Gaijin Cowgirl (20): Drinking games

"I guess he ain't so shady...on the outside."

(Previous chapter, or start at the beginning.)

Suki slurped tom yum soup and kept an eye on her friend across the table. Val looked as though she’d seen a ghost.

“Congressman Fred Benson,” Muddy said to the table, to no one.

Jiraporn asked, “Val, is he looking for you?”

“Who else knows we’re here?” Simon wondered.

“A friend…” Jira’s voice faltered as she noted the distress on Val’s face. “A friend at the interior ministry told me this morning. Val; Val?”

“My dad knew I was interested in Thailand,” she said. “I had told him Maxwell thought the map led to a site on one of the borders.”

“But why’s he here?” Muddy asked.

“To protect you,” Suki said.

“There may be another reason,” Jiraporn suggested. “I went to the interior ministry to ask about Jeb Maxwell. A check with customs shows that no one by that name has entered Thailand in the past seven days, which means that Maxwell is traveling on a fake passport.”

“What’s that got to do with my father?” Val asked.

“My contact has been an official in customs for a very long time. He is a friend of my father’s. He told me the name Maxwell meant something to him, but at first he could not remember what. He went back to check his records from long ago. These are private notes, not official documents. What finally stirred his memory was seeing the name Fred Benson on the recent VIP list at customs.”

“My father said they were rivals,” Val said. “Something to do with Air America. Maxwell was liaison for the CIA and got involved with local drug lords. My father worked for US AID.”

“Perhaps they became rivals, but for a time during the war in Vietnam, they cooperated,” Jiraporn said.

“What do you mean?” Val asked.

“Your father was working on Maxwell’s behalf to arrange for a smuggling operation.”

“Christ,” Muddy muttered. “Smuggling what?”

“Antiquities,” Jiraporn said. “Treasure. Supposedly to go on a cultural road show to Manila.”

“Oh my God,” Val said, feeling nauseous. “My father knew. He’s known all along.” She stood. “Sorry, excuse me.”

“Val—” Suki started.

Val fled the room. The others stared after her for a moment.

“What do you make of it?” Muddy said, his voice a whisper.

Jiraporn folded her arms and stared out the restaurant’s door. “My father’s friend, when he heard me ask about Maxwell, made some phone calls. He told me that, out of the blue, a US Congressman had entered the country and registered with Thai officials. Said to be traveling on unofficial business, just a holiday. Didn’t use the diplomatic channel. The ministry notes these things but doesn’t interfere. After all, we welcome tourists, particularly wealthy ones. But my contact, when he saw the name, he remembered a meeting long ago with this man Benson. Again, just a coincidence, a curiosity. But then the same morning, I come in asking about this other man, Maxwell. And naturally he decided there was no coincidence at all.”

“If it isn’t a coincidence, what is it?” Suki asked.

“Maybe he is concerned about his daughter,” Lotdorn said.

“Yeah, but how does he know she’s here?” Simon countered. “She may have said something about Thailand, but as far as he knows, Val’s still in Hong Kong, right?”

Muddy ran a hand over his shaved skull. “Has Val told us everything she knows?”

“Of course she has,” Suki insisted. “She’s not a liar.”

“Maybe not a liar,” Muddy said, “but maybe not telling us the whole truth. Jira, your friend at the ministry – now that he smells some rotten bizzo, what’s he going to do? Is this going to make trouble for us?”

“I don’t know. It depends on whether anyone knows about this map – which I didn’t mention to my father’s friend, of course. If not, then Maxwell and Benson, whatever his connection, don’t know where it is either. It doesn’t really change anything if all we intend to do is locate the gold and then publicize its history.”

Simon added, “And if someone does know about the gold, then they would’ve taken it years ago, or whatever.”

“Depends if they had access to it, given the area’s lawlessness,” Muddy said. “This is bad, Jira. We’re getting a hell of a lot of attention.”

“I better go make sure she’s all right,” Suki said.

She found Val outside on the street, heedless of the noisy traffic, the fumes and dust, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“Val…”

“That bastard!”

“You don’t know…”

“Fast Freddie. Freddie the Fucker. My father. God damn.”

Suki cradled her and gently drew her back toward the hotel’s quiet lobby. “Come on, Val…that’s it.”

Suki guided Val up the stairs to the American’s room on the second floor. She sat Val down on the bed.

“You don’t know he’s a bad man,” Suki said.

“He held back on me.”

“He told you he knew Maxwell.”

“Maxwell said I didn’t have the whole story, remember? Why didn’t Daddy tell me that the two of them had some gold smuggling operation? Just what the hell was he doing in Tokyo last month anyway?”

“He came to see you.”

“Yeah, and what else?”

* * *

Val didn’t stay long; the shabby room was too claustrophobic. Time to move on. Shop lights provided uneven illumination. The sidewalk was treacherous, with upturned bricks and gaping holes that ushered up fecund smells. Val walked with her head down and her hands in her pockets, getting angrier with each step. She must have traveled for nearly half an hour when she came to the boxing campus. The compound’s lights shed square patterns across the dark lawn. The gym would be shut now, the students sharing a meal or watching a movie in the communal hall.

By the entrance stood a miniature temple raised on a pole like a birdhouse. It was the compound’s spirit house. Offerings of fruit and flowers lay among tiny porcelain figures inside, while a stick of incense burned low.

Val crossed the dark garden for the banyan tree. She sat facing the road, where no one from the compound could see her, and stared at the spirit house.

Freddie the Fucker… “Hell, even your daddy and me was partners for a time.”

Snowflake…

“You know who he is?”

“Personally. And snowflake, I’m sorry to see you do too.”

Val remembered what she had read about those spirit houses, the phra phum. The offerings and the spirit house’s location made it a most auspicious place for spirits, to keep them from causing mischief in your home.

“I guess he ain’t so shady…on the outside.”

Her household sure needed help against troublemaking spirits, she thought.

She fingered the brooch on the silver chain, Daddy’s sentimental gift at Narita. She yanked it off, breaking the hook. She opened the brooch and looked again at her baby photo. What is it that you didn’t tell me, Daddy?

She had been a fool to think she could have simply made everything better. You don’t just settle accounts like those he had amassed. What about Tyler? What about her mother? He’d done it again, hypnotizing her with smooth talk over dinner at the embassy.

To hell with him.

Val hurled the brooch across the garden. She sat there for a long time, sometimes crying, before she realized what she now had to do. It was very dark by the time she returned to the hotel and wrote out a letter.

* * *

Beyond the door came the muted sound of a war movie. Val knocked twice. Pause. She knocked again and heard shuffling. The door opened.

“Can I come in?”

Muddy nodded and she trailed after him, careful to close the door quietly.

He was wearing his Wallabies shirt and boxers. He quickly put on his trousers as she sat on the bed with the wax treasure map in her hands. When he picked up the remote control, she said, “Leave the volume on.”

Muddy put the remote down. “Suddenly we don’t want to be overheard.”

“Jira leave you her maps?”

“Yes. I suppose you want a look.”

“Don’t you?”

He nodded once, curtly, and leaned beneath his bed and pulled out the interior ministry’s scrolls. He spread out one of Kanchanaburi Province.

Val placed the treasure map beside it. “Show me the exact location,” she said.

Muddy frowned. “Why are we doing this now, Val?”

“Because it’s time we pinpoint where we’re going.”

“In the middle of the bloody night with the television on.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “You’re still angry about your father. I think we should wait.”

“C’mon, Muddy, let’s put these maps together.”

“I don’t trust you, Val, it’s as simple as that.” He rolled up the geological survey.

“What—”

“I’m here to find that gold, Valerie.”

“And I’m not?”

“Sure, but why?”

“What are you saying?”

“I think you’re doing a runner on us, Val.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she sniffed.

“I think this whole thing is a bloody set up between you and your father. That’s why you say he can’t help launder the money. Oh, yes, act surprised.”

“Then I guess I should go.” She snapped up the map.

“I don’t like being used.”

“Christ, Muddy…”

“Don’t Christ me. You’re condescending, you know that? Typical seppo.”

“A what?”

“A seppo. Septic, septic tank – a fucking Yank. When things don’t go your way you act all high and mighty, but you’re no better than the rest of us.”

“Fine.” As she crossed the room she stopped by the mini-bar fridge and opened it. “I don’t know about you, Muddy, but I’ve had a pretty rough day.” She grabbed several small bottles of whisky, gin and amaretto, and plunked them onto the desk. “Care to join me for a drink?”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She peeled open a vial of scotch. “I’m guessing you take yours neat.” She found two tumblers and emptied the bottle into them.

“You really are a manipulative bitch,” he fumed, his eyes fixated on the drinks.

“Here,” she said, handing him a tumbler, “you can handle just one little drink, right? Just one?”

He wavered as the drink’s bouquet touched his nostrils. He stared long and hard at the copper liquid. “If you are trying to get me to pass out, I better warn you, I won’t fall first.”

“You’ll fall hardest.”

“Don’t try it on.”

She threw back her drink and poured herself another. “Coward.”

“Right.” He drank his scotch. His face glowed. “Satisfied?”

“Hardly.” She filled his glass. “Drink, you goddamn lush.”

He slapped her. “Don’t you call me that. You got no right.”

She slapped him back. “Drink.” He swung but she dodged his palm. “Drink!” She swallowed two fingers of whisky and ripped the top off a third bottle. Muddy tried to grab it and they stood for a minute, shoulders touching, fighting over the bottle. He finally pushed her away. His hand clenched the bottle. He stared at her in hatred and drank it all in one.

“Now get out,” he said.

“We’ve still got an entire shelf to go.”

Muddy seethed with anger, but slowly, like a beast hypnotized by song, he allowed her fingers to wrap around his own, grasping the bottle’s neck. She sat down on the bed, guiding him to sit beside her. She let her knee touch his as she poured him another drink. His eyes scoured her body, and she returned his gaze with a smile. Cowboy had taught her how to use backwash to mask teensy sips while pouring her clients big portions; how, with just a smile and a touch on the knee, to make a man think she genuinely found him desirable.

As he grew drunker, she let him hold her hand, convinced she had put it in his lap in the first place.

Val and Muddy were soon sitting on the sofa like lovers, knees touching, his hand caressing the small of her back as she rested her head on his shoulder. The tabletop was buried beneath a phalanx of empties surrounding a quickly depleting, full-sized bottle of Johnny Walker which he had pulled from the nightstand drawer, admitting he had bought it just in case of a situation like this.

He eyed her greedily if not sharply. “You’re so beautiful,” he sighed. “Dunno how a looker like you got into this with me…d’you think a guy like me and you could…could ever….”

“Who knows?”

“Esactly. Who knows. Cheers.”

Then she said, “Let’s see those maps again.”

He perked up. “Eh, what you wanna look at them for?”

She leaned against him. “It’s our secret.”

“You doing a runner, Val?”

“Muddy…” She let her fingers run up his arm. “Maybe I’m thinking about it, okay? You got me. Smart guy.”

“I knew it.”

“But I need you, Muddy.” She moved her lips close to his ear. “Wouldn’t this be easier with just two of us? We don’t want to put the others in danger, do we?”

“No.”

“You and me, Muddy. We make a good team, don’t we?”

He touched her face. “Christ you’re beautiful.” He moved to kiss her. She turned away but let him nestle against her neck and breathe in her hair.

“Let’s see where we’re going, okay?” He still hesitated, wobbling slightly on the bed. She took his hand. “For me?”

“Don’t see the harm,” he sighed, smoothing out the geological survey. “There’s more in the closet.” Val moved to where he pointed and pulled out the other maps, which she spread out on the bed. Muddy took a moment to figure out what he was looking for, his finger wavering over one of the charts and finally spearing their location. “We’re here. Kanburi’s here, and that town, Sang-something, that’s here, and Three Pagodas Pass is…here.”

“Can you figure out where the treasure site is?” She spread her treasure map on top.

“Need diff’rent map.” He pulled out a detailed survey of the border. “Is it here?” He stared a long time. “No…no…mm…no.”

“What’s this clock thing say?” she asked.

“Direction…south-east…but this flag symbol, this rising sun, it points to the left.”

“So?”

“So everything gets reversed. It’s one of their tricks, see, a Japanese trick. Clever buggers. So north-west, and you find…”

She watched his finger cross from the Three Pagodas Pass to a point of wilderness by the lake. “Round here,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Course I’m sure.”

She burned the area into her memory. “And how far down?”

“Down? Don’t know.”

“You told me, back in Hong Kong, that this clock also tells you the depth.”

“Yeah. Hang on.” He stared at the clock. “See this hand? Says quarter to twelve. The maps can vary but I’d say a meter a minute.”

“So fifteen meters?”

“You have the prettiest eyes.”

He lunged to kiss her again, his stubble scratching her face and his powerful booze breath assaulting her nostrils. She pushed him back against the headboard.

“Why not?” he demanded, too drunk to rouse himself.

“Not yet,” she said. “Soon, when it’s just the two of us.”

“Fuck that,” he mumbled. “Let’s do it. Beautiful.”

She tried to pull the blanket over him.

“You’re not shtaying?”

“No, Muddy, I can’t.” She brushed his brow clear of hair. “I’m so sorry about this, I mean it.”

“C’mon gimme a kiss.”

“I hope you’ll understand.”

“What’re you on about?” He could barely speak.

“Go back to Hong Kong. Go back to Jodie.”

“Jodie…don’t wanna think bout Jodie….”

She gently kissed his forehead, but his hand grabbed her shirt and he clamped his steaming, fetid mouth on hers. She panicked and pulled away. He grabbed her arm, pulled her back.

Val slugged him. It was a good punch. His head sunk in his pillow. He was out cold. She put the blanket over his shoulder, collected the maps and abandoned him to the detritus of the sorry room.

She stumbled to her own, realizing how drunk she was. Her tongue felt like cowhide and her red eyes stung. She guzzled a bottle of drinking water.

She had packed already. Val placed half the remaining cash and a note in an envelope. She tucked the maps away and closed the door.

Dear Suki, I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it.

She had to cling to the wall as she crept down the hallway, the pack heavy on her back. She slid the envelope under Suki’s door and went down the stairs. The night manager was sleeping behind the reception desk, while a bellhop snoozed in a lobby chair. The manager woke as she left him the key. She leaned against the desk, every pore exuding booze, wondering how dreadful she must look – and smell – as the manager processed her bill.

I must see this through, but you don’t. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.

The bellhop was sent upstairs to ensure she hadn’t taken from the mini-bar, and when he returned the manager gave her back a deposit.

Val managed a smile. “Do the busses run this late?”

“Bus?”

She nodded.

“No, no bus.” He pointed at his watch. “Six.”

The clock above him read ten minutes to four.

“Okay, thank you.” Every step was torture. The room reeled. She paused at the entrance. The bellhop opened the door. She stepped into the Bangkok heat. The odors of the street assailed her – the smell of sewage. I’ve left enough money for Muddy to fly back to Hong Kong, and for you to go wherever you like. She took a few steps out of the hotel’s light and vomited into the shadows. She fell to her knees, the weight of the backpack too much, unable to stop retching.

I’m still going to try to find this place. I still believe that exposing the gold is the best way for us to go home again, safely.Suki, you’re my only friend in the whole world. I hope you understand why I did this and forgive me. I hope you’re still my friend. – Love, Val

Finally, her throat burning, the taste of puke in her mouth, she got up. There were plenty of meandering taxis. It took only a few moments to hail one. The driver spoke no English, but she kept repeating, “Kanburi… Kanchanaburi… Kanburi….” and eventually he got it.

(Next chapter.)