“Maybe not the inside man, but the inside woman who knows the story.”
Colonel Pratt saw no need to be more specific.
“Okay, so I get her an appointment with the Black Cat. Does that mean Kati cancels the run on Sunday? Because that would be fine with me, if you know what I mean. I’m still recovering from the last 10K. I got a cold sweat with those guys at the train station. My legs are still sore from the last run. They should’ve caught me. I don’t know how I got away.”
“It’s hard to know. What I do know is, a woman like her runs on hope. That’s longer than a 10K. She’s on Udom’s personal treadmill, and that means her marathon never ends. No matter how fast she runs, she never gets square with him. Hope is all she has left to hold on to.”
“That’s all any of us has.”
Hope, Calvino thought, has an on-and-off relationship with the word “square.” No matter where a man looks, geometry between people runs in odd angles, almost no perpendicular lines, with the result that “hope” can sound like no more than the name of an old ghost town or an actor who died a long time ago.
“You’ll set it up?” asked the Colonel. “And you might ask Rob Osborne if Somchai Rungsukal is a name that rings a bell. Someone in Thailand had a reason to have him killed. Ask him if it was Somchai. Then ask the Black Cat. One of them will be lying.”
Calvino thought about the Black Cat stalking a mouse, backing it into a corner, playing with it, until playtime was over and dinnertime had begun. Catching her in the small hollow of that in-between time was the challenge.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Calvino.
NINETEEN
George Orwell’s Favorite Bookshop
GEORGETTE HEYER’S The Toll-Gate lay open on the reception desk as Calvino walked into the guesthouse. She had to be a Georgette Heyer fan like Ratana, thought Calvino. A lit cigarette burned in a glass ashtray. Down the short corridor he saw a light under the washroom door. He leaned over and took his key off the hook. The sound of a toilet flushing followed him up the first steps on the three-flight walk to his room.
He used the key to open the door and quietly shut the door behind him as he entered the dark room. In the shadows Rob rocked back and forth, his arms folded over his chest as if to comfort himself. He’d pushed the chair in front of the window, his eyes fixed on the windowless brick wall of the building next door. Calvino placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
He felt Rob’s shrug in the darkness.
“Weird shit. You see it, right?”
Eyes glazed, wide open, seeing stuff on the wall that came from his mind and thinking it real, he looked up at Calvino, but in the darkness it was hard to make out the expression on his face. Calvino walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, taking off his jacket. He smoothed it and carefully laid it beside him. He took the cap off a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink.
“You want something to drink?”
Rob was non-responsive, eyes paranoid.
“You don’t look so good.”
“I’m not giving you any, so don’t ask,” said Rob.
“I’m not asking, but what aren’t you giving?”
Rob’s altered mind had been enhanced, and it wasn’t from whiskey. Whatever he’d taken, it didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. Paranoia and drugs go together like rum and coke, Calvino thought. The classic sign of someone high is their illusion that someone is going to take away their drugs. Calvino sipped his whiskey.
“I’m not going to take your stuff, Rob.”
“How can I trust you? You killed those two men.”
“Somchai Rungsukal sent them because you double-crossed him. That’s how I see it. What do you see on the wall outside?”
Fear showed everywhere on Rob. In his eyes, in the twitch of his mouth. His mind was tricking him, telling him the things he saw were slowly cutting through the window pane, would enter the room and surround him, and he couldn’t move. Rob was both a man terrified of leaving a shabby room and a man terrified to stay in the room. Fear pinned him to the chair.
“You know Somchai.”
Calvino looked for a reaction.
Rob stopped rocking and extended his hand.