Lawrence Osborne - Hunters in the Dark

He left them there and went up to his apartment and later, still curious, he stepped out to the balcony and looked at the two heads in the pool. He had formed the unconscious idea that the Englishman had money locked up in his unit, money that was in some way connected to the dead American, and he was certain that he could be blackmailed or intimidated to surrender it to him without too much fuss. But all was uncertain and vague. He didn’t know either way; it was a shrewd and logical guess relative to the circumstances. He obviously had enough money for clothes at Vong and an apartment at Colonial Mansions and he had no passport. There had to be reasons for these things.

—

He made up his mind to get to know them, but in a very casual and unobtrusive way. The next day he watched them go out together and he again sat in the lobby with his bottle of Sang Som and waited for the boy to come back to the Mansions. He did so after lunch. Once again, Davuth raised his glass and because it was the second time the boy stopped and came over with a lopsided smile and cocked his head and said, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“No, sir,” Davuth said in his gimcrack English. “But I saw you last night with lovely lady friend.”

“You did, yes. But do we know you?”

“Me? I think not.”

“I just wondered—”

“Have a drink. I am all alone in this Mansions and always drink alone in this lobby. I have my own bottle, as you can see.”

“I don’t know,” Robert said.

“Sit and have a drink. Why not?”

There was a playful finality to those last two words and so Robert gave in, slightly curious anyway. His instinct told him that the offer was best not avoided or refused rudely. The man had level, steely eyes that gave off an indistinct heat.

“All right,” he said, “I will.”

“Please,” Davuth shouted across the room in Khmer, “one more glass for my friend.”

It was brought.

Davuth poured, and then used the tongs in the ice bucket sitting on the table next to him.

“I like mine icy cold — and you?”

“I like it cold too.”

“My name Davuth. And you?”

“Simon.”

“It’s nice American name.”

“English.”

“You holiday or business?”

“Holiday,” Robert said. Then, “Well, business too. I am thinking of living here.”

“Very nice and welcome. Well, chin.”

“Chin-chin.”

They tapped glasses and sipped.

“You look like a bright young fella,” Davuth said.

“I don’t know about that.”

“You found nice Khmer girl all right.”

“I don’t know how.”

Davuth gave him his brightest smile.

“You are young, handsome. They will love it.”

“Are you staying here?” Robert asked, to change the subject.

“I am tour guide. I have a deal to stay here.”

“A tour guide?”

“I know everything.”

“Everything?”

“If you want Angkor Wat, I can take you. Vietnam, I can take you.”

“That must be good business.”

“Yes, sir. I can take them to every place and translate for them. This is why I wait here in the lobby.”

“I see.”

Robert accepted a second shot almost at once.

Davuth said, “I wait here and they come and find me! The Americans are the best. They pay upfront — unlike the Chinese who pay downback. It’s my joke. They pay after and never happy. What about you?”

“I don’t really take tours. I’m sorry.”

“But you will change your mind one day.”

“I will?”

“You will. You will take a tour somewhere with Davuth. It’s the best one you can have. And it’s romantic for your girlfriend.”

“She probably wouldn’t find it romantic.”

“Oh, we’ll talk. I have a lot of options. Good price for you. Very romantic.”

They drank on, and Robert began to like him. He was unlike any Khmer he had met so far, rough, fast-talking, manly in his way. He seemed quite ancient although not yet out of his fifties. The eyes and their crow’s-feet had gone ancient and shriveled and yet they were also intensely alive and witty and through them Robert felt himself mocked, but gaily and without deep judgment or animosity. Davuth, he felt, was much deeper than himself because he had lived a much more dangerous life. The gift of a dangerous life: swiftness of thought, a fine capacity for hatred. You didn’t meet that type in developed areas anymore. In rural southern Italy you might, wandering the roads. You might in Serbia or the darker French towns, where strange military types still surface for a moment, veterans of wars they won’t admit to. You might come across one in the poorer islands in Greece, mending nets. But Davuth, although Robert didn’t know it, came from a recent war and it was a native one. He had come through it and he had learned how human beings worked on the inside. He looked right through Robert and into empty space and appeared unsurprised at how transparent an educated man can be, how docile and primitive and ignorant. There was no respect in his attitude at all. Davuth, for his part, had seen educated people begging for their lives from armed illiterate children by burning roadsides and he had not forgotten the looks on their faces, the way they had tried to explain why their palms had no blisters. It was one of those pathetic things you never forget. The children would listen, uncomprehending, then shoot them in the head with Kalashnikovs and laugh as the bodies went into convulsions. All that education and restraint for nothing. A demented child can blow all that classical music and Marx and mathematics out of you in a split second, just because he feels like watching your convulsions. Look to your own salvation, the Buddha said. He wouldn’t look out for yours, there was just yourself and your inner compass and the ability to plan ahead.

“All the same,” he said, “I can fix thing for you around town if you tell me what you need. I’m a fixer as well as a tour guide. Everyone here needs a fixer — I mean every barang like yourself.”

“You can give me your card if you like.”

“They’re up in my room. But I can give you my number.”

Robert hesitated for a moment but took it down anyway. There was no harm in it and one did need a fixer. It would be doing a hard-up local a favor if he could ever afford to do it. What would it cost, anyway? Fifty dollars? He could do that at some point. He even asked Davuth point-blank now what a trip down to the Mekong near the Viet border would be and the guide poured him another drink and just said that he could give him sixty for the day and his meals and all would be fine with him. It wasn’t much, he added, to take the girl on a romantic trip and there was a temple down there that no one knew about, the temple of Phnom Bayong, near the village of Kirivong. They could hike there for hours and look down on the Mekong and feel like they had come somewhere different.

Robert began to agree with him, though outwardly refusing.

“I’ll run it by the girl,” he said.

“I think that girl — that girl will say yes.”

The Englishman thanked him for the drinks — it was far too much — and said he might see him later.

“You might see me later,” Davuth said. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“Then I will.”

Robert went up to his room, drew the curtains and lay on the bed in a slight stupor. He hadn’t realized that Sang Som was so strong even with ice. Despite the AC he felt hot and damp and something in the chance encounter had rattled him. The fingers, perhaps, fat and powerful and elegantly assured. The eyes full of humor and doubt. An hour later, he went to meet a Vietnamese businessman he was giving lessons to and didn’t return to Colonial Mansions until nightfall. This time it was Sophal who was waiting for him in the lobby and he told her about the tour guide he had met there a few hours earlier.