Paying Back Jack Read Free Page A

that the rider of the second bike was also armed, but he showed no sign of pulling a weapon. When the biker saw Calvino running at him then kneeling with a handgun pointed at his head, he wheeled his bike around and fled in the direction from which he had come. Calvino holstered his .38 and opened the General’s door.
    â€œDid you see that accident?” asked the General.
    Half out of breath, Calvino nodded. “Yeah that was something.”
    â€œDoesn’t look like they survived. What a tragedy!”
    â€œGeneral, let me buy you a cup of tea.”
    The General stood beside his car, looking out at the burning remains.
    â€œWe should phone the police.”
    Calvino took out his cell phone and called Colonel Pratt.
    â€œThe General’s had a problem,” he said. “He’s parked on Soi 33 outside Goya.”
    â€œCrazy driver,” said the General.
    Calvino ended his call with Colonel Pratt. He knew that it would take Pratt a while to arrive at the scene in front of the dead artists bars. Meanwhile, it was just the two of them, the General and Calvino, standing downwind, waiting as they watched the smoke and flames shooting out of the wreckage. There was the pop of ammo exploding. Calvino figured it must have been spare rounds one of the men had squirreled away for a rainy day that would never come.
    â€œDriver’s training,” the General continued. “That’s what we could use.”
    The fire brigade drove up at about the same time as the police. They sprayed foam on the wreck, and the body snatchers (they wereone of the voluntary Chinese benevolent societies who raced to crash sites and collected the dead and injured) arrived to sort through the remains—bone in this container, metal in that container. “Colonel Pratt will be joining us,” Calvino said, walking the General toward a restaurant between the closed bars and nightclubs.
    â€œI didn’t want to bother him,” said the General.
    â€œHe’s in the area.”
    â€œWell, in that case, that’s my good fortune.”
    â€œâ€˜Good fortune’ is one way of putting it,” thought Calvino.
    The General pointed his remote at his car and it automatically locked. He hadn’t seen the second black motorcycle, or the guys with their heads covered coming at him at high speed.
    Calvino walked back to the vendor and gave her five thousand baht. “Buy a new cart,” he said.
    â€œYou bad man, you kill those boys,” she said, taking the money.
    A witness to the slaughter, he thought. Not the line he wanted her taking before the police, at least not until Colonel Pratt arrived. The ball of orange flame had climbed down the side of the banyan tree, burning through the dozens of old nylon ribbons. That should piss off the spirit, thought Calvino.
    He found the General again, open-mouthed, standing beside his car. “We’ll need to make a statement,” said the General.
    Calvino’s new jacket had a slight tear near the front pocket. He sighed, pissed off, as this meant a return trip to Venice Tailors and Tony shaking his head in disapproval over the damage to the masterpiece. Walking toward the burning bike, Calvino knelt down and picked up a nine-millimeter gun from the street and showed it to the General. “Driving and shooting should be against the law.” Calvino slipped the gun into his jacket pocket.
    â€œI could use a cup of tea,” said the General.
    Calvino had the feeling the General said that every time he saw something blow up.
    Thais, in the presence of a stranger or someone with authority over them, fall into a default of stone silence. They clam up. What few words they muster fall into the category of nondescript pleasantries. Have you eaten? Where are you going? These two questions are the staples of a Thai inquiry. A stranger could be forgiven for thinkingthat given the long silences in these official circumstances that words were