Every Man a Menace by Patrick Hoffman Page A

Complete compartmentalization.”
    On the drive back to Bangkok, when Semion expressed surprise that Nana hadn’t wanted to perform any kind of background check, any kind of due diligence, Moisey explained that he already had.
    “I had to tell them who you were,” he said. “They wouldn’t meet otherwise. They have people that’ll make a whole file on you; they probably know the name of every man in your old unit. If you got a traffic ticket in New York, they know which cop wrote it. These fuckers are thorough, man.”
    Semion thought about this and felt a small wash of fear.
    Two days after meeting Eugene Nana, Moisey introduced them to a Malaysian man named Fariq. Fariq owned a fish export company outside Bangkok, in Laem Chabang. He met them in his warehouse, during business hours. Workers in white jackets were busy unloading frozen squid—vacuum sealed in plastic—from a truck outside. Fariq led them upstairs into a cramped, fluorescent-lit office. Unlike Nana, Fariq looked like a criminal. He was a huge man, over three hundred pounds, and he had tattoos on his neck and hands. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a gold chain, and he had dark circles under his eyes. His skin was gray from smoking too many cigarettes. As soon as he had them in his office, heclosed the door, pointed at Moisey, and asked in heavily accented English if either of them had experienced the pleasure of having Moisey give them a massage. After that, he poured them plastic cups of cheap whiskey, and they drank.
    Fariq, like Nana, expressed some surprise that the men wanted to move ecstasy rather than crystal. “More money in meth,” he said.
    “Yes, but with meth, more headaches,” said Semion. “Hells Angels, Mexicans, fucking DEA, everything bad. Besides, we’re simple club owners. You know, disco, house music.”
    “Fuck,” said Fariq, nodding at Moisey. “Like this one, gay.”
    The price he proposed was disappointing. First, he asked what they were paying, and, in an unprofessional moment, Semion told him. Then, after making a pained face, Fariq said, “You’ll pay me one thousand US, a kilo.” They tried to talk him down, but he wouldn’t budge.
    “I,” he said, pointing his huge finger at his chest, “I’m paying customs agents on both sides. I have to pay for the freighter, which stays fucking refrigerated. I pay the American Coast Guard. I pay everyone! I’ll barely make anything by the time they’re done. See that down there?” He pointed down the stairs. “You want a fish company? You want fish and freezers? Take it. Squid, and, and—let me explain to you: It’s not hard to find shit here in Thailand. It’s hard to move it. You know? Fucking Thai police? They throw me away. You know what they do when they catch you here? They give you a death sentence.” He raised one eyebrow. “They weld the leg irons on your leg,” he said. He nodded his head up and down, waited for a reaction, and when he didn’t get one, continued. “On your leg!You think this is fucking America? Fucking Israel? This is fucking Thailand!”
    The sound of beeping forklifts filled the silence. Semion pulled out his phone and did the math: $9,000 a kilo was almost $4,090 a pound. That, times sixty pounds, worked out to around $246,000 a load. They could sell it to one buyer for more than twice that price: half a million a load. It was good. A lot more than they’d been making, even with the higher price for the freighter. He held his hand out to Fariq, and they shook.
    That night, Moisey took them out to a fancy dinner at the top of a hotel in the Silom district. He insisted on paying. The food was excellent; they ate steaks and drank bottle after bottle of Bordeaux. Over dessert, they cemented their plans. Moisey was going to run everything for them on this end; they wouldn’t be able to communicate with him except by intermediary, at least not for a while, and so it was important to talk everything through now.
    “To Moisey,” Isaak