by John Burdett
Imagine the moment when Bradley first set eyes on this woman. Instant armlock? A stranglehold this warrior could not escape? The kind of woman lesser men might find too dangerous to touch, who had perhaps been waiting herself for someone larger than life? But where had she been hiding? If she had danced in the bars of Nana or Pat Pong, I surely would have heard of her. Such a woman would be famous throughout the city the moment she began gyrating around one of those stainless steel poles.
I stand up to approach the painting, and admit to an aristocratic note in her pose; she doesn't look like a woman who would ever dance naked in public. But if she was the bastard child of a black American serviceman, how else would she have earned a living? If her mother was a bar girl her education would have been basic, her technical qualifications zero, her contacts outside of the bar scene very few.
I try to relate her to the rest of the house, which is not difficult. The two seem to go together, as if selected by a fine eye from different brochures. This isn't a home, not to me, it is an environment, a barricade against the ugliness of the city, a deliberate and very Western attempt to build a separate, personal reality.
A very big part of which is erotic. Who could help envisioning their passionate embrace, like two black tigers mating? I imagine elaborate lovemaking of a kind I have never experienced, a whole evening set aside as if for a private banquet, the prolongation of lust, the postponement of climax, the man's slow relentless savoring of his prize, the woman's ecstasy underneath her black god. Sure enough, in the bathroom on a shelf I find a pharmacist's collection of scents, perfumes and aromatic oils, some local but many imported, bearing the name and address of a shop in San Francisco.
My exhausted body cannot tolerate such stimulation. What of the other side to the marine? I find the computer in a small room which clearly served as an office, a desktop tower with a big nineteen-inch monitor. The office is stark, free of mementos of the woman: bare teak walls and floor, a shelf with a modest collection of books including some very large ones which look like photographic collections, and a single art object in a place of honor alone on a high shelf: a jade horse and rider. I assume an imitation. Who keeps real jade in a wooden house, even a wooden house like this?
I press the power button on the computer tower and the monitor creaks and flickers its way into Windows Millennium Edition. I click on "programs" and find a long list, perhaps as many as thirty or forty different applications. In addition to the word processors in both English and Thai, there are astrology and astronomy, gemology, a tutorial on mathematics, use of English, a Thai translation program, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Webster's New World Dictionary, How to Write a Winning Business Plan-it's like a self-improvement regime for someone who intended to leap from ignorance to erudition with no gap in between.
It is 12:46 p.m. and my problem has progressed from no data to too much. Proper examination of the computer and Bradley's web surfing will take days. I call up Word for Windows, type "Welcome, Khun Rosen and Khun Nape," switch the screen off but leave the computer running.
I return to Kaoshan Road, to have a copy made of the key to the upstairs rooms, buy a cardboard camera with flash and return to take pictures of the portraits of the woman, the jade horseman and the computer. I lock the door, return the original key to the old lady, who squats on the teak floor downstairs, near a window convenient for spitting. She is chewing her betel. She seems to have forgotten about me, for she gives a start when I approach, then replaces the key in her money bag without looking at me. Outside in the street I find a motorcycle taxi.
16
At Dao Phrya Bridge the Mercedes was gone, no doubt taken away by police. I paused for a moment to examine something which must have been under the car. The corpses of two cobras, which had been beaten to death, not shot.
Even as I got off the bike to pay the fare, I had heard a noise from the squatter huts which was only half human. Striding across the wasteland, I became aware of a man's full-throated roar originating from deep in his chest, like the bellowing of an enraged bull. "Fuck you, fuck the FBI, fuck the FBI's mother, I AM THIRSTY."
The headman came to meet me with a worried look as I reached the edge of the settlement. "You're late. You said noon, it's one-thirty."
"I had a busy morning. What's going on?" They had tied Old Tou upright to a plank with rope which encircled his arms, trunk and legs in a continuous binding of bright orange. Only the old man's neck and head were free. They had leaned him against one of the sturdier huts. The cords on his neck stood out when he roared.
"You said you wanted him sober. This was the only way."
"Can't you give him water?"
"We've given him gallons. He's not thirsty for water."
"Untie him."
"Are you kidding? I'm not untying him till we've got him drunk again. If he goes on the rampage he'll destroy the whole settlement. D'you want to interrogate him or not?"
The old man glared at me with bloodshot eyes. "Are you the police bastard they keep telling me about? I'm going to tear your nose off with my teeth."
"I just want to ask you a few questions."
"Fuck your questions. I want whisky. Rice whisky."
I nodded to the headman, who brought a plastic bottle filled to the brim with transparent fluid. "Give him a little, not too much."
The headman poured a couple of inches into a plastic cup. The old man held his head up like a bird while the headman poured the alcohol down his throat. "More."
"Just answer some questions, and you can go on killing yourself as fast as you like."
The old man licked his lips. "When they let me go I'm going to kill you. What fucking questions?"
"Yesterday, you saw the Mercedes arrive with the black farang?"
He spat. "Of course I saw, I was sitting against the wall of the bridge having a drink. I saw everything."
"What did you see?"
"I saw Khmer Rouge."
Guffaws from the audience. I sighed. "You were in the Cambodian civil war?"
"Idiot, I wasn't in any fucking war. A couple of weeks ago someone brought a DVD here about some stupid American journalist in Cambodia who got his friend into trouble-a boring fucking film but I liked the bit where he slits the side of a buffalo with a razor and drinks the blood. I never would have thought of that, those Cambodians are rough trade."
"So what about Khmer Rouge?"
"In the film the Khmer Rouge all wear red checkered scarves around their stupid heads, that's what they were wearing yesterday."
"He's right about the film," the headman said. "We all watched it. I remember the scarves too."
"Who was wearing the scarves?"
"The motorcycle yobs. There were about six of them, nasty pieces of work as far as I could see."
"They arrived after the Mercedes, or before?"
"About the same time. They surrounded it."
"You see any of them open the door?"
Old Tou laughed. "No, they did the same as you and your partner. They got off the bikes, went to the car and kind of ogled and grunted, then they started jabbering. I don't think they were as tough as they made out. Then they all got together for some kind of powwow, and ran back to their bikes and left."
"Were they speaking Thai or Khmer?"
"Too far away to tell. Anyway, how the fuck would I know if they were speaking fucking Khmer or Chiu Chow Chinese?"
"Was any of them female?"
"Give me another drink, asshole." I motioned to the headman, who poured some more whisky down Old Tou's throat. "Female? No, these were swaggering boys, you know the type, probably on yaa baa or ganja, no true manhood, they couldn't stomach the scene in the car. After they'd gone I went over to see what all the fuss was about. That black farang was being eaten alive by that python. There were cobras, too."
"What did you do?"
Old Tou licked his lips. "Well, I couldn't be sure, you know." The way he said it made some of the audience crack up. Several squatted in order
to laugh harder.
"Couldn't be sure? How's that?" More laughter.
"I get visions." Hilarity now from the audience. Two men and a woman lay down in order to enjoy a really good laugh. Some people leaned against a hut, overcome by giggles.
The headman grinned broadly. "He hallucinates a lot of the time. He sees snakes, mostly."
"That's right. That's why I couldn't be sure. When they told me I'd seen real snakes I had to have a drink."
"There was no woman in the car?"
"Don't be an idiot. If there'd been anyone else in the car they'd be as dead as that black man."
"You didn't see a woman at all, tall, half Negro, half Thai, maybe leaving the car before the motorcycles arrived?"
"No. A woman I would have remembered. I never hallucinate women. Why should I, I haven't had an erection in thirty years." Guffaws, people shaking their heads, the headman turning away to laugh.
"Okay." I turned to the audience. "Anyone else see the motorcycles?"
People directed their gaze at the headman. "The motorcycles were real, he didn't hallucinate them, but nobody wants to give evidence. They think this was a gang killing, they don't want to get involved."
"Generally, do people anonymously agree with what he just said, strictly on a nonattributable basis?"
"Nonattributable sounds good, whatever it means. Anonymously? Yes, quite a few saw the bikes, and Old Tou walk to the car and look in the window and then he started banging his head against the car. We all watched that. A group of people walked over to the car. You saw them when you and your partner arrived."
The headman poured more whisky down Old Tou's throat. The man's capacity was amazing. He drained the plastic bottle of moonshine before the headman judged him drunk enough to be untied. As a precaution, though, they placed another bottle nearby and stood away after the ropes were loosened. The old man made straight for the bottle and upturned it into his mouth.
I thanked the headman.
"So you won't be sending the FBI to investigate us? Moonshine is our main source of income, we'd be destitute without it."
This was the first sign of weakness and I needed to exploit it. It took only an exchange of glances and a jerk of the chin on his part for me to follow him back to his hut, where the whisky was distilling, trickling slowly out of its cloth filter into an urn. The headman took a bottle from a corner and found a couple of plastic cups. We wished each other good luck, then the raw alcohol hit the back of my throat and wormed its way into my stomach. It was cozy in the hut, with the fumes from the mash cooking over the charcoal embers.
"You're from District 8, aren't you?"
I gazed steadily at him. "So?"
A shrug. "Your Colonel is famous. Vikorn, isn't it?"
"You know him?"
A cautious pursing of the lips. "No, not personally. Like I say, he's very famous."
"Do you want to talk to him directly?"
A disarming smile. "I wasn't insinuating anything. Look, we don't want this FBI, whatever it is, coming round asking questions. The people really don't know anything. They were either drunk or playing cards. Old Tou hardly has a brain cell left in his head."
"Maybe you saw something?"
A hesitation. "Well, I did happen to be near the top of the slip road when the Mercedes arrived."
"When I asked you before, you said you weren't here."
A shrug. "I was returning from business on the other side of town."
"And?"
"It was more or less as Old Tou described, except that the Mercedes stopped at the top of the slip road, then some bikers arrived. Someone got out of the car and onto one of the bikes, but it was on the far side of the car so I couldn't see so well. One of the bikes rode off with this passenger."
Only more moonshine would develop his story. I'd had less than one-third of a cup, but already the fumes were filling my head. He poured two more cups, knocked some back like a professional and smacked his lips. I tried to maintain concentration while I gazed at him through a blur. "What else?"
A wry grin. "You're good, aren't you?" He finished the cup. "The bikers had guns. They looked like those little automatic machine guns you see in movies. They were pointing them at the car. It looked as though that black farang was being hijacked." He engaged my eyes. "Naturally…"
"Naturally you turned away. The last thing you needed was to be a witness to a crime and have to give evidence."
The headman detected no note of irony. He beamed with obvious relief. "Thanks for your understanding."
I finished the whisky and stood up. "I don't think the FBI cares about your moonshine. They might come. If they do, set Old Tou onto them. Don't worry."
"D'you want money?" the headman asked. "I can give you a little from the sales last week. The people will understand."
I shook my head. "Good luck to you, brother."
The headman gave his most convincing smile. "Thank you, brother. May you avenge your partner and live in peace."
I acknowledged with a nod.
I had told my motorcycle chauffeur to wait, and I could see him loitering by his motorbike near the bridge. I could not put it off any longer. It was time to face the Colonel.
17
A Third World police station, which is to say a two-story reinforced concrete structure festooned with our flag and busts of our deeply beloved King, with a large reception area occupying most of the ground floor, open for the length of the building as if one wall had been left out. In this open area there are many rows of heavy-duty plastic chairs joined by beams under the seats; the business a citizen may have here is infinite.
You have to remember we're Buddhist. Compassion is an obligation, even if corruption is inevitable. The poor come for money and food, the illiterate come for help with filling in forms, those without connections come for character references and help in getting jobs, tourists come with their problems, children come because they are lost, women come because they are tired of being beaten by their husbands, husbands come because their wives have deserted with the family savings. Prostitutes come with problems with their mamasans, feuding families come with complaints and threats. It is not unusual for an avenging brother or father to tell the police of his blood vow to kill the bastard who caused offense to wife or sister, perhaps seeking some indication that in the circumstances the police will turn a blind eye to the proposed assassination, for a fee of course. Sometimes young people come to try to find out who they are, for we are often a polygamous society in which babies are sometimes given to close relatives or friends for life and it is not always clear who belongs to whom. Drunks and beggars come to sit in the chairs, a monk in saffron robes waits his turn for help and advice.
Now here is the local leper who begs by holding a brass bowl between his stumps and who for ten baht will contort his face into something really pathetic. If the prospects are better he will let out a heartrending wail and bang his head on the floor until one of the cops threatens to shoot him. And there's the tattooist who plies his trade on the street corner with two very long needles and a limited palette (anything so long as it's black). When it rains the duty officer sometimes allows him to bring his victims here into the reception area, where he tortures them in one of the chairs. He is important, this tattooist who is half body artist, half shaman. Boxers and high-rise construction workers are in particular need of the protection afforded by the full astrological chart on back and solar plexus.
My junior colleagues who man the desks have developed a posture of stern kindliness, a willingness to help tempered by long exposure to the ruses of the poor, for District 8 is the very essence of Krung Thep, its heart and its armpit. I can hardly believe that my brother Pichai will no longer be here to share it with me, for this is where we both came of age, where Pichai built on his noble disgust and where I first fell in love with the polluted beauty of human life. It is here, too, that I learned to forgive my mother and to honor her, for against the backdrop of District 8 Nong's life has
been a brilliant success and a shining example. If only every woman could be like her.
My colleagues look away when I enter the station. Every man has ordained as a monk for at least three months of his life, meaning that every man has seriously contemplated the inevitability of his own death, the corruption of the body, the worms, the disintegration, the meaninglessness of everything except the Way of the Buddha. We do not look on death the way you do, farang. My closest colleagues grasp my arm and one or two embrace me. No one says sorry. Would you be sorry about a sunset? No one doubts that I have sworn to avenge Pichai's death. There are limits to Buddhism when honor is at stake.
"Detective Jitpleecheep, the Colonel wants to see you." The diminutive woman in short-sleeved blue shirt, black belt and blue skirt is a junior police officer who acts as the Colonel's secretary and aide-de-camp. She is also his eyes and ears in the station, his antennae, for there is no such thing as a nonpolitical appointment in our kingdom. I nod, climb some stairs, walk through a wooden door into a bare passage at the end of which I knock on another wooden door no more impressive than the first, except that the architecture of the building suggests that this office will be larger than the rest, with a better view.
At the far end of the room, across a floor of bare boards, a man in his early sixties is waiting. He is wearing the working uniform of a colonel of police, who is also superintendent of this district. His peaked cap hangs from a nail in the wall to his left, a gold-framed picture of the King hangs on his right. His wooden desk is bare except for an old-fashioned blotter, a plastic receptacle for ballpoint pens, and a picture of him standing with some elderly monks, one of whom is a famous abbot of a local monastery. The occasion was the police execution without trial of fifteen yaa baa smugglers, which required the subsequent blessing of the abbot to square it with local opinion, which had been irresponsibly inflamed by bleeding-heart journalists (who had blatantly insinuated that the dead smugglers had belonged to a notorious army syndicate in competition with Vikorn's notorious police syndicate). With a little help from the abbot our robust citizens saw immediately that such defamation, even if justified, did not detract from the justice of the Colonel's prompt dispatch of the villains, thus saving a small fortune in trial and prison costs. Not long afterward, the Colonel financed a new dormitory wing to the abbot's monastery, complete with electricity and running water, where novice monks might meditate in peace and tranquillity.