by John Burdett
“My Colonel and I have not yet had time to go through it,” I reply.
“Your Colonel? This is the Emperor Vikorn, right? Too bad he couldn’t make it to the videocon. Listen, I might talk ocker ozzie, but I’m Asian to the bones, mate, Chinaman to me marrow, me, I speak fluent fucking Putonghua. I know why this Vikorn character didn’t want to come. I’ve checked him out—he’s a smart cookie, no way is he gonna expose himself. So he sends you, and anything you negotiate he can repudiate if he wants to. No, please, no need to deny—I’m talking with respect and admiration, as an Asian. I like it. So look, Asian to Asian, and not meaning any disrespect to Tommy there, who worked his balls off drafting it, but fuck the contract, right? You send us the product of the same quality as your trailer, and we wire the dough to whatever offshore bank you name. If we default, you stop supplying the product; if you default, you don’t get paid. If there’s a prob with any of the product, we’ll give you a chance to fix it, but if you miss a deadline, you’re penalized. How much a day, Tommy?”
“Ten thousand U.S.,” Smith replies.
“Right. That okay with you? Course it is. Your Colonel has no intention of ever paying a penalty to anyone, and there’s no way I can go after him in Thailand ’cos he’ll just have me bumped off if I try to enforce, right? So it’s as well to know what our leverage really is here.” Hitching the shorts: “I represent a large consortium of interested parties worldwide, not only hotel chains but other outlets in every civilized nation on the planet, especially media. So if you do default, you may as well start looking for another business to be in. Clear? Good. Now Tommy, you had a problem with one of the member corporations?”
“A certain oil company that is closely connected to—?”
“Oh yeah, the kid in the White House. Just to fill you in, Mr. Jitpleecheep, the oil companies are interested in your product as a way of keeping the men entertained during the long boring days and nights on the rigs. They’ve all had enough of the usual cock-and-pussy show, so they might be ready for your wacky stuff. But there is a whiff of S&M that’s got a few knickers in a twist. That right?”
“That too, but according to some secret protocol, and considering the senior members of government who are associated with this oil company, they have reservations about showing actual penetration.”
A groan from the little Chinaman. “Fuckin’ wimps. See, Mr. Jitpleecheep, this is what we have to contend with. The rules change from corporation to corporation, government to government, and from one fuckin’ month to another. There’s no industry standard, as I pointed out in a meeting of the top producers of this type of product in Manila couple months ago. I said, ‘This is crazy, mates. We’re going to be as big as oil in ten years, and there’s no bloody industry standard for anything. You can see the girl’s pubic hair but not her nipples, or depending on the time of day, you can see her nipples but not her pubic hair. You can see the couple rolling and humping, but you can’t see the actual pumpin’ dick, or you can see the pumpin’ dick but the tart keeps her bra on’—well, fuck it. Have someone tell the kid I might just start thinking about ordering a global return to reality-based journalism. That’ll put the wind up the fucker.”
“I’ll make it happen, Mr. Yip,” Smith says.
“On yer. Anyway, time’s up, thanks for the trailer, Mr. Jitpleecheep. Tommy, you and I need a private word about the other thing.”
“Certainly, Mr. Yip. If you don’t mind, I’ll just show Detective Jitpleecheep out.”
The Chinaman stares blankly out of the screen as Smith shows me to the door. In the corridor Smith turns to me. “Isn’t that a great guy? You ever meet a genius of that caliber before?” He is good at reading faces and sees it as part of his job to accommodate me. He raises his shoulders, points his palms at the ceiling. “What can you do? The pathologically greedy have inherited the earth.”
Once on the street I fish out my cell phone and the card the mamasan gave me at the Parthenon Club last night. She agrees to meet me at Starbucks at the Nana end of Sukhumvit. I have to go back to the police station before the meeting, but there’s not a lot of time, so I take a motorbike taxi. There are about fifty riders gathered at the mouth of the soi, slouching around, playing checkers with bottle tops, talking about money and women in their well-worn seua win, sleeveless orange jackets with their numbers on back in huge spiraling Thai digits. I want to choose number nine, which is everyone’s lucky number, but I have to take the next in rank, number four, considered the number of death by the Cantonese and everyone they ever influenced, including us. Well, I guess this guy has lived with the number for long enough and still seems to be breathing. By the end of the journey I’m revising that view, though. Every motorbike trip makes you fear for your kneecaps when they overtake into oncoming trucks and zoom down the corrida de la muerte with no margin for error, but this guy knows no fear at all. It shows that whereas the number four isn’t necessarily lethal in all circumstances, nevertheless it is not a number to be taken for granted. I’m quite shaken when I get off outside the station, pay him—then turn right into the Internet monk.
“Kawtot,” I say automatically at sight of the saffron, but as I step into the station, I’m thinking that it was his fault. He must have seen me getting off the bike and simply stood behind me so that I would bump into him. Strange, because monks are meticulous about how they present themselves to the world. The moment passes, I attend to a few chores and note that Lek and I are on “red spot” all afternoon, which means we have to respond to whatever comes in over the radio and our caseload is more or less suspended for the day.
I call Lek over to my desk for a quick brainstorm. In his honorable opinion we should concentrate on the bracelets. “That’s twice, and both from a young monk. And it just so happens that we have a young monk in the area who has started to bump into you. Could this be a clue, d’you think? Sorry if it’s difficult.”
“You don’t have to get sarcastic. Of course I’ve thought about the monk and the bracelets, but what am I supposed to do? You can’t just drag in a monk for questioning in this country without having the Sangha down on your neck, and this one hasn’t done anything wrong so far as we know.”
“How come he’s handing out elephant-hair bracelets to everyone who ever got involved with Damrong?”
“You’re exaggerating, and we don’t know it was him. I want to let the monk play his full hand first, I don’t want you to start nagging him.”
I watch as a new idea penetrates and blossoms in Lek’s mind. He is more intuitive than me—indeed, intuition dominates the whole of his mental organ, so that once he is convinced of something, it is very hard to dissuade him. Now he is staring at me in fear and awe. “You’re going to let him win, aren’t you?”
I should, of course, say Win what?, but I guess that would be to deny a subtle truth. I have no idea what the young monk is up to—I’m just sure it’s more honest than any work Vikorn may have for me. I refuse to engage Lek’s eyes and look away.
Now I’m on the back of another bike on my way to Starbucks. My cell starts ringing, and I have to answer it because it might be Nok calling to cancel the meeting. The traffic noise makes it hard to hear, and the signal is intermittent.
“Is it true you’re giving him the money for the surgery?” the FBI wants to know. I have to use both hands for a moment to grab the strut behind the seat because the driver is taking a bend at about forty-five degrees; the trick is to keep the cell between one’s central digits without pressing any buttons, while clinging to the strut with thumb and pinky. “Hello, hello?”
“Sonchai? You still there?”
A little breathless after a near-death experience, I say, “Lending. Did you two have lunch already?”
“He switched to a coffee break because he says you all are on call this afternoon. How could you do a thing like that?”
This is one of the worst drivers I’ve ever had, and he’s a number nine, would you believe? Sometimes you have to wonder if th
ere’s been a paradigm shift equivalent to climate change, causing nine and four to switch in terms of luck distribution. I had to hug his back with my head down when he overtook a taxi just now. “What? Lend him the money? Because he practically went down on his knees and begged me. When I said yes, he made me the most important person in his life. Now we have gatdanyu.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll explain when you’ve got a week to spare.”
“I want to know. If you didn’t lend him the money, there’s no way he could go through with it, right? There’s no one else in the world going to put up that kind of dough for him.”
I sigh. “Kimberley, if I didn’t lend him the dough for a first-class operation, he’d go downmarket. Can you imagine what that means in Bangkok?”
“Sonchai, I just don’t understand you. That’s one of the most beautiful male specimens I’ve ever seen.” I have a disgusting feeling that the tough hide of the FBI is being corrupted by the worm of do-goodery. “You’re such a compassionate man. How can you do this? He’ll never be happy.”
“Hang on.” With all the optimism in the world, it is difficult to believe I am going to survive the oncoming cement truck. Well, I did. “Without a dick? I don’t know about that—you seem to manage. The male member doesn’t bestow any privileges anymore. A lot of us owners wonder if it’s not more nuisance than it’s worth.”
“Stop trying to be funny. This is serious. We’re talking about a young person’s future here.”
Irritated because I have to get off the bike before my destination in order to carry on talking, I say, “Wait a moment. I’m going to tell you something.” I have the driver stop at a cooked-food stall so I can grab a 7UP and sit down to drink it. “It’s like this.” Handing a reality sandwich to the FBI is not going to be easy, but there seems to be no alternative. “When Lek was five years old, he had an accident. He was jumping onto the hind legs of a buffalo to spring onto the animal’s back the way they do in the country, when the animal jerked his legs and sent him flying. He was lucky not to land on the horns and be gored to death, but when he hit the earth, he split his head open on a rock. They had no medical facilities, nothing at all. They assumed he was going to die. He looked dead already. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“So they called the shaman, who built a charcoal fire near the kid’s head and blew smoke over the boy to assist the shaman’s seeing. The parents were called. The shaman told them their son was as good as dead. There was one hope and one hope only: they had to offer their child to a spirit who would fill his body and bring him back to life. But after that the child would belong to the spirit, not to the parents.”
“Huh?”
“There was only one downside. The spirit was female. Strictly speaking, Lek is not entirely human—he’s a female spirit who inhabits a male body.”
I take a sip of the 7UP and wait for her response, which doesn’t come. I don’t think she has hung up, though, because after a while the line starts bleeping until I close my phone. When, a few minutes later, it gives the double-bleep that indicates a message has been received, I open it again with great curiosity. The message is not from the FBI, however.
Did you know that since the NATO invasion of Afghanistan poppy production in that country has increased more than 500%? Cost of raw sap has halved. My contacts can take the stuff as far as Laos. It would be up to us from there. What do you say? Yammy.
In the reply window I tap out two letters, no, and zing it off.
18
I sit upstairs in Starbucks on a sofa with a good view of the street, waiting for Nok. I am only vaguely aware of other patrons; I’m pretty much glued to the window. I know what she thinks our meeting is all about, and I’m feeling guilty to be deceiving her, but at the moment she might be the only real lead I have. I’m also feeling disloyal to Vikorn, who would obviously prefer that I don’t investigate the Damrong video too carefully. Amazing how easy it is to divide one’s own mind. There’s a fanatic in me who will not rest until I’ve got to the bottom of that snuff movie; he lives in the same house as the other guy, who would be happy to go along with Vikorn’s game plan and live happily ever after with his pregnant wife. The fanatic is winning.
Now I see her and know exactly what she expects by the way she is dressed. In tight jeans and T-shirt, she could not be further from the eighteenth-century mamasan of last night. She has assumed that because I’ve chosen the Nana area, with its profusion of cheap short-time hotels, we’ll go straight into sex: no need for her to dress up. There’s a bounce in her step: anticipation of making a little on the side in what will probably be a pleasurable encounter that may lead to something more enduring: maybe I’ll even make her my mia noi, or minor wife; give her a salary and a room to live in. Also, since I seem to have decided to betray my wife after all, I must have found her irresistible: pride and dominance in her quick smile at me when she arrives.
“Did you know we were raided last night, just after you left?”
I shake my head. “Really? Did they find anything?”
“No drugs, but they took away the computer with the member list. The boss has been on the phone all day talking to members who are scared the press will get hold of the list. Someone called Colonel Vikorn is taking money. Fuck cops.”
“Right,” I say, giving up on the idea of coming clean. “Well, it’s not your problem.”
She smiles. “Not right now anyway.” She waits expectantly. When I do not begin bargaining regarding the price of her services, she examines my face more closely. Maybe I’m one of those confused men who got into a marriage he’s not enjoying but is not sure if a mistress is really what he wants? I have not prepared properly for this interview, and I’m conscious of exceeding my authority. I feel more like a bandit than a cop when I take out my wallet and start to lay out some thousand-baht notes on the coffee table. There’s a flash of anger at my indiscretion which diminishes as I continue putting the money on the table. She has counted ten thousand baht and now checks my eyes. No one except a farang would offer that kind of money for a midday romp: Okay, I’m special, but I’m not that special. I roll the money up into a tight ball.
“Let’s say I’m an investigator,” I say. “I work with banks.”
Her shift into the new reality is pretty well immediate. “You’re trying to protect the members? That’s why you were there last night and didn’t want to do it? The bankers are paying you?”
“No. Someone else is paying me.”
I make a face that she construes as affirmation of her suspicion. Her features have hardened, and there is a new clarity in her gaze. “I’ll want more than that.”
“I’ll double it.”
“More.”
“No.”
“Then I’m not talking.”
I puff out my cheeks. Twenty thousand baht would probably be what she averages per month. Most girls would grab it—unless they were frightened.
“Look,” I say, “how do I know you have the information I’m looking for?”
“I can guess. If you’re not working for the bankers, then you’re into some kind of blackmail scam. I don’t want to get involved, but I need the money. I’ll talk for fifty thousand.”
There’s finality in the tone. “Okay. I’ll have to go to an ATM.”
“We’ll go together, then we’ll go to a short-time hotel. That way everyone who sees us will think you’re hiring my body.” She pauses to look around the café. Three middle-aged white men are sitting with girls they probably picked up in this area the night before. The others are mostly farang men and a few farang women taking a break from the third world and reading newspapers and magazines over a caffè latte or machiatto. We go to the nearest ATM, where a couple of young farang men with eyebrow hatpins watch with amusement while I take out a wad of notes with my whore standing beside me.
She knows the Nana hotels better than I do because she worked some bars here before she went upmarket to the Part
henon. We take a cab to a drive-in, where there are curtains to draw around your car if you brought one, and a hastily constructed set of rooms that give directly onto the underground car park. I pay a guard three hundred baht. Once in the room he asks if I want to watch porn on the DVD player while I’m humping, but I tell him no. Meanwhile Nok has started to feel horny. She sits on the double bed with a teasing smile and looks up at us in the ceiling mirror. I smile and shake my head. She holds out her hand. I give her ten thousand baht and promise to hand over the balance if she has useful information.
There is a gynecological chair in one corner. In use, it must offer access to the captive vagina from virtually every point of the compass. Nok jerks her chin at it with a complex smirk: Look what we could be up to if you didn’t insist on asking stupid questions; maybe we could multi-task? I shake my head again. She sighs and lies flat on her back. I join her, so we are both looking at ourselves in the ceiling mirror, which distorts somewhat. Perhaps the purpose is erotic, for everything appears longer.
“What do you want to know?”
“How the Parthenon really works.”
Her elongated features in the ceiling mirror give me a shrewd look. “Why don’t you tell me what you know so far?”
“I know that there are only a hundred and fifty official members. The subscription fee is not that high, and there’s no way such a small number can keep a place like that going. A membership that small couldn’t even keep you in your silk gowns.”
In the mirror a female demon nods gravely. “You’re pretty shrewd. So how do you think it works?”
“Secret membership,” I reply. “There are some impressive names on the membership list, but not half as impressive as they could be.”
She nods. “Correct. Not many people know about it, not even the girls. Nothing is written down.”
“Tell me how it works.”