Bangkok Tattoo sj-2

by John Burdett

  "So how do we handle it right?" I ask, humbled, irritated, and relishing the feast all at the same time.

  He makes a gesture with his left hand that might appear obscene if one did not know its country origins. What he is actually doing is tickling a fish-fishing by hand was his favorite sport as a boy. It takes a quite incredible patience-merely getting close enough to the fish to tickle its belly is only the beginning-fools make a grab and lose the catch-only the cool stay the course long enough to mesmerize the fish, then grab it. All you need is a heart as cold as the fish's.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Just concentrate. Our friends from the CIA will come calling very soon now. Follow the road signs and keep your mouth shut. Or do you want them to drag Chanya off to Guantanamo Bay?"

  "They wouldn't do that."

  "Why not? Turner was CIA checking out Muslims. He was murdered. She did it. They could leave her to rot over there for the rest of her life, or until she's totally insane."

  He is using Piercing Eyes to stare at me. I know he's playing three-dimensional chess and probably has me mated on every level; but he needs something, that's why he's taken me to dinner.

  "If you're a good boy and stick to the Mitch Turner case, I'll tell you why my Indonesia trip will protect Chanya." I gasp at his ruthlessness. He leans forward. "You think you're so smart? You've been in love with that whore since the day she came to work for us. I know it, your mother knows it, she certainly knows it, and so do all the other girls."

  I fall strategically silent. Then with what I think is fine timing and a not-bad display of low cunning, I say: "So how's the mia noi?"

  Feigning indifference: "Which one?"

  "The fourth one who lives in your mansion in Chiang Mai."

  "Oh, her." Frowning. "She's fine." For a moment I'm foolish enough to believe I've hit a nerve, but this is Police Colonel Vikorn-he doesn't seem to have any. Flashing me a grin, he launches into a brilliant parody of his paramour, mimicking perfectly her screechy voice when in the throes of a tantrum: " 'You shit, I'm giving you the best years of my life, and you don't appreciate it, you keep me cooped up here in this hick town when I could be in Bangkok, what d'you want me for, some kind of trophy? You haven't fucked me for a month, my body's going to waste, I'd rather be on the Game than your personal property. What d'you think this is, the fucking Middle Ages? Why don't you give me some decent money at least? Just because I don't want your kids, you're punishing me with exile from everyone and everything I love, as if you haven't got plenty. You've got more dough than twenty Chinamen, you have. I'm going to have an affair with one of the security guards, that's what I'm going to do. I'm a young woman, and you're a miserable old fart who can't get it up. I'm going to have the biggest tattoo on my ass and a silver ring in my pussy whatever you have to say about it. I could have men crawling at my feet, I could…' "

  What can I do? I'm doubled up and coughing from laughing too hard. It's as if she were here sitting at the table with us.

  In the Bentley on the way back to the station, Vikorn gives me an unusually tender tap on the shoulder. Reaching into the door pocket on his side, he brings out a small satchel and hands it to me. I peek inside. It is a Heckler and Koch machine pistol. I gulp.

  "It's just a precaution. Keep it with you when you can, especially at night. Take this too." It is a piece of paper with a number on it. "Plug that into your autodial numbers, so you can call it just by pressing one button. There won't be a reply, but I'll bring some of the boys to find you, so make sure you're either in your apartment or in the club. Nothing's going to happen before I get back from Indonesia."

  "Zinna?"

  "What you're calling Plan C-I'm afraid he may not take it too well." Vikorn has to concentrate to wipe the grin from his face. He catches his driver's eye in the rearview mirror. The driver is stifling a guffaw.

  25

  T hus have I heard: the faithful Ananda one day asked the Finest of Men: Lord, how is it that in the animals we see all the gods represented-the ferocity of Kali in the tiger, the strength and endurance of Ganesh in the elephant, the cunning and strategy of Hanuman in the monkey-but nowhere do we see an animal that reflects the Buddha? With a nod the Tathagata gazed over the world with an omniscient eye, then described to Ananda an animal living on another continent that was the size of a monkey, owned only three toes on each foot, and was capable of hanging upside down from the treetops for weeks on end; that ate only the leaves rejected by other mammals; that had a metabolism so slow, it took a week to digest each meal; that put up with pain and indignity without complaint; and that was constitutionally incapable of haste.

  Tell me, farang, can there be greater proof of enlightenment than that the man with the universe at his feet chose the three-toed sloth as role model? If he so completely extinguished ego, why cannot I?

  In other words, all of a sudden I find myself quite cured of the defilement of ambition. I worked on it over the weekend, meditated my way into tranquillity, swam for as long as I could in the ocean without a shore-and smoked a couple of joints. It was a struggle, but I got there. No, I don't want promotion anymore, I don't want the hundred thousand dollars, let her have it (the bitch). If she wants to defile her soul by serving Vikorn's sordid (and largely irrational) vengeance, so be it, but let her watch out for karma. Next time around Lieutenant Manhatsirikit will be my pet goldfish. (It still hurts that she's closer to him-and smarter-than me: what could the Plan C consist of?)

  Back at the club, with nothing better to do, I make that call to Fatima.

  She drawls into the phone: "Darling, it's been so long."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I was beginning to think you were ashamed of me."

  "Never. You're way out of my league these days. I'm intimidated."

  "Don't lie, darling. Nothing intimidates you. But you must want something, no?"

  I explain to her what I have in mind for Lek. I'm quite pleased with her momentary hesitation. "An Elder Sister? Me? You know, I've never done that for anyone. I've never wanted to. It's a tough path." A giggle: "I'll do it if you beg me to. I want you on your knees in drag."

  "I can't beg. I don't know if it's the right thing or not."

  "Darling, don't start talking like a farang. There's no right or wrong-either young Lek is a natural or he's not. If he is, and he certainly sounds like it, then a whole army could not stop him. Bring him to me. I'll know what to do the minute I set eyes on him."

  "When?"

  "Now."

  "But it's past midnight."

  "Can there be a better time?"

  I call Lek, who gasps with awe, excitement, and fear. We take a cab to Soi 39, where Fatima owns a three-story penthouse apartment in one of the city's most prestigious developments. On the way I'm seeing Lek the way Fatima will see him; he's just too damn beautiful for his own good.

  Bastard son of a Karen bar girl and a black American GI she's never met, Fatima is tall and chocolate brown. Of course she is ravishing in her favorite kimono (crimson with a great white sash), her long tragic face, scrubbing-board stomach, long finely manicured hands, exaggerated mascara, and eyes that have seen the very depths of desolation. She stands at the door holding Lek at arm's length. I'm already an irrelevant spectator. How to explain to the spiritually sightless the extraordinary event that takes place when Lek's guardian spirit recognizes this ancient soul? Fatima leans against her doorjamb; behind her: a vista of rare art objects, mostly priceless jade items on pedestals, leading to a floor-to-ceiling panoramic window filled with city lights and a yellow moon.

  "Oh Buddha," she says, still holding Lek's hand. I cough. "You can leave us now," she whispers hoarsely, without taking her eyes off Lek.

  When I get back to my hovel, I can't sleep. I have lived and worked in the heterosexual division of the sex trade all my life, I have seen all the things that men and women do to each other-and none of it approaches the intensity of katoeys. I don't want to worry about Lek anymore, or what Fatim
a might do to him. He'll have to follow the complex rules of his new world. By contrast, the assassination of Mitch Turner seems a more penetrable mystery-almost mundane, but no less compelling for that. I take out the fat wad of A4 paper I collected in Songai Kolok and start to read Chanya's diary all over again.

  FOUR

  Chanya's Diary

  26

  C hanya begins her diary thus: There are two Chanyas. Chanya One is noble, pure, and shines like gold. Chanya Two fucks for money. This is why whores go mad.

  She refers to herself in the third person, a permissible device in spoken and written Thai and very common in the humbler classes: Chanya has always wanted to go to Saharat Amerika.

  I seriously thought about translating the whole thing word for word for you, farang, but the style didn't fit with the rest of the narrative, and I know how you love congruity (I also got frustrated because I couldn't stick in any comments of my own), so I've opted for an impressionistic rendering of the kind deplored by all true scholars, if that's okay?

  America was a dream that infected her soul via a television screen while she was still a child. Starting with the Empire State Building and the Grand Canyon, her mind had collected a million brilliant images of a nation with a genius for self-promotion. One fine day, when she had saved enough money to keep her parents for a few months, and had paid for her sister's college fees for that semester, and had bought a piece of land in her village near Surin where she would build her trophy house on her return, and had bought a laptop with Thai word processor, she contacted a gang who had a reputation for honesty and reliability. Their fees were high-nearly fifteen thousand dollars-but they provided the full service, including a genuine Thai passport with a genuine entry visa to the United States, a return air ticket good for one year, a minder who accompanied her as far as Immigration in New York to make sure she did not freak out at the crucial moment and blow the whole operation, and a room and a job in a massage parlor in Texas.

  In return for her working in the massage parlor for six months, the gang reduced the fees by five thousand dollars. Of course, she would pay this back by swelling the profits of the massage parlor, which would contribute to the gang's overheads. She would have to make her own money those first months through tips and by turning tricks on the side, but she knew how to do that and had no illusions. She would use that time to perfect her English, get to know more about American men, and work out which was the best city in which to practice her profession for maximum profit.

  The way she saw it, she would be at the top of her game in a country that paid better than any other. When she finished, after a couple of years, she would still be under thirty years old. She would retire to her brand-new house with carport and giant wide-screen TV, decorated internally with photographs of Chanya in Amerika. The whole village would be proud of her and give her face. She would be a queen, and everyone would approve of the way she took care of her family. Maybe she would have a baby? Unlike most of her friends, she had not fallen pregnant to a Thai lover at age eighteen. She was childless and went along with the more recent fashion in that she liked the idea of having a half-farang child, who tended, according to the latest fad anyway, to be more beautiful than Thais and with lighter skin. She had no particular desire to marry, although a Buddhist ceremony was not out of the question. She knew enough about farang men to know that the father of her child was unlikely to stick around. Indeed, the chances were he would disappear the day she told him she was pregnant, which was fine by her. The function of a husband was to provide. If a woman had money, what did she need a husband for? She could satisfy her sexual needs anytime she liked, although she had always practiced Buddhist meditation and expected to become more devout once her working days were over. She would probably give up sex altogether once she retired. It was a very long time since she had enjoyed it or even thought about it other than in a professional sense. Come to think of it, she wasn't sure she ever had felt any real passion for a man. Sex was boring. It was paytime that made her heart skip a beat.

  She has insisted on a window seat in the Thai Airways 747, and her first view of America is the New England coastline. The gang chose for her to fly west, with a short stopover at Heathrow Airport in London, so for most of the journey, there has been only blackness out the window as they fled the sun. Now, though, the sun has caught up, and eight thousand feet below, the New England coast looks as pristine as when the Pilgrims first arrived. She had no idea that America could be breathtaking in its natural beauty, so it's quite a surprise to behold that aquamarine lazily lapping at a jagged line of rocks that reflect the morning light with the brilliance of diamonds. She has never been out of Thailand before, never seen a northern landscape. It looks so pure and unspoiled.

  The big moment comes when she reaches the immigration booth and a tall, stern farang in uniform checks carefully through her passport. The minder from the gang is in a parallel line, watching, ready to jump her if her nerves let her down. (Oh, solly, solly, mister, my sister she very emotional, I take her go sit down over there.)

  But her nerves do not fail: Chanya rides this dragon. Chanya owns big pair mighty balls.

  Here is the benefit of choosing the right mafiosi and of generally knowing what you are doing. Plenty of girls get caught at this stage because the passport is poorly forged, or there is something wrong with the visa. Not with these guys. Although he seems to try quite hard (when he pierces her with those cold blue eyes, it is obvious he knows what she is, but she keeps her cool and gazes steadily back), the immigration officer cannot find anything wrong with her papers and lets her through. Now customs wants to search her bags because she has arrived from Bangkok. Here again many girls get into serious trouble because the gang has slipped something into their luggage, trying to run two scams at once, but not this group. The only item the customs officer examines closely is her secondhand laptop, which she bought in Bangkok mostly so she could send e-mails to all her friends and family, especially her sister at Chulalongkorn University, but also because part of her American plan is to keep a diary. The officer lets her through, and all of a sudden she's in the country. There being no Buddha statue to wai to in this pagan land, she places her hands together near her forehead, facing in the direction of Thailand. Translated directly from the Thai: Say good morning to Chanya, Amerika.

  She and her minder take one of the shuttle buses to catch the connecting flight to El Paso. He watches her pass to airside, then disappears. Another minder, not Thai but Texan, meets her off the plane in El Paso. He is red-faced and balding with bad skin, and a sour odor seeps from his body, but she can tell he's a professional by the way he discounts her charms and gets down to business. On the way to the massage parlor he explains that the advantage of jet lag is that she'll be fresh and alert in the middle of the night, so she'll start working the graveyard shift in a few hours. Better get some sleep. He lets slip that she is the first Asian woman to work for this particular outfit.

  The first Spanish word she learns is cono. It means "cunt," a word women of her trade employ a lot, including in Thailand, but the Mexican women in the massage parlor use it all the time. It punctuates everything they say and sounds unspeakably filthy. Most of them are bilingual in Spanish and English but prefer to speak in Spanish. They tend to have families on the other side of the border and to know one another from Ciudad Juarez, where they have boyfriends and husbands who work as grunts in the narcotics trade. Chanya has mentally prepared herself for any kind of American man who hires her-she really hadn't thought that the other women would be a problem. She sees at once it's a cultural thing but has no idea what to do about it. She was lovingly brought up by poor but devout Buddhists, and she herself never violates any of the strictures except one. The Buddha requires of his followers that they find "right employment." Chanya made a decision to postpone complying with that one because prostitution offered better money than any other work and made it easy for her to comply with some of the other Buddhist strictures, espec
ially the ones that dealt with showing respect to one's parents. In the Thai interpretation that meant providing for them if they were too poor or old to provide for themselves. It also meant providing for her siblings until they were old enough to work, an event that could easily be delayed indefinitely. Chanya never steals, hardly ever tells lies, cultivates good thoughts and lovingkindness, never takes drugs, doesn't drink too much alcohol at this stage in her life, tries to see the best in people-including her customers-and most important of all keeps her mind as free as possible from defilements. All of which, together with her outstanding good looks and fantastic figure, infuriate the hell out of her colleagues, especially when more and more men ask for her services.

  After a week she has made her first important decision: Whores here all demons.

  In other words, they are impervious to compassion or any Buddhist salvation. When they die, they will return to the hells whence they came and remain there for tens of thousands of years before getting another crack at the human form, which they will probably make a mess of all over again. "Idiot compassion" is a novice stage in Buddhist doctrine. Chanya passed that phase a long time ago. She encloses herself in an impermeable mental shield that translates as aloofness but gains her some respect. The demons had seen her as something frail and pathetic, a tasty morsel dangling at the very end of the food chain. Now they see she is something else, a different animal entirely. Cono. She pays no attention to their religion, which seems important to them but strikes her as a barbaric product of one of the lower hells, full of torment and anguish that lead nowhere: Chanya fucks demons.