Paying Back Jack by Christopher G. Moore Page B

at his partner. They’d obviously talked about this before.
    â€œThe General paid for a room. Not for a suite. The dead woman paid to have you in the room below hers.”
    His heart pounded his chest and neck. No wonder the cops had wanted to lock him up. If these two flat shoes had this information, it must have been passed on to Colonel Pratt. He hadn’t said a thing about this on the phone. It was something Pratt would have wanted to think about long and hard. Pratt would want to look Calvino in the eye and ask him why a total stranger would upgrade him to a suite. How would she even have known that he was in
that
hotel? The situation was much worse than he had imagined. Somehow Apichart must have arranged it in the two days that had passed before he left for Pattaya. That was long enough if Apichart had known his plans. There was no way short of a gun pointed at her baby son’s head that Ratana would have divulged that information. His heart was still racing as he lay in bed, wishing he’d never rented the coffin. It had been a big mistake, and luck, bad or good, had nothing to do with it.

SEVEN
    COLONEL PRATT had once told Calvino that he reminded him of the kind of guy who walked into a dynamite warehouse and lit a match to see where he was going. After he lit the first match and looked around at the stacks of dynamite, he’d wait until the match burned down to fingernail-igniting length, and then he’d strike another match. Pratt thought about that conversation as he drove to Pattaya.
    Entering Pattaya, he used the siren to clear a path through the traffic. He pulled into a hotel guest spot and then spent half an hour talking with two senior police officers in the hotel. They’d gone over the paperwork for the suite, looking at handwritten notes setting out the arrangements for payment of the room. The suite upgrade had been paid in cash. Then he rode in the elevator with the concierge, the manager, the two senior police officers, and a bellhop to the ninth floor. They stood in front of Calvino’s door, Pratt collecting his thoughts. He didn’t knock, letting the concierge slip a plastic card into the slot. The manager pulled out the card and opened the door.
    Colonel Pratt asked to talk with Calvino alone. The others waited in the corridor as the Colonel stepped inside and looked around, leaving the door open behind him. Noriega slept in a stuffed chair, his head resting against the sliding glass door. An empty vodka bottle lay at his feet. Mao slumped over the glass table, snoring, his face a couple of inches away from a plate of pasta. The room looked like it had been raided and pillaged by a band of Vikings. Bones, scraps offood, clothes, plastic bags, and Styrofoam containers were scattered across chairs, tables, the bed, and the floor. Ants, geckos, and cockroaches feasted on the leftovers. The jungle had begun to reclaim the building, starting from the ninth floor.
    Colonel Pratt cleared his throat as he stood at the end of the bed.
    The men jerked, and Noriega instinctively reached for his holstered sidearm. He looked groggy-eyed at Colonel Pratt, who stood with his hands on his waist, his nine in a holster on his right hip. Noriega thought he might be dreaming until he realized a superior officer had entered the room. He shook Mao, who sat up too quickly, knocking the plate of pasta to the floor. The two cops snapped to attention. Noriega’s hair looked like a bad wig, and his skin, a slightly greenish color, looked ready to be harvested for high-end boots. He saluted Colonel Pratt while Mao, smoothing the wrinkles in his trousers, waited for the Colonel to say something. Calvino raised himself on one elbow in bed and stretched.
    â€œWhat time is it?”
    Pratt walked around the edge of the debris. “Time to find out what happened yesterday afternoon. And you might start by explaining about this room.”
    â€œWe had a small party. Then these two