by John Burdett
One cannot help but feel sorry for Beckendorf, peeping out at us from between his books, wishing to god (or Buddha) he had the guts to drop out, take some yaa baa, go to a disco, pick up a girl and get laid. I don't know why he has popped into my mind as I ride a motorcycle taxi on my way back to Warren Fine Art in River City. As far as I know, Warren and Beckendorf have nothing in common; indeed, you might say they represent opposite ends of the farang spectrum, with Beckendorf the eternal student, naIve and credulous despite all his fine long words, and Warren the ultimate cynic. But they do both belong to the farang spectrum, both spend their lives looking over the wall a little wistfully, although wistful is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Warren. Perhaps I'm trying to make sense of a telephone conversation last night at around midnight in which Warren invited me to come "check out my wares" this Sunday morning. There was something just a shade, well, wistful in the voice, almost shy, as if he had something personal to share which he had trouble putting into words. He even seemed on the point of blurting something out-again, not a word I would have expected to think of in his case-when Fatima came to his rescue and asked me in Thai, in her soft, husky tones, if I could make it for around 11 a.m. She made it clear that Kimberley Jones was not invited.
I called the FBI after I put the phone down on Fatima, and Kimberley made the same point she's been making for days: Why is Fatima working for Warren, after she killed Bradley? It simply doesn't fit with our hypothesis or Fatima's mind-set when I went to see her in her apartment. In fact, it's so out of whack with our suspicions that we've discussed twenty different theories which make Fatima a hit woman for Warren, but for the life of us we cannot come up with a reason why Warren would want to rub out Bradley. It doesn't fit with the FBI profiling exercise, it doesn't fit with Fatima's declared intention to kill Warren-it doesn't fit with anything. I'm not expecting a confession when I ride the escalator up to Warren Fine Art.
The shop is shut with the chain-link curtain down, but Fatima is in there dusting the six-foot wood sculpture of the Walking Buddha. She is wearing a pearl blouse, open at the neck, her large pearl necklace and Vietnamese black three-quarter-length silk pants. I stare at her between the links. She senses my eyes behind the glass, gives me a warm smile as if I'm an old friend, and presses a button to raise the chain-link. After I enter the shop she presses another button and the chain curtain descends again. She slips me a grin, which almost seems to say: Now we're all cozy.
"I thought you were fantastic the other night," I say with total sincerity. "I've never heard that song sung so well." She laughs modestly and makes a comic little flutter with her eyelashes.
While this has been going on the Khmer who owns the Uzi appeared from a side door. He is not wearing his gun at this moment but might as well be from his attitude. He leers at me and slouches against the back wall. Fatima picks up a telephone, dials a number. "Mr. Warren, Detective Jitpleecheep is here to see you," she says with the smile of a competent P.A. "He's in the warehouse," she tells me in Thai. "He'll be along in a minute. Can I get you something to drink? Green tea? Coke, whisky, beer?"
I shake my head. We keep locking eyes, for long seconds, then breaking the contact. I am uneasy and cannot understand the nature of this meeting, this morning, this day. When I get the chance I furtively try to meditate for a second to try to plumb the depths of what is going on, but I simply cannot read her or the Khmer. Everything is wrong, unnatural. I think that perhaps the Khmer is her jailer, that Warren has proof she killed Bradley and is using this and his Khmer bodyguards to control her and ultimately to use her as he intended from the start. I know this is Kimberley's favorite theory and it certainly seems to fit the facts, if not the atmosphere. The FBI has no patience for atmosphere, of course, and Kimberley is certain I'm being set up, perhaps Warren will have me killed with Vikorn's permission? I managed to enrage Kimberley with my indifference to this possibility. After I put the phone down on her I meditated with a joint and went to bed. Pichai was there, in my dreams, glowing and smiling.
Warren enters from the door at the end of the shop, followed by the second Khmer, who is wearing the Uzi. The American is wearing a gold paisley cravat, sleeveless cream cashmere sweater, navy superfine wool sports jacket, Zegna gray-green pants and Baker-Benje slip-ons which I find too beautiful to look at. He transfers his cigarette and jade holder to his left hand in order to shake mine with his right. His gray eyes search my own. As usual I cannot read him, his protective coating is impenetrable to my Third World sorcery. His face is just a little haggard, though, and his shaving this morning has been imperfect, leaving a line of stubble under the right side of his jaw. Close up I become convinced that his fragrance is from Joel Rosenthal, the jeweler at 14 Rue de Castiglione in Paris who launched his own perfumes, and I wonder if this is not perhaps some kind of reference: jeweler turned perfumer?
"Glad you could make it," Warren says with his usual charm, and actually makes me feel as if he is pleased to see me. I do no more than nod, however, and wait. Of course he understands perfectly, and with a facial expression which is almost a wink, if a weary one, he beckons for me to follow him across the shop to where the horse and rider is sitting on a shelf. He takes the piece down, holds it up to the light, then hands it to me. As with all jade, hefting it is a sensual experience, its weight belies the lightness of the artist's design. I know very little about precious stone, but an inner voice compels me to come out with an inspired observation, which I transform into somewhat stilted English: "The piece is so transfused with light it seems as if it might fly away at any moment, then when you hold it you realize it originates in the earth after all, that the weight, coldness and darkness of the earth are still somehow locked inside it, but that a magical power has caused it also to express the airiness of the spiritual world."
This is not at all the sort of thing I normally come out with, and for a moment I wonder if I have taken too much of a chance and gone too far. Warren is in an unusual mood, though, and my outrageously pretentious words, because inspired by the Buddha, have finally penetrated his shield. I've unbalanced him for a moment, during which he stares at me with the hostility of someone who has been found out, then he recovers, touches my arm with the tenderest of gestures (I believe I feel a slight shiver on his part as he does so) and takes the piece away from me.
"Bradley was having it copied for me," he explains. "I sent someone to get it back as I had a right to do-it's mine after all. I guess I sent the wrong guy, but you have to bear in mind that Bill had very recently been murdered. I had no idea what to expect at the house, so I sent someone who knew how to be rough. I'm sorry about your injury. If the scarring is bad, I'll have someone in the States take care of it." He is gazing into my eyes as he speaks and I experience a deep need coming from him. If I didn't know better I would think it a cry for help. His eyes are watery. Fatima and the two Khmer are watching us closely.
"Fatima told me that you and the FBI woman came here last week," he says, now fully recovered, while he replaces the piece on the shelf. "So I thought you and I should talk before the Bureau gets out of control again. You probably have no idea what price you pay for success in the land of the free. You become a sitting duck for every second-guessing bureaucrat who sees you as a vehicle for promotion. I've already got some people in Washington onto it, I don't expect that Special Agent Jones will be in the kingdom for very much longer."
While he is speaking he is leading me inexorably to the front of the shop and the window display, which is protected by a second, inner chain-mail curtain. At a pad on a wall he punches in a code, presses a button and this hardened steel curtain rises. It is exactly like watching a beautiful woman undress, only to be overwhelmed by the power of her nakedness. The ancient jade glows under the lights, and now for the first time, no doubt influenced by Warren's presence, I can see the genius which underlies many of the modern settings in silver and gold.
"These are all your ideas," I say. Now that I have glimp
sed his spirit I can understand his art.
" 'Ideas' is right. I hardly do any detailed design anymore, I have people who are better at it than I am. But a craftsman is not necessarily an artist. He needs that something extra that only comes from the cold heart of the universe." A faint smile and he picks up a heavy jade necklace on a gold chain. The jade is worked into large balls about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. "It was Hutton's," he says matter-of-factly. "Actually it went round the whole circuit. Henry took it with him when he fled the Forbidden City, then sold it to Koo, who sold it to her best friend Edda Ciano. Edda sold it to poor Barbara, who sold it to me the year before she died. She was so doped up by then I could have had it for a dollar, but I gave her the market price."
Fatima has crossed the room to join us, apparently drawn by the necklace. He cocks an eyebrow at her, then reaches out to remove her pearls. I see great professionalism here, the suave hands which have adorned the bodies of queens and princesses with his creations. He handles the pearls as if he is handling her body-with infinite tenderness-places them on the velvet of the window display, then-with an unexpected gesture-gives me the jade necklace. It is heavy like a collection of miniature cannonballs as I place it around Fatima's neck. An electric chaos of glances, eye-locks and turned cheeks as I step back to admire it: sex, money, paranoia and a thousand double bluffs crackle under the lights.
"Actually jade isn't really your color, my dear," Warren says, taking out his cigarette case, selecting one, tapping it gently, fitting it to his cigarette holder, lighting and inhaling and taking one pace back, as he must have with a thousand women. He has become impenetrable again and Fatima seems to experience a moment of fear. "Oh, it looks spectacular around your neck, because anything would, but nothing becomes you so well as pearl. What d'you think, Detective?"
I have to agree. The jade looks fine to me, but cannot deliver the shock of the pearls on her chocolate skin. When I replace them, I realize how I missed them, even for that brief moment. The effect is almost unique in that you never quite get used to it. Take your eyes away for a moment, then let them return to the object of contemplation, and it is as if you were experiencing the effect for the first time. Fatima smiles brilliantly, fondles the jade necklace for a moment, looks into Warren's eyes.
The hand which removes the jade holder from his lips trembles slightly. "Okay," he says gruffly. "It's yours. Keep it. The detective will be my witness."
I allow my mouth to drop open, but Fatima seems not in the least surprised. She nods as if at a commonplace sort of homage, carries the necklace to the end of the store. I'm watching in disbelief as she pours it into a black Chanel handbag. Warren is watching me. "Surprised? Actually, she can have anything she wants. What would you like from the window, my dear? Something priceless? My whole Aladdin's cave is yours. I'll be the genie."
Fatima is holding the Chanel handbag close to her stomach. A dark look comes over her face and she merely shrugs. Warren stares at her across the room for a moment, grunts, then reaches into the window to pick up the white tiger. He holds it up for me to look at and I have the uncanny feeling that he heard Kimberley when she admired it and explained it to me. To anyone who knows anything, it's as intimidating as hell.
"I want to take you downstairs to the warehouse," he says, handing me the tiger. I almost drop it in my astonishment that he should entrust such an icon to my hands and I believe I flashed him a look of fear. He smiles, I think in appreciation of my reverence. Immediately, I begin to wonder… "Oh, it's real all right," he says, reading my thoughts.
Holding the tiger in both arms like a mother, I follow him to the back of the shop, and under the eyes of the two Khmer and Fatima we walk out the back door, which I now see leads nowhere except to a single elevator which appears to have the hardened steel adornments of a bank vault. Only the hum of the Mitsubishi electric motor breaks the silence. Now Warren and I are alone in the lift, ignoring each other's eyes as people do in such close quarters, unless they are conspirators or lovers. Warren and I are neither, of course, which makes me wonder why I sense a frustrated longing on his part, a yearning, a silent pleading, even. We seem to descend to the bowels of the earth. The journey takes longer than I expected; his warehouse must lie under the lowest of the car park levels.
"This is it-the real shopwindow, you might say. Professional buyers don't bother too much with what I have upstairs. I wouldn't put it there if I didn't know I could sell it to some fool sooner or later for an inflated price. Down here, though, is where a real connoisseur might find a bargain or two. Beauty is a great mountain, Detective, and fashion only illuminates one face at a time. Sooner or later another side starts to get the attention and, bingo, the hoarder makes his killing. Hoarders are the toughest people to sell to, but also the most fun." An intense penetration of my brain by those gray eyes. "The greatest pleasure in life is to be understood, is it not? But who in the world does an artist like you or me find to understand us?"
I am about to protest, but decide instead to give the great vaulted cellar my full attention. It is far larger than anything I would have imagined from the shop, and charmingly chaotic. I calculate it must be perhaps half the size of the car parking area, with aisles running longitudinally from front to back.
"The mind cannot take in such treasures," I say in Thai, the proper language of reverence.
"Let me help," he says with a smile. I cannot understand why he should be flattered at what pathetic homage a Third World detective can render such a collection, but why would he wish to deceive me? I start when I hear the lift doors shut and the motor hum. He rests a hand on my forearm for a moment to reassure me, but this has the opposite effect. Here in his den I am able to see his strange spirit so much more clearly, experience its agony.
"You understand me, don't you, Detective?"
"I think so."
"And what is your answer to my anguish?"
"Possession in great measure requires great sacrifice, if the possession is not to destroy the possessor," the Buddha makes me reply. Warren grunts and the moment passes as he launches into a kind of sales pitch, beginning with five great stone Buddha heads standing on pallets, clearly stolen from Angkor and bearing tags, which presented themselves to us like prehistoric giants as we turned into one of the aisles.
"Special Agent Jones is bright enough," Warren says, pausing to light a cigarette, "but she's an American cop-she doesn't have your range or depth. I started buying as much stuff from Angkor as I could soon after the civil war started. As an American I felt responsible. The Pentagon bombed the shit out of the country and destabilized it, then the CIA backed the Khmer Rouge because they were the enemies of the Vietcong and we Americans are very sore losers. So, we destroy a country. Well, not quite, these ancient kingdoms don't really die, they reincarnate. But I wanted to save Khmer art, especially from Angkor, and the only way to do that was to keep buying it until things settled down. I'm sending it all back now, at my own expense." A sigh. "To be frank, nothing has changed since The Quiet American-when we finally destroy the whole world it will be with the very best of intentions. Meanwhile, as an American who has been deprogrammed by Asia, I'm trying to make amends. You believe me, don't you?"
"Yes."
"See, that's the difference. Jones wouldn't understand, wouldn't want to believe I can be a good guy. American cops have zero tolerance for moral ambiguity, otherwise they couldn't be American cops, could they? Not that I give a goddamn."
Step by step he takes me down the long corridor chockablock with gold Buddhas, spirit houses, ceramics, wood carvings from Ayutthaya, thirty feet of shelving from floor to ceiling dedicated to alms bowls, another section bearing hundreds of ceramic figurines-it is all amazing, priceless, wonderful. And I am still carrying the white tiger.
When we reach the end of the aisle, Warren takes it from me and sets it on a shelf. "It is the best thing I have. The phrase 'worth its weight in gold' is a cliche which really needs revision. I wouldn't sell it for t
en times its weight in gold. Now explain to me, Detective, how I knew it was perfectly safe in your hands?"
I shrug modestly, then search his eyes when I hear the lift doors open at the distant end of the warehouse. Footsteps, and Fatima appears with the two Khmer. Now both are toting Uzis and Fatima looks haggard. Warren gives her a cruel, agonized glance as she approaches.
"Because you do me the honor of recognizing my integrity, so I repay the compliment." He is clearly distracted as he utters these words and beckons Fatima to approach. The two Khmer stiffen and remain where they are. Now I see it. Somehow he picked it up when my attention was distracted: a rawhide handle and yards of leather disappearing into the gloom under a shelf.
When Fatima reaches us he turns her to face the wall and places her hands gently on a shelf about two feet above her head.
I say: "Please don't."
Ignoring me, he reaches around her to undo the buttons of her blouse, which he then pulls up to tuck over her shoulders, revealing the length of her perfect back and her bra strap. He undoes the strap; now there is no impediment to the eye traveling up and down those miraculous vertebrae. "Please don't."
Taking my hand, he brushes it up and down her back, then makes me reach round to cup a breast. "To learn love, all a man need do is touch her perfect flesh, no? But to keep loving, that's a very different skill. Which of us isn't seeking that love which is as yielding as Fatima's flesh, and as resilient as stone? Which of us doesn't test love till it breaks? Am I really so weird?"