"So where do you think it'll go from here?" I asked.
"The police will bring the two hoodlums in for questioning. They'll deny they threatened us. They might or might not mention the gun, but my guess is they won't."
"Why not?"
"Because we don't look like gunslingers, so the police would laugh at 'em. And they don't have any evidence."
"Thanks to me."
He ignored that.
"They'll probably come up with an alibi," he said, "and technically the police would check it out. But knowing our lot, they'll probably accept it and apologize to the hooligans for taking up their valuable time."
"Not Chompu."
"I admit the queer boy does have skills. But we don't know they'll assign him to the case."
"They don't have cases, Grandad. What else has happened down here for the past couple of months? They weed the station flowerbeds, use up their petrol allowance by driving round smiling at girls, and set up random barricades to extort money from truck drivers who think seat belts are for sitting on. Oh, and they practice marching.
They have to assign it to Chompu. He's the only one who can spell."
"These police don't know how to deal with hard nuts like those two thugs. There's only one recourse," Grandad snarled.
He cracked his knuckles. It sounded like tiles shuffling on a mah-jong board.
"Oh, Grandad. No."
"There's only one thing those types understand."
"Please."
"Street justice."
I'd been afraid that might happen. Our own geriatric Judge Dredd had recently formed an alliance with an equally honest and subsequently vilified ex-policeman from the south called Waew. Together, they had wreaked revenge on an evil-doer and got away with it. Vengeance was a drug that made Viagra look like aspirin. I suppose I should have reasoned with him, told him how dangerous it was to be messing with villains like the rat brothers, but Grandad's well past his use-by date. When you're beyond seventy, nobody's really surprised when they find you facedown in your fried rice. Probably better to arrive in nirvana with a slit throat and stories.
"Whatever," I said.
I was about to take the truck into Pak Nam in search of the elusive Burmese community that Lieutenant Egg had failed to engage. I'd reversed out of the carport and was crunching my way into first. It's an old truck. But in my side mirror I saw an excitedly pretty face. I squeaked down the window and said hello to Noy.
"The coast is clear," I said.
Mother and daughter had been hiding out in the woods at the far end of the bay for an hour for no particular reason. None of the police asked whether we had any guests.
"Jimm, I just wanted…to tell you…"
She was out of breath. The wind did that to you. Filled you up with so much air you couldn't get it all out. I'd been expecting a story. They'd had enough time to come up with a good one. I'd thought something like…I don't know…vengeful husband or boyfriend perhaps. That would have worked. Ours was a matriarchal family, so that would probably have twanged at our heartstrings. But what they conjured up was a disappointment. Noy ran round the front of the truck and put herself in the passenger seat. She was trapped now. There were no handles on the inside.
"I hope you don't mind," she said.
"Not at all."
I switched off the motor, and the truck shimmered to a standstill.
"I imagine that you and your family are wondering what people like us are doing here," she said.
"You're not on vacation?"
She giggled.
"I'm sure you didn't believe that," she said.
"If our prime minister can make spring rolls on national television, nothing would surprise me."
"The fact is…" she began.
I've noticed how often people say "the fact is" before launching into fiction.
"The fact is my father is one of the leading activists against the yellow shirts. You do know about the situation in Bangkok?"
I guessed nobody had informed her that I'd been an almost prize-winning journalist at a national publication. An army was rising up to oppose the yellow shirts, with the backing of the satellite-dish tsar and his billionaire family.
"I think I saw something about it on TV," I said.
"Well, he…Dad was very vocal against the yellows. We tried to convince him to keep a lid on it, but he's a very principled man. He spoke up in public accusing the yellow shirts of dragging our democracy into the dirt. He…"
"Yes?"
"He received threats. Not against him but against us. His family. They said they'd kill us."
"The yellow shirts said that?"
"Right. As he loves us, and I'm sure you understand why I can't divulge his name, he sent us away from Bangkok. That's why we're here. That's why we removed the number plates. That's why we're avoiding the police. I'm so sorry we couldn't tell you this. But we still have to be very careful. The yellow shirts can be evil."
"Right."
I could imagine the scene. Auntie Malee, the exporter of traditional coconut cakes, calls together Bert, the brake lining supplier, and Lulu, the barista, and orders a hit on Noy whose father had dared voice what half the country had been complaining about publicly ever since the yellows sauntered into Government House. So the Noys flee. And they head in exactly the wrong direction, south, yellow-shirt central. Come off it, girl.
"You must be terrified," I said and put my hand on hers.
"We are," she said, looking at a string of beach cabbage that had blown over from the sand and wrapped itself around our wipers. "But when you told us the police were coming, we sensed that you could feel our anguish. We decided we could trust you and wanted you to know the truth."
"Well, I appreciate honesty. We all do."
"We just wanted you to understand that we've done nothing wrong. Nothing illegal. We are victims."
"I feel for you, my sister."
She took back her hand and placed her palms together. She folded herself low to my left kidney like a scullery maid addressing a royal in a very confined space. She smiled and tried to leave the truck, only to realize there were no handles. I ran round to let her out and watched her walk off toward her cabin. It had been a performance worthy of a raspberry. But one thing was certain. These two were no grifters. They couldn't act their way out of a prawn cracker packet. It was time to see what dirt Sissi had come up with. The Noys had done something bad. Very, very bad. I wanted to know what it was.
5.
All My Jeans Are Filled
(from "Love Me Tender" – ELVIS PRESLEY)
It's hard to describe our nearest town, just as it's hard to call it a town and keep a straight face. Think of any crossroads you know, then squeeze it to a point where two cars can barely pass one another without slapping wing mirrors. Remove traffic lights and stop signs from your thoughts. Add the chaos of handcarts and sidecars and people walking in the street because the pavement has cars parked on it. Then imagine you're standing in the middle of the cross. North you'd see a few cramped wooden shops selling nothing anyone would ever need. Likewise to the south. Dead end to the southeast where the road terminates at the river. Too bad if you're new to the district and travel in that direction at any speed. The Pak Nam Champs Elysees, route 4002, heads west. It's there you can find the 7-Eleven, the post office, the bank, the market, the district office, and the best darned lady finger banana seller in the country. You cannot, however, find decent cappuccino, pizza, wine, cheese, ice cream, black forest cake, or cherries-all those things that make a civilized society. This was truly a hardship posting for a girl who grew up in a multicultural metropolis.
I pulled up in front of the old ice factory at the docks. The sound of ice being crushed resounded like strikes at a bowling alley. I'd had to ask directions. The factory was in a cleverly concealed turn-off before the cul-de-sac. When you were driving into town, you could see the harbor from the road bridge. It made a good photograph. The sun glinting off the water as the
triumphant fishing vessels returned with their catch. A few tourists stopped there. That and the concrete battleship were our only photogenic spots. But being down here was different altogether. The hastily put together hovels all around me spoke of poverty and disorder and neglect. Temporary accommodation for temporary people. Clunky wooden fishing boats gathered around the concrete piers, two or three abreast, like polite pigs at a feeding trough. On the jetties, people worked. I don't mean they went through the motions with one eye on the overtime clock. I mean they toiled. They sliced and gutted and bagged and hauled and lugged. There was a different pace to life. An urgency. It was a bit eerie really.
I stepped out onto the dirt parking lot. There were people all around, but nobody stared. Nobody so much as turned their head. All right, I know I'm no head-turner, but there's this world standard of inquisitiveness, isn't there? "Who is this broad-hipped, short-haired stranger?"
"What does she want with us?" Down here at the docks, nobody cared. I looked at my hand to see whether I'd become invisible on the drive over.
There was music playing. Women joking. Men shouting. And I understood not one word. And all at once I knew how Dorothy felt. I wasn't in Thailand anymore. The Toyota Mighty X had come down in the land of the Munch-kins. I was only five minutes' jaywalk from the town post office, postcode 86150, but I was completely in the wrong country. Nobody had been able to tell me exactly how many Burmese there were around Pak Nam as the majority weren't registered. But I'd certainly found myself in a hub. I needed a guide. Chompu had given me a name. He said I should ask at the open-air ice works for Aung.
I walked up to a big-boned woman whose face was caked in yellow-brown paste. I'd seen it a lot, but I'd never actually understood the concept. You splatter the gunk all over yourself as protection from the sun. The sun, as we all know, ages us prematurely and makes us unattractive and therefore unmarriageable. But I doubted that the effects of that nasty old sun would have been noticed much before our thirtieth birthday. And by then we should have been wed. After twenty-two, the odds started to stack up against us. So why, I ask, would you want to spend your most alluring years plastered in a vomit-colored death mask? It's like those poor Muslim girls who have to squeeze all their sexuality into a two-by-eight-centimeter eye-letterbox slot of opportunity. I'd tried that "if you're a nice person, men will find you attractive" routine, and I'm afraid it gives men far too much credit. They want something to show their mates. You have to have at least one selling point. I have my lips, which Mair often reminds me are sensual. The Burmese throwing huge blocks of ice in a crusher had breasts. They drew attention from her face. I know it's a little catty of me to say this, but perhaps, in her case, the powder mask did her a favor.
"Excuse me," I said. "I'm looking for Mr. Aung."
She didn't so much as look up. I rechecked my invisibility. I was there.
"Mr. Aung?" I said.
I didn't want to be ignored again, so I put my hand on the next ice block on the conveyor. I tried for eye contact. She shrugged and looked away.
"Do you speak Thai?" I asked. The ice blocks were jamming up behind me and my hand was getting an ice ache, but I wasn't about to give in.
"Do…you…?"
"No speak," she said.
Good. Contact.
"Mr.. .. Aung."
She pointed toward the nearest dock.
"Two…one…seven…one," I think was what she said.
"Two one seven one?"
She nodded. I thanked her and tried to leave, but my hand was stuck to the ice block. I may have screamed a little. Meeting Mr. Aung with a chunk of ice clutched to my chest would have made a bad first impression. Obviously I wasn't the first person to stick myself to a giant ice-cube because she had a plastic bottle of lukewarm water beside her that she sprinkled on my hand, and like magic, I was released.
I presumed 2171 was the number of a boat. They each had four digits in white paint at the front. The front of the boat is either the bow or the galley. I never did remember boating vocabulary. I knew you had to pass an oncoming ship to the starboard, but I didn't know whether that was left or right. Fortunately, I'd never have to learn it because I had no intention of being on the sea in any kind of vessel whatsoever. At high school I sat out swimming lessons because Mair had knitted me a swimsuit. I kid you not. Hand knitted. It was like a suit of armor. If I'd so much as stepped in the water, I'd have sunk like a rock. I did eventually learn to swim, but that had led to a number of other traumatic experiences in water. So I gave it up, and as a non-swimmer I fully intended to be a non-boat passenger.
I asked the nearest Burmese if there were any Thais around. He said yes, then walked off. At the same high school where I didn't learn to swim, I also didn't learn to speak Burmese. They had a very small part-time elective course. Instead, I went on to intensive English, memorized hundreds of pop songs, joined a student exchange to Australia, watched a lifetime of American movies, and fell in love with Clint Eastwood. And what good did that do me? Here in Maprao, even my Thai was a mystery. Southern Thai dialect was like listening to sausages popping on a grill, and now I learned there are more people here speaking Burmese than standard Thai. I was a minority.
"Can I help you?" came a voice.
I turned to see a dark-skinned man in shorts. Only shorts. His torso was decorated with grease smears, but that was a body without a gram of fat. A worker's body. On top of it was an untidy head; hair sheared and uncombed, a wispy haphazard beard, a recent scar dividing his left shoulder in two. But, my word, he was adorable. His smile went straight to my womb.
"I'm Aung," he said.
He put down his spanner and wai'd me. I wai'd him back.
I said, "Ming ga la ba," the only Burmese I knew. I hoped it meant good day. He probably didn't even know I was speaking Burmese because he continued in Thai.
"How can I help you?"
"Your Thai is very good."
We said that to Westerners all the time, but we didn't really mean it. We didn't really expect that much from the wealthy whities. But we tended not to compliment menial day laborers from neighboring countries, even if they were fluent. But Aung was fluent and gorgeous.
"I've been here twenty-four years," he said, and smiled again. "I must have picked it up."
I'd obviously reached that hormonal juncture in my life when every second man I met was a sex object. Aung conjured up feelings in me I hadn't felt since university. I wished he'd put on a shirt so I didn't have to stare at his pectorals. But he continued to stand there, sweating wonderfully.
"I…I…" I said.
"Yes?" He smiled.
"I'm a journalist. I was hoping I could interview you about the problems the Burmese community faces in Pak Nam."
"No problem," he said, which surprised me for some reason.
"Really? When would be a convenient time?"
"I work till seven," he said. "Any time after that is fine."
"Would tonight be too soon?"
"No."
"Sissi, he's so…"
"Yes?"
"So natural."
"Jimm, we're all buds of Mother Earth."
"No, we're not. We start off natural, then we're tutored in the arts of pretense and deception."
There was a pause, and I wondered whether we'd been cut off.
"That comment wouldn't be directed at me, by any chance?"
Damn. Why was everything about her?
"Shut up, Siss. No. It's him. He's raw. If he'd hit me over the head with his spanner and dragged me off to his cave, I wouldn't have made a whimper."
"OK. So you've got the hots for a Burmese. Welcome to the bottom of the barrel. I'm happy for you."
I wondered when the Burmese stopped being equals. Everyone hated them. It was as if you got yourself a shitty junta government and it was a reflection on the whole population.
"I'm going to marry him," I said, just to be cantankerous.
"Yeah, right. So do you want information about your Honda C
ity, or do I have to listen to tales of migrant lust all night?"
"You already found something?"
"It's not that hard."
"What do you know?"
"The car was registered in the name of Anand Pany-urachai. I looked him up. They're not an online family at all. No Facebook, no Twitter, not even e-mail accounts, as far as I could ascertain. That's really odd for a young girl in the dot com age. So I had to go down the slow track. The prehistoric route. National records. A program put together by orangutans. I started with the census and found where they live, and I worked outward from there. There's a program that allows me to align and cross-reference the-"
"Sissi, I've got to meet my Burmese in ten minutes. Can we just cut to the chase?" I'd always wanted to say that.
"All right already. I just wanted you to appreciate how much love I put into this assignment."
"I appreciate it."
"Father, Anand. Owns a small engineering company. Some gambling problems. Rumors they were living beyond their means. He seems to have sorted that out. No outstanding debts. Mother, Punnika. Middle school principal."
"Any political connections?"
"He's a registered democrat. He's helped with campaigning. Nothing fanatical. Couldn't find anything for the wife."
"And the daughter?"
"Right. Now here's where cross-references went bananas. Once I put in her name, I was bombarded. Daughter, Thanawan. Twenty-four. Nickname, Bpook. Number two in the nation in 2003 in high school mathematics. Number fourteen nationally in chemistry. Top fifteen percent in English, History, Thai language, Physics and Geography. Girl's a genius.
Who'd have thought it?
"Didn't you have to be overweight and dowdy to excel in high school?" I asked.
"She won a scholarship in 2004 to study in the U.S. Georgetown. Washington, D.C. And in the sciences, no less: they have very high standards."
"And she got through the course?"
"Barely."
"What?"
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