by John Burdett
Hudson stiffens at this holy word.
An hour later Vikorn and I are standing together in Bright's apartment. The situation, as much as the corpse, has begun to give me a headache.
"I just don't see any way out of it," I tell him.
Vikorn is strangely unperturbed. "It's okay. I still have a few of those hairs left. No fingers, unfortunately."
"Are you crazy? Those hairs belong to a terrorist who's known to have been killed before the murder. You'll blow the whole scam."
He shakes his head at my obtuseness and at the same time takes an airmail envelope out of his pocket. He rips it open and begins shaking it around the room. Crinkly hairs fall out like black snow.
"You'll never understand them. You present dedicated farang with contradictory evidence, and they'll use their infinite ingenuity to mislead themselves even further."
38
E lizabeth Hatch has summoned me to a private evening interview, and here I am in the back of a cab on the way to the Sheraton on Sukhumvit. In a jam at the intersection between Silom and Rama IV, opposite Lumpini Park, the driver and I listen to Pisit, who has been on the rampage all day, having finally woken up to the injustice in the way the government has ordered the police to slaughter about two thousand presumed drug traffickers, on a quota basis. The problem, as Pisit sees it: How do we know any of these people had anything to do with drug trafficking in the first place? Isn't that what trials are for? And isn't it a strange coincidence that all of them are small-time dealers, if they are dealers at all? Shouldn't a crackdown on drug trafficking at least try to include the kingpins? He's found a retired Crime Suppression Division officer to interview.
Pisit: Why aren't any jao por-kingpins-included in the slaughter?
Former cop: Excuse me for saying so, but that is not a very intelligent question. If it was possible to simply kill jao por, their enemies would have done so ages ago. By definition it is very difficult to kill jao por.
Pisit: So the government has taken an executive decision to kill non-jao por and suppress crime the easy way?
Former cop: It's logical isn't it?
Pisit: Might we take the logic one stage further and have the cops kill people with no connection to crime at all?
Former cop: Are you trying to be clever?
Pisit: No.
Former cop, after ruminative silence: Actually, that's probably exactly what's happening. After all, if all you need is the appearance of a crackdown, it doesn't really matter who you kill.
Pisit: You mean this is government-by-spin Thai-style?
Former cop: You could say that.
I am curious that the CIA has chosen the hour of nine p.m. to see me. Still more interesting is the way she is dressed: a splendid navy trouser suit by Versace with white lace blouse. I find it shocking that her wrists are a-wobble with elephant-hair bracelets, and she has discreetly dyed her hair a couple shades darker. The lipstick-wet-look crimson, thinly applied-perhaps gives the game away, along with a haunting perfume by Kenzo. Is there a single CIA officer who will not reincarnate as a chameleon?
"I felt the need for some on-the-ground experience," she explains when she meets me in the lobby. "One must resist isolation on this kind of case."
"Dancing?"
A quick look: "Is that your recommendation?"
"Traditional Thai?"
"Perhaps not."
I follow her trail of hints from the girls in bikinis dancing around aluminum poles in Nana Plaza, to the topless ones at the Firehouse on Soi Cowboy, to the naked ones at the Purple Pussycat, also on Cowboy, until we finally reach the upstairs bars in Pat Pong. It is dark in this club except for the pool of light where the star of the show is performing her act.
I've seen the banana show too many times not to be bored. Elizabeth Hatch is riveted. Suddenly, in a whisper, as if she wants to bond with me, or perhaps reward me for indulging her tonight: "One bomb in this place will be all the message they need: support America, and we'll break your economy. You don't have the intelligence operators or the security forces to protect your country, and we can't protect you either. So what kind of ally are we?" A thin, pitying smile followed by a prudish tone: "Are those really razor blades? I read about that in one of the guidebooks, but I didn't believe it. How on earth does she do that without cutting herself to ribbons?"
"It's a trade secret. D'you want me to call the mamasan over?"
"Let her finish. That is one very beautiful body."
Discreetly I beckon to the mamasan and whisper to her in Thai while the CIA studies the show. Even in Pat Pong not every girl zigzags, and I want Elizabeth Hatch on my side. The mamasan suggests a figure, though, that few girls would say no to. I tell the CIA, who nods. When the girl finishes her act, I watch the mamasan speak to her and catch the bright flash of curiosity that she casts at Elizabeth, the seductive smile. Elizabeth smiles back recklessly. As soon as she has dressed, the girl comes over to us, sits next to Elizabeth, and rests her head on the CIA's shoulder.
I say: "Shall I go now?"
In a lust-thick tone: "Just ask her, if you wouldn't mind, if there's anything she doesn't do?"
A brief discussion between me and the girl in Thai. "No, there's nothing she doesn't do. Don't hurt her."
She snaps her head around to face me. "Did you say that because I'm American, or because I'm female, or because I'm gay?"
"I always say the same thing to men," I reply with a smile.
The three of us leave together. I find Elizabeth a taxi and watch her disappear into the back with her trophy. They are moving away when all of a sudden she makes the driver stop, and she rolls down her window in back. Beckoning to me, then holding my arm when I'm close enough: "I appreciate this. I confess I'm not proud of what I'm doing." A pause. "I need air."
I smile: "I understand."
As she rolls up the window: "This is not what I generally do."
The girl beside her, now dressed in a low-cut black silk blouse and short white skirt that reveals her long brown legs, searches my eyes: Problem? I shake my head. No problem, just another gasping, life-starved farang. The taxi moves off.
It's one-fifteen a.m., which is to say forty-five minutes before the curfew. The street is alive with bodies already half conjoined on their way to the hotels all around. There are a few Western women with local girls, but the vast majority of the trade is heterosexual. Pat Pong is only a couple minutes' walk from the gay bars on the other side of Surawong, however. In the Grand Finale Club the format is much the same as in Pat Pong, except that the people on stage are all men. Most of them, in underpants, are late teens, early twenties, but quite a few are older, harder, tougher. And tattoos are everywhere.
I walk across the street to a gothic black door encrusted with nails that forms the almost-discreet entrance to the No Name Bar, a resort so sought after and so exclusive it never needs to advertise. You don't get to simply walk in without introduction, either. A child of the street knows the formula, though, and the burly, tattooed doorman lets me through.
Sure enough, the seats that surround the stage support a fair proportion of female backsides, most of which are Japanese, although quite a few are Thai working women on girls' nights out. The rest of the customers are gay, white, and male. The men on the stage are all naked and hand-picked either for their youth and beauty; for their testosteronic postures, the dimensions of their cocks; or for the quality of their decorations.
It happens that I'm just in time for the last act. The house lights dim, "Nights in White Satin" plays over the sound system, and a naked figure in black executioner's mask strides onto the stage; everyone, especially the Japanese women, gasps at the quality of the tats, which shine brilliantly under the spotlight. A naked boy and girl arrive to kneel and work his member. Soon, as the haunting sound track reaches its crescendo, the Battle of Midway arises magically from out of flaccidity. I have no idea if he has seen me or not, but even if he has, we both know it will make no difference.
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sp; I leave the club within ten minutes of entering. Back on Pat Pong the street is now so crammed with refugees from the curfew, it is hard to walk. I pause in the entrance to one of the bars to pull out my cell phone and press an autodial number. "If I give you my heart, will you give me yours?" I ask.
"Not if you're going to die."
"We have to stop him. You do know that."
A long pause. "This isn't easy. What do you want to do?"
"Live with you. Sleep with you."
Doubtfully: "Will that do it?"
My heart in my mouth: "It's worth a try, don't you think?"
A groan, then she closes the phone.
39
I believe it is intrinsic to your cockeyed morality, farang, that when a man and woman engaged in law enforcement are forced to pretend, for strategic reasons (say, a decoy-stakeout situation), to be lovers, they must be scrupulous in preventing their false embraces from developing into full-blown copulation-correct?
Well, fuck that. Chanya and I, in our tiny love nest on Soi 39, which is the best I can afford in this expensive part of town, go at it like rabbits. Not only is she beautiful, she is also generous. Who am I not to love her? Her extraordinary beauty might not be of her making, but that tactile friendliness, that gentle concern that expresses itself in soft touches, sweet caresses, premeditated kindness-that is all from her soul, and I would have needed to be stone. Nevertheless, it is part of the job to parade our passion up and down the soi, especially in the evening when the Japanese clubs are open and the mamasans stand on duty outside, checking the street. During the day our duties are more practical.
It is a traditional little apartment, which is to say ablutions are performed courtesy of a great tub of water out in the yard. There is a double gas cooking ring also in the backyard-oh yes, and a single rickety cupboard. There is no bed, so I bought a couple of futons that we keep side by side. I love her best in the mornings when, still sleepy, she rolls over onto her side to admit me from behind. Or do I love her best when she is horny late at night? Or is it when she's washing out in the yard, using her sarong to conceal her body from the neighbors? Don't ask me. Love is a form of insanity that pervades every fiber. It is also much increased by the knowledge that one stands a good chance of dying within the week. We keep our mobiles charged, and I check the Net every day at the local Internet cafe. Day after day, night after night, there is still no word, no attack. Perhaps we are growing complacent. When I remember I'm a cop, I try to elicit relevant information. Generally, she's happy to oblige but with heavy editing. Her story of the second half of her relationship with Mitch Turner is like the story of Othello without a single mention of Iago.
Chanya had returned to Thailand when the world was mesmerized by two office towers collapsing over and over on its television screens. She owned over one hundred thousand dollars and had no intention of selling her body ever again. She was twenty-nine and a little old for the Game in any event. She built a new house for her parents, set them up with twenty buffalo, which they used for breeding-a definite improvement on the hard labor of rice growing-sent her two young brothers to the best schools money could buy in Thailand, and already had proudly put her brilliant younger sister through a biology course at Chulalongkorn University. When all bills were paid, she did not have very much left, but then she didn't need much. Sometime toward the end of her Washington sojourn, beset by homesickness and self-doubt, she had determined to redress the karmic imbalance caused by her unseemly trade by dedicating her life to the Buddha. She was to be a maichee-a Buddhist nun. She was the queen of her village, the idol of her parents, almost a goddess figure to anyone who knew anything about rural Thailand.
Chanya did her best to make up for the lost years by spending as much time as possible with her parents, especially her father, a devout Buddhist with whom she had always been close. "To want nothing is ecstasy," he told Chanya. She knew that for him the farang drugs that would give him another decade on earth were a mixed blessing; they brought more obligation than joy. He really did not understand the purpose of extending his life artificially; he took the drugs out of politeness, to make her happy. She bought a Honda motorbike and took him to the wat most mornings for chanting, filled with envy for his innocence and vowing somehow to retrieve her own.
When she did not go to the wat, she woke before dawn to watch her cousin, whom she had known almost since birth. Jiap was the same age as Chanya and no less beautiful, but she had never been tempted by money or ambition. She lived in the timeless zone of subsistence agriculture; Chanya watched the twenty-nine-year-old mother of three take the buffalo over the paddy fields in the dawn mist singing softly to the animals in the Isaan dialect, exactly as she had when they both were children and with the same weightless joy. The distance was no longer geographic; Chanya was separated from Jiap not by time or miles but by an invisible glass screen. In America, Chanya had generally felt light and free in comparison to the people she met; here she felt heavy, decadent, lost.
Gloom, though, could not squat long on her shoulders, and during the rest of the day quite different forces seemed to invade her mind. In particular there was the little problem that no one in the compound had dared mention, so it had taken a delegation from a neighboring compound to come and explain it to her one afternoon. Well, not a problem exactly, something really rather positive. The delegates, clearly, were adherents to the more worldly side of the Thai mind.
Quietly and with an infuriating reluctance to come to the point, they explained to Chanya just how brilliant her sister really was. Consistently top of her class every time, and with that extra little thing that was more than just brilliance, it was Buddha-inspiration definitely. Sure, with a little help here and there, a little sponsorship, she could get through Thai medical school, no problem. But let's face it…
Tired of watching them beat around the bush, Chanya finished the sentence: Thai medical school? The country's best doctors all spoke English fluently because they had been educated in the United States or the United Kingdom. It would take money, a quite exorbitant amount, but look what it would do for the country, to have a Thai woman from a dirt-poor background who understood the medical needs of the poor, boasting the very best medical education in the world. It would help the status of women, too.
Chanya understood very well what all the more worldly villagers were thinking, for she still thought that way herself from time to time: she had a couple more good years in her when she could make the kind of money most Thais could only dream of. After that there really were not going to be any more opportunities. Not for an uneducated girl from Surin-especially not for an ex-whore.
Chanya did her sums. She didn't want to leave Thailand again, but she reckoned that with what she had saved and maybe another year or so on the Game in Bangkok, she would have enough. What difference would one more year make in the scheme of things, especially if she made merit by turning her sister into a first-class doctor? She convinced herself the Buddha would approve and believed she could prove it mathematically. She used a calculator, and the arithmetic went roughly as follows: an average of three men per week for ten years equals 1,560, at a rate of two screws per john (one at night, one the next morning to put him in tipping mood) equals 3,120 units of negative karma. To achieve neutral karma her sister would have to effect an equal number of medium-to-heavy healings, which Chanya guessed would easily be achieved in a year or so. In other words, in return for her sponsoring her sister, the Buddha would liberate her from the karmic consequences of her trade within about a year of her sister's qualifying.
She was going to take her time, though. America had exhausted her more than she'd realized. She wanted to relax, Thai-style.
She'd left America in such a rush, thanks to Mitch's warning, that he had not thought to ask for her home address. Nor did he have her telephone number, because her American mobile did not work outside the United States. Had she wished, she could have closed the door on Mitch forever. Even with his access to
CIA resources, it was unlikely he would have found her in Thailand. And that was exactly what she intended: to break off with him and his frightening (and delicious) madness forever.
There is a change of pace, though, in shifting from West to East that can be disorienting. The afternoons in her village were long and hot, and it never occurred to anyone to do anything except sleep, play hi-lo, and drink moonshine. (It was not for nothing they called it Sleeping Elephant Hamlet.) Even her cousin Jiap liked to gamble for pennies and drink cold beer. In her drive to accumulate wealth, Chanya had acquired just a little of the religion of purposefulness (every night you make a short list-the sober Mitch used to preach-of all the things you need to do tomorrow. Review it at the end of the day. How much further have you gotten in achieving your goal?), which immediately translates into restlessness when moved to another country. If only she had waited a couple of months, the restlessness would have faded quickly, and she would have readjusted to the primal rhythms of her beloved home. But the village itself, no more than ten minutes away by motorbike, did boast an Internet cafe.
It was a shop house of the Chinese type owned by an old woman who, in addition to horoscopes, love potions, and astrologically based business advice, took in washing to make ends meet, and somehow along the way she had acquired a few desktop computers linked to the Net. Chanya knew that on any number of engines (Yahoo!, Hotmail, MSN), it was possible to open an account free of charge. No way Mitch could ascertain her whereabouts from those.
She didn't admit it to herself at the time, but in retrospect she realized that Mitch, with all his problems, was the nearest thing to a real lover she had ever had. (Thanee was wonderful, of course, but she was mia noi with him, not goddess.) She didn't know how much she loved Mitch Turner, but that passion of his, she now saw, was immensely addictive. She did feel as if something vital had been brutally cut off from her life. There was a constant nagging at her heart-a new and quite bizarre sensation in her case.