by John Burdett
"No. Stick around, I need you to translate. Tell him to roll a joint." As I began to translate, Ruamsantiah laid a hand on my sleeve. "I want one of those huge things they make sometimes-with half a dozen papers."
I translated. "Do you know how to do that?"
Ferral grinned and went to work. The sergeant and I watched with fascination while he moistened the strips of glue with the pink tip of his tongue and expertly patched together a long rectangle of Rizlas, licked the seam of a few Krung Thips, broke them open and poured the tobacco onto the papers. He ripped open the bag of dope with his teeth and dumped a couple of pinches on the table. The ganja was raw and matted so Ferral had to rip it up with his fingernails. Ruamsantiah picked up his nightstick and placed it very gently on the table, causing a sudden draining of blood from Ferral's face.
"Tell him I want the whole bag of dope in the joint."
Ferral's eyes darted from Ruamsantiah to me to the stick, which remained thick and black on the table. Ferral stared at it. I felt a sinking in my own stomach, though nothing that could compare with Ferral's fear, which caused a cold sweat to break out on his face. He was thinking exactly what I was thinking. To be beaten up is one thing. To be beaten up stoned is a whole other experience. Pain and terror magnified by a factor of hundreds.
"Better do as he says," I told him.
Ferral went back to work without the comfort of irony. His hands started to shake.
"You've already squashed him," I murmured in Thai.
"Not enough. He'll be laughing at us as soon as he gets back to his buddies in Kaoshan Road."
"You've got him so scared he can hardly roll the joint." In addition to the shaking, a periodic juddering caused Ferral's hands to spill grass over the table.
"Okay, tell him I promise not to hurt him if he does as he's told."
This news calmed the kid somewhat. He even returned to his earlier presumption that we were going to party together, the three of us, and this of course would make great copy on the Net. On the other hand, his eyes could not stop sneaking glances at the stick.
When he'd finished rolling the joint it resembled a crooked white chimney. He glanced at Ruamsantiah for permission to light up and the sergeant nodded. Ferral took only one toke before offering it to Ruamsantiah, who declined. I also declined, which left Ferral holding the gigantic joint with a deeply puzzled expression on his face.
"I want him to smoke all of it," Ruamsantiah said, rolling his stick to and fro under his palm, generating a kind of muffled thunder. Ferral stared at me, then the joint, but the power emanating from the black stick was too much and he took another couple of tokes.
"He's to inhale properly and hold it in his lungs."
Ferral doubled up in a genuine marijuana racking cough, then carried on.
Ruamsantiah relented only when it became clear that Ferral would puke if he took one more toke. He had consumed three-quarters of the joint by this time and acquired fascination with tiny details: a fleck of dust floating in a shaft of light, the third whorl from the top on his left index finger.
Ruamsantiah picked up the lighter and waved the flame in front of the kid's eyes. Note by note the sergeant set fire to the five thousand baht. At an exchange rate of forty-three to the U.S. dollar it amounted to about a hundred and twenty dollars. Adam Ferral was not rich. This money could keep him in Thailand for more than a week, but the wonder in his eyes told of a still deeper anguish. The West dominates through wealth; for a poor Thai cop to burn it with a look of contemptuous indifference on his face was a magical act which challenged accepted reality, especially if you happened to be young and very very stoned. Worms of fire ate through the bills, sending off weightless particles of gold; Ferral saw miniature bodhisattvas riding carpets of flame. Ruamsantiah had all his attention now, his respect and his awe. The sergeant could have stopped there and Ferral would have been smart enough to absorb the lesson, but the suggestion that he was using the Royal Thai Police Force as a platform for some frivolous literary exercise had sent Ruamsantiah into a cold rage. "I'm putting him down the hole."
"Do you need to do that?"
Ruamsantiah turned his rage on me. "Not compassionate enough for you? Okay, give him the choice, eight hours in the hole or a fair trial and Bang Kwan for five years. Ask him."
The question hardly needed to be put, but Ruamsantiah's fury had even me in awe. "The Hole?" the kid asked, giving it a capital and leaving his mouth open in an O as the sinister word wrought havoc in its progress through his psyche.
Ruamsantiah stood up and walked around the desk to grab Ferral by the back of the neck to march him out of the room. The last I saw of him was a wild and desperate backward glance at me, an inadequate link to civilization surely, but the only one in the vicinity. I sat in the interrogation room for a moment regretting my wiseass guesswork. I wished I hadn't mentioned the web site. Ruamsantiah has broken hard men in that hole of his, and Ferral is neither of those things. Stoned too, on enough dope for ten joints. May Buddha help him.
A glance at my watch reminded me that the FBI had been waiting for forty minutes and was probably working herself up into a rage of her own. I decided not to tell her about Ferral in the hole. It was going to be a difficult enough trip without that embellishment.
The smile on Jones' face where she sat in the back of her car was slightly unnatural, being the product of will, but I gave her full marks for effort.
"Sorry I'm late."
"Don't worry about it. You've got more than one case, right?"
Slightly surprised by her generosity, I agreed. The FBI was in an unusual mood. When she saw how subdued I was she became touchingly solicitous: Was it something she said yesterday? She realized she can come across as arrogant and abrasive, especially in a polite, manner-conscious Buddhist society such as ours. Or was I offended that she frankly admitted how attractive she found me? That was very American, wasn't it, to be so up-front about such a thing? People in most other cultures, especially women, would never just come out and say it like that. Or was there something else bothering me?
The Royal Thai Police tow stolen, impounded, illegal and wrecked vehicles to a fenced and guarded wasteland on the river not more than a couple of miles from my housing project. Over the years small satellite businesses-metal stamps, scrap iron dealers, car repair shops-have grown up around the compound so that anyone ignorant of Thai ways might think it a well-planned industrial zone. A stranger might even be impressed by the dedication of the police guards who patrol the perimeter with M16s at the ready, protecting citizens' property until due legal process has determined true ownership.
The FBI has brought along her own kit for lifting prints, poking behind and under upholstery, which she has dragged into the small prefabricated office. Catching sight of a door which leads to a toilet, she takes out her coveralls and disappears, returning a few minutes later alight with luminescence.
Sergeant Suriya has reigned in this riverside kingdom for longer than I can remember; he is famous for the dexterity of his paperwork, the discipline of his men and the accuracy of his memory. He is enormously popular and generally considered one of those selfless individuals who live only to help others. His face possesses an extraordinary mobility as he checks and rechecks my own.
"Mercedes E-class hatchback you say?" I nod miserably. "Impounded I think two weeks ago?"
"About that."
"Number?" I tell him the registration number in a stilted voice, like a character in a pantomime.
"And you want to inspect it this morning? Has it not already been inspected by a forensic team?"
"I believe so, but the FBI wanted to look themselves. Their forensic equipment is so much more advanced than ours."
"I see. The thing is, the forensic team moved it around a bit, you'll have to look for it."
I explain this to Jones, who shrugs while Suriya studies her face. "Okay, let's go look for it. How difficult can it be to find a new Mercedes hatchback in a police compound?"
"I know. I might have to take off the coveralls and get all dirty. That's okay."
"You don't want to come back when it's cooler?"
"You mean in the middle of the night? I've been here more than three weeks now, and I haven't seen a cool day yet. It's always hot. You want to stay here in the air-conditioning? That's okay. Just lead me to the car, then I'll check it on my own."
Suriya has no English and waits for me to translate. He has seen Jones' professionalism, her kit and her coveralls and her unbending intent, and therefore understands my problem. He is a sensitive, intelligent man and I feel the depth of his compassion, which only makes me the more wretched. I look helplessly into his eyes.
"You have no idea where it might be, roughly?"
He bites his lower lip in concentration. "Maybe over there," pointing toward the river, "or there," pointing north, "or there," now the south is indicated, "but now that I think of it perhaps there," pointing west. Jones has followed his hand signals easily enough and is smiling indulgently.
"You know, I really think I'm making progress. Two weeks ago I would have just lost it if someone wasn't doing their work properly, but now I see your point. I mean, what the heck if we have to spend twenty minutes searching for it? It's not as if anyone's life depends on it. It's not a perfect world and Westerners like me should stop acting as if it ought to be. How about that, am I improving or what? So, let's go do this guy's job for him and find the car." She gives Suriya a glittering smile, which he returns. Outside in the heat, she takes my arm for a moment. "And you know something, your system works better than ours, at least on the psychological level. Be nice to incompetents and they'll be nice back. Be nasty and they'll still be incompetent, so what do you gain by making an enemy?"
"That's so true."
"Right. It even has a Buddhist ring to it, doesn't it? I feel like you've put me on some kind of spiritual learning curve. So how do you want to do this, intuitively or systematically?"
"Up to you."
"Well, since I don't have any intuition to speak of, I'll have to suggest we use a system. How about we start at the river, near the jetty, and work slowly west till we find it?"
The jetty is unexpectedly robust and modern-looking, with tubular steel piles more than two feet in diameter, a smooth reinforced concrete surface and a squat, powerful-looking gantry at the end with a heavy-duty sling. It doesn't fit with the rest of the scenery, as if visitors from the future built it on a whim, then left it for us to use. Jones doesn't pay it any mind as she turns her back to it, stretches out both arms to establish longitude and outlines the modus operandi.
I try to follow Jones' instructions to the letter, walking slowly between wrecks of cars and trucks which have been stripped to their bare rusting bones, carefully scrutinizing the lines to left and right so as not to miss a late-model Mercedes Estate. About halfway through the task Jones throws me a black look down a narrow lane between the wrecks, but we don't stop until we reach the far western end of the compound. Sweat is pouring from Jones' hairline and she is blinking from the salt. She has undone the zip on the front of her coveralls and rolled up the sleeves. She avoids my gaze while she squats against the wire fence and I squat beside her. I say: "I'm sorry, Kimberley."
A deep breath. "You know, back in my country I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as a pretty bright person. Then for a few days over here I wondered if I'd been deceiving myself, and maybe I was a pretty dumb person. I got over that when I realized I was just suffering from culture shock, that everyone is dumb outside their own frame of references. So I set myself to learn patience and even a little Buddhist compassion and for a moment I was stupid enough to be pleased with my own progress. Reality has a way of kicking us in the balls, doesn't it? Especially in Thailand, or so it seems to me."
I feel worse than ever and am unable to reply. I look at the ground instead.
"At least tell me if I have correctly understood why you've been in such a foul mood all morning."
"Yes, you have understood."
"Let's cut to the chase. What I've understood is that in Bangkok's only police car compound all the vehicles look as if they died from vehicle plague about twenty years ago. I know the standard of living is not particularly high in your country, but there are quite a few luxury cars on the roads of Bangkok, a quite surprising number of Mercedes, high-end Toyotas, Lexuses, that sort of thing. Statistically, one would expect them to be represented at least by one or two models in the car compound belonging to the Royal Thai Police Force, wouldn't one?"
"Yes."
"And oddly enough, the only new-looking, late-model, intact vehicles I've seen are two BMWs parked very close to that jetty."
"That's true, Kimberley."
"That is true, isn't it, Sonchai? Sonchai, you have done many things to my mind since I've teamed up with you, but I have always forgiven you because I never caught you being dishonest. I never thought you would deceive me. Why did you let us come on this wild-goose chase when you knew all along they already sold the fucking car?"
"There are cultures of guilt and cultures of shame. Yours is a culture of guilt, mine is one of shame."
"Meaning you always wait to see if the shit is really going to hit the fan?"
"That's not a bad way of putting it. The car could have been here."
"I don't think so. That sergeant in there sold it, didn't he, that Mercedes which constituted a major piece of forensic evidence in our little murder investigation?"
"It's not his fault."
"Oh, not his fault. Are we doing karma again, or did a tree spirit build that magnificent jetty and force the sergeant to use it to whisk away every damn car worth more than a thousand dollars, on one of those barges I bet, all the way to wherever cars go in Bangkok to experience rebirth, maybe a Buddhist monastery?"
"It's hard to explain to you, but it really is a good system."
"I thought you were an arhat, a totally noncorrupt cop?"
"I am, but you have to bear in mind relative truth. Before there were endless wars between the districts. Sometimes the colonels came close to shooting each other. The only solution seemed to be for each district to have its own compound."
"Let me get this straight. With only one compound receiving cars from all over the city, it was the district in which the compound was located that was making all the dough from selling the cars and the parts?"
"Yes. It was very bad. There were fights, shoot-outs, quite a few deaths. The profits from the cars are very good, you see, so everyone wanted a piece of it. Then we had a rank-and-file revolution. Cops from all over Krung Thep voted to appoint Sergeant Suriya as the officer in charge of the compound. He's a devout Buddhist and maybe nearly an arhat, so everyone trusts him. He spends the proceeds on charitable works, especially for the Police Widows and Orphans Fund, and to help cops with health problems. We've even built a new wing on the Police General Hospital."
"We?"
"We're all proud of what we've achieved here. There was a party when they finished the new jetty. That crane cost twenty million baht." I wriggle a little in the heat. "It's just a different way of doing things, I can understand why a Westerner would have a problem."
She nods sagely. I think my country is having an aging effect on her, which does not make me altogether sorry. I believe the first buds of wisdom have appeared under those blue eyes. I detect just the first touches of Thai humor around her mouth. "Wouldn't it have been easier to call the sergeant and ask him outright if he still had the car or not? Just not the Thai way of doing things, huh? No admissions until the farang has exhausted herself digging up the unpalatable truth. So how is it no one ever complains? An expensive car gets towed away and the owner doesn't want it back?"
"Oh, where the owner is still alive we always offer the opportunity of buyback."
"Buyback?"
"Sure. Within a specific period of time of course. After that we classify it as a wreck, which gives the governme
nt legal ownership."
"Government meaning the cops, right?"
We both stand up at the same time. It really is too hot for arguments. "Who else?"
We trudge back to the office, which is empty. From the window we watch while Suriya expertly drives one of the BMWs onto the jetty. He has already lowered the sling, and now the car sits over it, waiting to be hauled into the air. From across the river a steel barge turns against the current and makes toward the jetty. As soon as the boat is tied up, Suriya gets out of the car to work the gantry. I remember the stories of the first time he tried to work this crane; there are at least three cars drowned in the river directly under the jetty. You would never believe that now, from the great skill he exhibits in putting the car in the bottom of the barge. Merrily he skips off the seat of the gantry to fetch the second BMW. Jones is watching intently.
"New, a BMW like that costs at least thirty thousand U.S. I guess they would go for about twenty secondhand. Is that what they would fetch over here? So in ten minutes' work we've just seen the Police Widows and Orphans Fund swell by forty thousand dollars? Not bad. Does he keep any books?"
"Oh no."
"That would be incriminating, huh?"
"He doesn't cheat us."
Wonderingly: "Nope, I don't believe he does at that. Let's go back to town, Sonchai, my learning curve has been even steeper than usual this morning."
When I reach the station the public area is full with the usual assortment. Three monks are next in line, then some beggars, a bag lady, a young girl about fourteen years old looking impossibly new and bright in this worn corner of the world; perhaps as many as sixty men and women of every age in clothes just a little better than rags. Everyone is waiting patiently with their diverse problems. When I inquire at the desk I discover that no one has heard of Adam Ferral and Sergeant Ruamsantiah was called away urgently to some traffic disaster soon after I left the station and has not yet returned. When I check my watch I see that more than ten hours have passed since he put Ferral in the hole.