The Corruptionist by Christopher G. Moore

Author:Christopher G. Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thailand, asia, bangkok, christopher g moore, vincent calvino, the corruptionist
Publisher: HeavenLakePress

TWENTY-SEVEN

THERE HAD BEEN a long, noisy line at the buffet. Throngs of journalists, NGOs, embassy people, narrowly avoided colliding as they wove in and out, carrying plates loaded high with pasta, chicken, rice, vegetables, dumplings, pork balls, and somtam. Some of the meat had been harvested from no apparent known species. Someone in the line mumbled, “Genetically altered rabbit.” Another replied, “Mutant cats.” The line was divided between those who giggled and those who took the comments as sober cultural observations.

Calvino and Tanny found themselves at a white-clothcovered table—a chrome stand held a piece of paper designating it as Number 9—within arm’s reach of the upright piano. Calvino hovered for a moment, looking around the room. The table had been booked under Achara’s name.

His friends had failed to show up, and Calvino inherited the table. If it had been a nightclub, Calvino could have turned his chair and played some Ray Charles—if only he’d learned to play the piano. He put his plate on the table and sat down. Tanny sat on the opposite side, her back to the head table and the stage. It was as if she were happy to avoid eye contact with Brandon Sawyer.

The head table, positioned near the stage—behind which hung a large blue banner announcing The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Of Thailand—was occupied by the panelists, club officials, and several journalists and VIPs. Calvino’s table, wedged like a bread stick between the head table and the piano, had a clear view of the stage. Brandon Sawyer sat a knife’s throw away. He leaned back in his chair and nodded at Calvino, pointing at Tanny and shaking his head. He’d fully recovered from the sweatdrenched ghostly figure who had left the interrogation room shaken. From where Calvino sat, he had a view through half-open blinds out the window overlooking the balcony. Smokers, the bored, the conspiratorial, and the depressed congregated on the balcony, watching the rain streak through the canyon of high-rises on Ploenchit Road.

Most of the tables at the club were filled. In the back were the bar and the pool table converted into a buffet table. Calvino recognized some of the faces among the crowd, and the odd tank commander assigned to protect Thai political operatives. The bar was randomly divided between the redwine drinkers and the serious drunks.

Brandon, who occupied a place at the speakers’ table, sat squeezed between the club vice president, a balding farang with a Lenin goatee, and a Thai newspaper journalist who never stopped smiling. Brandon worked his meaty fist around a whiskey glass and flexed his arm like the slide on a pump-action shotgun. The organizers had worked to isolate Brandon from the two other speakers, a member of the opposition and a green activist, both of whom avoided him. Every so often Brandon turned around in his seat, glanced across the room at Calvino, gestured at the other panelists, and rolled his eyes. Tanny caught his attention, and Brandon waved at her as if she were an old friend.

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