When I got and took the elevator upstairs the first thing I noticed after the door opened at my floor was the faint odor of cigar smoke.
I reminded myself yet again either to clean up my act and cut down on my smoking or at least get the apartment aired out every now and then. It was a wonder to me that one of my neighbors hadn’t already complained to the residents’ committee and started a movement to get me thrown out of the building. It wasn’t until I opened the door to my apartment, dumped my briefcase, and crossed the entry hall into the living room that I realized the smoke I smelled wasn’t quite as stale as I had first thought.
“These are pretty good,” Tommy said, gesturing with the lighted cigar in his hand. “I generally prefer Cohibas, but Montecristos were all I could find around here and, like you Americans say, don’t look in the mouth of a horse that is a gift from somebody.”
“It’s ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’“
“Whatever.” Tommy took a long draw on the Montecristo. “My English may be a little rusty. Maybe you ought to help me with it, Jack.”
Tommy seemed to have made himself entirely at home there in my apartment. Although the living room was dim and he hadn’t turned on any lights, he looked comfortable enough settled as he was into one of the two leather chairs that were turned at right angles to each other in front of the big front window. The cigar he was holding was about half smoked, so I gathered he had probably been there for a while.
“Don’t just stand there, Jack. This is your apartment. Come in, come in.”
Tommy’s tone was so avuncular that for a moment I wondered if I had forgotten some arrangement we had made for him to be waiting there for me. I hadn’t, of course, and I stood looking at him as he took another long pull on the cigar and exhaled in a steady stream.
“Where’s your girlfriend, Jack?”
“She’s out. Somebody’s having a birthday party at the Oriental.”
My response was automatic and I immediately regretted it. Why did I owe Tommy an explanation for anything? After all, he had gotten into my apartment somehow and was lurking there in the dark waiting to ambush me when I came home. In my book that hardly entitled him to start asking questions, much less to get any answers.
“Okay, fine.” Tommy’s voice filled the room with a hearty, good-natured boom. “That’s good.”
I wondered what was good about it from Tommy’s point of view.
“How did you get in here?” I asked.
“You ought to be more concerned about how I’m going to get out of here, Jack. That’s what I’d be worried about if I were you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Why don’t you just sit down? This won’t take long.”
Tommy tapped the Montecristo against a green celadon bowl he had put on the floor by the chair to use as an ashtray. He smiled slowly in what I gathered he thought was a reassuring way. Other than grabbing Tommy and flinging him bodily through the living room window, I didn’t see what else I could do. And that didn’t seem like too hot an idea, so I sat down.
I watched Tommy as he smoked quietly, smiling in a vague sort of way and looking off in the direction of the lights along Ploenchit Road. He had a soft, almost pink face, and he wore plain, black-rimmed glasses. His dark hair was neatly cut and he was conservatively dressed in a dark suit that was neither snappy nor expensive, a white shirt, and a plain tie with a muted pattern. He didn’t seem to notice that I was looking him over or, if he did, to care very much.
“You weren’t expecting me tonight, were you, Jack?” he asked, still looking out the window.
“I wasn’t expecting anybody.”
“But you should have been, Jack. You should have been.”
He took a quick draw on his cigar and twisted his head toward me when he exhaled, pointing his free hand toward the humidor that was sitting on a desk across the room.
“You want a cigar or something?”
“It’s my apartment, Tommy. If I want a fucking cigar, I’ll get it myself.”
He nodded slowly at that, but I noticed he had stopped smiling.
“Okay, here it is,” he said.
Tommy tapped the arm of the chair lightly with his fingers.
“We asked you to stay away from the Asian Bank of Commerce, Jack. We asked you nicely. Then we find out that you’re still asking all kinds of questions about the ABC; you’re searching through people’s houses and looking at their personal papers; and you’re pitching all these crazy conspiracy theories. Why would you do things like that, Jack? Are you trying to fuck with us?”
“Well,” I said, “I guess that qualifies as getting straight to the point.”
Tommy started smiling again, but this time it was in a way I didn’t much like. I thought about asking him how he knew all that, but decided it would be pretty much a waste of time.
“You see, Jack, the way it works around here is that I’m responsible for looking after some things.”
“Things like what?”
“Money. Banking. Investments.” Tommy puffed at the Montecristo again and I started wishing I had taken him up on his suggestion that I have one, too. “You know the things I’m talking about.”
I didn’t know, but I nodded anyway.
“Those things get fucked up and some people start thinking that I fucked up. Suddenly that would make me a problem for them. And I don’t want anything like that to happen. I don’t want to be a problem for these people. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“I can understand that,” I said.
I still didn’t have the slightest idea what Tommy was talking about, but I figured that if I let him keep talking, eventually he would tell me.
“But you see here’s the thing, Jack. When Barry told me that he had brought you in on the whole deal, I started worrying.”
I stared at Tommy. “You mean Barry Gale?”
Tommy nodded.
“Barry told you what?”
“That he’d brought you in to help with some problems at the ABC.”
“Look, Tommy, I’ve seen Barry Gale exactly once in the last two years, and I promise you that he didn’t bring me into anything.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, Tommy. That’s so.”
“Well, Jack,” Tommy pulled a face. “I’m having a little trouble there.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Barry also told me something else.”
“Yeah?”
“He told me you were looking into how the ABC had been disbursing its funds recently, that you were looking for some assets of theirs that had gone missing.”
“Well, if you believed that, Tommy, you’re shit out of luck.”
Tommy took another puff and then he turned the cigar around and examined the ash that had built up at its tip as if he was looking for something that might be hidden in it.
I waited, but Tommy didn’t say anything else. The longer the silence went on, the more threatening it felt, so I started talking again.
“Look, Tommy, Barry Gale showed up here in Bangkok right out of the blue last week. He told me-”
“I know what he told you,” Tommy interrupted.
Then Tommy went back to his cigar again, leaving it entirely up to me to carry the conversation. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but not knowing what we were talking about was a considerable handicap.
I decided to give Tommy a little jab, just to see what developed. “So I guess it was your people who swung Howard off the Taksin Bridge, huh? And that would also no doubt be your people following me around town instead of the FBI or the CIA.”
I thought Tommy looked startled for a moment and then tried to cover it by drawing slowly on the cigar and carefully tapping off the ash against the bowl at his feet. It was a technique I had used on a few occasions myself when I wasn’t sure what was happening, so I thought I recognized a slight opening. I pressed him before he could regroup.
“Didn’t know I’d picked up on your flunkies, did you, Tommy? Maybe you’d better find yourself some higher quality guys.”
Now I could see clearly how surprised Tommy was. I figured I was on a roll and kept pushing.
“The real question, of course, is why you have guys tailing me in the first place. It wouldn’t be that you’ve lost Barry Gale, would it? That you think by sticking with me you can find him again? Because if it is, you’re shit out of luck there, too. I have no idea where Barry Gale is.”
Now Tommy was staring at me as if I had gone mad.
“What the fuck you talking about?” he snapped.
“I’m talking about you having me followed.”
Tommy looked disgusted. “What do you take me for, Jack? I’m not some criminal; I’m an official of the Thai government. If I wanted to know where you were, I’d just stick a bug up your ass.”
He snorted and started to turn away, but then he stopped. “What’s this shit about the FBI and the CIA?”
Okay, so maybe I had that part wrong. I tossed out a hapless-looking gesture to buy some time to decide where to go from here. Under the circumstances, it came easily.
“It was just a figure of speech,” I said. “I’ve had a feeling that someone is following me, but I don’t know who it is. I guess I’m still just spooked by Barry Gale showing up the way he did.”
“Yeah,” Tommy nodded, “he’s a spooky kind of guy.”
I could see that my mention of the CIA was still turning in Tommy’s head, so I tried to change the subject before he had any more time to think about it.
“I’m really enjoying your little visit, Tommy, but are you going to tell me anytime soon what it is you want?”
“Yeah, Jack, I’ll tell you right now.”
Tommy bent over and punched out his cigar in the celadon bowl with a half-dozen stabs that looked just as harsh and brutal as he obviously wanted them to. Then he took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hands, and stood up.
“Forget about the ABC, Jack. Back off. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not involved with the ABC, Tommy, and I’m not helping Barry Gale. There’s nothing for me to back off from.”
Tommy turned and walked out of the living room and I followed him into as the entry hall. He opened the front door, but then he stopped and looked back at me over his shoulder.
“That’s not the way I hear it, Jack, and I usually hear things right. I’ve warned you to back off and I’m not going to warn you again. Get as far away from the ABC as you can. Believe me, it’s the only thing you can do now.”
I was in some kind of game that nobody wanted to tell me the rules for and I felt like a fool. I didn’t like being a fool and something in Tommy’s tone made me angry.
“Yeah? And what are you going to do if I don’t back off, Tommy? Kill me?”
“You know better than that, Jack. Thais are gentle people with peaceful hearts. We’re not violent like you Americans are.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Then, on the other hand, you know Bangkok, too, Jack.”
Tommy let his eyes hang on me through the pale blue haze of cigar smoke drifting in the apartment.
“It’s tough to get much done without occasionally having somebody shot.”
In the dim light and still air the cigar smoke began breaking into long, spiraling wisps, elegant little whorls that floated gracefully away into the darkness at the ceiling.
“Good night, Jack. Thanks for the cigar.”