by John Burdett
“Owners?”
“The Yips are big here, but the cops are controlled by some army general. I bet you can tell me the name.”
“Zinna. How did you know?”
He seems to consider the question. “Fanaticism. One day very soon it will overtake you. Then you’ll want to know every tiny thing about Vulture Peak. Just like me.”
We hook up the rowboat to the stern and head out to sea. I feel dirty about what we are doing-in my own way I have always honored the deeper rules of law enforcement-but Chan is right: Zinna and the Yips would never let me off the island if they could find an excuse to keep me here. When we’re about a mile out to sea, I watch him drag the clerk’s body into the rowboat. He finds an adjustable wrench in the wheelhouse and unscrews the bolt at the winch that holds the anchor chain. He drags the chain and anchor across the teak deck to the rowboat and ties up the two cadavers with it, including the anchor. He is sweating from the effort, but won’t let me help. The clerk’s head is a problem, though. Chan solves it by putting it into a bin liner, then making a skein out of some rope to keep it from bloating and floating. Now he ties the skein to the anchor chain.
I jump into the rowboat and together we haul the corpses and chain overboard. Back on the swimming platform, Chan empties the Magnum’s chamber into the bottom of the rowboat. Seawater floods in as if from spigots, and soon the boat also sinks. Chan jerks his head at the wheelhouse and tells me to make way.
“Where to?”
“Any position that gives a view of Vulture Peak.”
Boats are very slow compared to cars. It takes more than three hours to round the various headlands until the mountain with the mansion comes into view. It’s hot now. Chan and I are both stripped to our shorts, glistening with sweat. Whether out of some kind of respect for the dead, or a need to suffer, or because we are on serious business, is hard to say, but neither of us thinks of turning on the air-conditioning.
I drop anchor at the spot that Chan indicates and watch while he empties the contents of his sports bag onto a table. The main items are three light, hardened aluminum pipes that screw into one another. When put together with a few more parts, they transform into a singleshot rifle with an exceptionally long barrel, a high-tech scope, and a clever way of calibrating the angle of the shot to the finest tolerances.
“It takes time to aim. You were lucky the kid was so blown away by his first kill that he stood motionless for over a minute. Otherwise you’d be dead.”
“You brought that from Hong Kong? I thought you were on vacation.”
“Of course I didn’t bring it from Hong Kong. Don’t you know you can buy anything in Bangkok?”
We go out on deck, where Chan uses the sight from his gun to examine Vulture Peak. He seems fascinated.
“Don’t you want to go up there to have a look?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It’s too soon. If anyone even suspects I’m here, we could blow the whole operation.”
“What operation?”
He scratches his head. “If I’m right, then probably one of the biggest in the history of crime detection. But there’s no way you would believe me at this moment. You might not appreciate it, but I’ve been working on your education since the night we met.” He gives me a patronizing smile, then turns back to his scope. “And there’s still a way to go. You examined the whole house up there on top of the hill?”
“Well, I took a look at it the day I was put on the case.”
“And it’s just a big house with bedrooms, a side lounge, deck, et cetera”
“Basically, yes, just that. Very fancy, but in the end just a house.”
“Garage? There must be a garage.”
“Yes, a big one carved into the rock. It would take at least three limos.”
“And how was it?”
“Empty.”
He nods.
I leave him to roast in the sun with his telescope while I retreat into the wheelhouse. It’s been more than twenty-four hours since I was last in the world, so I switch on the radio. The story of the day is the Sukhumvit Rapist again, but with a difference. It seems he followed a maichi, a Buddhist nun, to her family home, where she was visiting, and tried to rape her. The maichi, though, had other ideas:
“He took all his clothes off and made signs for me to undress in front of him,” the maichi is telling a press conference.
“Was he aroused?”
“Well, I’m not an expert, but I certainly got that impression.”
Laughter.
“Then what happened?”
“I’m afraid I lost my composure and told him what I thought of him.”
Snickers. “What did you say?”
“I said that I could quite understand why he would think of a nun as some kind of symbol worth violating, but he was wrong. As a maichi I’m as much divorced from the culture as he is. I told him that far from being a suitable target, I represent the only force in the world that could help or understand him. I probably despise the superficiality of a society that judges by appearances even more than he. I’ve certainly spent decades of my life thinking about it. Anyway, what could he possibly achieve by shoving his thing inside me and moving it in and out for a few minutes? I have no particular use for that organ at all, I would just wash it afterward hoping he hadn’t given me a disease, then I would dissolve the whole incident in meditation. So what could he possibly achieve? I’ve never been pretty, and now I’m scrawny with a shaved head, so it wasn’t as if he was going to possess a beautiful woman for five minutes.”
“You said all that?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“His thing went floppy, and he looked as if he was about to cry. I felt sorry for him. He put his clothes on and left.”
Roars of laughter.
“So those Buddhist power words did the trick?”
“Oh, I don’t think he paid much attention to what I was saying. I said it all looking him in the eye, you see? I wasn’t horrified. My stomach didn’t fall out at the sight of his ugliness. I told him by my body language that I knew he was not a demon, just another tormented human along with six billion others. I think that’s what did it.”
It’s an amusing crime story so I go out into the blaze to tell Chan. He listens while he continues to check out the mansion in a kind of manic overdrive. I have to wonder if he is-well-a hundred satang to the baht. When I’ve finished telling the story, he says, “Does anyone know who he is?”
“No one knows for sure, but all the betting is on a young man who used to be Zinna’s lover. We all thought he was attending a monastery in Cambodia, but it’s looking like he decided to return to the world.”
I tell Chan about Zinna and the tragic accident. He takes the scope away from his face for a moment. “Another transplant in China? Interesting, don’t you think?” Then he returns to his distant surveillance of the empty house and, it seems, every inch of the mountain it stands on.
Part 2
18
When things go wrong between us, Chanya and I try to mend our relationship by going out to eat. We’re both too shy to yell at each other in public, and we love food and wine, so there’s nothing for it except to make polite intelligent conversation on all topics save the ones raging in our hearts. If we’re still mad at each other after the cheese course, we tend to settle scores in the cab on the way home.
Tonight we’re eating at a brand-new Italian place that’s just opened on a soi off mid-Sukhumvit, impelled not so much by rage as by sadness that we seem to be drifting apart in separate rudderless boats. Chanya orders a Caesar salad, I order mozzarella with tomatoes drizzled in extra-special extra-virgin olive oil from some olive grove in southeastern Sicily; the bottle sports an explanatory tag with a coat of arms to prove it. For the main course we both order fegato alla veneziana, because it’s almost impossible to get in the tropics. Chanya tells me to order the wine, in deference to the oenologique education I received from my mother�
�s richest client, Monsieur Truffaut. But that was more than twenty years ago, and all the finest vintages have changed. Since we’re eating on Vikorn’s tab via his black Amex, I figure the simplest selection procedure is to choose the third most expensive Barolo, my thinking being that the two most expensive wines on any list are always irresponsibly overpriced by reason of glamour and cachet, but the cost of the third is probably fair value for an excellent wine. When the sommelier has me taste it, I’m fortified in my strategy and gaze at Chanya with triumph.
“It’s good,” I tell her.
“I can see that from the smug look on your face,” Chanya says.
It becomes clear to both of us that the ensuing awkward silence can be relieved only by gossip, and the subject of that gossip is going to be the same as everyone else’s.
“One of my women’s groups has access to news stories the police try to suppress,” she tells me as she sips the wine. “Apparently he brutally raped an army wife.”
“He hurt her? So far he hasn’t been violent. That story about the maichi almost rehabilitated him.”
“I know. We were so proud of her, all the women at Uni sent her congratulatory e-mails. Such dignity, courage, compassion-a great example of womanhood at its best. I had an argument with a feminist who moaned that the maichi was a product of a medieval paternalistic exploitative system and she’d only prevailed against the predatory male by neutering herself. I was so mad I nearly punched her.”
I sip the wine-actually, it’s more a glug than a sip. “I agree. I felt sick in my heart after I heard the story. It made me realize how I’d strayed from the Buddhist path. Even my thought processes seem to have become superficial. I find myself fixating on things that don’t matter, like a farang.”
“Yes,” Chanya agrees. “I’m so glad you finally said it-all those eyes. You were really freaking when you came back from Dubai. But you’re probably still not seeing the full horror-you’re in denial, that’s what makes people superficial. Look at the Brits, still in denial about the atrocities of empire and superficial as hell. They all watch East Enders, like Dorothy. That’s not culture, it’s despair in disguise.”
Affronted by her lack of kindness, I return to an earlier topic. “So, the rapist-he beat up his latest victim?”
Chanya shakes her head. “I didn’t say that.”
“You said ‘brutally raped.’ ”
She takes another sip of wine. “You can’t do that to a terrified woman without hurting her, Sonchai, no matter how much KY Jelly you use. The harder the thrust, the worse the psychological damage.”
I stare at my mozzarella and tomato salad, which has been drizzled with that deep green olive oil that looks so special. “I guess.”
From the Sukhumvit Rapist, we move on to the extension to the Skytrain; then over the main course Chanya reports on Dorothy.
“You know what’s amazing? She seems to have tamed Jimmy Clipp.”
“Who?”
“You know, that American civil engineer who was in your mother’s bar that night getting a hand job and then took Dorothy to the short-time hotel where she fell in love with him.”
“She tamed him? What did she do?”
“Apart from threatening suicide about fifty times, I’m not sure. He’s American, so maybe he’s seduced by pubescent adulation. You know how they are.”
That story sees us safely through the fegato, and neither of us wants to risk our waistlines on a sweet, tempting as they are (I have an almost insurmountable weakness for profiteroles, but with superhuman will I decline the whole desert trolley), so I pay with a dark flourish from BlackAm and add a hefty tip for the Thai man-and-woman team who have been trying so valiantly to follow the arcane system of HiSo farang restaurant rituals, not to mention forcing their tongues around such lingual torment as profiteroles, Barolo, et cetera: we tend to hold the r sound in contempt and whenever possible substitute the infinitely more elegant and playful l; few Thais can hear the difference. (The Balolo cost roughly two hundred dollars, by the way, DFR; I know you’ve been dying to ask.)
Chanya and I take a cab back to the hovel. We’re silent for most of the journey, and my mind eventually flips back to the case. The deeper I sink into it, the less I am able to understand Vikorn’s part. And now that he’s popped into my mind, I realize the Colonel is the only remaining source of relationship-neutral conversation.
“He’s a control freak,” I tell Chanya as the cab turns into our soi. “For more than thirty years he has outmaneuvered, outcheated, outwitted, outflanked, outsold, outbought, and outkilled his enemies so that he could have total and absolute control of his kingdom. Now, suddenly, he decides to enter politics, we have three Americans running his life, and everything is in the hands of people in Beijing. It’s not like him.”
“Isn’t it out of character for him to run for governor in the first place? It just isn’t his style-he’s way too shrewd to want to become a minor public figure. Is someone making him do it?”
“Force Vikorn to run for political office? Who in Thailand would have the power to do that?”
“Someone he owes a lot of money to-or someone with the power to blackmail him.”
“Blackmail Vikorn? Vikorn in debt? He owns everyone.”
Chanya shrugs. It’s my problem, not hers. Then she says, “What about that Yunnan trip all those years ago? Something happened to get you all excited for a day. You were running around all over town and wouldn’t tell me what it was about except that it was on urgent Vikorn business and that he was stuck in Yunnan with Ruamsantiah. Then it all suddenly faded, and next thing I knew Vikorn and the sergeant were back in town. I was sure there would be a coda to that one day. You told me Vikorn got himself into a tight spot and had to throw money at it. Maybe he still owes someone a favor?”
I blink. Stare. She points at my mouth, which is hanging open. I close it, give her one huge smacker on the chops, and say, “D’you know you are absolutely fucking brilliant?” I’m experiencing a non-narcotic ecstasy of the loving kind and cannot stop. “You’re just the most fantastic wife a cop could ever hope to have. I just totally adore you to bits. You’re just unbelievable.”
She enjoys adulation as well as any woman, but she has known me for a long time. “Did I say something to crack the case?”
“Yes.”
“So can I get laid tonight before you dash off to Phuket or Hong Kong or some other damned place?”
I hesitate-a bad mistake, which I have to cover by saying, “Sure,” and placing her hand on my cock as an earnest of my troth. Once inside the hovel and naked, I make a supreme effort to dedicate all my energies to the task at hand and wait the regulation period of post-coital silence before beginning to make restless movements.
“It’s okay,” Chanya says with a sigh. “I realize I’ve had my twenty minutes. You can get on with your case now. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me exactly what I said that’s gotten you so excited?”
“Later,” I whisper. “I’m just popping out to make a call, I want a good signal.”
19
I have to tell you about the Yunan trip, DFR; it goes like this.
Colonel Vikorn was away on business with Sergeant Ruamsantiah. Only the inner circle, which is to say me, knew where they had gone: Yunnan, in southwestern China. He had never been there before, and my present guess is that he will never go there again. On the face of it, though, the intention had been a relatively normal meeting between high-end narcotics traffickers. It seems a Burmese general closely associated with, but not a member of, the ruling elite had perfected the black art of producing morphine from poppy and, when required, heroin from morphine. Vikorn was interested for two reasons, the first being that he could never obtain enough smack to match demand, the second that he had been trying for years to break into the Burmese wholesale market as a strategy for doing in his main business rival in Thailand, General Zinna, who had been pals with the psychopathic rulers of Myanmar for decades and derived most of his c
rystal meth supplies from there. Due diligence had revealed that General U-Tat was something of a rebel within the Burmese military but was too well entrenched in the Shan Mountains for them to do much about it. Clearly, this was a man to cultivate with a long-term view of using him to squeeze Zinna. Vikorn and Ruamsantiah set off together for Lijiang, leaving Manny and me at headquarters.
General U-Tat was not at the airport to meet them; instead they found one General Xie, of the People’s Liberation Army. General Xie gave them to understand that his dear friend General U-Tat was dealing with a minor insurrection among the Shan tribes, which he was putting down with such speed and brutality, he would be able to join the party in not less than two days. In the meantime General Xie let it be known that he knew why Vikorn and Ruamsantiah had come to Yunnan, that he was himself a major shareholder in General U-Tat’s enterprise and might even be the senior partner. As the days passed, the dinners grew longer, and the entertainment more lavish; opportunities to indulge in all the major vices were offered and, in the case of Ruamsantiah, accepted.
Then Xie announced that General U-Tat had successfully put down the rebellion but had sustained a minor yet debilitating injury to his left knee that made it difficult for him to travel. He would certainly not trouble Vikorn and Ruamsantiah to come into Burma, but would they mind meeting him halfway-at the village of Ruili, near the Yunnan-Burmese border? This would not be a sinister-looking jungle trek-there were modern roads and full communications all the way to Ruili, and for full security General Xie himself would escort them. The general had held a full inspection of the local garrison the day before and invited Vikorn and Ruamsantiah as guests of honor; they duly admired the general in full-dress uniform. Not that they trusted Xie any further than they could throw him, and not that General Xie thought he could induce them to trust him. It was more a case of the general showing how wealthy and powerful he was, and how well known, so he would hardly pull a fast one on them. For what? They were merely two Thai cops and had no money on them to speak of. What good could come from molesting them?