Veera’s son nodded and gave Calvino the high-five. “I like your style,” he said. “I can’t remember anyone turning down the old man’s offer of money. I’ve seen money buy everything. I mean everyone and everything.”
“Does it buy Sawai?”
A crooked smile ran across the kid’s face.
“Yeah, you can bet on it.”
Twenty minutes after leaving Veera’s compound, Calvino stepped inside Sawai’s compound.
At the main gate, he fished out the key and opened the Yale lock. The lock had been threaded through a heavy chain. A medieval-looking chain like that shouted that the person inside wanted to be left alone. He closed the gate and walked through the grounds. Several cats scattered and a dog barked and charged until Calvino leaned down and pretended to pick up a stone to throw. Calvino passed the deserted cottages and walked up the stairs to the main house. He knocked twice before opening the door and letting himself in. He removed his shoes and left them beside a row of shoes near the door. He had a look through the downstairs rooms. The sparsely furnished rooms were dark and hot. The salt from his sweat made the wound slicing up the side of his ear sting. He wiped the sweat away. Two steps later, he was dripping sweat again. He walked between two long teak beds. Bamboo mats covered the floor. The shutters on the windows opened onto the garden and the sunlight illuminated cobwebs around the hinges, suggesting the windows downstairs were permanently open. A gecko flicked its tongue and then darted across the wall. The dust and cobwebs were strong evidence that there was no maid in the guru’s future. The kid had indicated Sawai had been bought. From the look of the place, he had sold out cheap. It was hard to imagine that a famous guru who lived alone didn’t have servants. Combine face with an obsession for cleanliness, and bingo—maids, gardeners, drivers, and cooks materialized in the most humble of surroundings.
Calvino climbed the stairs to the second floor. “Hello,” he called out.
A film of gray smoke hung in the air as Calvino approached. The smoke came from an open door at the end of the corridor. Calvino walked down the corridor and peered inside.
Sawai sat on a bamboo mat smoking a cigarette. He flicked a long ash into a bowl filled with unfiltered butts.
“I am Vincent Calvino.”
Sawai nodded. “I’ve been expecting you. Please, sit down.”
The voice was the same as on the tape Calvino had heard in Prasit’s prayer room; it was more formal, less comforting, with an edge of suspicion.
This wasn’t exactly Thai hospitality at its best. A visitor had been expected but the compound was bolted shut. He hadn’t been invited into the guru’s house. The shadow that fell between expectation and invitation covered guest relations in a fog of ambiguity. He would still have been waiting at the gate if he hadn’t broken inside the compound using a spare key.
Sawai, like most chain smokers, had yellowish fingers; he also had the large, unblinking eyes of an executioner. He looked like he’d been freshly shaved. A scent of cologne rose from where he sat. His dress was simple: a collarless white cotton shirt and dark trousers. Joss sticks burnt in clay pots on either side of his prayer table. Through the haze of smoke, Sawai’s face, round and fleshy, looked more Chinese than Thai. Behind the guru, on the sofa, two young girls no more than fourteen or fifteen read comic books, sneaking a look at the farang who’d come into the room. They wore school uniforms and lounged with a degree of comfort that led Calvino to believe they had been in the room before. It looked like an afternoon ritual. After school, go and see the guru, read comics, watch the mystic smoke, his eyes falling on their young bodies. A fan rotated, moving the air and ruffling the pages of their comic books. An advance warning from Veera was suddenly an understandable precaution, thought Calvino.
“Has anyone done your chart, Mr. Calvino?”
This was an interesting question. Thais inevitably called everyone including farang by their first names.
“No, but I have a secretary who keeps my bank book.” One of the students offered Calvino a glass of water. She slid along the floor like a slave servant of a hundred years ago, keeping her head lower than his chest. Having delivered the water, she pulled herself across the polished teak floor and resumed her place on the sofa. The buttons on her white blouse were undone, the outline of her breasts showing as she leaned forward. Calvino took a sip of the water. There was a tattoo of a coiled snake on her breasts. She lingered for a second too long. Her fingers brushed against his. He could smell her perfume.
“The water’s ice cold. How do you do that?”
Her smile wasn’t the innocent smile of a schoolgirl. “I make cold. I make hot.”
“That makes you a thermos,” said Calvino.
“Sia Veera said you had a sense of humor. That is good in a man. Women love a man with a good sense of humor. You make her laugh and she belongs to you forever,” Sawai said.
“Do you make these girls laugh?”
He ignored the question, smiling. “What year were you born?”
The guru was very smooth and in control of his turf. “Year of the Dog.”
“That makes you fiercely loyal to your friends. They are faithful and obedient.”
Freud wrote that dreams were a kind of hallucination. Calvino wondered if he were dreaming inside the guru’s house. Beautiful, nubile girls with long, slender legs stretching out like cats on the sofa. The guru would have felt at ease in Valentine’s compound, as Valentine would in his. He started to wonder if the two men had ever met.
He had a number of questions: Was this staged for Calvino’s benefit? What kind of game was Sawai playing? What game had he played with Valentine’s gardener? Sitting across from the guru, the whispering, giggling schoolgirls in the background, Calvino had an idea why Veera’s son had linked the guru to Rasputin, who also had a highly developed taste for women and orgies. And like Rasputin, it would be difficult to pin down Sawai’s religious affiliations.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” said Calvino. “Anyone who comes at the invitation of Sia Veera is free to
ask whatever questions he wishes.” The amulets around his neck rattled as he shifted position.
From what Calvino had seen, it seemed that the guru’s beliefs covered a range of themes—Buddhism, Hinduism, the Tao, Spiritualism, and early Hugh Hefner. His religion was served up like the small bowls of pepper, sugar, salt and sauces that a Thai restaurant delivered with a bowl of noodles. Sawai expertly spiced his client’s spiritual food to suit their individual taste. Like all great chefs, Sawai had mastered the art of hooking repeat customers; those who took the bait became loyal, and loyal people did favors, brought gifts, gave him money. Local students stripped down and, in exchange for his gifts, lent him their bodies. If he was in direct contact with the other worlds, there was little in the house and compound to show that his supernatural buddies had given him advance tips on lottery numbers, horse race winners or stock exchange tips.
“Nice house,” said Calvino.
“Sia allows me to occupy this house. Thanks to his generosity I can carry out my mission.”
“What is your mission?”
“Bringing enlightenment.”
The Buddha complex in spades, thought Calvino. Here was a country guru with a personal mission, bringing spiritual growth to his village while kicking back, locking the gates, and relaxing with a couple of young girls. It was the kind of work that would have attracted a lot of applicants. He must have some talent.
Discovering that Veera owned the well-preserved teak house in a largely unoccupied compound came as no surprise. Nor was it unexpected that Sawai lived in the house rent-free with his groupies bringing cold water for his guests and clients. Calvino guessed the guru had a finger in many pies. Close to the main source of power in the community, his power would only increase.
“Did you know a gardener named Prasit?”
“A sad case,” said Sawai. He fingered a string of worry beads. The beads clicked, the only sound in the sil
ence.
“You knew him well?”
“Very well.”
“You went to his house?”
“Often. But his wife, Fon, she was a non-believer.”
“What did Prasit believe in?”
“Spirits who could protect him. I tried to give him strength.”
“Why did he need strength?”
“Because of his past. He did some terrible things, and the weight of his past was heavy for him to carry. The burden became too heavy.”
“You think he killed himself?”
The guru nodded and sipped tea from a round Chinese cup.
“What if I told you he’d been murdered?”
Calvino watched the guru slowly put the Chinese cup back on the table. One of the girls quickly left the sofa and refilled it from a shiny porcelain pot. “Murdered by whom?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. I thought you might have some idea.”
The guru closed his eyes, breathed in deeply and slowly exhaled.
“Someone close to him,” said Sawai.
Calvino raised an eyebrow, pulling the stitches over his right ear. The guru had told him nothing. If Prasit had been murdered, it was hardly likely that it would have been the random act of a stranger.
“What’s that mean?”
Sawai’s eyes opened. His fingers splayed out on the table. Long, manicured fingernails. “He was fearful of his past. I can tell you what I’ve told no other person. Prasit did some bad things. Not that he was bad. But sometimes good men bend to the will of others.”
“What kind of bad things?”
“He carried out contracts.”
“He killed for money.”
The guru’s eyelids half closed. His voice softened in the soothing, ethereal tones that had been recorded on Prasit’s tape. The ligaments in Calvino’s legs twitched. Sawai could transform himself in an instant the way a truly professional con man could switch roles on a dime.
“He killed many men,” said Sawai. “And he couldn’t put this past away from his thought. I can say that he was a man consumed by his guilt and sin. No one could save him. I sent him spiritual guides and taught him how to call these guides to his service. All he had to do was allow those spirits into his heart. At first, these spirits gave Prasit comfort. But his sadness was too deep and not even my powers could save him.”
“What about Khun Prasit’s brother, Sombat? He was found shot. Was that someone close to the brother, too?”
“Sombat was drug dealer. They have a short life in Thailand.”
“Fon said Sombat was never known to use drugs. They were planted on him after he was killed.”
“One can never know the truth about another person.” Calvino nodded. An image of the editor, Mike, flashed through his mind. That was the first piece of truth to come from the guru, he thought. “Prasit told you his brother was a drug dealer?”
Sawai was silent for a moment. “They worked together. That’s all I know.”
“I have information there was a third man,” said Calvino. He was bluffing, and waited to see if the bluff would be called. If the man could see events happening in the future, he could certainly see Calvino was holding a hand that should be called.
“Ton?”
“That’s the one,” said Calvino.
A long sigh followed from the guru and he drank his tea. Things were going in a direction that he obviously didn’t like.
“What do you want with him?”
“I want to meet him. Ton. That’s his name, right? Can you arrange a meeting?”
The guru slurped his tea. The joss sticks had burned away. He removed several more from a plastic pack and carefully stuck them in the vase. He lit them and then a cigarette, inhal- ing the smoke deeply before letting it coil from his nose.
“I can arrange, Mr. Calvino.”
Calvino wasn’t certain what was more disturbing—the outright refusal to help or the too-quick willingness to assist. A more drawn-out, calculated and open-ended reply would have better fitted the character of such a man.
“One more thing—when was the last time you saw Prasit alive?”
Sawai withdrew the cigarette from his lips. “A couple of days before he died.”
Calvino watched his eyes. A slight flutter crossed his face; those eyelids that didn’t blink moved. His jaws flinched. He was lying through his teeth, thought Calvino.
“How often do you see Sia Veera?”
The question deflected Sawai back to comfortable territory. His face relaxed. “Every day. I make a daily chart. There are auspicious times and dates for business. If you know how to predict these moments, you can provide a great service to others. But it takes great concentration. I can’t be interrupted. That’s why the gate is locked.”
“Veera appreciates your guidance,” said Calvino. He laid Prasit’s amulet on the table before the guru. Sawai picked it up and examined it with an eyepiece.
“I help Sia Veera see his destiny.”
“What do you make of this amulet?”
He lowered the eyepiece and laid the amulet on the table.
“Over the years, I’ve given many amulets to Sia Veera. He uses them for his protection and for the protection of his men. I may have given this one to him.” For someone who was so certain about the future, the guru had a habit of making vague and disturbingly imprecise answers about the past.
Veera was downstream in the amulet distribution racket. Calvino figured that one or both of them was lying about the amulets. To connect Veera and Sawai to the dead gardener with an amulet was evidence of a relationship. It could mean nothing as handing out amulets was a common occurrence. Or, depending on the amulet, it could be a reward for service, or mean that special protection was conferred. Sawai handed the amulet back to Calvino.
“My duty is to guide Sia Veera so he avoids conflict and problems. A powerful amulet like this can help. Like powerful men everywhere, he has enemies. Such men wish to destroy him. He needs to know the path that leads him away from danger and pain. You are a farang. You don’t understand how Thai people think. You believe what I do is based on superstition. But you are mistaken because you let your logic and science crowd out another world just because you can’t see or prove its existence.”
“It is a specially powerful amulet,” said Calvino.
“Quite rare,” said Sawai.
Not rare enough for the Prasit’s widow to keep.
“Valuable?”
“It would bring a good sum,” said Sawai.
Fon had wanted no money from the object. She wanted the amulet to find its way back through the mist of time and place and into the hands of the person who had given it her husband. She wished it to return as an omen.
“Even if it had been worn by a man who hanged himself?”
Sawai eyed the amulet and sat back, arms folded around his chest.
“What is it I can help you with?”
“I have a question. With all of your powers, why couldn’t you help Prasit? Or did you see into the future and know that he would die?”
“I can lead a man by showing him the way, giving him spiritual guides he can call on, but I can’t force him to choose a way he doesn’t wish to go.”
Calvino rose onto his knees. He remembered the tapes in Prasit’s prayer room and how Fon had said Prasit had listened to them over and over again.
“One more thing. As you seem to know about everything that happens in this village, did you ever meet a reporter named Pramote?”
“When I saw his face, I knew he was a dead man,” said the guru.
“How could you know this?”
“I have a link to the future. I see things that will happen. There is no changing what will be. Nothing anyone does can alter the outcome.”
“And when you saw me come through the door, what future did you see?”
“That you are doomed to love a woman you can never have.”
Sawai opened a wooden box and removed an amulet. He looked
at it closely and then held it out to Calvino.
“Take this with you. It is very powerful. Wear it and you will have luck and happiness.”
Calvino took the amulet.
“So far I’ve managed to live alright without either.”
Sawai nodded at the two teenage girls. “Would you like to take the girls with you?”
“Take them where?” asked Calvino.
“To your room of course. They might change your luck.”
“I thought the amulet was supposed to do that,” said Calvino.
“A man with such a sense of humor is always the saddest of men.”
“The saddest is yuen pen kai ta phang,” said Calvino. The Thai proverb for the blurry gray-eyed chicken that isn’t disturbed by the heavy rain, or the idiot who refuses to see the danger of destruction about to fall on his head.
The guru sucked his teeth. “There’s another Thai saying about chickens you should learn: kai long.”
This phrase described the chicken that pecked the ground for seeds without knowing it had pecked itself into the center of a pack of wolves. It was a threat and a warning.
“If you can arrange the meeting with Ton, I’ll make an effort to live with my sadness and watch out for the wolves.”
On the way out, Calvino had a funny feeling that it was Veera’s kid who had made him understand that he was walking into a setup. Calvino’s Law: Just because you are at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean you can’t get eaten.
TWENTY-EIGHT
FON SAW HIM in the distance as she groomed Wagner’s brown-and-white dappled neck. Calvino passed alongside the row of rooms, stopped and talked briefly with Som, then continued with a measured, steady walk as if he knew where he was going and what he wanted when he got there. She had a feel- ing as he reached the gate that he’d discovered something; a piece of information that she had withheld. Now he’d returned to confront her, asking more painful questions, twisting her words, bending her memory and warping, devitalizing her spirit. She ran the brush along Wagner’s spine. It was just a matter of time before he found certain things out about her husband. She had wanted to tell him—she was so close to the zone of disclosure—but couldn’t bring herself to confide in a farang she hardly knew. A man hired by the very man who held her in contempt.
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