“One girl I know she practiced black magic. She live in the same building as me. One night I wake up. I hear a loud rattling of the main gates, and shrieks in a strange woman’s voice. I look out the window, and this girl’s shaking the gates, yelling to get in. Not very far away, the security guard sleeps in his chair. Why don’t he hear? The sound so loud I wake up. Yet he still sleeps. Why? I think the spirit of the place not let her in. It don’t like the dirty things that girl did. So it won’t let her key open the door. And it won’t let the guard wake up. You know that spirit house in the front yard of houses? This one was right next to the gate. But I don’t really believe it was a spirit. This girl does drugs. Shoots heroin. Maybe she’s having withdrawal. She’s having a fit. And can’t use her key because her hands shake too much. But I think the voodoo’s not good. It’s makes her dirty.”
“My wife used heroin, “ said Lawrence, sitting back in his chair, and watching Fawn’s reaction. She simply shrugged her shoulders, sucking on her plastic straw. “She killed herself. Did Asanee tell you that? ”
“No, she just say you a good man. You jai dee.”
“She said that? ”
Fawn nodded; a serious look of concern appeared in her expression. “I think Asanee like you too much. But she afraid to tell her father. Tonight she dance to show him she can choose her own life.”
* * *
LAWRENCE had been a witness to a part of the Thai mind. Her conversation had been filled with stories of black magic, suicide, ghosts, and drugs. Then doubled back to Asanee’s surprise appearance as a go-go dancer; and Fawn implied the dance had two wanted each man to know that she was sending a message to both of them. Either it was telepathy, or Lawrence was beginning to realize the bottom had fallen out of his own life and nothing firm was left from stopping his fall through the void of Bangkok. That he wasn’t alone in his grief. Fawn had supplied both an irrational and rational set of causes and effects; explanations that mingled speculation and logic. Both were true at the same time. Reason had cut on and off in her conversation like the faulty electrical system in Mr. K’s toilet. She was utterly convinced that ghosts are nonsense and exist; both explanations were correct and not in conflict with one another.
She attended law school during the day, danced in a go-go bar, exchanged sex for money, and dreamed about practicing law in New York City. And she dreamed about working for IBM, of dirty dancing in a disco with the perfect partner—not an American, because they dance like ducks—and wouldn’t marry for ten years. But she would have married Lawrence the next day. Her world began and ended with the message that appealed to the heart.
What drew Lawrence to her was a shared sense of how loss installed an undercurrent of emotions that flicked back and forth under the surface of reason. Her experience of life was mixed with her father’s ghost. Her life was interconnected with different ways of living and hiding. Healing drew her into one world after another. In each place she sought to heal herself, her face, her dreams.
When Lawrence caught her off guard, staring at the paper lanterns on the wooden river boats, he caught a glimpse of her face undefended. A small portal into what she really was. What she believed in. Things that no one could put a name to. Visions beyond reason; and landscapes faraway and remote from reason. Her vision was so perfectly clear to her. But when Lawrence looked through that lens, what appeared on that other side was a huge stadium packed with people singing and waving Nazi flags. He remembered the Lahu godmen, and he thought maybe, just maybe, he had found a faulty seam where his visions had been badly stitched together. Only the seam had split apart time after time; the center never held for long. And into the void was the place where the Western nightmare of the irrational, the cause of evil, that pulled mankind into conflict waited for another chance. None of these thoughts translated.
So in the Oriental Hotel they reached what he thought was a parting of the ways, never wholly understanding the frequency of their two different ghost worlds were a universe apart. And his efforts to build the perfect receiver to pick up her signals registered with a long burst of static.
“Hello, are you there? ” he asked her, leaning across the table.
“What did you say? ” She had been watching the lights on the boats passing down the river.
“If working at Robert’s school is a matter of money,” said Lawrence. Her head tilted to one side in a tentative fashion.
“They have no money.”
“And if they did, would you work at the school? ”
“And not go to New York City? ” She asked, rattling her long red nails against the rim of her empty glass.
“But if the money were right. Say, a thousand a month to start.”
“No one can live on a thousand baht a month in Bangkok. Cannot,” she said, narrowing her lips and frowning.
“I wasn’t talking baht. A thousand US dollars.”
She shook her head. “Joking, yes? ”
“Not joking.”
“And you want me to sleep with you? ”
Lawrence removed his chequebook from his jacket and began writing out a cheque. Her eyes dropped down, trying to read as he wrote. “Why you no answer my question? I think maybe you want sleep with Asanee. I can talk to her if you want. No problem for me.”
He tore the cheque from the book and slid it across the table. “One month’s salary for teaching. Sleeping with the staff is never a good idea,” he said. “That includes Asanee.”
“Asanee say you want her to go to Los Angeles. Why? ”
“Because it’s a secret between us.”
She looked carefully at the cheque, then glanced up at Lawrence. “I think you be careful. Tuttle know many, many people in Thailand who might not be good for you.”
14
Lawrence had returned alone and gone straight to his room. It was morning in Los Angeles, and Lawrence had already spoken with his broker, placing a sell order on his shares. Next he phoned his law firm, and with a yellow legal-size note pad, the telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder, he spoke with Greg Walker, one of his law partners. He wrote, as Greg outlined the law governing the formation and structure of a charitable educational trust.
“The client in Bangkok has deposited one million dollars with me, “ said Lawrence. “He wants to remain anonymous.”
“No problem,” said Greg Walker, his partner and former law school classmate. “So who is this angel? ”
“No can say,” replied Lawrence.
“He’s not laundering drug money, is he, Larry? ”
The accusation shocked him, caught him off-guard. In an odd way, though, he thought, Sarah’s insurance money was drug money. Not money made from buying and selling drugs, but a bundle of cash he had collected when she put an end to her private drug hell, her conflict, and the complex shell game of hiding her habit with a sleight of hand.
“The money is okay.”
“He wants to fund a school? In Bangkok? It’s gotta be a first. Education isn’t exactly what springs to mind when you think of Bangkok.” Greg made a point of saying Bangkok in a provocative fashion; “Bang,” a short pause and then he uttered the word, “cock.” He laughed at his own joke, and waited for Lawrence to join in; an awkward silence followed, and finally Greg changed the subject. “Kelly Swan made partner two days ago.”
“Wonderful,” said Lawrence.
“You don’t seem all that happy. You were the one pulling for her, Larry. You want me to transfer you over to her? ”
He could hear Greg breathing over the line, waiting. “I’ll get back to her later. Gotta run. Someone’s at the door.”
“That’s more like it,” said Greg. “Engines fired up. Tropical climate. A beautiful woman at the door. Just pace yourself, Larry. And leave the trust documents to me. I’ll fax them to the hotel within twenty-four hours.”
Crosby, dressed in a rumpled cotton shirt and trousers, was smoking a cigarette as Lawrence opened the door. Tuttle gave him the detail of retrieving Lawrence
from his suite at the Bangkok Regent Hotel.
“Your phone was engaged. So I took the liberty of coming directly to your room.” Crosby looked over Lawrence’s shoulder and into the room. “Very posh,” he said. “I suspect you don’t have anything to drink.” Crosby walked past him into the room and over to a counter lined with bottles of imported liquor. He poured himself half a glass of gin and sat in a chair, stretching his feet out on the carpet. “Very posh, indeed.” Crosby possessed that imperil English quality of settling into a situation as if he had been invited; and this making himself-at-home ability was accomplished without the slightest embarrassment, undue explanations, or request for permission.
Sarah’s letter lay open on the table next to where Crosby was seated. Lawrence walked over, picked up the letter, and slipped it in his jacket hanging over the back of a chair. “Of course, Fawn lost face—more face than she can recover in one night,” said Crosby.
“How did she lose face? ” Lawrence was seriously perplexed, as he shoved his yellow legal sized note pad into a drawer.
“A farang gives her a cheque for a thousand dollars and doesn’t even want to sleep with her,” replied Crosby, knocking back a large sip of the gin. He sighed and lowered the glass. “It plays on their minds. Maybe she’s not really a sexy girl. You see, the girls like to believe that they earn their money, and that their johns find them totally irresistible. It’s a mind game they play among themselves.”
The evening had not panned out the way Lawrence had planned. There was something debilitating about trying his best to do the right thing, and falling flat on his face. He felt like a child who needed the constant attention of others to guide him through the most simple situations. Crosby sat in his room, drinking his gin, criticizing his conduct, having appeared out of nowhere.
“Who told you about Fawn? ”
“Communication between the girls is measured in nanoseconds,” said Crosby, elongating each vowel in nanoseconds. “She phoned Asanee from the Oriental Hotel lobby all weepy, who told her father, and he phoned me. Asked me to come around and have a little chat.”
“Why the hell didn’t Tuttle come? He tore out of the bar tonight. I had never seen him like that,” said Lawrence, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“Typical family row,” said Crosby, refilling his glass and lighting a cigarette. “I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Tuttle worries Asanee might return to the bar scene. And from what she’s told me—which, mind you, isn’t a great deal—your wife had a similar concern about her. Bar girls are a little like junkies. They can kick the stuff for a week or even a year or more, but they always miss it. Sooner or later, most girls end up looking for their fix. Asanee’s fix is dancing in a go-go bar.”
The phone next to the bed rang. Lawrence slowly picked up the receiver. Crosby had finally established the tie between Sarah and Asanee in Lawrence’s mind; that common fear of regression, sloping down the side of a mountain, giving them that rush that made them high on the downward spiral to the bottom. He placed the receiver to his ear.
“I’m more than a little upset, Larry,” said Kelly, choking back tears as she spoke from her office in Los Angeles. “I just finished talking with Greg. He said you were too busy to talk. And I’ve been sitting here crying my eyes out, trying to make some sense of what you were thinking. What you feel about us.”
“Congratulations, Kelly,” he said in a flat tone. “Ask Greg when he faxes the documents to send the relevant tax code provisions on charitable trusts.”
Crosby peered over the top of his racing form. Lawrence stood with his back toward Crosby, who scribbled a note in the margin of the racing form. He rolled up the form and stuffed it in his back pocket.
“Is that all you have to say? ” asked Kelly.
“I have someone in my room.” He looked straight at Crosby as he spoke. “Yes, a woman. A fourth-year law student. I guess you’re right, I have lost my senses. Of course I paid her,” he paused, staring blankly at Crosby. “I paid her one thousand dollars.”
Crosby heard the muffled sound across the room as Kelly Swan ten thousand miles away slammed down her phone in Lawrence’s ear. He raised an eyebrow as Lawrence toyed with the receiver, then rested it back on the cradle. She had never wanted to speak to him again; he was out of her life. Lawrence felt numb as he wiped the beads of sweat away from his upper lip. He was losing the sense of his own personal geography; the distance between one emotional point to the next; the channels from one kind of idea to another. Bangkok had disorientated him, robbed him of his sense of direction and compass.
“Exactly what do you want, Crosby? ”
“I’ve only known you a couple of days. Yet something in the way you affect people interests me. What is even more interesting is the effect they are having on you. As you were handing the cheque to Fawn, I was thinking of how I felt like a fish out of water when I was a kid,” said Crosby, as Lawrence paced beside the bed. “When I was in boarding school in England, I carried back a full-blown dose. And I showed up at a country doctor’s surgery. I pulled my pants down around my knees, and this Victorian doctor, his hands covered in rubber gloves, sweated for the right diagnosis. He had four or five medical books—the ones with the expensive leather bindings—open on his desk. He ran his finger down one column, then another, turned the page, another page, lit a pipe, sank in his chair, smoking and muttering to himself.
“I knew what I had. I told him. Would he listen to a fifteen-yearold from Bangkok? And when I told him precisely the form, brand, and amount of medication, did that make an impression on him? ‘That’s a bit of a gory rash you’ve got. Bangkok, you say. Rub this ointment on twice a day. Once in the morning, and again before you go to bed. Four or five days should do it. There’s a good lad. Be on your way now. Give my regards to the headmaster.’
“I did what any intelligent fifteen-year-old whoremonger would do, I took the train into London, walked down Harley Street, found the office of the specialist who had treated me before. We had a half hour discussion on tropical VD. I say discussion, though basically I spoke and he filled a notebook with my medical conclusions. I provided the seminar, and in exchange, he signed the prescription I needed. That afternoon, he asked me if I had time to speak with a few medical students at the hospital where he had privileges. At half-past three in the afternoon, there I was, fifteen years old, my pants around my knees, discussing the symptoms, diagnosis, prognosis, and methods of treatment of what I called “Bangkok nightshade.” I was in a small amphitheater with two dozen interns staring down, asking questions, and taking notes.
“Later, I took the train back to Dorset with the prescription I needed. Plus I pocketed a small honorarium from the hospital. Five days later, the dose was gone. I was cured. I went back to the country GP, he had another look.
“‘Good, lad. Ointment’s done the job. All this nonsense about sexual disease . . . you must put that out of your mind. Filthy thoughts aren’t proper for a gentleman. So let’s not be spreading tales to the other boys about these poor, wretched girls of Siam.’ You’re looking for the big cure with your chequebooks. I suspected that might be the case when Tuttle mentioned you might be of some assistance to the school.”
Lawrence stopped pacing and turned to Crosby, who smiled, knowing he had gained his full attention. “He said that? Assistance to the school? When, Crosby? When did he say that? ”
“About an hour ago,” said Crosby, raising his glass of gin.
“You’re sure about that? It wasn’t earlier? Say, yesterday or a week ago? ” Lawrence fired the questions, one after another, not letting Crosby reply.
“Lawyers have this innate ability for aggression,” said Crosby, rising from his chair. “Perhaps it’s a defect in the genes. But, yes, I’m sure.” He paused a moment, looked across the lavish suite, and cleared his throat. “An adjustment in salaries for the rest of us might be advisable. Nothing like the new hire getting special treatment to sow the seeds of discontent.”
“How much does Tuttle pay you? ”
Crosby smirked. “The princely sum of six thousand baht a month. That is when Tuttle is in funds. He actually owes me two months’ back pay; and Snow has carried him three months running.”
“That’s six times more than the cheque I wrote to Fawn,” insisted Lawrence, smiling with self-satisfaction, as if he had captured the high ground.
“Unless I’ve been misinformed. You paid her a grand.”
Lawrence nodded as if that was obvious.
“That works out to almost twenty-six thousand baht, my friend. Or about Tuttle’s monthly budget for the school,” said Crosby, who had moved to the door. “Don’t get the wrong idea. None of us help out Tuttle simply for the money. It’s a question of fair treatment, isn’t it? ”
A Killing Smile Page 24