Francis refilled his glass. “Yes. I’ve heard it and seen it all before. Now I’m living a cliché. That woman was an illusion. She disappeared like a ghost. The terrible thing is, I somehow became attached to her, which is strange for me. I think there was something unexplained happening. I feel cursed, Joe, cursed.”
“And the case?”
“The contents of that case are terribly important, Joe. Not just for me. I need to have it found and returned to me sooner rather than later. It’s my ticket out of this town. I’m giving you another forty-eight hours to find it and then who knows...” Francis stared out of the window again. The crowd had dispersed.
“What about your little photo collection. Quite impressive.” Joe nodded at the closed volume.
“Nothing more than research for a book I’m working on. Unrelated to the missing girl, naturally. Sex sells, can’t you tell by looking around this dump of a city? I need a way out and if it involves writing a book, then so be it. A dirty way out is better than no way out at all. If it wasn’t for that bloody girl.”
“You mean dead girl, her name was Monica. So she wasn’t to be included in the book. Did you take her photograph?”
“Never got around to it. Sorry, yes, of course, Monica. Feisty little thing as I remember, but she was so, so flighty. I couldn’t connect with her like I did with the others. It bothered me. It shouldn’t have, but it did.” Francis took a sniff of scotch. “So what have you discovered?”
Joe gave it to him: “After she left here, she was found dead at an apartment she was staying at in Udom Suk. Hung to death. Danced the dance. Sung the song. Police suspect some kind of black magic play. They found a note. All leads point towards a fetish bar called the Demon Dreams. You are a member.”
“I’ve never been a member of any kind of club that would accept me.”
“I would love to believe that. On the note was written a spell. A black magic spell. I see you’ve already read the Ramayana,” Joe pointed to the bookcase.
Francis laughed. “Primitive nonsense. The book you refer to, I haven’t had the pleasure to read yet. Listen, the trouble with this lot is that they’ve never been civilised. A seventeenth century culture with twenty-first century toys. Black magic indeed, black market more like it. Black magic.” He took a healthier drink and sat the glass down on a cork coaster atop the hardwood coffee table. He waited for the next wave of alcoholic assault. His pathetic suicide attempt forgotten. “Somebody has that case and they can’t open it without my help. If they believe in this black magic nonsense, then that’s their business. But it seems they don’t want to speak directly with me, so I am asking you to find the case and negotiate. That is your assignment. To go in and broker a deal. I’ll give them what they want if they give me what I need.”
“Why is it locked and where is it?”
“Locked and rigged with chemical explosives. I was hoping they would give up and return it.”
“Who’s they?”
“They are a bunch of blithering idiots put on this earth to make my life a bloody misery, that’s who they are. They could well be the type that believes in potions and magic.”
“As might you.”
“Let’s just say that you are on the right track,” Francis’ eyes seemed to look through Joe toward the window. “And please, no more break-ins, Mr. Dylan, we are supposed to be on the same side after all, aren’t we?”
Joe stood up and turned around. Through the window. Outside on the street. A helicopter. Children played in the nearby schoolyard. He walked over to the window and closed it. He locked it. “In the tropics, Francis, one must before everything, keep calm,” Joe said.
Francis looked over at the detective quizzically. “Ah, Joseph Conrad. A talented Pole. I didn’t know you read, Joe?” His eyes lit up and Joe felt the warmth of kinship across the room. The old man was transported back to the safety of literature. Leather bound books. The smell of cherry pipe tobacco. He stood up using the stick as a third leg.
“The only thing I know about books, is that they should be like a woman’s dress: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting. I read people,” Joe said. “I see you have quite a collection. Of books that is,” he motioned at the bookcase.
“Shipped over for the most part. I find it difficult to be parted from my books.”
“Did Monica read?”
Reminiscing over. “How do I know? Comic books maybe. Joe she was a whore and now she’s dead and my case is missing. Rather than sit there talking about her reading habits, I suggest that you should be finding that briefcase.” He glanced at his wristwatch.
“Sure.” Joe took the six strides toward the door. Francis followed and stood there, opening the door. “Never underestimate whores, Francis; they know more about people than you might think,” Joe said. “A whore on the top of her game is the most dangerous person in this world.”
“The pioneers went west and us Bangkok expatriates went east. Mistakes too monstrous for remorse,” he said as Joe approached him and stood close enough to make him feel uncomfortable. Real drunks never like the sober getting up to close and personal.
“I’m going to find that case for you. I need a little more time, Sir,” Joe could smell the whiskey on his breath. The smell brought back memories. Like seeing an old lover in the street. Funny how you forgot the bad times.
“Hurry,” he said, “we don’t have much time.”
Joe walked through the door, leaving the once rich old man to his whiskey, memories, and to his newfound poverty.
TWENTY-SIX
JOE WALKED into the station and spoke with the uniform behind the desk.
Brown uniform.
Brown face.
Hadn’t he learned how to smile? Joe told him about Monica and asked who was in charge of the investigation. He waited for ten minutes and wished he hadn’t. A policeman with aviator sunglasses and a large facial mole walked into the room. The facial mole interested Joe. It had a hair that grew and twisted out from it like a strange exotic plant reaching for the sun. That hair was an antennae that tuned into trouble. The hair was never disappointed.
Last time Joe saw the inspector, he was pointing a gun at him on the Bangkok Express. There was a tunnel.
Darkness.
The inspector smiled and sat down in the chair next to Joe. “Paths cross at the most unlikely places, Khun Joe. What do you know about the whore?”
“I know she didn’t kill herself.”
“Really. That is interesting. I will make a note of it. She did not kill herself. So who killed her?”
“I come with questions, not answers. She was working from the Demon Dreams bar, and from what I gather, it is a high risk place of work. My thinking is that a client killed her. I guess that isn’t something that the boys in brown have thought about. Just another little whore done and dusted. Makes little difference to you boys, right?”
“Whores will be whores.”
“Right. Compassion. That is the word. Compassion.”
“What is it about the whore that interests you, Mr. Dylan? What do you expect to learn?”
“Right now. Nothing.”
“You and her, were friends?”
Joe nodded. Rang was looking for a confession.
“How well did you know her?”
“I knew she had a tattoo like a tiger scratched her on her shoulder. That’s all.”
“Where were you on the night of October five?”
“Working.”
“So you have found employment. Do you have your work permit to hand?”
Joe dipped into his pocket and brought out the blue book. It had him listed as a consultant for an investigation service that worked out of an office on Prong Phom. Joe had only met them twice. Rang studied the document. “And what were you doing the night in question?”
“I was
in the plaza checking up on a neon ballerina named Toy, whom had told her Belgium boyfriend she was planting rice. Tintin got curious as it isn’t the rice season. He called me and asked me to check the bright lights for a girl named Toy from a small town called Prasat. I found her hanging onto a piece of Dutch meat in the G-Spot. The joint has closed circuit cameras. Ask the staff. I didn’t kill her.”
“Do you recognize these?” Rang handed Joe a pair of panties. They were red. Joe picked them up and looked at them. He ran the fabric through his fingers. Expensive silk, maybe Italian.
“Never seen these before in my life,” Joe said.
“Good,” The inspector smiled like a salt-water crocodile. He took the panties. Sniffed the panties. “We have all we need now.”
“Sure. The train is in the past?”
“The Burmese python waits patiently for its prey. There was a man, a farang, he bought the snake and kept it in his apartment.” Rang looked directly at Joe. “The snake grew big, very big, one day…”
“It bit him?”
“It crushed him. Kill him. The neighbours call police. Too much noise. When we get there, the farang is inside the reptile. You have been very helpful. As I say, we have everything we need now, Mr. Dylan. Everything is perfect.”
Rang’s smile was predatory as Joe turned and left the station.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JOE TRAVELLED west across the city on the red number two. A homeless man sat with a rice sack full of plastic bottles. His arms and legs black with city grime. The bus was a free service that spanned from east to west through the city. The heap was too ancient to race with the other buses. It simply chugged along the streets spitting out black clouds. Past the quasi-art deco, Hualamphong station, and toward the river. Over the tracks: Chareon Krung road. He jumped out of the number two and continued on foot through the urban labyrinth of China Town. Chickens, ducks, vegetables, teas, and paper lanterns in reds and blues. Dim sum restaurants, noodles stands, bicycle repair shops, moneychangers, and laundry houses. Women squeezed pomegranates and made juice in the street.
He reached the riverbank. A stubbly boatman picked his nose by the waterline. Joe asked for the location of the River View guesthouse. The boatman pointed at his river taxi. Joe climbed aboard. Away upstream, the oily black waters shimmered under the tropical sun. Joe could taste the filth in the water. Next to him on the long-tail, a woman petted a restless black piglet fresh from the market. The animal shook nervously. His coarse hairs erect, head twitching, mouth grunting. He was aware of his fate. He would be put to the butchers knife and then to be reborn into a cockroach, a centipede, a man with a complex about his mother and a taste for pussy in the city of sin. Red light eyes and deep pockets. Water monitor lizards sunbathed on the banks of the canal. Their elongated reptilian mouths grinned at the passing water traffic. Converted rice-barges sailed tourists up to the ancient cities, Ayutthaya,
Lopburi,
Sukothai.
The sky was an apocalyptic red, lilac storm clouds, skyscrapers, and building cranes loomed like birds of doom. A helicopter circled. Wake-skipping long-tails weaved in and out of the water traffic. Along the canal banks, commuters walked like a vast silent herd. Joe remembered a case involving a couple of artists who were good with colours and had their work stolen in a warehouse down on Chareon krung. Joe watched the river, the colours,
the city.
A long-tail shot past turned one hundred and eighty degrees and then stopped in front of their boat. A distance of three boat lengths away. Joe looked closer at the passenger: a short stocky Thai. He raised a camera to his eye with the lens directed at Joe, and squeezed off a number of shots. The long-tail sped off again only to stop again a distance of four boat lengths upriver. Joe made out his flat boxers nose and a mark that could have been a tattoo on his neck. The strong legs that kicked strangers in alleys. Arms and fists made for punching through concrete.
The boxer fussed with something obscured by the hull of the long-tailed boat. Then he raised an object that glittered in the sun. He blew into it. A whistling sound, then a dull thud as the small metal dart bedded into the hairy black skin of the piglet’s rump. A tiny trickle of blood seeped out of the pig’s black skin. Blood or poison? The animal squealed and keeled over to his side, jerking around like a fish out of water. The market lady shrieked as her prize shook.
Joe ducked below the wooden hull as the second missile whizzed past and hit the driveshaft.
Joe glanced back above the side of the vessel.
The boxer put the tube back into a bag and waved at his long-tail man to move away. They sped off. The woman tried to resuscitate her baby pig.
It was hopeless.
The deeper Joe got, the louder the laughter became.
Mocking laughter.
The laughter was Monica’s.
“Poison,” the woman shrieked.
Joe nodded. Neuro-venom like that of the King Cobra, Joe thought. Easy to obtain in the city. A snake farm. Bribe a handler a couple of thousand baht. He watched the riverbank grow closer as they approached the pier. The vessel docked. Joe stepped over the dead animal and onto the landing platform. It wobbled under his weight. He headed towards the River View, quickly glancing over his shoulder. Hundreds of people moved next to him. The assailant could easily take another shot and disappear. Joe felt the intentions were to scare him from the case. But he was in too deep. Way too deep to be scared by a dead pig on a long-tail river taxi.
Monica laughed once more.
Joe arrived shakily at the Riverside hotel and looked around the grounds at the potted plants and the Buddhist shrine. A television set played Thai soaps in a dusty lobby. Two young schoolchildren sat on the tiled floor, books open, and homework on the floor. The sound of a ceiling fan rotated above them. Flies buzzed. A wok hissed steam from a kitchen somewhere inside.
Joe found the old woman pushing a straw broom around a small flight of steps. She looked up at him with a tired expression. A picture of old, unshakeable faith. An expression found with the elder generations. A look of terminal endurance. Courage. Spirit.
“Hello, khon Mare, may I speak with you for a moment?”
“Why, yes, of course?” Her wrinkled oblong face smiled beneath a shock of grey hair. The extremities of her mouth were stained red with betel. Eyes sparkled with a timeless wisdom. The type of wisdom that cannot be learned in libraries or studied in houses of academia.
“I have some questions.”
“Okay, I like to talk. Have you eaten yet?”
“Yes, Mother,” all Thais referred to each other as family, and asked each other, as a form of greeting, if they have eaten yet. The woman was partially blind.
“Tell me, my son, what troubles you?” She sat down on a plastic chair and invited Joe to sit next to her on the steps. He sat and waited for her to speak. She didn’t. Joe said:
“Mother, what do you know of black magic?”
“Why do you ask about this sort of thing?”
Joe told the old lady the story from the beginning. He told her about the abbot and the schoolteacher, Mint. He told her about Monica and he told her about the witchdoctor scam artist. He told her about the spell and the words from the ancient epic: The Ramayana. He mentioned the Demon Dreams.
“Oh. I remember him now, this witchdoctor Woody, a funny little man. He is from the South of Thailand I think. People from the South don’t know about the magic from Isaan. Of course, they have their own types of magic down south. There is magic everywhere if we stay still long enough to see it, to believe in it, touch it. Most people never stay still enough. They are too busy doing things. We are human beings not human doings.”
She cleared her throat and continued. “But, that man, I could tell was a trickster and not a man of faith the moment I laid eyes on him. And I, my son, am almost blind. I read people you see, son, I get this instinct about p
eople. I feel energy from people. My instinct about you is that you have a good heart and you carry lots of pain. You are pure. Many aren’t. You are not from this country.”
“Tell me, Mother, if you can, how a spell works,” Joe asked the old woman slowly.
“There are many spells, and I have only seen one being practised, so I shall tell you about the one that I have seen. A woman from our village in Buriram went to see him, the witchdoctor, because she was in love with the village headman and she wanted him to feel the love too. She was very lonely, poor too. She had a child by a young man who had left her desolate. He went to the city to find his fortune. Like all of us, I doubt he ever found it.”
“Was the village headman already married?”
“No, he was alone, single, some people suspected that he, you know, liked boys. He was a headman of a neighbouring village, not the same village. But he was a respected man and everybody trusted his advice. He used to help those that needed help. But only those that were faithful to their partners, did not intoxicate themselves with alcohol, spread malicious gossip, gamble, or have secrets.”
“I guess he didn’t help many people then?”
The old lady smiled. “He was intelligent enough to understand that people basically make their own problems by partaking in evil, the work of Ravana. The sick and uncared for young, he would help. But those that cheated, stole, gambled or drank the Soma, he wanted nothing to do with. Said they were demons. He may be right.”
“How did the witchdoctor proceed?”
“First, the woman and the witchdoctor met and just spoke about things; he explained to her many times that if he were to perform the spell, that it could not be reversed. He also explained that she needed to find three things for the spell to begin,” the old woman turned away from Joe and spat out the red betel into an aluminium spittoon that stood on the tiled floor.
“What were the three things?”
Red Night Zone - Bangkok City Page 12