Bangkok Haunts

by John Burdett

  You might think it medieval, but it’s far more ancient than that. We are a deeply conservative people at heart. Our version of Buddhism, called Theravada, is two thousand five hundred years old, and we haven’t changed a word of it. The robes our monks wear are stitched together from the same template Siddhartha himself used, and we follow the same Four Noble Truths the Greatest of Men expounded when he began his ministry, the first being: There is suffering. Only farang ever argue with that one.

  I pass through dilapidated but majestic wooden gates onto consecrated ground, and it is as if he is waiting for me. A young novice, all bright and earnest, points him out where he is sitting on the balcony of an old wooden kuti. He is not surprised to see me.

  “Welcome to my palace,” Damrong’s brother says with a smile, hitching his robes and waving a hand at the particularly tumbledown shack the abbot has loaned him in the name of hospitality. I wai him, as if he were a real monk. Now he’s smiling modestly. “You checked with the Sangha? They’ve never heard of me, right?” He laughs. “I ordained in Cambodia, brother. The Thai Sangha wouldn’t have me. Something about a criminal conviction.” He offers a shrug to lose the world.

  “Oh,” I say, as if I didn’t know.

  “Does that bother you?”

  “I’m a cop.”

  “No,” he says, all-knowing, “you’re a monk, like me. You just signed the wrong form. You’ll be in the robes, chart na.”

  I settle down in a semilotus with my back against a flimsy wooden wall, facing him. Down below a dog with almost no fur left on one leg is ferociously scratching. In the middle distance two senior monks are talking softly in the shade of the huge bodhi tree that forms a sort of center to the complex. “It’s true we have a lot in common,” I concede. “You lived off your sister’s prostitution all your life before you ordained, I lived off my mother’s. You traded yaa baa, I watched while my buddy Pichai murdered our dealer. I spent a year in Buddhist purgatory. For three months my abbot had Pichai and me breathing death.”

  Perhaps it is melodramatic of me to use this colloquial phrase. While I have been speaking, he has allowed a smile of affectionate amusement to flicker back and forth across his mouth, a master watching the clumsy gropings of one who has never passed intermediate level and likely never will.

  “Breathing death is good practice,” he says. I want him to say more and find myself fidgeting, wishing he would continue. It seems the perfect expression of compassion when he finally starts speaking again.

  “In Cambodia it is still possible to use real corpses. I lived with one in my cell for a year, experiencing its dissolution from the flies-and-stench stage all the way to dry bones. While I watched I identified: every attachment, every aversion dropped away as the organ that created it disintegrated.”

  “A year? I would have gone mad.”

  A tolerant smile. “Of course I went mad. For a monk, what the world calls sanity is a whorish compromise.”

  “But something saved you. You seem okay now.”

  A curious expression. “Saved? There is nothing to save, my friend. You are talking like a Christian. You cannot cast yourself into the Unknowable in the hope that gesture will buy you salvation—you have to jump for the hell of it. In a nirvanic universe there can be no salvation because we are never really lost—or found. The choice is simply between nirvana and ignorance. That is the adult truth the Buddha urges upon us. We are the sum of our burning. No burning, no being.”

  I accept defeat in awe, a mere B-plus student effortlessly demolished by a true yogin. I decide I may as well give up testing him, since I am only making a fool of myself. I sneak back into forensics.

  “If that is your enlightenment, why did you trouble to seek me out?”

  “I told you, my sister’s spirit is not at rest. As a monk, of course, I have nothing to do with her dharma at all anymore, but particles of my debt to her remain.” For debt he uses a word which has no counterpart in English but invokes the most serious obligation known in my culture: gatdanyu, a kind of blood debt.

  “But to a near-arhat like you, how can a cop help?”

  Perhaps it is my imagination, or perhaps that really was a wince that distorted his features for a moment.

  “Her spirit craves justice” is all he will say.

  A few beats pass. He is the one who finally breaks the silence to prompt me: “Why don’t you ask me questions that will push the case along? Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

  A pause. “Okay, do you know about the video?”

  More beats, no answer. I say, “Someone sent it to me anonymously. I think it must have been you.” Still no answer. “I thought you wanted to help with the case. You do know about the video?”

  A long pause before he says, “I am still in touch with my village. Monks are allowed e-mail.” A very long pause, during which he seems to dwell in another universe, then: “The function of the West is to turn bodies and minds into products. It cannot understand that the rest of the world holds this to be an obscenity, a corruption of our nirvanic nature.” He follows this statement with a scowl.

  I find I am cast into doubt about him all over again, perhaps by a twitch or gesture, a subtle alteration in his diction, which turned vulgar.

  I cough apologetically. “Phra Titanaka, may I be permitted one very personal question?”

  “For a monk there are no personal questions.”

  “Then for the sake of forensic inquiry, would you tell me how close you and your sister were?”

  His eyes dart, but he says nothing. Instead he stands up abruptly—inexplicably—and leaves me on his balcony to cross the compound to the bot. I remain in a semilotus, watching that elegant, measured walk in the flowing saffron robes until he enters the temple. I think he expects me to leave, and I’m half tempted to do so. I wait, though, feeling foolish and distracting myself by watching the muted but incessant life of the wat until he returns about an hour later. He makes no sign of surprise to see me still here, slips down into a semilotus a couple of yards from me, and says with that peculiar abruptness that I suppose is a consequence of his mental discipline:

  “We were closest when she was in her early twenties and I was a teenager. She always said she was sorry for using me as a pillow to cry on, but it was the only way she could cope. She said maybe if she paid for my education, I would be able to figure it all out better than she.”

  “She used to talk about her customers?”

  I stare in fascination while his serenity morphs into hatred. It is as though he has peeled off a rubber mask to reveal an alien monster from a denser planet. “Every sweaty, pink, brown, black, overweight, desperate, lovelorn, emotionally crippled, fucked-up, shit-eating one of them. It took all she had to pretend enthusiasm. She even had to pretend to love them sometimes—that’s the kind of assholes they were.” A scowl at me: “That was before she became a numb professional.”

  I am struck dumb not only by the sudden change in personality but also by the way he seems quite unaware of it. Something else, too, has made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He sounded exactly like Damrong; same voice, same tricks of speech.

  Thoroughly unnerved, I say, “I see.” He is still scowling and turns his head away, perhaps aware that he has said something inappropriate but is not sure what. He has lost his serenity and fidgets with his robe. He clearly wants to get rid of me.

  Now it is my turn to stand up, wai him, and leave, telling myself that the man who pronounced those bitter words in a growl of the most vulgar slang was not the monk Phra Titanaka; it was someone else.

  In a state of shock I wander across the compound, past the great white chedi, which is the oldest part of the temple complex, and ask a senior monk where I might find the abbot. The monk replies that he is in the same bot from which Damrong’s brother just emerged.

  The abbot sitting in semilotus under the dais is fat, almost the perfect image of a laughing Buddha, and acknowledges my high wai with a nod. I use the most
polite form of address from a hierarchy of dozens as I sit, careful to keep my head lower than his. In the jolly face shrewd eyes examine me. I explain I am a detective investigating the death of the monk’s sister. The abbot confirms that he is extending hospitality to the Khmer monk, who arrived last week and seems very devout.

  “Have you noticed anything strange about him?”

  “Strange? We humans insist on inhabiting a charnel ground—isn’t that strange enough for spiritual creatures without splitting hairs?”

  “He seems to be two different men. His personality switches from moment to moment.”

  “Only two? Perhaps there is something wrong with your eyes. Look more closely and you will see he changes with every exhalation. So do I. So do you.”

  I wai once again, thank him for his wisdom, and take my leave.

  23

  The monk’s sudden entry into the case has brought me to an emotional dead end. The intensity of my guilt over Nok’s death is tempered by the great mountain of suffering this young man has climbed over; and anyway this afternoon has long massage written all over it. I use a fairly large, well-known establishment on a side soi which joins Sukhumvit and Soi 45. A lot of people use the soi as a shortcut, and it has plenty of cooked-food stalls with specializations that can be known from the shape of the stall: braised pork with rice; boiled chicken with rice; somtan salad with sticky rice; and mango and sticky rice plus a lot of kong wan, sweets. Don’t miss the crispy pancakes with coconut cream fillings, farang. I’m watching a hawker prepare Thai coconut pudding in the old style, pouring the batter into tiny hollows of a large round pan, then pouring sweet coconut milk into them. You don’t often see it done properly these days; sometimes I’m driven to steamed banana cakes, thanks to globalism and the fast-food fad.

  I have brought the FBI by way of developing our kiss-and-make-up strategy. We had it all out yesterday in a hurricane of calls, text messages, and e-mails, only the most hurtful of which are really worth recording:

  Me: It’s just hormonal consumerism. You’re no different from the middle-aged johns roaming Nana Plaza.

  The FBI: Oh, and what about you and Damrong, huh? When it happens to you, it’s Cupid, it’s Orion marching across the night sky, it’s chakras and lotus petals in the head. When an American woman falls in love, it’s hormonal consumerism.

  Me (aware that I am about to make a serious tactical blunder): Exactly—that’s the cultural difference.

  The FBI: So you are a cultural chauvinist, exactly what you’re always accusing the West of.

  Having duly noted the magnificence of each other’s claws, we found something else to talk about, and I invited her to the massage parlor so we could sign off on our peace treaty. Now the FBI, all bright, smiling, and looking professional (I know she took Lek out for a drink on Soi 4 Pat Pong last night, however; Lek called me afterward; she was a little fresh but took no for an answer after an aborted grope), tells me she has good news which she will share during the massage.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to stay awake, Sonchai.”

  “You’re not supposed to. If you don’t nod off, the masseuse isn’t doing her job.”

  It’s a relief to step out of the crowded soi into the air-conditioning. The girl at reception asks if we want traditional Thai or oil massage, I say “Traditional Thai” without consulting Kimberley. I order two hours each. Two hours of pure mental emptiness: at three hundred baht I see it as a bargain.

  As many as thirty masseuses are sitting around reading magazines or gossiping in low voices, which causes the FBI to turn to me. “These girls, some of them could be…are they straight or on the Game?”

  Ah! The simple mind of a farang. “When they work the second floor, they are totally straight. When they work the third floor, they are on the Game at the client’s option.”

  “Are we talking morality by altitude, or am I missing something?”

  “The second floor is traditional Thai massage, the third is oil. It is very difficult for a young woman to oil a man all over without arousing him, and we are a compassionate people.”

  “Compassion pays better too, huh?”

  “Three times the price of a straight massage, but the expense is all in the tip. The girls love the third floor, but we are on the second.”

  “Got it” from the FBI.

  Before we are allowed to climb the stairs to heaven, however, we must have our feet washed. The FBI is ill at ease when her girl tells her to take off her shoes and come sit down in front of a bowl of warm rose-water. No one to arrest, shoot, or interrogate here; Kimberley sees no outlet for her talents, and her forehead is a mass of stress wrinkles. She is afraid that having her feet washed in this way might be anti-American, like cricket and Communism. Five minutes later she turns to me with a clear brow. “Amazing what a lift a simple little thing like that can give you.” Her eyes are sparkling.

  I tell the two masseuses that the FBI and I will have adjoining mattresses. Actually, the whole of the second floor consists of mattresses divided one from the other by thin curtains, so we can talk in low voices while the masseuses work on us. We change into thin cotton pants and shirts. A grunt of satisfaction from Kimberley next door as she hits the mattress.

  My girl has already begun working my feet, untangling knots of nerves and muscles with their mysterious connections all through the body. A sudden gasp comes from the FBI side. “Wow, it’s like something popped. This is reflexology, right? Isn’t the theory that every organ has a connection to the soles of the feet?”

  “And every emotion arises from an organ.” I realize that in some way I am echoing the words of Damrong’s brother. I think of him alone in his cell with the corpse. I could never do it myself, but I understand enough to see how it might work: the disintegration of the cadaver was the liberation of his spirit. It’s a radical technique, though, frowned upon by orthodoxy these days, because the Sangha doesn’t want to be responsible for the cases that go wrong. No such qualms in Cambodia, apparently. How wrong did Phra Titanaka go?

  “Yeah, I know that theory. Love is all chemical reactions.”

  “Not only love. What the blind call life is virtual reality for those who see.”

  Another grunt. “You’re losing me. I’m a nuts-and-bolts farang, remember. Want to know what I found out?”

  “Of course.”

  “The masked man, the monster in the black gimp mask, we know who he is. His name is Stanislaus Kowlovski, Stan for short. Both parents were second-generation Polish immigrants.” She groans suddenly. “My god, I don’t know what organ that corresponded to, but a vivid clip of childhood memory just passed across my eyes. Where was I?”

  “So we have the killer?”

  “Not yet, but we have his Social Security number, fingerprints, everything. That isometric hardware you’ve got at the airport works fine. All I had to do was give the nerds the challenge of using the DVD to get a still of his irises. Took them less than five minutes.”

  “How did they react to the DVD?”

  A pause, then softly: “Same as me, Sonchai. Except maybe for a man it’s even worse, to see a beautiful young woman, full of life, do a thing like that. When I told them it wasn’t just a sick fantasy, she really died like that, they couldn’t take it. Hardened agents had to hold back the tears. Amazing.”

  “So you’re hunting for him?”

  “Sure. Everyone’s excited. International sex offenders are the flavor of the month all over the West. We’ll have him for sure in a few days, unless he has strong connections in another country, which I doubt. He might hail from Kansas, but he’s a California boy through and through.”

  “Any rap sheet?”

  “No form at all, but plenty of reputation. The LAPD know about him as a male porn star. There are dozens of low-rent movies with his dong in a supporting role.”

  “All heterosexual?”

  “Yes.”

  “All sadistic?”

  “No. Not a single one. He was a main
stream stud—you know, the obliging, smiling, baby-oiled, irresistible jock who fades into the background early in the flick while the camera homes in on the girl’s body. They showed me a few pix of him without the mask. A handsome male animal, strong jaw, toothpaste smile. If I didn’t know better, I would have categorized him as harmless beach-bum type—you know, the kind of Ivy League iron-pumper who makes a point of not kicking sand in other guys’ faces because it’s uncool and blue collar.”

  We both take a break from the investigation while the girls go deeper into the torture. Mostly these are country girls from Isaan who were tough enough even before they took up massage and are built like miniature brown tanks. I’m getting the elbow in the liver and trying to think of the next question.

  “So, it must have been money that made him do it?”

  “What else? It fits in a kind of way. Male porn stars fade as quickly as their female colleagues. He is forty-three, broke, technically bankrupt, and when that happens, you can bet loan sharks are making circles somewhere under the surface. We’re liaising with the LAPD. Ouch! Is it healthy to get an elbow in the gut like that?”

  “Helps with digestion. Did any childhood clip come up when she did that?”

  “Ten years of car sickness. We lived in Florida, but both sets of grandparents lived in New York. Reunions four times a year. We drove every time.”

  A pause while my feet are bent inward and pressed. “So, what we really want is a lead to the paymasters?”

  “I’m optimistic. Porn stars of either sex tend not to rate so high in IQ tests. A couple days of interrogation should give us everything.”

  We both fall silent under the power of the Wat Po massage technique. There comes a point where the masseuse must confront the sex organ if her client is male. Usually one is totally relaxed and the girl delicately shifts your dormant member from one side of your groin to the other. Often there is humor in the moment, especially if the client has been finding the massage stimulating and the girl gives a why-are-you-so-big? twist to her lips. This time, though, in my relaxed and vulnerable state, the sudden erotic connection triggers off the nightmare I’ve avoided replaying all week. I block it, though, somehow, and now that the massage has reached the relaxing stage, I start to nod off.