Bangkok Haunts

by John Burdett

  “Listen,” his pal said after five bottles of sake, “there’s only one way to make a film these days, and that is to find the kind of investors…”

  Yammy finished the sentence for him.

  Well, farang, I know you’ve guessed the rest, although it happened in Jap Time, which is to say that dear Yammy slumped into alcoholic depression for nearly a decade before he succumbed to the inevitable. To be fair to Yammy, he came very close to running a successful business operation, but like a lot of beginners in my country, he made the fatal error of choosing to buy from the army instead of the police. Worse, he bought his modest ten kilos of smack from Vikorn’s arch-enemy General Zinna, which, to cut a long story short, is why Vikorn had him banged up and had the boys produce a watertight case that will inevitably get Yammy the double injection. (We changed from the bullet last year in recognition of current fashions in the global execution industry; Buddha knows why, nobody ever felt the slug enter the back of the skull. It wasn’t a question of humanity, simply new-wave squeamishness. Personally I would much prefer hot lead in the cerebellum to a slow suck into the big sleep by chemical means. What d’you think, farang?)

  So, things were not looking so good for Yammy until five minutes ago. Here’s my heroic visit to him in his cell in Lard Yao (our biggest, holds nine thousand prisoners, built by the Japs as a concentration camp in World War II):

  Imagine a long hot ride to a tropical middle-of-nowhere. Suddenly a not-displeasing display of lush vegetation announces the beginning of the penitentiary’s extensive estate. Hold it, though—what is that terrible stench? Oh, that’s the raw sewage vat in which they make difficult prisoners stand up to their necks for hours, sometimes days. Not a great place to drown. Hold your nose, and we’re being patted down by the rock-faced screws and led to the visitors’ room, where we sit on a single wooden seat while they bring in Yammy in cuffs and leg irons: a slim, rather handsome Japanese in his midforties with an attractively receding hairline and the sullen determination of a true artist, in an age when true art is beyond the cultural pale. There’s no seat for him so he has to stand. I am delighted to be the bringer of fantastically good news and feel that I must be well in with the Buddha, since I am the instrument of his salvation. Imagine my consternation, therefore, when, after I have outlined in broad strokes Vikorn’s irresistible business plan, he says, “No.”

  “But Yamahatosan,” I say, “perhaps I have not expressed myself with sufficient accuracy. Let me be clear. In a few short weeks from now your case will come to trial. It makes no difference if you plead guilty or not—the evidence against you is overwhelming. And even if it wasn’t, Colonel Vikorn knows how to get a conviction. You will be sentenced to death, and while spending the usual few years on death row, you will be gang-raped by farang and thereafter deemed an unlucky pariah by the Thais, who will cut off your supply of fresh cockroaches, thus depriving you of your only source of protein. You will probably be terminally sick long before they strap you down and get you ready for the long needles—”

  “Stop!” says Yammy. “You can’t scare me. I’ve decided to kill myself.” He makes a samurai-like gesture with his left thumb across his lower intestine. “I’ve got the knife already.”

  “But Yamahatosan,” I say, “I thought I’d already explained, you don’t need to kill yourself. I’m here to get you out.”

  “I don’t want to get out. What’s the difference? You Thais know nothing of honor. I was going to kill myself anyway if I couldn’t make a feature film. If you let me out, what will I be?”

  “A well-paid pornographer.”

  “I don’t want to be a fucking pornographer. I’m an artist.”

  Flabbergasted, flummoxed, exasperated—and impressed—I fish out my cell phone to call the Colonel.

  “So let him be artistic,” says Vikorn. “He can use ten cameras at the same time if he likes. He can cut to the fucking moon landing in between fellatio. He can have flowers and ink-block prints all over the stupid studio. He can have complete artistic freedom, just so long as he gets the cum shots right and the junk sells in America and Europe.”

  I translate all this to Yammy, whose glower slowly lifts. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Here, take my cell phone,” I say with saintly self-control. “If you decide to graciously accept our humble offer of employment, please press this autodial number, which belongs to Colonel Vikorn.”

  Back in the cab I borrow the driver’s cell to call Vikorn, who bets five thousand baht Yammy will call within the next five minutes. I bet the same amount he will not call before I reach the station, because he’s a stubborn, suicidal Japanese whose honor will take at least half an hour to collapse.

  Vikorn and I sit amazed in his office, waiting until after nine in the evening. Finally the phone rings, and Vikorn hands it to me because Yammy speaks no Thai.

  “I want the right to introduce my own story lines. Most porn has the stupidest, corniest story lines, if any. I want real plots.”

  Vikorn waves a weary hand of resignation when I have translated.

  6

  Damrong came to me last night. I guess I knew she would whatever color pajamas I wore, and no matter how many times I waied the Buddha in our little homemade shrine with fairy lights: Chanya’s idea. I was aware of her and the Lump in bed with me at the same time as being out of the body. Furtiveness only added to the intensity of my lust. We cannot wake Chanya, I tried to say, even as Damrong’s mouth descended on my quivering member. Liberated from time and space, she was able to project a multiplicity of images: naked; half naked; wearing a black ballgown with silver jewelry; topless in tight-fitting jeans with her long black hair intermittently covering her breasts; bent over me in the attitude of total submission; standing above me in a posture of command. The point, really, was the overwhelming sexual power of her spirit, which somehow was able to trigger hormones from the other side. Men, let me be frank, there is no erotic experience that compares to being fucked by a ghost. When she had finished with me, I took myself off to the yard to hose down my feverish body. Thankfully Chanya was still fast asleep when I slipped back beside her.

  Back to the case. I have used Colonel Vikorn’s security clearance to penetrate the deeper reaches of the national database. When I plug in Damrong’s ID number, I find a curious surname: . It takes me a few moments to process this odd couple of syllables. I try out various possibilities before light dawns: the name is Baker. Armed with this clue, I make a few cross-checks and discover that her Thai family name is Tarasorn, and her parents were Cambodian refugees. She married an American named Daniel Baker just over five years ago and, according to the Immigration data, went to live with him in the United States until she returned about two years later. On official documents she was still obliged to sign her name as Mrs. Damrong Baker, which is the name that will appear on her death certificate.

  From the database I extract Mr. Daniel Baker’s American Social Security and passport numbers. I call Immigration to have them check if Baker happens to have returned to Thailand recently. It’s a long shot, but you never know. Then I call Kimberley at the Grand Britannia to give her Baker’s Social Security number.

  I am afraid the FBI is the first to respond. Within less than half an hour she calls me back, slightly breathless.

  “Okay, this could be your big lead. Dan Baker has a conviction for pimping.”

  “Pimping?” I give this information the reverence it deserves. “No illicit porn videos?”

  “No, but these days that’s pretty well implied in the act of pimping, at least in the States.”

  “And?”

  “She was prosecuted for running a bawdy house, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They both pleaded guilty. He got twelve months plus one year probation. She got six months, but they deported her.”

  “When?”

  “Just over four years ago.”

  A pause, then Kimberley says, “It must have been right after she was deported that she went to work for you.�
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  Fighting a certain internal resistance, I say, “Yes. We always thought she was way too upmarket for us. I guess she was just using us as a stepping-stone while she readjusted to Bangkok. It must have been quite a letdown after the States.”

  “I don’t know about that. Prostitutes in the States don’t have such an easy ride.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m working on it. The whole case rings a bell. I think it got a lot of publicity because some of the city fathers were involved.”

  Mrs. Damrong Baker: the asymmetry in the name might say it all. I have to call Immigration five more times before I am able to convince them to get off their backsides. When they do, it is simply a matter of plugging Dan Baker’s passport number into their database. Finally my desk phone rings.

  “He’s here in Bangkok.”

  “As a tourist?”

  “No. He has a license to teach English as a foreign language. Yearly renewable visa plus work permit, signs in every three months to confirm his residential address.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sukhumvit Soi Twenty-six.”

  I call Lek, my assistant. While I am waiting for him, I walk to the window to look down. The young monk, whom I’ve come to think of as “the Internet monk,” is crossing the street to enter the Internet café. I watch his vivid saffron robes disappear into the bright shop; then Lek arrives. We take a cab. “I want to know if he’s lying or not,” I tell Lek. “Just watch him while he answers.”

  All Bangkok taxi drivers practice witchcraft, but this one is at postgraduate level. Garlands in honor of the journey goddess Mae Yanang hang from the rearview mirror with a bunch of amulets, obscuring the middle slice of external reality. I should mention that there are two ways of avoiding death on our roads: pop pong and pop gun. Pop gun signifies the usual dreary ineffective stuff like wearing a seatbelt and not driving too fast; we generally prefer pop pong, with its inviolable spiritual protection. Done properly, pop pong not only protects your life, it can also deal out severe punishments to those who threaten it. At this very moment our driver is proudly recounting the tale of a road-rager who cut in front of him last week, only to be flattened by a cement truck five minutes later. “What a mess,” he says with glee, and points to the ceiling.

  Lek is riveted: “Dead?”

  “Sure.”

  “He didn’t have an amulet?”

  “Would you believe it? He had a salika inserted under the skin.”

  “And he still died?”

  Our driver points to the ceiling again with a beat-that expression. “Accidents don’t just happen. The origin is in the past.” He jerks a thumb backward to indicate the past. “Gam,” he says. Karma.

  Lek and I study the ceiling, where a kind of astrological chart provides luck, health insurance, and protection from traffic cops. The inscriptions are in, not Thai, but the ancient Khmer script called khom, from the time of Angkor Wat. “You use a moordu?” Lek wants to know.

  “Sure, a Khmer moordu. What do Thai seers know? All magic comes from the Khmer in the end.” He shifts around to give Lek a quick glance. “I got into this in a big way after the tsunami. Before that I was pretty choi choi about it.”

  “Because of the ghosts?”

  “You bet. See, what people don’t appreciate is that most of the Thais who died didn’t come from Phuket at all. They came from Krung Thep and up north. And of course, the farang ghosts wanted to get home as well, so the dead all arrived here trying to get on planes at the airport or buses back to Isaan. My partner, who uses this car on the night shift, said it was terrible. He’d pick up a party of four or five passengers and drive them to Don Muang; then when he turned around to collect the fares, they weren’t there anymore. The worst, though, were the ones who boarded in the dark; then when he turned the light on at the end of the trip, they were totally rotted already, eyes hanging by the optic nerve and bouncing around on their cheeks. Then there were the farang who don’t know diddly about being dead and were still looking for loved ones, crying out and all that. It was just awful. For that kind of stuff, you got to have professional help.”

  Lek nods gravely in agreement. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this side of the katoey soul, so I look out the side window, where carbon monoxide is laced with air. We’re stuck in the usual jam at the Asok-Sukhumvit crossroads, and a kid about ten years old with a dirty face and exaggerated misery picks his way around the stationary vehicles. He makes a halfhearted attempt to clean the windows with a broken windscreen wiper, then holds out his hand. When I roll down the window to give him ten baht, hot poison wafts in and the driver complains. “There’s no karmic benefit in giving to kids like that,” he explains. “Better to get the right amulet. How can you walk around without protection?”

  Lek gives me a told-you-so nod. He never removes his shamanic plant roots wrapped in yellow yantra cloth, which hang in a small bunch from a cord around his neck. He often chides me for trying to take reality naked, like a dumb farang.

  The right turn out of Asok into Sukhumvit can be tricky without pop pong. Our shaman screeches around almost on two wheels, just in front of a crowded bus, forcing a motorcyclist to swerve and the bus to brake. Then we’re speeding along past the Grand Britannia, way ahead of the pack. “Amazing,” Lek says, lavishing awe on the ceiling.

  I’m pleasantly surprised when the guard at Baker’s apartment building tells me the American farang still lives here and is at home this very moment. I give the guard (light and dark blue uniform, handcuffs, and nightstick; he was playing Thai checkers with his colleague sitting at a makeshift table using bottle tops when I interrupted) two hundred baht, and by the time I’m standing outside Baker’s door, I already know most of the American’s private life. Works regular hours mostly from home. Brings a girl back every Friday and Saturday night, sometimes the same one. Speaks Thai quite well. Likes to work out at a local gym. Never has any money to spare but usually pays the rent on time. Not a big drinker but smokes ganja from time to time. Has a sideline in something photographic, but it doesn’t seem to make him much money. Never seems to return to America, prefers to spend his vacations in Cambodia. He was quite an argumentative type of farang when he arrived about three years ago, but he’s learned local ways. He’s quiet now, respectful; he walks the walk.

  I have to decide what kind of knock to use. Too hard, and I fear I will awaken that farang mind-set called Thaicopsyndrome: he could start shivering in his boots and replaying every horror story he’s ever heard about our legal system, which is not what I want. Too soft, though, and I could get insolence. I opt for the middle path, which brings him to the door in a pair of knee-length walking shorts, nothing else.

  Thirty-seven, male-pattern baldness, gray in his chest hair, an iron-pumper’s physique, no tats; he experiences the usual sinking feeling when I flash my police ID. Teachers of English tend to be a subset of the backpacker nation; for us they fit into the poor-and-deportable category of foreigners and tend to think the worst when a cop comes calling.

  “I’m here to ask a few questions about your ex-wife, Mr. Baker.”

  A scowl disguises something more sinister. I think he is not surprised enough. I check Lek with a flick of my eyes. Lek is using feminine intuition, or at least practicing the shrewd, assessing look that is supposed to go with it. He purses his lips at me and shakes his head.

  The apartment is built from the same tired building plan that is used all over the world these days: in the hierarchy of concrete caves his owns a window and a toilet, which puts him two points above basic. There are other signs that he is not totally resigned to nonexistence: a laptop opened and sitting on a chair; a corny but provocative poster of a Thai girl sitting topless by a river and a poster of Angkor Wat; some books. I guess Not a Lot to Show would be his category in the global pyramid, a popular level, I have to admit. They have long been a curiosity with me, these farang men who come here to be nobody, as if even that role is too stressful in their utopi
a of origin. Now Lek and I are both staring at Baker, who checks his wristwatch, which looks to me like a fake Rolex. (The second hand jerks instead of rotating smoothly around the dial; for some that’s all you need to know during your stopover in Bangkok.)

  “I don’t want to offend a cop, but I have to tell you I have an English lesson in ten minutes.”

  “Where is your lesson, Mr. Baker?”

  “Right here.” He looks me in the eye. “A private lesson. You can get me on nonpayment of tax if you want, but it’s the only way I can survive. The school I work mornings doesn’t pay a living wage.”

  I nod. “I don’t want to deprive you of income. Let’s see how far we get before your student arrives,” I say.

  “Right.”

  “Your ex-wife, Mrs. Damrong Baker.”

  He seems uncertain how to proceed. A long moment passes, and then he comes out with it, in a kind of anger burst: “That bitch—what did she do now?”

  I raise my eyes and crumple my brow. “What did she do before?”

  A mistake on my part; my response was too smart by far. He quickly erases all expression from his face and shrugs. “I was married to her for a year. We lived together. You might as well ask what she didn’t do to destroy me—the list would be shorter.”

  I exchange a glance with Lek and nod at him. I know he is anxious to practice his interrogation skills—and his English.

  “Mr. Baker, how did you first meet your Thai wife?”

  Baker takes Lek in for the first time. There are not that many transsexual cops in Bangkok; as far as I know, Lek is the only one. On duty he takes measures to disguise his growing bosom and keeps the camp act to a minimum. When he talks, though, his body language says it all. There is shyness and female cunning in the way he does not look Baker in the eye. Baker experiments with an attitude of contempt, then thinks better of it after a glance at me. I jerk my chin: Yes, you do have to answer that question.