Cambodia Noir Read Online Free Page B

it. I case the joint as I finish my drink. Shiny: fresh paint, wooden chairs—no plastic lawn furniture here. Someone had cash to play with.
    A wiry thirtysomething with little scars all over his hands pops up next to me as Channi pours my second. He’s the manager, he says. Terry. He asks if the girls are paying attention to me. “Lip service,” he calls it, with a little Mona Lisa smile, “they giving you lip service?”
    â€œChanni’s keeping me in peanuts.”
    Terry used to work in steel in the Midlands, but there was no future in it; then he did travel for a while, but that didn’t suit him either, so now he’s moving into food and beverage—hey, everybody’s gotta eat. He winks like we’re in it together now. He’s bringing some class to this place, there’s a second floor, I must try the snooker table—
    â€œIf the beer runs out,” I say.
    He puzzles over that. I turn away and he dives for the sidewalk, and fresher-smelling punters.
    I have a third, then a fifth. A truck roars by in the distance, ancient engine clanging. Outside, the streets are coming alive: blaring horns, slamming blinds, people finishing errands and scurrying for cover. Time to wrap up what you’re doing; to get home, if you have one. Time to take shelter. A final door bangs shut and for a second there’s perfect quiet—like someone’s clicked a shutter and we’ve been caught, frozen in this moment forever.
    Then the monsoon hits. Sheets of water rip across the world beyond the awning.
    Terry doesn’t seem to notice the rain. He’s busy smiling his Mona Lisa smile at me over his shoulder. Channi’s smiling, too, as she tops off my beer and slides over more peanuts. It’s like I just won some fucking award.
    Something’s happened, but nobody else notices, they just keep grinning. The moment passes. Not even a snapshot: just a rumble in the distance, then the rain.
----
    Back at the house; unsteady on the narrow stairs. Almost night now. I rattle Gus’s gate in the dark; no answer. Up to my floor, stumble over the suitcases on the landing. When I was in Vientiane, Gus put one of those American vampires in here. Girl left her shit while she went on some backpacking jaunt, and here it is, still in my hall, waiting to kill me. Consider trashing the stuff, but it’s too much effort. I’ll make Gus deal with it later.
    I thought the beer would get me to sleep until it was time to go out, but I just lie there in my cage, listening to the rain. Pictures keep flashing in my mind: men in dark uniforms with plastic-wrapped bundles on their shoulders. The general and his aide crumpled into the back of a police van like yesterday’s newspaper. The police and the army, facing off. Why now? The Eastern drug trade is peanuts these days. Ten years ago, maybe, it was big—four times as much dope coming out of the Triangle, all headed for the States. But times change: a few warlords crash and burn, supply declines. The US invades Afghanistan and a new supply appears, traveling west through Turkey and Europe. Cambo gets left with the scraps, again.
    But out here, we’re hungry. Even scraps are worth fighting over.

DIARY
June 28
    Phnom Penh airport is tiny, made of cinder blocks and glowing with yellow sodium light. Border officials wear uniforms embroidered with pagodas and elephants. . . . Stamps, visas . . . and then waiting, and more waiting. I’m not sure if the men here make a fetish of blond girls the way they do in Japan, but I don’t much want to find out. I wrap myself up and fade from view. It is one of life’s little consolations: realizing I can choose whether or not to be seen.
    It’s a while before the boy comes, but I spot him at once. There aren’t many foreigners here, waiting—or arriving, for that matter—and he’s the only one who fits the type. He might be 25 or 26,