A Killing Smile Read online

  He kept coming back to one of Sarah’s journal entries. “It is a wise man who knows that the woman who sleeps beside him is a sharp knife he keeps at his throat. The man who doesn’t see the knife is betrayed by his innocence and deserves death. The man who throws the knife away is only half alive. It is the man who respects this knife at his throat who has mastered the instinct for survival and makes no appointments for his destiny. A man like Robert Tuttle.”

  One of the minor wives was rumored to have engaged the services of a professional killer. Each of the women looked innocent. He studied their faces, looking for signs of sadness, despair, and gloom to match what he saw in his own face. Instead he found smiles and blank expressions; formal, polite, and businesslike faces. His mind flashed to Kelly “Will I make it? ” she had asked about her partnership prospects. He saw her face in the minor wives staring out from the newspaper. The land developer had not survived. He had had a butcher’s drawer full of knives at his throat.

  On the third day, he phoned Robert Tuttle and asked him about the photos of the women which kept running in the newspaper. “It’s called estate planning in the land of smiles,” said Tuttle. Lawrence had insisted that he not be met at the airport and that he have several days’ rest before they saw one another.

  “I would like an appointment,” said Lawrence.

  “I don’t make appointments. What if we just hang out? ” asked Tuttle.

  As he put down the phone, Lawrence regretted coming to Bangkok. He read about the minor wives. He worried about his law practice. His income tax return was not prepared. The insurance money from Sarah’s death had been placed in stocks and bonds. He worried about the market falling while he was halfway around the world. He read the newspaper accounts about the litigation and the minor wives. He had over a million from life insurance proceeds invested in Disney, McDonald’s, Boeing, and AT&T. Bedrock American stocks that captured the bookends of American culture in the 1990s—Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse, along with the means of communication of the audiences trapped between them. If Sarah had been one of four or five wives, would he have felt the same? He hated himself for even thinking that way. What was in the newspapers in Bangkok had nothing to do with him, Sarah, or their marriage.

  Tuttle had suggested that they meet at a coffee shop on Sukhumvit Road; a place that was a kind of expat club, and they could spend the evening catching up. “Plan to relax and spend the evening. The place doesn’t close until six or seven in the morning. That should catch us up on a few of the missing years.”

  “Is it in a safe area? ”

  “Is anywhere in the world safe, Larry? ”

  “One more thing. Why aren’t the widows weeping and clawing out each other’s eyes? ” asked Lawrence.

  Tuttle paused before he answered. “You need lessons on how to read a smile, Larry.”

  * * *

  Lawrence recognized Tuttle immediately—the man Sarah’s father had referred to at their wedding reception as “the felon.” The same broad, athletic shoulders, high cheekbones, and dimpled chin. His brown hair was cropped shorter than twenty-two years earlier, but the moustache remained the same, covering the edge of his upper lip. Lawrence had dressed much like he did every day: in a dark gray suit, a navy blue tie, and a pair of two-hundred-dollar shoes. He nervously played with his Rolex as he crossed the room to where Tuttle sat alone in a booth. The laugh lines crinkled around Tuttle’s eyes as a slim waiter with a patchy black moustache and wearing a light tan traditional Thai shirt brought him another drink. The standard dress attire for men was informal; the most overdressed man wore cotton pants and a short-sleeve shirt open at the neck. This was not the Bangkok Regent Hotel crowd.

  “Didn’t you say we had an appointment at your club? ” asked Lawrence, as Tuttle stood up and offered his hand.

  “I said hang out. That means informal. You’ll be okay. It takes a week of living in the future to adjust.” Tuttle waved to the waiter to bring another drink as Lawrence sat down, removing his jacket and undoing his tie.

  “Future? ”

  “It’s Tuesday in Bangkok and Monday in LA—the Crips and Bloods hometown teams,” said Tuttle, smiling.

  “For a guy who’s not been to the States since LBJ you’ve formed many opinions.”

  The waiter brought a whiskey and soda for Lawrence.

  “Come to think of it—and it didn’t seem like it at the time—those were probably the good ole days.”

  Lawrence sipped his drink.

  “Whiskey and soda. You remembered.”

  “Some things never change.” Tuttle raised his glass and touched Lawrence’s. “Welcome to Headquarters. Maybe you’re not ready for HQ. We can head out someplace else.”

  Tuttle sounded genuine; there was no hint of irony in his voice. But to have gone would have been a kind of defeat, thought Lawrence. The man had asked him to a place where he felt comfortable, and already Lawrence had managed to insult him.

  “I came because of Sarah. And I think we should stay put.”

  “I thought you might have come because of you.”

  Lawrence looked embarrassed. “I wanted to clear my memory on a few things. That’s all. Sort out some old stuff that’s been clogging up my nights and days since Sarah died.”

  Lawrence was sincere in what appeared an absurd proposition. One of Sarah’s diaries contained a passage that haunted him through a month of sleepless nights.

  “We are marked by what we forget as much as what we choose to remember. What things, events, and people shape that memory define us as a person. It may be our only definition. Why and how and what we forget is our reality machine in forward motion. We forget individually and collectively. Forgetting shapes our destiny. That’s why Robert left. He was afraid of what everyone around him was forgetting. Including me. He watched our memories going down the drain. He left to remember. I only wish there was some way Lawrence or I could reel him back and reclaim from him what he preserved over all these years; and restore the things we’ve forgotten and thrown out over all these years.”

  Lawrence wondered what kind of club had accepted Tuttle for membership. A place he now referred to for the first time as Headquarters, HQ for short; a coffee shop in the basement of a massage parlor, the Bangkok gate into the night. Tuttle had become a legend at HQ, and over the years had become the collective memory of HQ. Two decades earlier, Tuttle had first strolled down the long back alley and entered the backdoor of HQ, passing the common toilets and kitchen. The unreality of the night quickly struck Lawrence as he saw Tuttle had grown middle-aged just like himself. He looked for some piece of memory from their old friendship in this strange man; all he could recover, was the odd way Tuttle sometimes cocked his head to the side when he talked. He still had that habit. Tuttle was alive, sitting next to him, and actually lived in this place. He listened to Tuttle speak Thai to a waiter; hearing him speak in an alien language, one which excluded him, feeling the damage of being left out.

  Tuttle saw a middle-aged American, conservative, off balance, anxious, a ridge of sweat covering his forehead, trying to make small talk about their old apartment. Lawrence, the old college roommate from the States; the man who had married his college sweetheart drinking a whiskey soda, bending his elbow at what had to be the end of the earth for him. Lawrence, the widower, the lonely figure who had avoided the invitations of the few early-bird ladies of the night. Tuttle had been living in Bangkok so long that he had begun to sleep with the second generation of HQ girls. The new generation of eighteen to twenty-three-year-olds would creep into HQ throughout the night; freelance girls, moving like cats, eyes circling the room for their prey, tongues licking the night air.

  Lawrence Baring had stolen Sarah from him. Throughout those years, Tuttle wondered what price would be sufficient repayment for that betrayal. The morning he sat inside the Greyhound bus, nose to the window as it pulled away from the station, Tuttle knew one day he would meet Lawrence again. Only Sarah’s death had changed his plans.
This time Tuttle had the right woman for Lawrence; the woman who would even the score and settle the outstanding account. Before the moment Lawrence would pay in full on that debt there was the sticky business of the past, and psychological disturbance of the present moment to overcome. Tuttle delighted in the drama he had planned for his old roommate.

  “The girls sleep with customers for money. Three reds for shorttime,” said Tuttle, stopping as a look of confusion filled Lawrence’s face.

  “Three what? ”

  “Three hundred baht. About twelve bucks. A purple or five hundred baht buys the whole night. Twenty dollars.”

  “Twenty bucks? Do you have any idea how much I bill out my associates? ” Lawrence suddenly thought of Kelly. Tuttle shrugged. “Two hundred an hour.”

  “As a rule of thumb it should never cost more to get divorced than to get laid,” said Tuttle, nodding at one of the passing girls who was a regular from the old days. “Exactly what kind of lawyer are you, Larry? ”

  “I specialize in pension law. Federal pension law.”

  “Civil rights for old people. Wasn’t it civil rights law that you were once interested in? Going to devote your life to? Why do I remember civil rights? ”

  One of the girls had leaned over the table, resting forward on her fingertips, her face a couple of inches away from Lawrence’s face, as he sat erect against the back of the booth. “Friendly, aren’t they? ”

  “Noi, meet Larry. My lawyer from America.”

  Noi stretched out her hand and shook hands with Lawrence. “You want lady? ”

  Tuttle spoke to her in Thai. “He has a lady. Thai wife who is very dangerous with a knife. You want him, it’s up to you. But I think she come after you; find you and cut your throat.”

  Noi rose up from the table, turned, and quickly retreated to her friends.

  “What did you say to her? ”

  Tuttle smiled. “I told her your hourly rate.”

  Tuttle’s presence at HQ provided the girls with some sense of continuity; the farang who spoke their language; the body-builder using exercise and drugs to carve a body that wouldn’t be destroyed by time; the businessman who had been a writer for newspapers and had published stories about hill tribe shamans, life among the exiles, whores, and crazies in Asia.

  Stories that Sarah had discovered reprinted in various odd places and had admired, stories that Lawrence had found after her death in a folder in the back of her filing cabinet.

  “After Sarah’s death I found a collection of your stories in her office,” said Lawrence. He hadn’t decided whether to tell Tuttle about the number of times he had been mentioned by Sarah in her diaries. He hadn’t told anyone else; he struggled to find some way to pull out this secret harpoon Sarah had thrown from her grave. Lawrence kept the secret from Kelly. It was humiliating, a strike against the memorial of his marriage with Sarah, and worst of all, the diaries created the perception of huge amounts of energetic emotional activities that had gone unnoticed by him for over two decades. His marriage had begun to fall apart in his mind; the realization of his exclusion in volume after volume of Sarah’s most private thoughts was beyond his ability to understand.

  “Funny you asked on the phone. If I had seen Sarah after ’68. I never took you for the suspicious type.”

  Neither had Lawrence. He moved uneasily in his seat, rocking forward on his elbows. He looked at Tuttle’s hands and thought about them having once been wrapped around Sarah’s naked body. “Sarah thought your stories were a kind of message,” he cleared his throat. “From the desert to her.” The phrase sounded awkward coming from Lawrence’s lips.

  Tuttle fingered his glass. “She said that? ”

  Lawrence nodded, carefully watching the smile fade from Tuttle’s face. Sarah hadn’t as far as he knew ever said that; at least to him; but it had been in a diary entry she had written one night when Lawrence had been in New York City working on a corporate takeover. Lawrence reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out one of Tuttle’s stories. He laid it out on the table. In the margin were notes in Sarah’s handwriting, and passages underlined with a yellow Magic Marker. He shoved it across the table to Tuttle, who looked down at the page. The story had been inside one of Sarah’s folders. The story had been published two years before in Hong Kong.

  “You came halfway around the world because of a piece I wrote? ”

  Lawrence rolled up the sleeves of his tailored white shirt.

  “Because Sarah harbored this illusion you had something to say. I don’t see it from this. But I’m just a lawyer. So I’m curious. Was she taken in by a bullshit artist? Or is there some outside chance you have something to say. I’m here to find out. To see if the case can be made. I need to put this thing to rest if I’m to get on with my life.”

  A CHANGE OF HEART

  A Short Story

  by

  Robert Tuttle

  The hilltribe shaman wears a set of ordinary clothes to the ceremony reclaiming the spirit of an ill villager. “Where are his robes? ” a tourist asked, disappointed his vision had not found a counterpart in reality.

  “He wears sacred robes inside his heart,” answered the guide. “And if you believe, you can see him go into this room locked in his chest. If you believe.”

  * * *

  EVERYONE goes North on the same search, looking for the same shaman spitting in the dirt by a dead dog and reciting homespun chants. And everyone thinks the same at first. Here’s a framework—a point of reference, a map I can follow once back in Bangkok. A way to restore myself when I start to drift. And I always wish them luck. Like I wish you luck. And I’ll tell you my lesson of twenty-one years of living in Bangkok. That the ringside seat is at the Zeno after midnight.

  Zeno, Headquarters, HQ, the Star Wars Bar on Sukhumvit. You can’t miss it. Fake Greek columns in front of a sign that reads Turkish Bath, Barber, Massage, Espresso Coffee Shop. Fritters frying in big pots of palm oil outside the entrance. Beggars, bar girls, diplomats, spies, writers, bums, ex-Nazis, merchants, gangsters, tourists drifting in and out, eating at makeshift sidewalk cafes beside food carts and stalls. Cuttlefish and lottery vendors working the crowds. Like you, they’re all looking for shamans and ghosts.

  You get a flash that you’ve seen this room somewhere else. After a couple of years, one night, an ordinary night, you’ve ordered the usual, and it hits you, that memory of the very first room like HQ that you entered. You were a kid, and the room was downstairs in your house. HQ was an elaborate replica of that basement; the handyman job performed by your father and a couple of neighbors back in the ’50s. Tongue-and-groove panelling. Your dad got so carried away that he even panelled the support columns with the same shit as he nailed to the walls. He got cute and hid the fluorescent lights between a gap in the acoustic tiles and the panelling.

  Now, close your eyes and throw in a wet bar, stools, tables and chairs, and curved booths with black plastic-covered benches and a television set on a shelf at the far end, a hundred girls, and you’re back in time but no matter how hard you try, you can never truly get back to the starting blocks. But what if there was a way back? Where everyone’s thirteen again, but this time they are flush with money for tits and ass. You don’t care what you saw when you looked in the mirror, or the ’68 photo album the morning before; and you think about the eggs inside that girl’s body last night. One night, someday in the next century, another Noi will walk past the jukebox at the Zeno, and now even though its all compact disks and lasers, you’ll hear golden oldies like ‘What a Wonderful Life’ playing over the loudspeakers, and you’ll eye her. And you go into that trance of yours. Haven’t I seen her somewhere before? Didn’t I take her back one night? Last month, the year before? Your mind is like a dripping faucet, each thought breaking the skin of the surface with a tiny splash. Before you can say Jack Spratt, there is hysterical shouting from the toilets, and a cop tells you another girl took a razor blade to her wrists. All that comes out of her mouth are
the words, “Chai, ka. Chai, ka.—Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” Time after time, night after night, an echo of sound from this life into the next.