Lawrence Block - The Scoreless Thai (aka Two For Tanner)

“Later.”

“Like a king’s ransom.”

“Or the ransom of a Senegalese princess.”

“Huh?”

“Later. Let’s move.”

We moved. Tuppence took one sack of jewels, and Dhang carried the other. I twisted the commandant’s arm behind his back in a hammerlock and propelled him in front of me, the muzzle of the pistol against the side of his neck. The fight had gone out of him now. With his men locked up, his prisoners liberated, and his jewels gone from his desk, he had lost all will to resist.

We located the back door. I hesitated in front of it, certain that we would open it to find ourselves surrounded by soldiers. There couldn’t be too many of them, I decided. It seemed unlikely that too many men would be garrisoned at Tao Dan, and with several dead and a dozen locked inside Dhang’s cell and more fighting the fires that the old man had started, I didn’t expect too much of a welcoming committee. Dhang thrust the door open, and we went through it.

There was no one there. The noise from the other side of the building was deafening – shouts, screams, the staccato snapping of small arms fire. From the street we could see flames leaping everywhere. The fire was spreading throughout Tao Dan.

I tried to remember the old man’s map. Off to the right, then to the left on the long street that ran to the river. Which was right and which was left? My head was mixing things up. I started in the wrong direction, then caught myself and turned around.

“Do we have to take this pig with us, Yevan?”

Dhang gestured at the commandant with his pistol.

“He will slow us down.”

“He could be a valuable hostage. If we run into an armed patrol, his presence might save us.”

“Make him move faster.”

We hurried onward. The race to the river bank remains a blur in my mind. The fever seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Colors were unusually bright. My body took one path and my mind another, and I seemed to be racing along without paying any real attention to what I was doing. My head was overflowing with unexplained questions. Why had Tuppence and the quartet been kidnapped? Why were the men killed? Why was Tuppence kept alive? How did the jewels enter into it all? Who had stolen them, and for what purpose?

Somehow we found the right street and followed it to the river. I remember the whole thing very imperfectly, and the memory is mostly sensory – the heat of the road beneath my feet, burning through the thin soles of the sandals, the sun hot overhead, the furious pounding of my heart. There was no one behind us, but I was fairly certain that pursuit would come before very long, and so we ran, out of the village and past the stray huts on its outskirts, and onward to the bank of the river.

It was a broad river, the waters dark and muddy, the current swift, forming little whirlpools here and there. The bank was dense with undergrowth, reeds and bulrushes and sprawling vines and shrubs. We made our way along the river’s edge and found the boat just where the old man had said it was. I would never have found it if I had not been looking for it. It was completely concealed among the reeds.

We removed the camouflage. Off in the distance small fishing boats sailed upon the river. I studied our craft. It was not the rowboat I had suspected but was more along the lines of the dugout canoes of the American Indians. A very large tree had been cut down and split in half, and a section of trunk some twelve feet long had been hollowed out, evidently by fire, with the charred center of the tree carefully removed until only a shell remained.

Tuppence studied the boat thoughtfully. “We don’t need him any more,” she said, pointing to the commandant. “He’s a good old hostage, but we have no use for him now.”

“We could take him.”

“Really, Evan.” She was swinging with her English accent now. “There’s scarcely room for three of us, and we have the jewels as well. We needn’t waste space on a rapist and a murderer. He made me watch when he killed those four boys. He had their heads cut off. Rivers of blood.”

“So?”

“He’s had a long life. I think it’s time it ended.”

I still had the dagger. I handed it to her. “Want to kill him yourself?” I asked. And she, of course, was supposed to do as the girls always do in the movies, clutching the dagger, studying it in horror, and then muttering something like Oh, let him live with himself, that will be punishment enough for him or Oh, no, I couldn’t, I couldn’t or No, it’s wrong, there must be an end to all of this wanton slaughter or If we kill him, then we are no better than he is or any of those lines.

But Tuppence hadn’t read the script. “I’d bloody well love to,” she said, and fastened her small black hand around the butt of the dagger and advanced on the cowering commandant. He shrank from her; he seemed as much dismayed at a woman’s being the instrument of his death as he did at dying in the first place. He let out a rather pathetic moan, and Tuppence sank the knife into his soft, round belly and ripped him wide open.

I threw up, but I think it was more the fever than the spectacle that caused it. The commandant made unpleasant noises for a time and then quietly died. Tuppence and Dhang helped me into the dugout. There was a single oar inside it, and we used it to push the boat free of the bank and out onto the waterway.

I sat in the stern, Dhang perched in the bow, and Tuppence was between us. Dhang had taken the oar and wanted to know in which direction we ought to proceed.

“Go with the current,” I said, pointing. “We’ll go that way whether we want to or not, so we might as well paddle in that direction.”

Tuppence wanted to know what we were saying, so I translated for her. Then Dhang asked what I was saying to the girl. I could see a potentially horrible situation developing, with myself in the middle of it. I told Tuppence in English that Dhang did not speak English and that I would relay to her whatever was important of my discussions with him but that we would all go crazy if I translated everything. Then I told Dhang approximately the same thing in Siamese, and then I leaned back in the dugout and watched birds diving for fish in the river and thought that perhaps Esperanto wasn’t such a terrible idea after all.

I took a fresh piece of betel for myself and offered one to Dhang, but he said his slice had not yet lost its flavor. I popped the betel into my mouth. Tuppence wanted to know what the hell it was, and I told her.

“Man, you’ve really gone native,” she said.

“It’s not bad once you get used to it.”

“Is that how come your teeth are black?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be able to get them clean later on?”

“I hope so.”

“What I could really use is a cigarette. I don’t suppose you have one?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“I’m hip, but you used to carry cigarettes for me.”

“This is a little different.”

“I know it, baby. I know a girl who’s a betel nut. She’s crazy for Ringo Starr. Sorry about that. I’ll try it, what the hell.”

I gave her a piece of betel, and she chewed it and spat in the river. We were altogether a charming little group.

“You look terrible,” she said. “Is that sunburn or from being sick?”

“A little of both,” I said. And I told her, too, about the cosmetic properties of tobacco juice. She thought that was very interesting but would be more interested personally in finding a way to reverse the process.

“What happens now, baby?”

“We just keep sailing. Later on we might be able to catch some fish for dinner, but meanwhile I think we should keep moving as fast as we can.”