Crackdown Read online

  “Believe me,” said Ballard. “It was big. One critic called it Paddington Bear porno for the digital age. A series of painted photos of fat and seedy billionaire Christopher Robins. She became an instant celebrity, an underground hero, queen of the Occupy movement. I can’t believe you didn’t hear about it.”

  Calvino shrugged. “I don’t follow the art scene.”

  “It’s more than art. She dropped economic, political and social bombs. She was everywhere on social media—Elite John Number 1 through Elite John Number 29. “

  “Why did she choose the number 29?” asked Calvino.

  “She keeps changing her story. She said it was a number some fortuneteller gave her. She told another interviewer it was in memory of 1929 and the start of the Great Depression. By then she had a professional publicist who coached her on what to say.

  “Then there was a New Yorker piece about how Christina, I remember the quote: ‘Christina had curated a village of the damned, a slaughterhouse of the super-elites, exposing their fleshy, ugly bodies as if inviting people into the abattoir that capitalism had created.’ He went on to write there was nothing pornographic about any of the men. I’ll quote again, ‘These high rollers had been stripped to display their slack, flappy bodies, immobile and soft, with the teddy bear’s paw reaching toward their penises.’ ”

  “Very Freudian,” said Calvino.

  “Very Lucian Freudian, with a teddy bear’s paw instead of a live rat’s tail.”

  “I mean Freudian that you memorized those quotes.”

  “I’m part of it.”

  “Which number were you?” asked Calvino.

  “Elite John Number 22. She had seven more Elite Johns after me before she launched her exhibition. Six months later it opened at a gallery in New York. More rave reviews. The photos sold out. By now Christina was a mega-celebrity. She was getting rich bashing the rich. Ironic, right? And me? My photo currently hangs on the wall of a Soho loft owned by an investment banker who must have lit a candle to thank whatever god he believed in that it wasn’t him with a teddy leaning near his pecker.

  “Once the New York exhibition took off, I was ruined. The whole thing went even more viral online. You might have missed but believe me most people didn’t. Copycat exhibitions sprung up all over the world. But Christina’s was the first. She was a legend. Her painted Elite John photographs were reproduced on shopping bags, T-shirts and bikini bottoms. Every hooker in New York and London wore them. I officially became Sleazeball Number 22.

  “It was only a matter of time before my associates found out. Basically she fucked up my life. At that point I happened to be flying to Cambodia on business. Now I’m in Bangkok, like a million other fuckups trying to figure out what to do next.”

  “Sorry I missed it,” Calvino said, not certain what to say next. “So tell me who else showed up in her exhibit? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet?”

  “No. I was her token American. London is a playground. She had Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires, Arab sheikhs, a couple of South American drug cartel bosses... It didn’t take long for each of them to be outed. Their shills showed up at the London exhibition and would have bought every original photo. Christina told them to fuck off and took the exhibition to New York. By then the prices had tripled and she was selling them to collectors. She knew the shills would destroy her work. One of the English papers called it one of the most brilliant blackmail scams in history, but that was wrong. She only used their bids to raise the prices in New York. Being an elite hooker, she must have picked up some financial skills from her investment banker clients.”

  “How does she manage to stay alive after that double-cross?” asked Calvino.

  “She has three ex-special forces guys as bodyguards, and she never stays in one place long. Someone in a federal witness protection program has more freedom. She’s famous, and she has a book and a film deal too, but she can never walk down a street like a normal person again. That’s a high price, but not as high as the price I’m paying. You have no idea what it’s like to be romantically linked to a famous woman.”

  “Her name doesn’t ring a bell,” said Calvino.

  Ballard sighed and slumped back in his seat.

  “I was involved with a famous woman,” said Calvino. He’d kept a ring of secrecy around his relationship with Marley. Ballard who’d spilled his guts out about his relationship with a woman who became famous. It was like the false intimacy of a stranger next to you on a long-haul flight. You can tell them everything because you’ll likely never see them again.

  Ballard came back to life.

  “Seriously?”

  “Not a celebrity like Christina Tangier but someone internationally well-known.”

  “Not a hooker?”

  “No, she’s a mathematician named Dr. Marley Solberg.”

  “She sounds seriously smart,” Ballard said with a nod, conveying the impression of making a mental note to Google the name later.

  “She’s a genius.”

  Ballard pursed his lips, pausing for a moment.

  “I can see the problem—‘Boy from Brooklyn turned Bangkok PI romantically involved with famed math genius’ didn’t compute.”

  “It was a little more complicated than that, but as a quick and dirty summary, that isn’t wrong.”

  “Calvino, she taught you a lesson, the same lesson Christina taught me. A famous woman doesn’t need a man. She doesn’t even want a man,” said Ballard. “Except, in Christina’s case, as a bodyguard.”

  Ballard’s bitterness was apparent in his voice. Whenever Calvino thought of Marley, it wasn’t with bitterness but longing and regret. During their taxi ride together the two men had discovered an unexpected bond. Both of them had fallen for a woman who had turned out to be famous. Though their individual routes to fame couldn’t have been more different, the outcomes had been comparable. For the first time Calvino thought that Ballard had showed up in Bangkok at an opportune time. If there was someone to distract him from the coup, it might be Elite John Number 22. Calvino worked over in his mind what Ballard had said about a famous woman not needing or wanting a man and wondered if it described Marley Solberg.

  Back in the condo, Calvino pulled out On a Mission by the American saxophonist Eric Darius and put it on continuous play.

  “I’m going for a swim,” he announced.

  He needed to wash away the Soi Cowboy gloom and the bargirls’ fear before heading to bed, and more than that, to reflect on Ballard’s story about Christina, her camera, the teddy bear in London and the exhibitions in London and New York City.

  “You know where to find the single-malt.”

  He then carted his laptop computer to the seventh-floor pool area, where after a quick dip he Googled “Christina, New York, conceptual artist, Number 22.” He clicked on images and scrolled through a dozen photographs of sleeping nude men with a teddy bear. It was plain to see that in a state of sleep men’s faces become more vulnerable, innocent and childlike, and Ballard’s was no exception.

  The presence of the fluffy bear, with the red bow tie around its neck, cummerbund around its pear-shaped waist, large black-glass eyes and furry snout, added a dreamlike quality to the portraits. At first none of the articles, essays or blogs mentioned Ballard or the other “models” by name. That dam had broken when a Russian oligarch’s ex-wife exposed him—for a second time. Within two weeks all of the men had been identified. The commentators concluded that they were, despite their wealth, ordinary men when stripped naked and representative of all men in the state of unconsciousness. Their heads resting on a pillow, hair messy, lips slack, eyelids pulled down like Chinese shophouse shutters, they lay on one side facing the camera, feet caught in a tangle of sheets like a Roman emperor’s vestment hastily discarded, with a teddy bear as their companion on their dreamland journey.

  Fifty minutes later Calvino closed his laptop and headed back. He walked into the sitting room, his hair damp from the shower, and poured himself a drink.
/>   “I’ve been trying to figure out if this fits the definition of conceptual art,” Ballard said, staring at a framed picture on the wall.

  Calvino wasn’t sure if Ballard was joking.

  “It’s an old map,” he said, moving alongside Ballard.

  Ballard touched his glass to Calvino’s, registering the high-pitched crystal ping.

  “A client gave it to me.”

  That statement was true as far as it went, and he hoped the explanation would suffice. Ballard nodded.

  “From the look of it, I’d say your client wasn’t Michelin.”

  He flashed his deal-closing smile, the kind Christina’s photos never captured.

  “The client was also a good friend,” said Calvino.

  “That’s the best kind. Like my good friends in Cambodia.”

  “Doing business in Phnom Penh means good connections,” said Calvino. “Good friends almost never have the right ones.”

  “ ‘Almost’ is the key word. What you really want is my Cambodia story, right?”

  “Only if it tops the story about Christina.”

  Ballard explained that in Phnom Penh he had brokered the sale of an oil tanker for $9.3 million and walked away with a nice commission. He’d had some last-minute luck with a Chinese buyer who had been blissfully unaware of Ballard’s sudden fame in art circles, or the deal might have gone bad, and his good fortune had held. Now he was riding high in the saddle again.

  “I have my fresh-start money. I’ve got a few matters to finish, and then I’m a free man.”

  “How are you going to enjoy that freedom?” asked Calvino.

  “I’m working on that,” he said. “This map... Was the artist on drugs, insane or just trying to fuck with you?”

  Calvino rarely had houseguests, and when he did, none showed much interest in the artwork on the walls. He’d kept to himself the story of how Dr. Marley Solberg had given him a rare handmade map of the ancient world, along with the logistics of how a Japanese-Canadian mathematician who lived in Bangkok had acted as a map messenger. Marley Solberg had bought it at an auction in London. She had made the arrangements with Yoshi Nagata without involving Calvino.

  “It’s a fifteenth-century Italian reproduction of Al-Idrisi’s Tabula Rogeriana, 1154,” said Calvino.

  “I missed that. Can you explain it to me in English?”

  “Some say the original hand-drawn map is the first real map of the world. Ancient maps recorded Bible stories, myths and legends. The Greeks introduced geometry and mathematics, but Al-Idrisi drafted the first modern map.”

  “Al... what?”

  Ballard looked at the bottom of his empty glass and glanced up at the map again.

  “Al-Idrisi.”

  “An Arab made this?”

  “A tailor on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The kind of place an Upper East Side man wouldn’t know,” said Calvino.

  “I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “How early terrorists didn’t know much about the world back then.”

  Ballard scratched his chin and leaned closer to the framed map.

  “Is it an original?”

  “An original fifteenth-century reproduction, yes.”

  “When was the original ‘original’ made?”

  “That was 1154, around the time of the Crusades. From the Arab point of view, our ancestors were the terrorists. You are looking at the first map showing Africa, East Asia and the Indian Ocean. At the time it was state of the art. Ships sailed and trade caravans traveled overland using Al-Idrisi’s map.

  “This Michelin-type reality lasted for about three hundred years. Then in 1492 everything changed. He’d left out what no one had known about until then: North and South America. Not that Columbus knew either. He thought he’d discovered another route to Asia. Al-Idrisi’s map is a reminder that our reality lasts only until a new reality reveals the old one to have been an illusion.”

  “My sister’s kid has autism. He draws maps that look like this. He gave me one once for Christmas. Maybe I should frame it and stick it on the wall. It’d be a conversation piece. That much I’ll grant you.”

  He leaned over, picked up the whiskey bottle and refilled his glass.

  “Though it might drive a man to drink too much,” Ballard added. “So, when you look at this, what do you think?”

  “Boundaries,” said Calvino. “The ones that stop us cold, and the ones we breach to see what’s on the other side.”

  Christina, the high-society hooker-cum-conceptual artist, had crossed some personal boundaries, taking an artistic crowd to the private place where the one percent lay exposed, cuddling a stuffed toy.

  “Can’t disagree,” said Ballard. “Every map has a different set of boundaries. No-go zones. I once saw a map state by state of the highest-paid public officials in the States. They were all football or basketball coaches. Millions of public officials, and it’s the coaches who are on the money map. When I saw that map, something snapped inside me. Broke. I saw that cash is just another boundary, and you could see who was rewarded and who was left on the bench. When a man sees that on a map, it does something to him.”

  “A good map always gets you thinking,” said Calvino.

  “And why not?” Ballard said. “One age looks back at an earlier time and tells itself that what people used to believe was stupid. And they think they’ve got it all figured out. After them, no one will ever have a better map of boundaries.”

  “That’s why Marley wanted me to have this map.”

  “Marley? Isn’t that the name of the famous mathematician you mentioned in the taxi?”

  “The same woman.”

  “She gave you a valuable ancient map? All I got out of my brush with fame was a public exhibition of my dick next to a teddy bear.”

  “Life’s not fair,” said Calvino.

  “You Italians have got flair. I didn’t even get a T-shirt.”

  Calvino liked Ballard’s mental agility, his ability to reflect on what had happened to him. It was as if he had no ego or opinions he cared enough about to fight for. Likely it served him well in selling old oil tankers to Chinese traders. He seemed to be working through a crisis and coming out the other end a better man for it.

  “What kind of case did you handle for Marley? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “A missing person case.”

  “She must have been happy when you found who she was looking for.”

  “Not really.”

  “What happened?” Ballard said, looking over his glass at Calvino.

  “A murder, another murder, a cover-up. Bangkok has its murderous dark side, but what place doesn’t?” asked Calvino. “It’s the art of the cover-up that makes Bangkok unique.”

  That made Ballard smile, and he pivoted to the sofa, lay down and with arms outstretched eyed the map on the wall again. He retracted his right arm to return the glass to his lips.

  “Do you keep in touch, Marley and you?”

  “I hear from her sometimes. What do you hear from Christina?”

  Ballard tilted his head to the side.

  “The bitch. I hope one of those Russians or Colombians finds her unguarded for a minute and half. Bam.”

  “Of course you’re not bitter,” said Calvino.

  “Why would I be bitter? She only ruined my life.”

  Ballard flicked his hand in a gesture of dismissal. That she was worth no further discussion had been transmitted with precision.

  Turning his attention back to the map, Ballard searched his memory for associations. What had first appeared like a child’s misconception of things, mistakes in spatial arrangements, was now evoking something more down to earth.

  “If you squint like this... Look at me, Vinny. Yeah, like that. Now look at the map.”

  “It’s blurry.”

  “No, it looks like a butcher’s block that’s taken a burst of .20-cal rounds. And a couple of lucky .50-cal shots.”

  Calvino considered it
through Ballard’s eyes and thought he had a point. For centuries people had stared at a lie that looked like a shooter’s target and believed it to be true. The consensus of truth had masked an illusion.

  “People can’t get enough of mapping the world,” said Calvino.

  He thought of Marley’s words about how imagined places are an approximation, an average of reality, with most of the details stripped away. The history of maps was the history of the stripping process—what to take away, what to emphasize, what to underplay. Maps archived the human imagination’s take on the reality of space and the boundaries between spaces. The reality show needed a stage on which to mount its performance. But fake maps, like fake performances, left an audience stranded in a fantasy land of make believe.

  “Yeah, Google Cars, GPS, satellite photographs. We won’t be making this Arab’s mistakes again.”

  “The funny thing is Al-Idrisi in 1154 thought the same thing. He thought that he’d discovered every detail of the world, and that his Tabula Rogeriana would last forever.”

  “Nothing lasts forever,” said Ballard.

  “Including painted photos of nude men next to a teddy bear.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m okay with what I know. About relationships, governments, money. And people. I hear what you’re saying. I get it. Be on the lookout for a Christopher Columbus wild card. When the wild card’s played, you see where you went wrong. Now,” Ballard said, shifting his gaze back to the wall, “how much is that map worth?”

  “In terms of describing the reality of our world, it’s worthless. As an ancient testament to three hundred years of ignorance, it’s invaluable.”

  “Give me a number, Vincent. I’m a businessman. I can’t think without a number in my head.”

  “Try a mid-six figure amount.”

  “What currency?”

  “Pounds sterling,” Calvino said with a smile.

  Marley had bought it at Sotheby’s in London. Calvino had found a record of the sale online. The fact that the information was still there to be found meant that Marley hadn’t stopped him from discovering the price.