Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness

by David Casarett

  She greeted him warmly and sat on a chair nearby. Not too near, though. She sensed that getting close might spook him in the same way that getting too close to a wild animal might cause it to flee.

  After greeting her, though, the man was silent and watchful. Not unfriendly, but cautious. And just like a wild animal would be, he seemed as though he’d be ready to turn and run at the slightest provocation. Ladarat guessed that a question—any question—might send him flying away. So she decided to talk instead. No questions or interrogation. She would just talk, and he could listen or not.

  “I am here to see a man and his family,” she said. “It is a sad situation. A very sad situation. He was injured, you see, and was taken here. But he and his family are farang. They are not from here,” she clarified, unsure whether this man’s rural vocabulary extended to tourist words like farang.

  Perhaps it didn’t. He was looking at her with a steady concentration that you might devote to thunderclouds boiling in the sky. A mix of fear and concern tinged with fascination.

  “Have you heard of this man?” she asked.

  In an instant he became flustered, looking down at the ground and then at the ICU doors, which remained shut. He rose to a crouch, and then stood up. But that put his head above hers, which was disrespectful, so he crouched down, bent almost double in a hurried wai. Ladarat stood, perplexed, and returned the wai.

  Then he scurried quickly toward the long hallway, his bare feet slapping on the tile floor. She followed for a few steps, well behind him. Still perplexed by the departure, nevertheless she smiled as she saw that the long hallway was empty, just as she knew it would be.

  But she didn’t have much time to ponder that brief conversation and its outcome. No sooner had the man disappeared than Sisithorn emerged pushing the young Mrs. Fuller. The American was looking up, and Sisithorn was leaning over and they were talking conspiratorially.

  She needed to focus her attention. This would be a difficult conversation.

  THE IMPATIENCE OF STEPPING-STONES

  And indeed it was a difficult conversation. But not nearly as difficult as it could have been. The young American woman Kate had a view of her husband’s chances that was realistic. Surprisingly so.

  Perhaps her clear view of the future came from a lack of fear? You cannot plan well for a future that you’re afraid of, Professor Dalrymple tells us. And many people facing the loss of a loved one are crippled by fear. So much so, in fact, that they can’t imagine what life would be like without the person. So they hold on and they cling to the person’s life. They won’t let go, no matter how much that person—the patient—may be suffering.

  But not Kate. No, she would miss her husband terribly, of course. Yet it seemed as though she was not afraid of what life would be like without him.

  This young woman had been through so much in her short life that the prospect of losing a husband—although certainly tragic—didn’t fill her with dread. She knew in her heart that life would go on. So although they didn’t come to any decisions at their meeting, they had laid the groundwork, so to speak. And Kate would be able to let go when she needed to.

  It had been time well spent. And work well done.

  And yet as she sat in her small basement office, facing the remaining piles of policies that were waiting patiently for her eyes, it did not feel like work well done. Or it did, she supposed, but just not enough. The meeting had gone well, she knew. And it had gone well at least in part thanks to her efforts. She had done some good, and she had helped the Fuller family.

  Then why did she feel as though she was failing? Or not failing, exactly. But she felt as if she had stopped midway through a project.

  It was the same sensation she had when she bought a row of twelve stepping-stones for her garden. It was around the time of the last Royal Inspection three years ago, was it not? She’d placed seven of them exactly so, but then she’d been caught up in work. And those remaining five stones nagged at her whenever she saw them. She knew in her mind that they were not urgent, those stones. They could wait. Stones may not have much to recommend them, but they do tend to be patient. And yet their unfinishedness nagged at her. Every time she was in her garden, sitting at her little wrought iron table, they chastised her for ignoring them.

  “We’re still waiting,” they said. Sometimes loud enough that she was certain the neighbors would hear. Maewfawbaahn certainly heard them. He would give those unfinished stones a wide berth in his perambulations and midnight prowlings.

  But why should she be having this feeling now? As Ladarat asked herself that logical question, though, she knew the answer. She knew it with as much certainty as she knew what those stones were telling her.

  She could say that she was an ethicist, and she was. But she was also a nurse, and nurses help people. That’s what we do, she told herself. That’s why we do what we do.

  So she knew, just as she did when she left those stepping-stones in a neat pile on the patio, that the Peaflower case was going to nag her with the same insistence that those stones had.

  Even more so, to be sure. There were men who were dying. And a woman who was getting away with murder. That was wrong, wasn’t it? As wrong as anything in the world of medical ethics?

  And didn’t she have a responsibility to fix those wrongs if she could?

  It was at this point that Ladarat realized three things.

  First, she was almost certain that she was talking out loud. To the pile of policies closest to her on the desk. That was not good.

  Second, she realized that she needed to solve the Peaflower case. That need had nothing to do with being a detective. She was not a detective. But she was an ethicist. And she did have skills of reasoning and deduction. And above all, she was good at watching and listening. She had an obligation to use those skills, just as she had an obligation to finish placing those stones.

  Third, she knew there might be consequences. Khun Tippawan would not be pleased if she learned that Ladarat was ignoring her duties. And it was entirely possible that the director might make such a discovery tonight, if Ladarat did what she needed to do.

  Ladarat looked at her watch and realized that she had been lost in this conversation with the stack of policies in front of her for almost twenty minutes. It was almost three o’clock, and she had made no progress on the policies in front of her, or the Peaflower case. Or even in figuring out what she should do.

  Easiest, she knew, would be to reach out and take a policy from the pile. On top, right there in front of her, was the nursing policy about proper visiting hours and family comportment in the obstetrics unit. That was all she needed to do. So simple. She would open that policy and make sure that its approval dates were current.

  Much more difficult would be to stand up, gather her things, and make the trip that her conscience was telling her she needed to take. More difficult by far.

  Although she had made up her mind to reach for that visiting hours policy, a quote from Professor Dalrymple’s good book came into her mind. Unbidden, as usual. The quote simply appeared in much the same way that a text message appears on a mobile phone. Although much more welcome, and useful.

  “When a nurse is faced with an ethical choice,” the professor counseled, “the option that is most difficult to make is generally the right one to choose.”

  So. There could be little doubt, in this case, of which choice was the most difficult. There could be little doubt, therefore, about which choice was the correct one.

  THE HOUSE OF ROOSTER HAPPINESS

  Despite the fact that she was certain what she needed to do, and despite the incontrovertible fact that she enjoyed the support of Professor Dalrymple herself, Ladarat was uneasy as she left the hospital. So uneasy, in fact, that she made her escape via the loading dock, where the Director of Excellence was unlikely to have spies.

  Ladarat felt like a young girl sneaking out of her father’s Ban Huai Duea School in the middle of the day. Winding her way through the garden that
led to the cricket field in back, then taking a left turn before she got there, disappearing behind the high wooden fence. She hadn’t done that often, and it had never been her idea. It was true, Siriwan had been a bad influence.

  Now here she was, without her cousin to blame. Just her. It was just past three o’clock, and she was sneaking out of the hospital. And with a Royal Inspection on Monday.

  But this was an errand Ladarat didn’t want to run at night. She suspected that this place of business wasn’t somewhere she wanted to be after dark. So it was worth risking the censure of Khun Tippawan. She would do what she needed to do, then go home.

  Home… already Ladarat was thinking about dinner. Perhaps she would get something light. Nam tok moo, maybe. Grilled pork and lemon juice and toasted rice. Simple but hearty. And maybe Duanphen’s kanom maprao—coconut cake—for dessert as a special treat if this errand was as productive as she hoped it might be.

  She was still thinking about kanom maprao, or maybe glooai tawt, weighing their relative merits, as she nosed the Beetle through the seedy back streets of Chiang Mai’s river neighborhood. She’d never been to this part of Chiang Mai before. As far removed as it could be from the touristy spots, or the university that she knew so well, it was just up against the river, near enough to the night market to walk to. Yet this was new territory.

  She parked in front of a dusty antiques store that looked as though it hadn’t seen a customer since Rama VII was king, back in the 1920s. The fact that she’d never been here before didn’t bother her, nor did the neighborhood’s reputation. The fact that she had no trouble finding a parking spot, though… well, that was a little worrisome.

  There were few people on the sidewalks, which was also a little worrisome. And those pedestrians she saw were almost all men. Americans and Europeans, of course. One rowdy group of young men with tight shorts that showed off muscular thighs. Australians.

  And Chinese. Lots of Chinese. They made up perhaps half of the people she saw on her side of the street. They were dressed as businessmen mostly. Middle-aged, with a bit of a paunch. And she passed more than a few heavy gold watches on beefy wrists. She hoped they weren’t real, because in this neighborhood, you shouldn’t flaunt anything that you expected to still be wearing the next morning.

  She’d heard the stories of these places. She’d heard about the videos of clients that were sold online, of course. And those who were blackmailed, and robbed, or worse.

  All these men around here would risk that—and worse—just for… what exactly? She couldn’t understand it. What was the attraction?

  These Chinese men in particular were probably all smart, successful businessmen. No doubt they had large brains. Yet tonight, at least, they were not using those large brains to think. Instead, they seemed to have delegated their thinking to another part of their anatomy.

  Ladarat finally found a parking space that was perhaps half a dozen blocks from where she was going. She locked the Beetle—a precaution that she didn’t remember ever taking. It wasn’t until she started walking that she remembered the Beetle had two doors.

  Was the passenger door locked? She honestly couldn’t remember. When had she ever used the passenger door? That question brought her to an uneasy halt and the men on the sidewalk flowed around her.

  She really had been living a solitary existence, hadn’t she? I mean, really. Not knowing when you’d last had a passenger in your car? That was truly the classic symptom of a sad, solitary life.

  Thoughtfully, she began to walk again, but with more purpose. She would need to work on that, wouldn’t she? It just wouldn’t do to keep on like this. Somboon had died twelve years ago. And didn’t Thais reckon life in twelve-year increments? Perhaps that meant something.

  But she would ponder that later. Now, she had to search for a murderer.

  Ladarat walked on down the block as the buildings around her became smaller and darker. Back where she’d left the Beetle, at least there had been storefronts, a few of which were still open, with lights on inside. Now, though, only a hundred meters away, the narrow street was lined only with blank brick walls and tough-looking steel doors. There were names and signs above most of those doors, but at least half were in Chinese. The few that also offered English translations followed a predictable theme. “Pleasure Garden” and “Happy Palace” and the inscrutable “Lucky Go-Go,” whatever that meant. But she could imagine.

  As she hesitated in front of one door, it swung open and caught the back of her right shoulder and spun her around. She turned, annoyed, to see a group of five or six Chinese men emerge. They flowed out through the door and meandered in a drunken serpentine back the way she’d come. Apparently they were cruising from bar to bar. The mamasan—an older woman with her hair pulled back severely in a bun—stood in the doorway watching them go. She was also Chinese, and looked at Ladarat appraisingly. Then she shook her head sadly and disappeared, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Rubbing her sore shoulder thoughtfully, Ladarat looked up.

  “Fun Time.” Its faded neon sign blinked in a regular, slow rhythm as if someone were trying to communicate with a particularly dim-witted tourist.

  She kept walking and had almost reached the end of the block when she saw what she was looking for. It was an unassuming building that was in poor shape, even for this block. It had litter on the sidewalk in front of it, and the pavement looked as though it hadn’t been hosed down in weeks. There were no windows at all, but it looked as though there might have been once, but they’d been bricked up.

  There was a diminutive sign over the door: “The House of Rooster Happiness.” The red letters were so smudged and dirty, she wouldn’t have noticed the name if she hadn’t been searching for the number she’d been given. There it was—just to the right of the door: 9283. This was it.

  LOVE IS THE EXPRESSION OF SIMPLICITY IN EMOTION

  Thoroughly unwelcoming, the House of Rooster Happiness offered only an imposing steel door placed dead center. Nor was there any indication of what might be inside. Could this really be the right place?

  But she knew it was. Things were starting to make sense. A blind front, with no advertising at all, is exactly what she should have been looking for all along. If this was mostly a matchmaking agency, it wouldn’t need to rely on advertising and neon and touts, would it? It would not.

  Still, she was a little surprised when she pulled on the door handle and it opened to reveal a low, dark room. The space seemed to stretch back ten meters or more to a bar at the far end that spanned the width of the building. There was a narrow wooden staircase to her left, and to her right there was a collection of small, low tables with velvet-upholstered armchairs that seemed well used and frayed. That was what she noticed first.

  It took her another moment to realize that the large room was empty. There was a bartender sullenly mopping the counter, but no one else in sight. No mamasan, and no girls. Where was everyone?

  She made her way quickly and purposefully across the empty room toward the bar. Was she being watched? Ladarat snuck a furtive look around her. It felt as though someone had eyes on her, but how was that possible? She and the bartender were alone.

  She focused on him. Just concentrate. A small, thin, pinched man, little more than a teenager. Too young to be a bartender unless… this was a family business? Perhaps he was the mamasan’s son? Or grandson?

  He was halfheartedly wiping the bar counter with a gray rag as Ladarat approached. She made a polite wai, which he returned perfunctorily and almost uncertainly. It was as if it was a custom he was unfamiliar with.

  “Good evening, Khun,” she said as politely as she could. “I’m wondering if you could help me?”

  The man shrugged. This, Ladarat thought, is not going well.

  “I’m looking for Khun Wipaporn. Is she here?”

  At the sound of the mamasan’s name, the man’s eyebrows rose a fraction of a centimeter and one new wrinkle line appeared above each eye. But that was the only
sign he offered that he understood what she was saying. Or for that matter, that he was listening at all.

  Without a word, he put the rag on a shelf behind the bar, which was good. Then he turned and disappeared through a heavy swinging wooden door behind him, which wasn’t. Oh dear.

  Ladarat shrugged and took a seat at the bar. This was truly strange. But then again, if you go venturing into dens of iniquity looking for a murderer, you shouldn’t be surprised when things get a little strange. That has to be one of the first rules of being a detective.

  She was sitting there, curiously content, and pondering that wisdom, when her attention skated over the mirror that was set into the wall above the liquor racks behind the bar. It was too high for even an elephant to see her reflection. So it seemed to be a silly place to put a mirror, unless…

  Ladarat waved in the general direction of the mirror. She smiled. Then she waited.

  That should work. But it wasn’t working. Ladarat thought very hard about that.

  Should she follow the taciturn bartender through the door? That seemed like a generally poor strategy, though. Who knew what was behind that door? Best to stay here. She would await developments.

  Another minute went by. Then another. It had been five minutes. And no developments. And no sign of anyone resembling a customer.

  That was worth thinking about. What sort of place was this, which could survive without customers?

  She was pondering that, and having second thoughts about what she should doing here. In truth, she had just about given up on this whole endeavor. Maewfawbaahn would be waiting for her.

  And it was… only four o’clock. She could go home early for once. Khun Duanphen would be overjoyed.