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interrogations, and inevitably, viewing the dead body. He’d be asked, “Was that the woman you saw dropping past your balcony, Mr. Calvino?”
    He’d lost his appetite for the steak dinner and revised his dining plans. He’d talk with the cops and then go back to his room and watch what little was left of the setting sun. A few minutes later when his cell phone rang, he didn’t answer it. He saw Pratt’s number in the missed call window. Calvino told himself he needed to handle this his way.

THREE
    FOR PRIVATE SECURITY contractors like Alan Jarrett, dawn was not just the start of a new day; it was a favorite time for executions, torture, or confessions. Interrogators, ambush point men, dictators who worked along the edge of the dark side of truth, they watched their targets illuminated by the first light on the horizon. Old military habits tend to graft onto a life, and after some years in the service no one can tell the grafted bits from the original. Dawn work detail was one of those grafts. Civilians slept through the dawn. Soldiers and ex-soldiers doing a soldier’s job were up and already at work, checking weapons and the perimeter, heading out for that place no one wants to go, with no choice in the matter. Dawn was the time for a hanging or an ambush. Jarrett and his buddy Tracer, both five days in from Kabul, had an appointment here in Bangkok, a job to do. Then they’d fly back to Afghanistan.
    At five in the morning the new day’s light was no more than a fragile crack at the edge of the sky, running like a fissure of gold in a deep shaft. Within fifteen minutes daybreak would spread into a full-blown dawn. As if programmed, Jarrett’s eyes opened. He reached above his head and pulled back the curtain to look out. Letting the curtain fall, he laid his head back on the pillow and relaxed his muscles against the sheets. He felt the chill in the air and listened to the background buzz of the short time hotel room’s air-conditioning. It was always good to wake up in a safe civilian zone, an environment removed from the danger that lay justahead. Jarrett raised his left arm slowly and glanced at his Rolex. It was 5:27 a.m.
    His head slowly pivoted on the pillow. A ying in her early twenties, naked, back turned toward him, slept with one fist clasping the sheet waist-high. She moaned as she turned over, as if responding to someone in her dreamscape. She was an upcountry beekeeper’s daughter, and he wondered if in her dreams she was out in the fields tending the hives. Or was she just back in the bar, fleeing from a drunk who was pawing her? Rivulets of long black hair fell over her pillow. Her breathing was slow, regular, the kind that accompanies the deepest sleep. Jarrett told himself she was dreaming of tending hives somewhere in Surin province, the sun on her face and buckets of honey at her feet. At least he wanted to believe that. She introduced herself as Wan, which meant “sweet”—as in honey sweet. He had known her eight hours, long enough to learn her life story, or at least the edited version bar yings learn to tell. Her charm and body were enough to cause him to feel the excitement that comes with an unexpected close encounter with a young woman.
    He smiled, thinking of an old blues song “A man always has a price to pay/A woman knows her value/But she sells it for what she can/There’s always a price/always a price/but you don’t always know how much/til you break it/always a price/and it ain’t always money.”
    Jarrett slipped out of bed without disturbing Wan. He moved like a shadow with its own life and purpose. The hotel room was smaller than he remembered from the night before. From the edge of the bed he crept over to the chair and slipped on his jeans and T-shirt. He froze as she curled on her side, moved her leg, and pulled the sheet up to her chin. He waited until she settled back down and her breathing became more