by John Burdett
“Let’s sit down.” Vikorn gestures to four large pink sofas set around a coffee table a little smaller than the surface area of my hovel. He places his hand on my shoulder and presses me down to the sofa. I find I am sitting between two men who do not choose to take full advantage of the spaces offered by the sofa. Colonel Suvit’s left arm and shoulder are pressed hard against my right side while Vikorn is squeezing from the left. I have never felt so wanted. Suvit is about fifty, ten years younger than Vikorn and a dangerous age for a Thai cop. Somehow he has not managed to make as much money as my Colonel, though not for want of trying. His is a jealous, ferocious spirit who can never understand that a good gangster spends money to make money. He squeezes too hard (that is the rumor, statistically supported by the high rate of beatings and deaths amongst his tribunes). Where Vikorn will ostentatiously contribute to poor relief as a way of ensuring local support, Suvit kills people who get in the way, a method which many consider to be bad form. Vikorn’s minders sit on the sofa opposite and stare at me.
“Tell me about yourself,” Suvit says. “I mean, how did a wet little creep like you ever become a cop in the first place?”
“He was an accomplice to murder.”
“Not a bad start,” Suvit concedes.
“His mother’s father was a close follower of my brother. He and his fellow felon spent a year at my brother’s monastery, after which even the Royal Thai Police Force was a relief.” Vikorn sighs and takes out a slim tin of cheroots, which he does not offer to Suvit or me. He lights one and exhales with a frown. “You don’t know my brother. He can dismantle your mind and rebuild it the way some people take clocks apart and put them together again. Afterwards nothing works properly, but the thing still manages to tick. That’s what he did with these two.”
“But you admire your brother,” I say reproachfully.
Vikorn takes another toke of his cheroot and ignores me. “Then he sent them to me. It was just the same when we were kids, every time he broke something I had to fix it.”
“He’s fifteen years older than you,” I point out.
“Exactly. You can see how unfair he was, expecting me to clean up after him. I’ve done what I can, but there are screws my brother loosened which I’ve never been able to reach. Would you believe that Sonchai here has never been with a whore?”
“He’s queer?”
“Worse. He’s an arhat. He won’t take money.”
“That is worse. I’m glad he’s not on my team. There’s nothing you can do?”
“You can take a horse to water . . .”
As if on a signal, the two colonels hold my two arms and raise me to my feet. It would be preferable, in a way, if they were acting in accordance with a plan, but this is unlikely. They are Thai cops after all, and I feel I am in the grip of ingrained professional reflexes as they escort me out of the hotel with the two minders following.
“Let’s take a walk,” Vikorn says. “It’s such a nice day.”
Another of his lies. It is muggy, the sun is invisible behind the pollution, and the crowds droop as they make their way along the strip, dodging from one air-conditioned refuge to another. After a couple hundred yards we reach the Consulate of the Republic of Ukraine, which gives all three of us pause for thought. What middle-ranking functionary, violently liberated from the straitjacket of socialism and brownnosing for promotion, chose this site in the center of the world’s most extensive brothel area? A hundred yards more and Vikorn jerks his chin at a neon sign the size of a truck which is attached to a building which bears some resemblance to a colonial mansion, but not much, it being five stories high on a site the size of a football pitch. The sign says JADE PALACE in English, Thai, Japanese, Mandarin and Russian. The same five languages convey that a massage service is available. I start to struggle, but Suvit and Vikorn have me in an iron grip and the two minders are close enough behind to trade viruses. “Jade Palace, I like it,” Vikorn says as I am marched up the steps, where the uniformed lackeys wai to us and open the big glass doors.
In the lobby the eye is inevitably, if not subtly, drawn to a window about a hundred feet long behind which are arranged perhaps three hundred plastic seats. It is daytime so most of the seats are empty; there are no more than about thirty beautiful young women sitting in their finery, all carefully selected for their porcelain skin, perfect bosoms and beguiling smiles. Vikorn twists my head to make sure I’m looking at them. “Aren’t they fantastic? And you know what, because of the prices they charge and the tips they get, they want you as much as you want them. Which one will you have?”
I give him a wild look and shake my head. Suvit has increased his grip on my arm, while Vikorn loosens his and walks over to the reception area to say a few words to one of the men in dinner jackets. The minders close in behind me. I see Vikorn take out a credit card.
Now Vikorn has returned and we are making for the lifts. At the fifth floor a sign warns that we are entering the VIP Club, which is reserved for members only. Three young women, who have benefited from the improved diet which was available to their generation and are about my height and sure contenders for Miss Thailand, are waiting in elaborate silk bathrobes. The fourth woman is about forty, shorter, well turned out in an evening gown.
“This is Nit-nit, Noi and Nat,” she explains with a deep wai to Vikorn and Suvit. The minders are guarding the lift.
“Where’s the room?” Vikorn asks. The mamasan gestures to a padded green leather door off the reception area. He turns to me. “Your choice. Do you want the girls to strip you or shall we do it for them?” Not bothering to wait for an answer, he says to the mamasan: “Lock the door on him. Don’t let him out until his time’s up. How much did I pay for downstairs?”
“Three hours,” she says with a curtsy and a wai.
The girls giggle behind me while I am taken and thrust into a gigantic bathroom, with Jacuzzi as central feature, a Sony flat plasma TV about a yard long and two feet tall, high up on a bracket, a double king-size bed with rubberized sheet, and a dazzling array of aromatic oils in bottles standing around the Jacuzzi. The door shuts, then opens again and Nit-nit, Noi and Nat stride in, grinning. The door shuts with a click. Nit-nit turns on the water in the Jacuzzi while Noi and Nat skillfully undo my shirt and pants, pull off my shoes and socks, underwear, lay me on the bed. It does not help my self-respect that my resistance is worn down by liberal application of an American product. Johnson’s baby oil is a girl’s best friend in these parts. I am not resisting as fiercely as I might. I am not resisting at all. In a last-ditch stand I chant softly to myself in Pali from such scriptures as I remember; unfortunately, I remember what every young monk recalls: Monks, I owned three palaces, one for the summer, one for the winter, and one for the rainy season. During all four months of the rains, I remained inside the monsoon palace, never passing its doors; everywhere I was accompanied by courtesans who danced and played music, sang and looked to my pleasure without cease. A seductive precedent from the Golden One in whose footsteps I endeavor to follow.
Nit-nit returns from the Jacuzzi, undresses completely and runs her finger gently along the ladder of my stitches, moaning sympathetically. It’s enough to make me burst into tears.
“D’you want the TV on or off?” Nat asks sweetly while she undresses.
“I don’t care. Whatever.”
“You don’t mind if we put the football on?”
“Is it Man U?”
“Playing Bayern Munich.” Breasts dangling, she reaches for the remote.
39
The Colonel, a cybervirgin if ever there was one (mouse? double click? keystroke?), has surprised and impressed my mother by purchasing for a hefty fee from a gangster in Atlanta a specialist e-mailing list (updated every thirty minutes) which is automatically transmitted to a gangster in Phnom Penh (try nailing anyone for anything in Phnom Penh) who, for really not much money at all, will zing advertisements for the Old Man’s Club at any surfer who has been so uncircumspect as to alight fo
r a nanosecond on a web page bearing such keywords as Viagra; sex; Bangkok; go (go); porn; impotence; and prostate. There really cannot be very many sexually active men over the age of fifty using the Net who have not received my mother’s cyberequivalent of Hello sailor!
On my way to work on the back of the motorbike this morning, listening to Pisit’s phone-in: Thai Rath reports that car thieves have hit on a new wheeze: rent a car, drive it over the border to lawless Cambodia, sell it to a Khmer thug, report it missing to the Cambodian cops, let the hire companies claim the insurance. According to Thai Rath, the culprits are all Thai cops. There is the usual flood of callers complaining about police corruption before Pisit introduces his guest, an insurance expert.
Pisit, laughing: “You have to hand it to the cops, they do seem to have found a crime without a victim. I mean, who loses here?”
“Everyone, because of the rise in insurance premiums.”
“Does the average Thai driver pay insurance?”
Insurance expert, laughing: “No, if he gets into an accident he bribes a cop.”
Caller: “Does this mean that money which would otherwise go to insurance companies goes to the police?”
Pisit, laughing: “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Caller: “Is this right or wrong? I mean, if the cops didn’t get the money, their salaries would have to be increased, which would mean an increase in tax, wouldn’t it?”
Pisit, admiringly: “That’s a very Thai question.”
When I arrive at the police station Jones is already there, in our workroom. I decide to begin on a dynamic note which to my fancy has a measure of American aggression about it, which I think she’ll appreciate.
“Kimberley, there must be something else Warren did. Why are you holding out on me?”
I take my place beside her at a crude wooden table on trestles. We are carrying on from the day before yesterday and there’s a stack of cassettes in a wooden box between us. Jones figured we would not have the facilities to play the large-spool tapes they use at Quantico, so she had them copy Elijah’s telephone conversations onto the cassettes. She also figured, with equal clairvoyance, that we probably wouldn’t have the facilities to play the cassettes either, so she bought a couple of cheap Walkmans on her way here, and now she’s taking a break with the headphones hanging around her neck. There’s nothing on the bare boards of the tabletop apart from the Walkmans and our elbows. No pens, no paper, no computers, no files, but there is a stack of old file covers that someone has dumped in a corner of the room and one empty chair in another corner.
“What makes you so sure he did something apart from art fraud?” She does not look at me as she speaks.
“Mostly because I don’t think he does art fraud. I think you want to think that because you’ve got it in for him. So I ask myself why you would have it in for him, and the answer I come up with is sex. You don’t resent men for being rich and powerful and owning more of the world’s assets than women, you resent us for having cocks.”
Wearily: “Sonchai, the myth of penis envy was put to rest in my country sometime before I was born and I’m not in the mood to relive those prehistoric battles. I made the mistake of having some Thai beer last night which has given me a splitting headache, and listening to these two drawl in deep Harlem dialect isn’t helping. That’s not a racist comment by the way, just a sociological observation. And on top of that, coming here I twisted my ankle on a manhole cover for the third time in as many days. Tell me, wise one, why do the manhole covers in your city have to be three-quarters of an inch above the pavement? I know this is a chauvinistic observation to make, but in my country we have this eccentric habit of making them flush with the sidewalk. If we didn’t the city of New York would go bankrupt with negligence claims. I know there’s got to be a reason. It’s karma, right? Every Thai citizen spent a previous lifetime tripping people up, so now they have to get tripped up?”
I make a sweet smile. “We don’t trip. Only farangs do that. It must have been you who tripped up other people in a previous lifetime.”
A shake of the head. “Okay, let’s drop it. Anyway, what’s got you so frisky this morning?”
This is a good question. It took me five showers to get the Johnson’s out of my hair and skin, but it’s going to take a few more days to wear away that special glow, that phallic pride which no good meditator permits to defile his mind. I never thought I would have been able to cope with such a challenge, but I seem to have managed despite lapses of concentration on the part of the Three N’s whenever Beckham scored. Such feats were never part of my egotism. I decide to talk about the case.
“I think Warren hurt a woman, probably a prostitute. And I think he covered up so well there’s not a chance anyone in the whole of Quantico will ever get the evidence to bring an indictment.”
“If that’s the case, it would be indiscreet for me to talk about it to you, wouldn’t it? Listen to this, I think this might be what you’re looking for, not that I exactly follow your occult reasoning.”
She hands me her Walkman and headphones.
Listen, bro’, something I never mentioned so far. I borrowed money. I guess you don’t know what that means out here. You borrow money, you pay back, you don’t let it ride. I’m talking sharks, bro’, sharks like don’t exist Stateside. These cats, I mean, they don’t have to threaten.
Yeah, I did kinda figure that, Billy. It did cross my mind. How much?
[Inaudible reply]
That’s one fuck of a lot, kid. I don’t got so much right now, and if I did I would probably have to use it for forward investment. I do business these days, I got to make my money work for me.
I ain’t askin’ for money exactly. I’m askin’ for a way out, Eli. I got to get out of this once and for all. Just tell me what to do, like in the old days. [William is speaking in a throaty whisper, the whisper of a man collapsing inside.] You know me and eve’y thing you ever said about me was true. I’m a second-stringer born, I’m the original second child syndrome. An’ on top a that I just spent thirty years following orders. I’m damn good at doing as I’m told, Eli, you know I am. I can perfect any order you give me, down to the last detail. That’s what I know. Fucked if I kin think up one original thang, tho’. Not a goddamn one.
Billy, d’you think it’s a wise thing or a foolish thing to start this kinda talk over the telephone line of a convicted felon?
Okay, okay, we’ll do it the other way. I’m sorry, Eli, sorry to make you have to say that. I was wrong . . . [A very long pause, perhaps as long as five minutes, when I assume the conversation is ended and am waiting for the next one, then a wail of spiritual agony such as I’ve never heard from a grown man before. It lasts for more than thirty seconds.]
Hang in there, Billy. [A sigh] I’ll see what I can do.
It’s bad, bro, it’s bad. I’m scared as shit.
[Tenderly] I can tell, kid, I can tell.
I stop the Walkman and pull off the headphones. I allow Jones a nod of appreciation. She takes back the Walkman and sets it on the table. “Okay, we’ll do a deal. You tell me why you’re so sure I’m so sure Warren hurt a woman and I’ll tell you if he did or not.”
“There was some scandal here which is making everyone nervous. It looks like half the senior cops in Bangkok were involved in covering it up. I don’t know what it was, but the Colonel more or less admitted it involved a woman. I figured if he did something like that here, he might have done it in your country too.”
Jones is unable to hear any reference to my Colonel without making her jaw muscles work overtime. She seems to be choosing her words carefully. “A twenty-nine-year-old prostitute who specialized in submissive sex. She would charge very large amounts of money in return for being tied up and abused by wealthy men and pretending to enjoy it. She was tough and smart and could fake orgasm the way—well, the way any woman can. She chose only those men who had too much to lose by going too far. She knew how to choose, too. She thought she could rea
d men, at least that kind of man, and she never accepted a job without scoping the guy out. I guess she figured Sylvester Warren was about as safe a bet as she could make. I think it was the only time she misread a man.”
“He hurt her?”
“The human body cannot survive with less than sixty percent skin. The problem is more water than blood. You lose moisture faster than you can replace it, even assuming you’re not tied up and unable to get yourself a drink.”
“She died?”
“Gladys Pierson died on February 15, 1996. She was still tied up.” Jones puts her headset back on, then takes it off again. “Everyone who worked on the case knows that Warren did it, but there’s no evidence, no hair and fiber, no sperm, no DNA. We think he paid a team to clean up after him, specialists who normally work for the mob.”
“He used a knife?”
“A bullwhip. It’s called being flayed alive.” She switches the Walkman on and off, on and off. “From my profiling course I would say that the two sides of Sylvester Warren came together at that moment. I think he’d used a lot of women with that specialization before, but something about this one drove him over the edge. I think it was the most ecstatic moment of his life, something he’d subconsciously been building up to since adolescence, but was too smart, too controlled, too strong to give into until then. But it was something that sooner or later he was going to have to repeat. Usually the psychosis which has its origins in adolescence is given full expression between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. We’re talking men, white men. But Warren is a very disciplined man, the wall between the conscious ego and the seething fantasies would have been much thicker in his case. I think he came to this kind of stuff relatively late in life. Maybe he used drugs as well, but somehow I doubt it. I think he’s a genuine psycho without the need for chemical assistance.” A long pause; Jones is clearly moved. “You’re right, when we realized we weren’t going to get the evidence we needed, the others in the team gave up, but I decided he was into art fraud. It was an excuse to keep on investigating him—and to learn about Oriental art. What the hell? I was pissed, and I don’t think all his transactions are legit. Art is so much more complex than murder, it’s hard for anyone in the Bureau to argue with me when I say there’s evidence of fraud—how would they know without reading an encyclopedia on Southeast Asian antiques? I’m gonna get him sooner or later. They got Al Capone on tax evasion for god’s sake. D’you have any idea what happened over here?”