Jake Needham - Killing Plato

When CW and I met at the Paradise Bar-back in a time that now felt at least a century ago although it had really been just a couple of weeks-he told me he was staying at the Holiday Inn. If CW was in Phuket now, and I had no doubt he was, I would bet my last dollar he was still there. Besides, the Holiday Inn was always the first place you looked for Americans in Phuket.

I had barely driven up the hotel’s circular driveway and climbed out of the Cherokee when I heard his voice.

“Goddamn, Slick,” he bellowed. “What the fuck you doing here?”

I followed the sound across the open-air lobby and found CW nursing what looked like a cup of coffee in an otherwise empty bar. When I walked over and sat down across from him I saw he was puffy and drawn. He looked like he had aged ten years since I had seen him last.

“What’s wrong, CW? You look like somebody shot your dog.”

“I ain’t got a dog.”

I nodded at that, waiting, but CW didn’t say anything else.

“No progress on Karsarkis?” I prompted.

“Ah, son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I am so damned tired of that little pissant I’d like to go in and just string him up on a palm tree. Then at least I could get home to Dallas.”

I raised my eyebrows at the implication, but CW was staring into his coffee cup and didn’t notice. Besides, I doubted irony was a big part of his conversational repertoire.

“Forget about Karsarkis for a couple of hours then,” I said. “You like barbeque?”

CW looked at me as if I had just begun speaking in tongues.

“What are you talking about, boy?”

“Don’t call me boy, you redneck motherfucker. Now do you want to eat barbeque with me or don’t you?”

CW grinned and spread his palms. “Shoot,” he said. “Why not?”

The Cherokee was still in the hotel driveway exactly where I had left it. CW and I got in and I drove back to the main highway and headed south.

Don’s Barbeque was at the far south end of the island, almost all the way down to the yacht harbor at Chalong Bay. The building itself looked as if it might once have been a gas station and it sat in solitary splendor alongside the potholed asphalt of an uninspiring rural highway. Its nearest neighbor was a mosque. I seriously doubted very many barbeque joints in the entire world could make a similar claim.

A tile-roofed pavilion open on three sides fronted the building. It was furnished with poured-concrete picnic tables with matching concrete benches. In a modest nod to graciousness, blue plastic tablecloths covered at least parts of some of the concrete tables. Several electric fans hung from the ceiling struggling valiantly against the heat and humidity, but about all they succee?l they sded in doing was pushing the heavy air around a little.

“Well, goddamn it all to hell,” CW said as we sat down. “Looks just like home.”

I wasn’t absolutely sure whether CW was joking or not.

A young girl came over to the table carrying two thick plastic folders. CW ordered a beer and I asked for an iced tea. When the girl went off to get our drinks, we leafed through the folders.

“They really got all this shit?” CW asked.

“They do,” I assured him.

“Enchiladas, tacos, tamales, barbequed chicken, rack of ribs. Man, oh man, Slick. This is better than getting laid.”

The girl brought our drinks and I ordered. Then I looked around while CW made up his mind. The place was fairly crowded. Although there were a couple of women who appeared to be local girlfriends or maybe even wives, most of the customers were middle-aged Caucasian males. At one table were four men I had no doubt were Americans. They were big men: big arms, big legs, big shoulders, and big wristwatches. They had sunny, open faces with deep tan lines, and wore faded golf shirts with jeans or khakis and scuffed boots. All of their arms seemed unnaturally hairy and, deeply bleached by the sun, the hair enveloped their forearms like loosely woven blankets. They looked like oil-field workers on R amp;R, or maybe military or cops. I hoped they were oil-field workers.

When the girl had taken our orders and left, CW folded his arms on the edge of the table and leaned toward me.

“So what have you got to tell me, Slick?”

I looked around Don’s in mock surprise. “You mean I give you all this and you want more?”

“Don’t try my patience, boy.”

“I thought I told you not to call me boy.”

We stared at each other a while after that and I could feel the testosterone levels climbing. Then we both laughed a little and everything settled down.

“You enjoying yourself here in Thailand, CW?”

“Yeah, I like Thais. They’re primitive as hell. They talk to spirits and dead chickens, shit like that, but they’re okay.”

“You ever make it back up to Soi Katoey again?”

I thought I saw a touch of caution in CW’s eyes. “Why would you ask that?”

“Just making conversation.”

“Well then, Slick, you better watch out how you go about doing that, you hear me?”

There was a pause as two motorbikes passed on the highway, both in need of muffler jobs.

“I wasn’t questioning your manhood, CW, I was just asking what you’d been up to since I saw you last.”

CW looked at me for a while, and then he sighed heavily in what seemed to me to be a genuine mixture of disgust and exasperation.

“Ah, I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been running around like a two-dicked rooster with a key to the henhouse.”

I laughed in spite of myself, but CW didn’t even smile.

“Nobody seems to know jack shit about what they really want us to do with Karsarkis,” he continued. “They run me one way and then they run me another. I just wished they’d make up their damned minds and we could get on?could gewith it.”

I let a moment pass, and then because it seemed as good a time as any to do it I laid out the question I had brought CW here to ask in the first place.

“Did your men kill Mike O’Connell?”

CW looked at me without answering. I tried to read his eyes, looking for surprise, but they had gone flat.

“Well, did they?” I asked again.

“Son, you watch your mouth or I’m gonna kick your goddamned ass.”

“Somebody shot him, CW, somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. Local hitters don’t use silenced sniper rifles. A couple of wild shots off the back of a motorcycle with a handgun is the best they can manage.”

“And that’s why you think it was my boys who killed O’Connell?”

“Marcus York was in Bangkok the day O’Connell was shot. Do you want me to believe that was just a coincidence?”

“I don’t give two shits what you believe. You can go fuck yourself right up your sorry ass with a garden rake for all I care.”

The air was so heavy it felt almost solid. I could probably have reached right out with my hand and ripped away a piece of it. Sweat ran in tiny rivulets behind my ears and down my back.

“I know what’s going down here, CW. I have friends at the NIA. They laid it all out for me.”

“What the hell is the NIA?”

“The National Intelligence Agency. The Thai CIA.”

“Well, whoopee do.”

“They showed me transcripts of the intercepts they’ve been running of your email.”

“Intercepts of my email ?”

“Not your personal email; the communications between your operational headquarters here and Washington.”

“Are you pulling my pecker, son?”

“Nope, they got it all, CW. They know what your instructions are.”

“Well then, son, maybe you better tell me, because I ain’t all that clear what those instructions are myself.”

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”