by John Burdett
ALSO BY JOHN BURDETT
Bangkok Haunts
Bangkok Tattoo
Bangkok 8
The Last Six Million Seconds
A Personal History of Thirst
For Nit
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank David Giler for his usual invaluable comments, and Douglas Mays, who taught me all I am ever likely to know about padparadschas.
Few are there amongst men who go to the Farther Shore; the rest of this mankind only run about on the bank.
—Gautama, The Dhammapada
The third kind of suffering and pain that the soul endures in this state results from the fact that two other extremes meet here in one, namely, the Divine and the human.
—San Juan de la Cruz, The Dark Night of the Soul
There must be some way out of here.
—Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower”
1
Ours is an age of enforced psychosis. I’ll forgive yours, farang, if you’ll forgive mine—but let’s talk about it later. Right now I’m on the back of a motorbike taxi hurtling toward a to-die-for little murder off Soi 4/4, Sukhumvit. My boss, Colonel Vikorn, called me at home with the good news that he wants me on the case because the victim is said to be some hyper-rich, hyper-famous Hollywood farang and he doesn’t need poor Detective Sukum screwing up with the media. We’ll get to Detective Sukum; for the moment picture me, if you will, with a Force 8 tropical wind in my face causing eyes to tear and ears to itch, on my way to one of our most popular red-light districts where there awaits a larger-than-life dead Westerner.
I’m nearly there. With a little urging my motorbike jockey drives up onto the sidewalk to avoid the massive traffic jam at the Soi 4 junction with Sukhumvit, weaves in between a long line of cooked-food vendors busy feeding the whores from Nana Plaza who have just gotten up (it’s about eleven in the morning), slaloms between a mango seller and a lamppost, returns to the tarmac with the usual jolt to the lower spine, and now we’re slowing to swerve into Subsoi 4. (Should one add the two fours to make the lucky number eight, or should one accept the stark warning: two fours mean death twice within the Cantonese luck system, which has taken over the world as a vital component of globalization?) Finally, here we are with a couple of squad cars and a forensic van in the parking area of the flophouse to welcome yours truly on this fair morning.
Also waiting for me is my long-haired assistant, Lek, a katoey—transsexual—who has not yet scraped together the courage or the funds for the final op. He avoids the supernatural brightness in my eyes (I’ve been meditating all night) to inform me, sotto voce, that Detective Sukum is here before me and has already developed possessive feelings toward the cadaver. The good Sukum is half a grade above me, and we are rivals for promotion. Like any jungle carnivore, Sukum is hunched over the kill as if it were all his own work—and who can blame him? Necrophilia is a professional hazard on any murder squad, and I have no doubt my rival is slobbering over his magnificent prize, just as if he had come across the Koh-i-noor diamond in a sewer. Within the value system into which we were all inducted at cadet school, this murder is everyone’s definition of ruang yai: a big one. It will be interesting to see how Sukum handles my inconvenient arrival. I think I might be able to surprise him.
Lek leads me past the guards’ hut into the parking deck which is also the entrance area for a ten-story apartment building that was erected in a hurry fifteen years ago in order to profit on a no-frills basis from the sexual frustration of Western men over the age of forty: a fail-proof business decision, the owners got their money back in the first three years and it’s been honey all the way ever since. Paint is chipped and flaking from the walls, revealing white plaster with occasional graffiti (Fuck you, farang, in Thai; Sarlee, you were so good last night, in English); the lift is tiny—even the slim Lek and I find ourselves embarrassingly close for a moment. (Our clash of colognes reveals our sexual orientations. He will use nothing less than Chanel No. 5, which he begs from my mother, Nong; mine is a rugged, take-no-prisoners little number from Armani.)
“This could be one for the FBI,” I say in the elevator.
“She’s stuck in Virginia,” Lek says. “Poor little thing broke her arm during combat training. She was fighting two instructors at the same time, and of course they both came off worse, but she still can’t really call herself one of the boys because she’s in love with me. Don’t tell her I said that.”
“Kimberley? Really?”
“She sent me an e-mail yesterday.”
Kimberley Jones, an FBI agent, is a friend of mine and Lek’s. Especially Lek’s. It’s a long story. She worked with me on a few cases of an international nature and fell in love with Lek, which awkward fact has confused the hell out of her. Does her lust for a transsexual make her a dyke or not? I fear there is little in your culture, farang, to provide guidance on this conundrum—so she calls me all the time.
The corridor on the fourth floor leads to room 422, where two uniformed cops are stationed.
They part to let us into the apartment, where a massive American at least six feet long waits propped up in semi-sitting position on a bed wearing only a gigantic pair of shorts, over the top of which a great wormy mass of intestines has flopped like tripe in a butcher’s shop. (His bed is so narrow that parts of his flesh sag over each side, and one has to wonder how he coped when engaged in sexual congress.) The drama of this center-screen image at first makes the various slim Thai cops and forensic technicians seem like a chorus to a Greek tragedy. Then Sukum steps forward.
Detective Sukum Montri is a good-looking Thai cop in his early thirties, very upright and proper when not consumed by fear, aggression, and lust—like the rest of us; but right now I discern in his eyes the fire of one who has decided that this is the moment when the fig leaf of comradeship must be dropped by both protagonists to reveal the competing stiffness of their virile members. Well, I have good news for him: today, thanks to the way my psychosis is hanging, I’m all metas—Sanskrit for “loving-kindness.” However, it is important not to spoil people. I shall break the good news that I don’t give a damn about promotion today—or for the rest of my life—later. For the moment, let us enjoy Sukum.
He wears a black jacket, black pants, white shirt, thin pink nylon tie (pink because it’s Tuesday—our days of the week are color coded), all items generic, i.e., not good enough to qualify as fakes. The jacket is particularly narrow at the shoulders, pinching under the arms and badly crumpled, even though I’m sure it was freshly pressed yesterday. (Our gifted imitators of French and Italian haute couture would never be so crass; Sukum’s tailor, if he has one, must be Thai Chinese of the old cloth-saving school.)
“Good morning, Detective.” I take careful note of the position of his hands as he wais me (palms pressed together and raised to mouth level, with precisely the right mindful pause), before I wai him back in exactly the same way. Sukum coughs. “It’s very kind of you to rush over to help me out,” he says. I grunt noncommittally, causing a brief grin to cross Lek’s face.
“Of course your special input will be most welcome.” Sukum is talking about my perfect English, which I learned from my mother’s customers, and my half-farang blood, which gives me a unique insight into the mysterious Western mind.
“Yes?”
“Oh, yes. But let’s not get carried away.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Here Sukum drops his tone almost to a whisper. “Let me be frank: the unwritten rule that you get farang murders only applies when the murderer is also farang. It doesn’t apply when a Thai whore snuffs a farang.”
I insert the pinkie of my left hand into my left ear, which is still itching from the motorbike ri
de, and work the wax around a bit. “Really? Forgive me, Khun Sukum, but is there not a failure of logic in what you have just said? How would one know until the end of the case if the perp were Thai or farang?”
“I knew you were going to say that,” he snaps. “Look, this is obviously a Thai hit.” I ostentatiously move my eyes up and down the gash from the victim’s solar plexus almost to the pubic area; the corpse is so massive it is hard to imagine a little Thai girl standing on tippy-toe so she can get a good angle with the boning knife. I allow Sukum a skeptical stare. “Okay, it’s a bit ambitious for a girl, but you know how they go when they get angry. Maybe he insisted on buggering her and she got mad—our girls can be picky these days.”
“But didn’t I hear someone say that he’s famous?”
“You mean it’s a paid hit? Maybe, but if it’s a hit, it’s bound to be by a Thai. In Thailand ninety-nine point nine percent of professional hits are by Thais,” he says patriotically.
“Is that an official statistic? Perhaps you are right, Khun Sukum. Mind if I look around?”
Mostly I’m staring at the dead American. His hair is long and gray and swept back in a ponytail; a gray beard expands an already gigantic face. His mouth is half open, and a little blood is trickling from one corner. When I shift my glance to the rest of the apartment, I immediately become mesmerized by the books. It occurs to me that Sukum has no English.
I take a couple of surreptitious steps in the direction of the bookshelves, which are thinly populated with a set of novels and screenplays. My eyes fixate insanely when I come to a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I turn my back so Sukum cannot see the intensely puzzled frown on my face, which only increases when I check the other titles. I finally manage to tear my eyes away, and pace the room for a moment. I am careful not to take any more notice of the bookshelves. For a moment my eyes rest on the cheap cathode-ray TV on a stand with a DVD player hooked up to it on a lower shelf.
“Khun Sukum,” I say, my hands clasped gently behind my back as I pace, “would you do me the honor of indulging a whim of mine? Would you open the victim’s mouth and tell me if you see there either a small pebble or an imago, or possibly both?”
Suspicious, Sukum opens the giant’s mouth and slips in his fingers, then pulls out a large black imago and a pebble. He is staring at me with fear, loathing, and envy-driven hatred. “How in Buddha’s name did you—”
“And I think, Khun Sukum, you had better examine the top of the victim’s skull, in the area of the fontanel; you might want to pull at the hair in that area, give it a good tug, that’s right.”
As he does so, a large circular section of the skull, which amounts to the whole of the top of the head, comes away with the hair. Now we have a clear view of the victim’s brain, still bright red under the protective membrane, but with a few folds missing from the left lobe.
When Sukum stares wildly at me, I allow my eyes to divert to a small and squalid coffee table on which a paper plate and a plastic spoon have been left. Now Sukum is shuddering involuntarily, Lek is astounded at my brilliance, and everyone is staring at me. I shrug. Sukum shakily replaces the victim’s scalp, carefully trying to fit it into place like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that might get damaged if he forces it, then looks up at me. “I don’t know how you did that; it must be your farang blood.” I feel bad for him as I watch his ambition sag, his identity crumple. Finally, with weary detachment after a heroic inner struggle: “Okay, it’s your case, obviously the assassin was a farang, we don’t have any Thai murderers that crazy.”
I shake my head and tut. “No, no, my dear Khun Sukum, I would not dream of standing between you and your life’s ambition of becoming a detective sergeant. Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear chap. Look, why don’t you simply use me as a resource—here’s my private cell phone number, call me whenever you get stuck, hey?”
Lek is pulling at my sleeve; he has something private and confidential to communicate. “Look, I’ve got to go now, let’s meet for a brainstorming session sometime soon. It’s okay, your name will be on the file, I don’t want any credit, just the honor of helping out in a spectacular case.” I smile as Lek pulls me out of the room. At the door I add, “I know you’ve thought of it already, Detective Sukum, but just in case it has inexplicably escaped your notice, the victim was not staying here. No clothes or other signs of habitation, you see, only a few books. I would check with all the five-star hotels hereabout, if I were you.” Sukum knows so little about farang, he still doesn’t get it. “He was probably hiring the room for sex, while living in some five-star suite at the Dusit Thani or something.” Sukum nods, trying to get his head around the idea that someone might rent two hotel rooms at the same time, just to be discreet. Now that really does say ruey ruey in Thai: fabulously rich.
In the lift on the way back to the ground floor, a silent trickle of tears flows down Lek’s cheeks.
2
Lek has me trapped at a cooked-food stall on the sidewalk off Soi 11. It’s lunchtime by now, and all the tables are full. There is a traffic jam to my left and iron railings to my right. Lek sits opposite, staring resentfully. “I can’t believe what you just did,” he says. We have ordered and the food has arrived—tom yam gung for Lek, green sweet rabbit curry for me; neither of us can eat.
“I told you, I’ve found the path, you should be pleased.”
“For five years you’ve been the guy who has to get promoted next. It’s outrageous that the committee hasn’t promoted you yet. If it was up to Colonel Vikorn, you would have been promoted years ago. Even your enemies think you should get promoted. Sukum’s okay, but he’s not inspired. You’re a genius.”
“They’ll never promote me. You know that. People put up with me as a lowly detective. If I rise any higher, people will start talking about my farang blood. You know how Thais are. Totally fair-minded Buddhists, until their personal income is threatened. Anyway, I told you, I’m almost there, Lek. A few more sessions with Tietsin and I’ll be an awakened being.”
“That charlatan. I hate him.”
“You’ve never met him.”
“I hate him for what he’s doing to you in your time of grief.” Lek covers his face, lest I see my suffering there. He has become like the picture of Dorian Gray: I see in him the reality I dare not see in myself. I turn away.
“I’m not really a genius. It’s just that my English sometimes gives me an advantage. D’you know how I guessed about the pebble and the imago and the trepanning? It’s all in the titles of the books and screenplays—”
Lek wipes his face and tuts. “I don’t give a shit how you did it, I only care about you, and that Tibetan witch is destroying you.” He stares at me with simple country love, then calls for a can of beer. When the Singha arrives he says, “Drink it.”
“I can’t, Lek,” I say, shuddering slightly at the can and its implications.
“If you love me, if you have any regard left for me, drink it.”
“Lek—”
“You’re scared, aren’t you? That’s an artificial high you’re on, I think you were smoking dope last night while you were reading witchcraft—”
“It’s not witchcraft, it’s Tibetan Buddhism—”
“So, if it’s not witchcraft, drink a can of beer. Just one. I’ve seen you sink ten in a row. But you’re terrified of the comedown, aren’t you? Just one little can of beer bursts your balloon—that’s why he’s a charlatan, that Tibetan witch.”
Wearily, because I love him, I guess—he might be the only one left—I drink the beer. He’s right, the very modest intake of alcohol bursts the bubble. I feel the onset of paranoia. Lek pays for the food and takes my hand, leads me to the nearest cab. It doesn’t matter that we’re going to sit in a traffic jam, it’s the relative privacy of the backseat Lek is looking for. When I close my eyes I see what is always there, like a video playing on the back of my forehead: a car—it was a silver Toyota Echo—taking the turn into the soi, hitting my six-year-old son, Pic
hai, where he was standing in the street after getting out of a taxi. Chanya only slightly injured in her left foot, refusing help, taking Pichai to the hospital, calling me on my cell phone. I arrived at the operating theater just in time for his death.
Chanya couldn’t handle it any better than I could. She became a novice nun at a radical forest convent out in Mukdahan, on the border with Laos. They still meditate over pictures of dead bodies there. She turned into a fanatic, observing and merging with every stage of human decomposition. For my part, I found Doctor Norbu Tietsin, the mad Tibetan mind master. Let’s say he showed me how to orbit the earth, as an alternative to living on it. The technique doesn’t go with alcohol, though. Even a small amount is inimical to spiritual evolution; alcohol is a death drug, a devil brew from the lands of the setting sun. It drags the spirit back into the body: more torture.
“I’m going to have to roll a joint, Lek,” I say, suddenly feverish.
“Not in the taxi, for Buddha’s sake.” He stays my hand, which is reaching for the small bag of pot I’m never without these days. “Master, face it, you’re bipolar. Your tragedy has done this to you. With help you can get over it. Real help, hospital help. Farang help.”
“Sorry, Lek,” I say, and pull the handle to open the door and get out of the cab. “It’s an emergency.”
It’s been no more than an hour, but I’ve forgotten all about the gigantic dead American and the theatrical circumstances of his murder. I’m concerned with how to survive the next five minutes. It happens that the cab has stopped in the jam outside the Rose Garden on Soi 7, where I’m quite well known. I dash through the bar to the toilets, where I find a booth and roll a joint, but I can’t stand the claustrophobia, so I leave the booth as soon as the joint is rolled. While I’m feverishly smoking, I check out some of the signs on the wall above the pissoirs, which warn that the establishment is not responsible for the behavior of the women who use the bar to solicit customers, and advises patrons to take note of a girl’s identity card before taking her back to a hotel. There’s a female worker in the process of cleaning the toilets, but she doesn’t seem to notice the acrid stench of my joint. I retreat to a cubicle to sit on the throne and soak myself in a damn good cry.