by John Burdett
Now progress took the form of inexplicable homicides. In Krung Thep a group of construction workers mutilated passersby in a rabid slashing spree. In the northeast an addicted monk raped and killed a tourist. Truck drivers drove ten-wheelers into ditches, pedestrians and each other.
The official figure is about a million addicted to the drug, but I guess the reality to be double that. Many employers openly admit they have to purchase yaa baa at wholesale prices in order to distribute it to their workforces, who could not afford the retail price and could not work without it.
Yaa baa means "mad drug" and refers to methamphetamine produced from ephedrine. It hits the blood in a rush and shoots into the brain stem. When it is smoked its effect is even more powerful-often violent.
Yaa baa is much easier to produce than heroin, an amateur can learn the chemistry in an hour. In a day he can use a pill compress to produce a hundred thousand pills, usually from a mobile factory. All he needs is the raw ephedrine, which is usually smuggled in from Laos, or Burma, or Cambodia. Do you have a private army perpetually in need of a war chest? Khun Sha does, lord of the United Wa. So does the Red Wa, so does the official Burmese army itself, come to that. Well, here's what you do. You build a yaa baa factory right on the Thai border, guard it with your troops, most of whom are already addicted to the drug, staff it with uneducated peasants and local tribespeople to pull the handles and press the buttons, and-here is the delicate part-find the right connection in Thailand to take care of the distribution.
Which explains why I am dancing in a club in Pat Pong at 3:29 a.m.
This is the most venerable of our red-light districts, where my mother worked most of the bars at one time or another, changing employment regularly according to her luck in finding customers, her relationship with the boss and the mamasan, or simply out of boredom. This is home, which I suppose is why I've come for comfort, as I used to as a kid. Often I would come in the early evening before she changed into her hideous bar-girl costumes (I loved her most in blue jeans and T-shirt, she looked so young and sexy). Or sometimes in the early hours of the morning when I'd been unable to sleep, because of the ghosts. Then I would take a motorcycle taxi all the way from home, racing through the night. If Nong was busy with a customer, the mamasan would find me a place to sit, some food and a beer.
The police shut down the market, bars and clubs an hour and a half ago, but the street knows me from the old days. Somehow they already know that Pichai is dead and it's like being that kid all over again. I'm mothered by a hundred whores. There is a price to pay, though. I have to dance.
"Sonchai, Sonchai, Sonchai." They clap steadily, insistently, and motion at the stage with their chins. This is what I used to do, to earn my supper. Day after day at home I watched my mother practicing her erotic bum-thrusts and tit-wobbles to the disco music of her time, and she never realized how well I'd learned until she came in one night from a session with a client to see me all alone up on the stage, a twelve-year-old boy-whore dancing for life.
I'm pretty far gone, of course. The yaa baa has fried my brains, and on top there has been beer and ganja. The mamasan turns the music up real loud and I'm dancing a blue streak. Dancing like a tart. Dancing like Nong the goddess, Nong the whore. I'm better than Jagger in his prime, better than Travolta, maybe even better than Nong. The mamasan plays Tina Turner's "The Best" on the sound system and everyone screams, "Sonchai, Sonchai, Sonchai…" The girls, mostly dressed in jeans and T-shirts and ready to go home, roar and clap me on and on into the oblivion I've been searching for all night.
I call you, I need you, my heart's on fire
You come to me, come to me wild and wired
Give me a lifetime of promises and a world of dreams
Speak the language of love like you know what it means
Mmm, it can't be wrong
Take my heart and make it strong
You're simply the best, better than all the rest…
Pichai.
Nobody remembers Bradley, or if they do I don't remember them remembering. I am very very stoned.
13
Needless to say, the yaa baa was a serious failure and I find myself in Kaoshan Road at about eight-thirty the next day, not having slept at all. I am sitting in a cafe opposite the offices of the Internet server, drinking black coffee, while the kaleidoscopic night replays in my head. I seem to remember talking to five hundred women, none of whom remembered Bradley. I remember my dancing in Pat Pong with extreme embarrassment. Now, with the sun already hot, it is as if the night were repeating itself. The street is filling with white-skinned foreigners.
This is a different scene from Sukhumvit. Indeed, the place is so bizarre it is hardly Krung Thep at all. Thais themselves come here as tourists, to gawk and judge.
Here the farangs are often in couples, girls and boys, far younger than the clientele of places like Nana Plaza, kids on their so-called gap year between school and university, or university and reality.
Kaoshan offers the cheapest accommodation in the city, dormitory beds for a few dollars a night in conditions even I would find squalid. Here the feeling of party-party-party never dies, not even in early morning. The street is lined with stalls selling pirated DVDs, videos and CDs, and travel guides to Southeast Asia, cooked-food stalls, junk stalls, sandal stalls, T-shirt stalls. Between the stalls and the cafes there is hardly room to walk; tourists with massive backpacks turn and twist to pass, having just arrived on some long-haul flight from Europe or America, in search of the very cheapest accommodation, hoping to preserve their funds for the duration of their vacation, perhaps as long as a year. Remember the Chinatown scenes in Blade Runner? My people quickly learned how to produce Balinese masks, Cambodian sculptures, puppets from Burma, batik from Indonesia-even Australian didgeridoos. You can change money, have your body pierced, play bongo drums, watch a video or check your e-mail. It is a long way from Thailand.
A black man looking for a low profile would be smart to choose Kaoshan Road.
Now a Thai arrives on a motorbike to open the offices of the Internet server. I give him a few minutes before crossing the street.
This man is in his early thirties, clearly one of that industrious, switched-on new generation of Thais who have seen the opportunity offered by the Internet technology. He gives me a swift glance and knows immediately I am a cop. I show the photograph of Bradley.
The man recognizes him immediately and leads upstairs to where his machines sit on trestle tables and buzz and whir from all sides of the room. Anyone renting an Internet service is legally obliged to fill in a form issued by the government under the Telecommunications Act, and the man takes a file out from one of the filing cabinets and quickly finds Bradley's form. The form is printed only in Thai script, and most of the information supplied by Bradley is also in Thai.
"You helped him fill in the form?"
"No. He took it away and brought it back like this."
"Did he speak Thai?"
"Only a little. I don't think he could write in Thai."
"Ever see anyone with him?"
"He only came to the shop twice, once to collect the form, once to bring it back. He was alone both times." The man hesitates. I encourage him with a nod. "I think I saw him once, though, walking down the street. He was hard to miss. He was with a woman." I nod again. "Well, I mean, quite a woman. At first I thought she was African American like him, then I saw she had eyes like us, and her skin was more brown than black and her hair was basically straight, even though she'd frizzed it out a bit. Tall, much taller than most Thais, but not as tall as him of course. She came up to his shoulder." The man grins. "I came up to his rib cage."
"What was her hair like?"
"Dyed different colors, green, orange, you know? But well done, the two of them sauntering down the street was like a fashion show. She was incredibly sexy, like something out of a film. Everyone turned their heads, I think people wondered if two film stars had arrived from the United States. She looked
like she was enjoying the attention."
"And him?"
"I think he was a serious guy. He looked like a serious American, you know? She looked more frivolous. But as I say, I only saw them once, and from a distance, it might not even have been him. I think it was because there aren't many like that in Krung Thep."
This is my first real lead and I want to reward this man. I copy down Bradley's address as it is written in Thai on the form and say: "Listen, sooner or later some agents from the FBI will come here asking to see this form and asking the kind of questions I just asked."
"So?"
"They have no investigative powers here. You're not obliged to tell them anything."
"What d'you want me to do?"
I smile. "If I were you, I would let them bribe you."
The man nods. The suggestion does not surprise him at all. "What would be a good price?"
I think about it. I am strongly in favor of redistribution of global wealth from West to East. "If I were you I might hold out for a thousand dollars." He makes an instant calculation: forty-five thousand baht, not a fortune but a considerable windfall. He places his palms together near his forehead and wais. "Thank you, Detective."
"You're welcome. And if you ever see the woman again, you'll let me know."
Out on the street I suddenly feel faint. The meth has leached every nutrient from my blood, and I'm failing rapidly. My brain thuds with the rhythms from a nearby music store and I believe I'm going to vomit. The world is inclining by about thirty degrees by the time I find the narrow soi where Bradley's apartment is supposed to be.
14
To my surprise, Bradley's address is not an apartment but an old teak house on stilts. I kick my shoes off, climb the wooden staircase to the main door and examine a bellpull. It is old, brass-an antique curiosity, perhaps seventy or more years old. Underneath, a name also in brass: William Bradley.
I wait five minutes before pulling the bell again. I seem to hear the slap of bare feet on teak boards, but it's hard to be sure because of distant traffic noise and the interminable thump-thump-thump from speakers on Koashan Road. I try once more. On the third pull I realize I'm being watched from an open window by a woman in her sixties with the fearful eyes of the incurably shy. I give her my best smile.
"Khun Bradley around?" She stares. "I'm a police officer." I fish for my ID and flash it at her, aware that she is probably illiterate. She continues to stare so I try: "Mother, I have your wages for last week."
A smile breaks out on her face: naIve, country, joyful. A bright pink tongue and gums set off the pure ebony of a few remaining stumps. It seems the house even boasts an authentic grandmother with an authentic betel habit. She disappears and with surprising speed the front door opens. She is less than five feet tall with black hair drawn back in a ponytail which reaches the base of her spine; not a trace of gray. She wears a sarong and a cream-colored shirt, a gold chain with an oval in gold displaying a former king of Thailand. She presses her palms together and makes a deep wai. Now that she has decided to trust me she lets another smile reveal the untouched soul behind her eyes.
As I enter the house she leans over the stair rail and emits a stream of rich vermilion fluid which hits a specific target on the ground.
"Remind me, mother, how much do we pay you each week?"
"Four hundred and fifty baht."
I pull a roll of notes out of my pocket. "Sorry to be so late."
"Not late, today is payday."
"When did you last see them?"
"Two days ago. But she came back sometime and took her things. It must have been yesterday, when I was with my daughter in Nakhon Sawan."
"Yesterday was your day off?"
"Yes."
"You sleep here?"
"Yes."
I squat down in order not to tower above her. She immediately squats also, so as not to keep her eyes above mine. I take out the picture of Bradley. "This is Khun Bradley, no?" She nods her head vigorously. "I'm sorry I don't have a picture of Madame Bradley. Do you?" She shakes her head. "Could you describe her?" The question only raises a moment's doubt in her eyes; she has decided I'm a good man and a few strange questions will not shake her faith now.
"Tall, oh! Very tall. I never saw such a tall woman."
"As tall as him?"
"As him? Nobody is as tall as him. He is a giant."
"Who gave you your orders?"
"She."
"Did she speak Thai like you and me?" The question confuses her. "She farang or not?"
"No, not farang. She's Thai, speaks, talks, same as us. At first I thought she was African"-the woman makes a shape around her head indicating big hair, and raises her hand to show height-"but she's Thai."
"What did you call her?"
"Madame Bradley."
Silly question. "Mother, I want to look around, okay?" She shrugs. How could she stop me? I cast an eye over a large downstairs room which takes up the whole of the first floor, with two teak pillars equidistant from the walls. The floor of long narrow boards is highly polished, even more so than is usual in these houses, and reflects light with a dull, antique glow. Brightly colored throw cushions and futons are scattered over the floor. The cushion covers are silk, in electric shades of green, orange and purple, contrasting well with the old wood of the walls and floor. Panels in the walls are picked out in gold leaf and midnight blue and there is a sunken teak table about ten feet long with a hidden well for legs and feet. The table is laid with a homespun blue cloth, rattan napkin holders with yellow homespun napkins, celadon plates and bowls, citronella candles in coconut shells.
I'm not an expert on the American military, but it occurs to me that this is not the kind of home an average marine would be inclined to show his comrades. The choice of a teak house to live in is eccentric even by Thai standards. They tend to be inhabited by oddball foreigners or Thais of the arty type who have spent a lot of time overseas in places like Paris or New York. When I look more closely, I notice great varnished grain storage baskets of the kind which have become so fashionable, and the futons are all in gold print silk which is only produced by the Khomapastr Corporation, which exports to royalty and billionaires worldwide. Wall brackets hold what seem to be priceless antiques: kendi water jars, reliquary urns with lotus-bud handles, ceramic medicine jars. Everything is Thai, everything is alien. The whole room is begging to be photographed by farangs.
To reach the next floor it's necessary to leave the house and return to the external staircase. The entrance to the second floor is locked and I have to go downstairs again to find the old woman. "Mother, I've forgotten my key, can I use yours?" She fishes under her shirt and I catch a glimpse of a modern money wallet of the kind favored by backpackers. She draws out a large brass key and hands it to me. Upstairs again I open the lock with the big key, and gratefully enter the cool of the old house.
15
The slatted shutters on the windows (there is no glass) allow air to circulate, and the teak walls are good insulators. It's dark apart from the brilliant outline of the doorway, and I find a light switch, then close the door. The lighting seems to come from nowhere, directed upward from behind a teak panel which runs the length of a corridor I'm standing in.
On the walls hang six twelve-by-eighteen-inch studies of the same woman's face; they are the same print in different colors, in exactly the style of famous Warhol portraits of Marilyn Monroe. The woman is definitely half Thai, half Negro, which puts her into a specific category in my feudal society. If she is in her thirties she would have been born in the late sixties or early seventies, when the city was permanently flooded with American servicemen on leave from the war in Vietnam. It is notorious that America sent a disproportionate number of African Americans to the war, and many of their female offspring now work the Bangkok bars. My racist people tend to marginalize them, and their lot can be a tough one. I open a door which gives on to the master bedroom, where homage turns into obsession.
The w
oman is everywhere, in oils, watercolors, black-and-white photographic studies, color photos, sometimes full length, sometimes in portrait. There is a huge nude study in oils, opposite the bed, tastefully done, with her pelvis turned slightly to one side; no pubic hair visible, perfect brown breasts with black areolas and nipples, a long fine neck, multicolored hair artfully chaotic and not really African: I think that with the color and frizz washed out it must be straight and black. Somehow the eye travels most naturally not to her face but to a jade ball set in a short gold stick which diagonally pierces her navel in two places.
I sit on the bed mesmerized by the extraordinary beauty of this woman, her long shapely legs, high buttocks, elegant arms, finely tapered hands turned in the style of a Thai dancer, those alluring oval eyes, almost hollow cheeks, full lips smiling ironically, perhaps a reference to her nakedness, a fine straight nose which must have come from some Caucasian cross in her blood. I put my hands behind my neck and recline full length on the bed, to think about Bradley.
Suppose a man for whom no other man had ever been a challenge, an accomplished athlete and soldier, himself of pure African blood, heterosexual and surely a connoisseur of the female form as it appears all over the world, a man on the brink of middle age and retirement but more vigorous than a man half his age, stationed in Bangkok and perhaps addicted to the city, as often happens, a frequent visitor to the bars of Nana Plaza, searching as he has searched over decades for that perfect female form?
Surely this man was no ordinary soldier? This man was born with an instinct for visual beauty as another of his tribe might be born with a genius for jazz. I wonder how it might have happened, that such a man should ever have dreamed of becoming a soldier? Perhaps his exquisite taste developed later in life, when his career path had already been set, maybe in his late twenties? How irksome to find himself permanently surrounded by the ugly functionality of the military world; might one assume a continual dissatisfaction pressing on consciousness, a vow repeated minute to minute, with increasing urgency as the years passed, that after retirement I will… A meticulously planned retirement, as befits a career soldier, with the foundations in place long in advance of the due date: the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, in a beautiful house, a serious hobby in precious stones with a web page featuring a jade phallus of great elegance. Should we impute an element of narcissism? How could such a man not love himself to some degree, however stern his professional discipline? Even when he was laid out on a gurney in the morgue with the flabbiness of death and his flesh disfigured by snake bites, did I not witness a stupendous example of manhood?