Cambodia Noir (23 page)

The reception room: a desk piled with binders and dusty stacks of paper; a single poster on the whitewashed walls, hideous memento of some long-forgotten environmental campaign. Through a second door there's a glimpse of some equally abandoned-looking cubicles. We seem to be alone.

You can never tell with these outfits: an unused office could mean they're not doing quite what they say they are—or just that they save their energy for the field, where it counts.

Phann says we're out here to shoot the area's environmental glories. I try to look blank, which isn't hard. I barely speak English right now, much less Khmer. He says we want to talk to Luke, and the woman says he's out of town today—probably in Phnom Penh, not that she'd know, he's very busy. Yes, he'll be back soon, but he spends most of his time on-site in the mangroves. No, she doesn't know when he'll get in.

“How's the assessment going?” I ask, perching myself on the windowsill and reaching for a cigarette. Phann translates.

“You'll have to talk to Luke about that.” She glares at me until I put the cigarette back in my pocket.

Phann solemnly explains that I'm on a special assignment for the
New York Times,
and her eyes get a bit big. Impressed—or worried? I can't tell. One more point for my new hustler. The woman still isn't sure Luke will ever be free, but our royal status means we can get his mobile number. She keeps glaring until the door shuts behind us. I say nothing to Phann on the stairs, but as we cross the empty street outside, I stop to light my cigarette, glance up. Are the blinds above us twitching? Or is it just me, with the jitters? If something is going on down here, I wonder how much these folks know about it.

Hard to imagine anything happening in this town.

I try calling Luke's mobile a couple times, get a “switched off” message.

We don't have a boat until tomorrow—not sure I could handle the trip yet, anyway, not if it's as rough as June described.

I leave Phann to his own devices and walk down the main street, toward the beach. Just a brownish strip of sand with a rickety excuse for a pier. Deserted. The Gulf is choppy, waves dark and metallic. A shudder runs through me.

I could go back. If I'm right about Charlie, and I just put him in a convenient place to get killed, then no one is after me. I could give Gabriel his pictures—maybe suss out how he got his info.

Am I just trying to avoid tomorrow: getting in a boat, crossing this black water?

But something about the horizon tugs at me. This place makes no sense. I want to know what June was looking for down here. Maybe Steve can tell me something, if he ever—

Hell.

I haven't told him how to find me since I ditched my phone. Meant to call last night, but—

Don't think about it.

I send him a text and consider heading back to the Dane's for a cup of coffee, but as soon as I've stood up, the phone rings.

“Where the fuck have you been, Keller?”

“Better you don't know.”

From his voice, I know it's bad. I hope he's not about to ask after a dead Australian backpacker. That could get awkward.

“I got a name for your girl.” I wait for it: watch the waves as they beat against the pier, wonder what he knows. “You're gonna have to get straight with me, Will. People are about to get very interested in this.”

“Who've you told?”

“I asked around, like you wanted. Turned out that got a lot more attention than I expected. You want the rest, you tell me what you know.”

“I told you, I don't know anything.” Struggling to remember three days ago's lies. “The girl's story started unraveling, she's out of town, we—”

“Stop pissing about, mate. This girl isn't vacationing at Angkor Wat, an' you know it. So where is she?”

I have to give him something; too tired to work the angles. “I don't know. She said she was going to Angkor, that's the truth, but it was nearly three weeks ago now. She never came back. Just vanished—”

“Christ,” he mutters. Then, in a different voice: “You should have let her.”

I wait for him to tell me something new. Clouds churn overhead.

Eventually, he sighs. “So, she vanished . . . you didn't think to tell the police, the family, the embassy?”

I'm thinking fast. “Police out here? Are you kidding?”

“And where are you now? Siem Reap?”

“Yeah.” As good a lie as any. “I needed to get away from Phnom Penh awhile.”

“Why's that?”

“I don't know if you noticed, it's got a bit dangerous.”

“Last I checked, you weren't FUNCINPEC.”

I stare out at the water, doors opening in my head that I'd rather keep shut.

“I was friends with Heng Bunly. The Radio Ranariddh guy. I didn't think anyone was coming after me or anything, I just needed out.”

Steve's quiet a second. “Sorry for your loss,” he says—close enough to serious that you could believe it, if you wanted to. He's still suspicious, but I'm hoping he's not going to push it.

My head is spinning; sit down on the pier. “Who is she, Steve?”

“She really is called June, but her name's not Saito. It's Koroshi. The other one you described sounds like her older sister, Karasu Koroshi.”

Oh, fuck me. “
That
Koroshi?”

“His only children.”

I expected bad, but nothing like this.

Ryu Koroshi: don of dons to the American spin-off of the yakuza. He must be in his seventies now and has never been indicted, never even charged—but if half the stories about him were true, he'd be the devil. I'm guessing they're not, though: no one knows anything about a guy like that. It's safer not to.

Now I know way too much.

“The girls got records?”

“Karasu's a clotheshorse, hangs out with celebrities but steers clear of coke. Nothing on her except Versace and a few parking tickets. June had some trouble, but since she was a juvenile, it's hard to say. I think the Feds tried to use it to leverage the dad, but they got nowhere.”

“She's not a juvenile now. Where's she been the last five years?”

“Funny you should ask. See, my FBI buddy recognized her description right off and said someone was fucking about with me. Got real excited when I told him I'd seen June myself. Seeing as she's been dead for five years.”

Huh. “She never said anything about being dead.”

“The things people forget to mention, eh?”

“So how'd it happen?”

“LA classic, mate. Driving drunk in the hills at four a.m. Took 'em almost a week to find her. By then, the critters had been at her pretty good.”

“Still, there'd be DNA—”

“DNA needs a comparison. I don't know the details, but I'd be fairly surprised if a member of the Koroshi family stepped forward to give a sample. Most likely they ID'd the body and that was that. Or maybe your Feds cooked the whole thing up: give the girl a new life if she'll inform. My mate wasn't close enough to know that stuff.”

I can't think anymore—this whole thing is too far out of control. I need a drink. The only saving grace is that Steve doesn't know Kara is here.

I can only guess at the kind of hell to pay if she finds out the FBI knows about her sister. “I suppose it's way too late to keep this quiet.”

“No chance. Out of my jurisdiction, and my pay grade.”

“How long do I have?”

“Dunno. If the Feds extracted her, then lost her, they could be on their way up your ass already. If they really thought she was dead, there's no telling how long it'll take that ball to start rolling. Weeks, maybe longer?”

“Any way you can buy me some time?”

“Sorry.” He doesn't sound sorry at all. Eventually: “You know you're not going to find her, right? If something happened, it happened a long time ago. And if she doesn't want to be found—”

“I know all that,” I snap.

“Just don't get your hopes up, mate.”

“I haven't got any hopes.” I hang up.

The waves hit the shore and draw back. A shadow moves out on the water, and for a moment I think I see a shape—like a boat, with a figure in it, waving to me. Then it's gone.

The back balcony at the Dane's. Bottle of vodka—two-thirds left—and June, spread out on the table in front of me.

June Koroshi. I turn the name over in my mouth, seeing how it tastes.

Sharp, like a penny.

What would Ryu Koroshi's daughter want in Cambodia? I bet it's not a Pulitzer. More important: What did she want in Koh Kong? June Saito could have been down here chasing some teenage fantasy of being a reporter; June Koroshi had a reason.

I look again at the journals, the news articles, the photographs: Are they all a blind? Some carefully constructed code, meant to hide June's real mission?

I can't believe it.

It's not that no one could be that meticulous, that painstaking—no. I can't believe it because I saw something in those journals. For a moment, I thought I knew her.

I go back through the pages I've flagged. Words take on new meanings: June's idealism rings strange and frantic; her family dramas loom large. The way she talks about her mother leaving—I should have asked Steve what happened.

It must take a special kind of guts to walk away from Ryu Koroshi.

June writes about running away, about feeling haunted, and somehow I still believe it. Sounds like she had plenty to run from. Maybe she really wanted to be someone different.

ELECTION FIGHT NOT OVER, EXPERTS WARN

By Augustín Franco

PHNOM PENH—As the country celebrates what is being called Cambodia's smoothest election ever, some poll-watchers are warning that a new conflict could be just around the corner.

“The Cambodian People's Party still does not have the votes to form a government,” said Thomas Stockmann, head of the independent political research consultancy PollWatch Cambodia. “It's simple math: one of the opposition parties will have to form a coalition with the CPP, or Cambodia will be left without a government.” After months of campaigning for major political reforms, Stockmann said, it was unrealistic to expect either opposition group to join a coalition without demanding substantial concessions from the former ruling party.

Other analysts agreed that the election results could set the stage for a more severe political crisis.

“Both opposition parties still believe the election was unfair, based on the campaign of intimidation that preceded it,” said Mu Keo, head of the Cambodian Center for Political Rights. “They believe they have popular support, so they will ask more than the CPP is willing to give.” The negotiations could leave the country leaderless for weeks, she added. “The longer this situation lasts, the more dangerous the political environment will become. . . .”

The polls closed, and I'm keyed up, restless. I've been waiting, holding my breath, but nothing happened and now I'm gasping, starved for air, dragging myself through Cambo streets at night, looking for my fix. (Ha.)

Clever won't help me now.

There's Koh Kong, but that's a day or an eternity away, and I want it now . . . so I've come here. Victory Hill. The streets were nearly deserted when I arrived: prowled by a handful of foreign men, aloof and nervous, never looking straight at what they'd come to buy. The women lounged in doorways trying to be seductive, but I could tell they were edgy too. They all noticed me. The men peeked at me sideways, the girls stared and didn't try to hide it. They could see I was
half,
and it made them curious: Why was I here? Spy or client or competition? I was asking myself the same question. The first place that didn't look completely over-the-top, I crept inside.

It's just a bar: seedy, crumbling, smelling of jasmine air freshener, and the girls all in the back, waiting; sparkling on their stools, waiting; screaming with laughter louder than boys and throwing ice cubes at each other . . . waiting. They're different, in here—not the tired statues that stalk the streets. And again, just like that night in the Heart, some shameful part of me is jealous: they may be faking, but it's a fakery more real than I have ever been.

For years, I have waited. Even with my looks, I had offers, but not the ones I wanted. I could always see the pity in their eyes or the predator behind their smile, and I was never willing to pretend. I told myself I was waiting for something right and true . . . but I never found it. I made up reasons. I told myself that bodies meant little to me, but that wasn't true, either.

I was always afraid.

Afraid of the terrible darkness that might be down that road; afraid of what I might find out. Here, where all flesh is used and dying, clawing its way back toward the earth, I see no further reason for fear.

I am not who I thought I was at all.

Up before dawn. In the dark, the hotel room looks like the cold storage in a morgue and smells about the same. I dress fast, roll a joint without turning on the lights. Make it strong: take the edge off what comes next.

Phann is waiting for me in the lobby, and we walk to the marina in silence. Lon is already there, unhitching a rowboat with a little motor on the back. June was right: it's a toy for paddling in the duck pond. I feel dizzy just looking at it. At least I know she's wasn't going Jayson Blair on the details.

Phann goes through his spiel: we saw June's stories in the paper, we want to visit some of the same places she did, take pictures. Promote some tourism, that's us. Lon smiles and nods. He's another one—nearly as skinny as Phann, though it looks to be from hunger rather than years of speed. Square face, phony enthusiasm. He's making his own little speech about how bad tourism is here, and I recognize a few lines June quoted in her story. Like all hustlers, he's got his part down pat.