The waitress came back just then and saved Tay from having to respond, which was his good fortune since he didn’t have the slightest idea what to say and almost certainly would have ended up saying something he would later regret.
“One more milk, Khun John?” she asked. “Milk make you strong, yes? Give power, na kha.”
From the waitress’s smile and her manner toward August, it appeared now that Gunter was more than welcome to stay in Berlin pretty much as long as he liked.
“Mai krap,” August said to the girl. “Drink much milk, still have no power.”
Noi laughed and August joined in. Then he stood up, pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket, peeled off a few, and pushed them into her hand.
“Khop khun mak krap,” he said, bending down and kissing her on one cheek.
Noi brought the palms of her hands together in front of her face in the graceful gesture Thais call a wai. “You have good heart, I think, Khun John.”
Tay wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it sounded like an excellent thing to have and he really did hope Noi was right about that.
“Come on, kids,” August said to Tay and Cally. “Let’s take a little walk.”
Tay didn’t see why they needed to do that, but Cally pushed the files and pictures back into the envelope, picked up the camera, and slid out of the booth. She stood up, so Tay did, too. They followed August out of Shenanigan’s and a short distance up the main road where he crossed over and headed down a narrow lane lined with bars. They were all closed now and looked tired and squalid in the bright morning sun. Tay could see the ocean a hundred yards straight ahead and he wondered if they were going somewhere in particular or if August had just gotten a sudden urge to work on his suntan.
Cally must have been wondering the same thing.
“Where are we going, John?” she asked.
“I’d rather finish this conversation outdoors, darling. If it’s all the same to you.”
Tay almost asked why, but Cally just nodded as if that actually made good sense, so he didn’t. Instead, he trailed along silently while he thought back to his first meeting with Susan Hoi, the one when she told him what she had found in her autopsy of Elizabeth Munson.
There were marks on her wrists and ankles consistent with restraints, Dr. Hoi had said. At first I thought that might suggest sadomasochistic sexual activity. On the other hand, her killer may have snapped the handcuffs around both her wrists and ankles for the purpose of killing her.
Handcuffs? Tay had asked.
Yes. My guess is they were the plastic disposal kind.
Like the cuffs police keep in their cars?
Yes, Dr. Hoi had said again and, as he remembered it now, without the slightest hesitation. Quite similar, or even possibly identical to those.
Tay and Cally followed August across Beach Road and out onto a narrow strip of gray-brown mud that people in Pattaya apparently thought was a beach. An elderly woman in a worn blue sarong hovered protectively over several lines of green-and-yellow beach chairs standing in perfect ranks underneath a stand of palm trees. The roll of bills reappeared in August’s hand and he passed several to the old woman. She waied him deeply, bending at her thick waist as well as she could, and then melted away into the trees.
August selected a chair and sat down. Cally took the one to his left and Tay the one to his right. Almost immediately, August slipped out of his loafers, peeled off his socks and shoved them inside his shoes, then reached back and pushed them underneath the chair. He stretched his long legs and wiggled his feet into the sand. When he had them exactly the way he wanted, he leaned back in the chair, knitted his fingers together behind his head, and closed his eyes.
Tay looked across at Cally. She appeared to be studying the ocean and didn’t look as if she were going to break the silence. Tay was on the verge of saying something himself just to get the conversation back on track again when August, his eyes still closed, spoke up.
“You don’t like me, do you, Sam?”
Tay’s first instinct, of course, was to lie politely. Then he considered the possibility of retreating into euphemism. Neither choice was particularly appealing to him and that didn’t leave any alternative he could think of offhand, except of course the truth.
“No,” he said. “Not really.”
“You got any idea why?”
That seemed a strange thing for August to ask and Tay didn’t quite know how to respond. As it turned out, it wasn’t really necessary for him to respond since August seemed quite happy to continue the conversation without his involvement.
“Because, if you don’t, I can tell you. You think that Cally and I-”
“Now boys,” Cally interrupted, “don’t be that way.”
Tay shifted his eyes to her. She looked like a lonely sea captain’s wife searching the far horizon for her 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.