awful confusion of the young and the despair and the awe and the agony of the old when faced with the obscenity of death, And almost as if she were reading his mind, Melinda went on, ‘Johnny was something. Not afraid of anything. And dreams — God, did he have dreams. But he wasn’t prepared for Nam. It overwhelmed him, and he was like, I don’t know, a little boy in closet who needed somebody to reach out and hold him. He really needed me. He’d cuddle up against me at night, curl into all the right places, tell me how much he loved me. I was drawn to his poetry. And I guess to his weaknesses, too. But Indian country was like a magnet to him. And so was the needle. When he didn’t come back that last time, I waited and waited. I knew he wasn’t dead.’
‘How did you find him?’
‘Pai. She called me one day. I didn’t know her and she was very secretive. “Come to Bangkok” is all she said, but I knew why. I was on the next plane out.’
‘The spike’ll kill him, you know,’ Hatcher whispered.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ve always known I’ll outlive him. Every time he takes a shot I think it’ll be his last. He comes to me and he puts his arms around me and I can feel all the futility and defeat in his body. That’s when I just pray I’ll have him one more day, before the needle takes him away. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like. The loneliness of not having him anymore.’
‘Fong will kill Murph, Hatcher, like he had to kill Wol Pot. That’s why we have to destroy Tollie Fong first.’
‘I’m out of it. Do what you want. I’ve done my job and I’m going home,’ he said.
Hatcher thought about the trips Pai had made down- river to score for Taisung and for Johnny; about the deals she had made for them; about the logistics of getting Jaimie, who was dying of cancer, back into South Vietnam so he could get home.
‘Leave Tollie Fong alone,’ Hatcher whispered. ‘You prod him, he’ll be like an angry bull. Leave him alone and it will all pass. Believe me, I know this man well.’
‘How about Sloan?’
‘I have to see him once more — there’s something that needs to be finished between us.’
‘And what’ll you tell him about Murph Cody?’
Hatcher looked at the tall, sad-eyed man who had once been his brash boxing colleague, looked across the yard at Wonderboy, who was playing his guitar and singing softly for the Thai dancers, and at Pai, who had traded her youth, her nationality, her very soul, for the man she loved.
‘I’ll tell him the truth,’ said Hatcher. ‘I’ll tell him Murph Cody is dead.’
PLAYBACK
The sun was close to the horizon when he got back to the hotel. Hatcher was tired and dispirited, and at first did not notice the tape recorder sitting on the table beside the bed. He peeled off his dirty clothes, took a shower, came out with a towel wrapped around his waist and lay on the bed, thinking about Murph Cody and the regulars, a disparate group bonded together by love and the need to protect one another. And suddenly he missed the island and Ginia and his friends there, people who asked nothing of one another but trust and friendship. Not unlike the Longhorn regulars. And he admitted to himself that Ginia had brought more happiness and feeling into his life than anything since his days at Annapolis.
He shifted his thoughts back to the regulars. They were going to hit Tollie Fong, he was sure of it, and they would risk everything to do it. And then thinking of Fong, he thought about the assassination of Campon and the bombing in Paris and the death of the Hyena. The police were speculating that he was killed by one of his own people, but Hatcher was familiar with the Hyena — he always worked alone. Pieces began to fall in place in his head.
Then he noticed the small hand-size tape machine. He stared at it, wondering where it had come from, before he reached out and picked it u.
