by John Burdett
I confirmed the message originated from the same number as Denise's mobile. Ruamsantiah's eyes flicked between Chaz and the mobile. He nodded at me, and I pressed the autodial button. This time only a couple of rings were required. A cautious tone: Yes?
"It's me again. He's in a Bangkok police station getting beaten up after being found with two suitcases of ninety-nine-percent-pure morphine, which he has confessed he was planning to smuggle out of the country. He has named you as an accomplice-"
A great bull yell from Chaz, who tried to attack me again, but this time everyone was ready. Two of the cops sat on him while others held his arms.
A contemptuous tone from Denise: "Leave it out, sonny boy. My Chaz wouldn't grass on me for all the tea in China. What kind of rank fucking amateur are you?" She closed the phone, leaving me stranded in perplexity. When I tried her again, I got a busy signal.
I looked thoughtfully at Chaz. Whatever doubts I might have had concerning Ruamsantiah's rather precipitous conclusion that Denise was behind the racket had now been cleared up. But our evidence against her, although intuitively compelling, could be argued away by an expensive lawyer. Indeed, it could be pretty effectively laughed out of court by a cheap one, since it consisted entirely of that tattoo on his right forearm. Even a Thai court might hesitate to condemn her to death without more to go on.
The sergeant and I shrugged at each other. Ruamsantiah seemed to feel sorry for this great pink baby, who would probably not actually be executed (because he was pink, not brown, the King would pardon him eventually after a few decades on death row) but who would certainly be ground down by our prison system until he was no more than a toothless shade on slopping-out duty. Well, there was nothing more to be done for the moment.
"I guess we better check that it really is morphine in the suitcases," I said to Ruamsantiah, who blinked. What else could it be?
And there it was left, farang, because the next day, before I'd had a chance even to consider what the morphine might signify with regard to Zinna, there was the problem of Mitch Turner to deal with and then that trip down south to Songai Kolok.
End of flashback, farang.
19
R uamsantiah, still in awe of Vikorn's low cunning, calls back slightly breathless:
"I've just been in the cell with him."
"How's he doing?"
"Bad. Really bad. The jailer had to use restrainers."
"Withdrawal?"
"Cold turkey with extras. He's strong, he was bashing his head against the bars."
"Is he in interrogation mode?"
"He could be, with a little help. You'll have to do it-the brute hardly speaks a word of Thai."
"I'll be down. By the way, did you get his record from Scotland Yard? I'll need it before I question him."
"I've got the fax, but I couldn't read it because it's in English. I'll send it up to you."
The sergeant sends a young constable, who arrives on the double with Buckle's British record sheet. He started in reform school, after which he began a five-year career as a moderately successful burglar, followed by jail, where he addicted himself to heroin and began an apprenticeship as a small-time trafficker. After the first serious drug bust he developed an increasing sophistication in his MO and is now suspected of large-scale trafficking from Southeast Asia to the U.K. via Amsterdam in a well-organized ring. Said to have developed a serious reluctance to go back to jail, which has resulted in greater caution in the way he does business. Despite numerous detox programs, he has never been able to kick his smack habit.
I meet Ruamsantiah at the steps down to the cells, and we walk with the jailer to cell four. For once the jailer has exercised compassion in that he has used padded, hospital-style restrainers instead of his usual chains. We stare through the bars. Chaz is in poor shape, shivering and groaning, with some nasty cuts and bruises on his forehead. "Self-inflicted," the jailer defensively reports.
"Is he on anything?"
"Only tranqs."
The jailer selects a key from a sparkling chrome chain as long as infinity, then opens the door. Ruamsantiah and I enter the cell, dank with one man's total despair. I say: "Chaz." There is only a flicker of recognition, then a return to his compulsive shivering.
"Maybe we can help you."
Again, a brief flicker of recognition, but this is not the same man as the one I interrogated last week. Thwarted craving shows us our darkest places, our deepest fears, our basic cowardice. "Denise didn't get you out of here like she promised, did she, Chaz?" I am using Paternal Concerned with plenty of saccharin and just a dash of menace. He stares at me, then lets his head down again, shivering and shuddering.
"You weren't any ordinary courier, were you? You're a pro, Chaz. I've seen your record sheet-you're not just some dumb mule like the other losers who hang around Ko Samui and Pataya, waiting to be used, those other ugly dumb tattooed bastards who'll risk anything for a fix. You were the boss's main man, her lover, weren't you? You didn't have to worry about a little thing like a bust, because the boss is so rich and influential and so damn well connected, she could get you off of anything anytime. That's why you had the nerve to jump me, remember? This is Thailand, and all she needs to do is bribe the forensic lab-throw money at it, as they say-and you were going to be walking the streets again, shooting up on the best stuff money can buy, right? That was the plan, you talked about it many times, she told you how special you were, how powerful she was, didn't she? But you were way too experienced to take her word for it. There had to be more to it than this, she had to show you her influence. Her connections. You'd been east enough times to know what connections mean over here. According to your passport you've made twenty-five visits in the last five years. Connections are wealth, power, happiness-connections are everything. And even Denise is just another lost farang if she doesn't have them. So tell us, who is her main man?"
This time he doesn't even bother to look up. I nod to Ruamsantiah, who produces a small glassine bag with white contents from one of his pockets.
"Chaz," I say softly. A sudden flick of his eyes, which fix on the bag in Ruamsantiah's left palm, then down again to stare at his navel. "I can relieve your suffering, Chaz." I finally have his full attention. Suddenly his eyes are pleading. "It's okay, Chaz, you can trust me, I'm a cop, ha-ha. No, really, I give you my word. We'll let you come down slowly, reduce the dose a little every day till you're clean, maybe even find you some methadone. That's the humane way to do it, isn't it?"
He gulps, opens his mouth, stares at the packet, and shuts his mouth. In a whisper: "I can't do cold turkey, it's killing me." Our eyes lock. This is a confession straight from the soul. He just can't do it. He really can't do it. Oh, how he would love to play the macho martyr immune to all weakness, but the dope dragon is too powerful.
"Of course, you'll have to help us nail that bitch and her supplier."
A quick look, a nod, and then he bursts into tears. In a sob-drenched whisper: "Gimme the smack, I'll tell you what you want to know."
Ruamsantiah and I exchange a glance. "Better get him some gear," I tell the sergeant. "Make sure it's sterilized."
While the sergeant is gone hunting for syringe, oil lamp, and other accessories, I use Coaxing Voice on the perp: "You're small fry, Chaz, a mule, a dummy. She used you, then she let you twist in the wind. But she's not such a big fish, not really. She's just another middle-aged fucked-up farang on her last life, isn't she? She moves nothing, shakes nothing, she just hangs around the table with her tongue hanging out. So her crumbs are bigger than your crumbs, but at the end of the day it's still crumbs. Because over here the trade is owned by the locals, right? There are no farang jao por, Chaz, no farang big bosses, they're all Thai-but you know that. Now tell me, who did Denise produce to convince you that she had the connections to keep you safe? That's what it takes in your game, doesn't it, for a wise guy like you to take a risk, even if you were screwing her. She had to show her credentials, didn't she?"
Ruamsantiah has returned with a disposable plastic syringe still in its germ-free packet, a small oil lamp, and some aluminum foil. He lays it all out on the crude wooden table at the back of the cell, while Chaz watches intensely. Ruamsantiah lays the packet of smack next to the syringe. Now the sergeant and I are both looking at Chaz.
"A Thai army general," he says in a broken voice.
"Name?"
"Zinna."
"Tell me more about General Zinna. How many times did you meet him?"
"Once."
"She produced him just the once to convince you she was kosher?" A nod. "You must have been impressed."
"He came in uniform, with soldiers."
"Where did you meet him?"
"How do I know? She took me somewhere, I wasn't paying attention."
"Describe the place."
"Big house, three stories, lot of land, dogs, monkeys."
When I translate, Ruamsantiah stares at me. "He's talking about Khun Mu."
Chaz Buckle has recognized the name: "Yeah, Mu, that was it."
I nod. "Can you manage to cook on your own, Chaz, or shall we get someone to help you?"
"I'll do it."
I watch while the sergeant drags the table over to where Chaz is taped to the bars by his ankles and wrists, then releases Chaz's wrists. He immediately hunches over the table, pulls off a strip of aluminum foil, and starts to shake out the smack from the packet, oblivious to all human emotion, including his own shame. I leave him with Ruamsantiah.
20
I n a jam at the intersection between Asok and Sukhumvit-that black hole where time gets lost-I ask the driver to switch off his Thai pop CD so Lek and I can listen to Rod Tit FM. Pisit has invited none other than my mother on the show in her capacity as Thailand's most famous, and vociferous, ex-prostitute.
These are sad times for sleaze, farang. Our government is going through one of its puritanical phases and has decided to impose an earlier curfew. Starting next month, all the bars will have to close at midnight. Naturally, the flesh industry is outraged, the whole of Soi Cowboy has been mobilized, no farang is allowed to pass by without signing a petition. Pisit's first guest is a katoey who works the bars. Lek listens, riveted.
The katoey with deep voice maintains that she intends to sue the government for the cost of her operation and the ruination of her life. She had the whole shooting match cut off for purely commercial reasons. She grew up as a boy in Isikiert, one of the poorest regions in the poorest part of the Northeast, with five sisters and one brother. Her mother is blind from cataracts, her father's health is broken from rice farming in the tropical heat twelve hours a day, her sisters are all mothers of infants by drunken Thai men who don't pay child support, and anyway none of the girls were likely to make a fortune in the Bangkok flesh trade for aesthetic reasons. Her only brother suffers from Down syndrome and requires constant supervision. As the cutest of the brood, she was nominated (unanimously) as the one to solve the family's financial problems in the big city. Borrowing as best they could and pooling everything they had, they just about scraped enough together for the operation that turned her into one of the sexiest-looking whores on the Game. It was a onetime, high-risk capital investment that, after apainful lead-in period, is finally beginning to yield a reasonable return, and now the government is sabotaging the fledgling cottage industry with this early-closing nonsense. Everyone knows the major part of the business of the Game is conducted between midnight and two p.m., when the johns' resistance has been properly ground down by alcoholand the attentions of near-naked young women (or katoeys). What maniac in government had this bright idea? Obviously they care nothing for the poor. If she has no money to send home, is the Interior Minister going to take care of her family?
Pisit turns to my mother, who needs little launching:
The government isn't merely killing the goose that lays the golden egg-it is ruining the only wealth-distribution system we have in this feudal society. This government has no common sense at all. Do they seriously think we'll get rich by becoming as sterile as the West? I've been to Paris, Florida, Munich, London-those places are museums populated by ghosts. The bottom line is that for more than three decades the people of Isaan have been kept alive by what little cash their daughters in Bangkok have been able to send home. There are whole towns, roads, shops, farms, water buffalo, cars, motorbikes, garages-whole industries that owe their existence to our working girls. These courageous young women are the very essence of the female genius for sustaining, nurturing, and honoring life with life. They are also everything that is great about the Thai soul, with their selfless devotion and sacrifice. They ask for no help or gratitude, they don't expect admiration, they gave up looking for respect decades ago, but they are the heart of our country.
Pisit: How much of our government's attitude is influenced by Western media, do you think?
Nong: Well, I must say I don't know what the Western TV networks would do without a brothel in Southeast Asia to point their cameras at. Of course our government is influenced, but it's just a question of the TV networks improving their ratings. They never trouble to really understand us. What can you do? This is the ersatz morality of the West.
Pisit: Does this crackdown spell the end of the sex industry in Thailand?
Nong: I don't think so. After all, it's been illegal for nearly a hundred years, and look what we've achieved. Also, there's a lot of investment from the West these days because the upside potential of investing in a well-run go-go bar is much greater in my view than, say, investing in General Motors. Our girls charge far less per hour than in most societies, yet at the same time they are among the most sought-after women on earth. Rates have not increased in real terms since I myself was active.
My heart swells with pride at my mother's mastery of a vocabulary usually reserved for the ruling classes, but the taxi driver twists his head around. "That's your mom? She must have been a real goer in her day."
"You may go back to your Thai pop CD now," I instruct.
When the jam finally starts to ease, Lek says: "Have you seen the new stuff from YSL? It's in the Emporium; some amazing dresses."
"I haven't kept up with the fashions this year."
"Armani and Versace still have the best colors, though."
"Italians have the best eye for color."
"But I still prefer the Japanese designers. Junya Watanabe's stuff this season is out of this world. Dusty grays in satin and velvet. Such a shock at first, you know, then you think: perfect. So did you speak to your mother?"
I swallow, then cast a glance at his ink-black hair, the hue of youth still on his flesh, the buttery glow in those high cheeks, the innocence still in those eyes. I've been mulling the thing over in my mind for days, wondering if my mother's wisdom had deserted her in middle age. It seems almost against nature to introduce this angel to Fatima. Then it clicks. Initiation is the word. My mother is right, as usual. Not only will Fatima be good for him-she is exactly what he needs for experience and survival. Also, Fatima is very rich. If she decides to adopt him, he'll be set up for life.
"Actually, she suggested a friend of mine who I'd just not thought of in connection to you. I haven't seen her in over a year, but it won't be difficult to look her up. I'll see what I can do."
Lek beams happily and throws me one of those grateful swooning looks of his. "Remind me again, where are we going?"
"We're going to see Khun Mu, Lek."
21
T ake a poor Thai girl out of her third-world village, throw money at her, and what is the third thing she wants, after the three-story wedding-cake mansion and the lurid Mercedes? Louis Quinze furniture in acrylic tones, as a rule. Even beige is garish at this level of light reflection, and the green carpet is like something you might play tennis on, but Khun Mu somehow fits the decor.
A word about Mu. Before Vikorn shot him, her husband Savian "Joey" Sonkan used to boast that he'd spent more money renovating her body than he'd spent on the house a
nd the five-car garage, but Mu began sculpting her body before she met him. She was what was known as a late developer. Most of her friends left the Isaan village at around eighteen to work in the big city, and many of them returned for holidays to boast about the money they were making out of dumb farang men who hired their bodies for ludicrous prices. (You could buy a fully grown buffalo for what those guys spent in a night at the bars.) For years these stories seemed not to affect Mu overly much, until one fine day she stole the family savings from under her parents' bed and blew everything on silicone breast enhancements and a new wardrobe, then fled to Krung Thep to make her pile. As luck would have it, she found her destiny not with Western men (the rigid echoing bosom and the pink body stocking proved resistible, despite assurances from her consultants) but with a home-grown jao por-a young drug baron who appreciated a woman whose taste was as bad as his own.
Joey didn't just deal drugs-he lived with them. After my Colonel took him down, we found whole cupboards full of yaa baa, the matrimonial mattress stuffed with heroin, bales of ganja in the garage. Vikorn, who had long grown out of shoot-outs with desperadoes and would have been happy to come to some arrangement (say, a modest seventy percent tax on Joey's gross profits), never wanted to kill him, but Joey's other passion, apart from drugs and modifications to his wife's body, was chase movies, the more violent the better. He wanted to die like Al Pacino in Scarface, and after years of provocation Vikorn finally granted his wish.