Paying Back Jack by Christopher G. Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

shit—only, until this experience, he hadn’t thought the words in the songs could apply to him. He’d thought, like most people, that he was the exception to the rule.
    As he drove into Pattaya, the traffic thickened up like water turning to ice. The car in front slowed, then stopped. After ten minutes, he was edging along Beach Road. Through the window, Tracer saw a number of uniformed police, a body snatcher’s van, and hordes of onlookers. A body under a white sheet was half in the road and half on the sidewalk. A man in a security guard’s uniform leaned down and pulled back the sheet, and a TV camera crew moved in to film the dead woman. What was your big sorrow, little lady? he thought. What team didn’t you make?
    The traffic picked up, and in a few minutes Tracer turned into the Royal Garden Plaza and parked in the shopping mall’s basement garage. He climbed out of the Mercedes and dragged an orange plastic traffic cone over to the side. Wiping his hands, he climbed backinto the car and pulled into the spot. He locked the car and then put the traffic cone behind it, crossed the parking lot, and pushed the elevator button for the first floor. When he emerged from the elevator, he hadn’t walked more than twenty feet when he ran straight into two men in civilian dress who he knew from the look of were military; they were loitering outside an all-you-can-eat restaurant, studying the menu. They looked nineteen, twenty years old. About the same age he’d been when he’d enlisted, just in time to see action in the first Gulf War.
    â€œYou boys with Cobra Gold?” asked Tracer.
    â€œYes, sir,” they said at the same time. Just looking at Tracer they could see military written all over him.
    Tracer smiled. “Thought so. Watch yourself in Pattaya.”
    â€œWe’ve been briefed about the situation, sir.”
    â€œThen you’ll be all right. Don’t forget that when push comes to shove, lady boys are more boy than lady.”
    â€œThere’s not a lot of lady in that boy,” said one of the marines, breaking into a smile. “We’re here to assist you, sir.”
    Whoever had come up with that password exchange knew a lot about Thailand. That would have been Mooney’s doing. Tracer was no prophet, but like he always said, the blues gives a man insight into the human condition. Working with a guy like Mooney, it paid to know something about the human capacity for bending the rules. The men shook hands with him and, seeing Tracer’s Marine Corps ring, exchanged a knowing glance. He wondered what Mooney had told them. His bet would be next to nothing. “A jarhead’s head ain’t a place to store knowledge,” Mooney had once said. “It’s a place to store orders, one at a time.”
    â€œWhy don’t I take you boys to dinner?” Tracer turned up the amps on his hundred-watt smile. “I know a place where they bring you a steak that just about defeats any man.”
    On the walk to the restaurant one of the jarheads whispered into his cell phone, letting Mooney know everything was going according to plan.
    They walked a couple hundred meters along Beach Road to a small restaurant. Once they were seated at the booth, one of the jar-heads asked Tracer about the first Gulf War. Bar girls talk about sex, bond traders about the market, soldiers about war.
    â€œYou boys done your tour in Iraq?”
    They nodded, smiles coming off their faces.
    â€œThen you know that no one who’s been there wants to talk about it. But if you wanna talk about football, I’d put money on Michigan taking the conference this year. They got a quarterback who shifts downfield like Spider-Man.”
    His companions looked disappointed, shifting their knives and forks around.
    â€œOkay, I saw some shit, did some shit,” Tracer said. “Some I was proud of, other stuff I’d just as soon forget. You know what