by John Burdett
The sergeant popped a whole Viagra when half is the recommended dose and ordered a beer while he waited for his next erection. I tried to start up the conversation I had invited him out for, but he was reliving the experience he’d just had and didn’t answer while a smile of obscene gratification played over his lips. By that time I was resigned to playing his game, whatever it was, and even felt a certain relief when he reported the drug was starting to have effect and maybe we should return to the Shangri-La. I guess the chemical was building up quite a bit of steam by the time we got back to that bar, because with shocking speed the sergeant chose two of the girls he’d formerly been entertaining and had me pay for their services on the credit card. While they were changing into street clothes, he leaned over to me and said, “Yeah, I do remember. How could I ever forget? It’s at times like that you find out what leadership means. I was scared shitless, but the Colonel never turned a hair-didn’t faze him at all.”
Then he admitted he’d known from the start that I would want to talk about Mr. To, but he was afraid that if he spilled his guts earlier on, I’d disappear with the BlackAm, but now that the evening was building toward its second climax, he was ready to talk, and anyway he needed something to distract him while he suffered the sweet torment of gratification delayed: bar girls are known to take an age to put on the couple of bits of clothing they need to cross the street to the short-term hotel where they take them off again.
“But you know what happened. You went to talk to the bank’s number-one enforcer with guanxi in Beijing. So there was the Colonel and me in a barrack cell, with armed guards outside, thinking this might just be the end, when there’s a whole brain-bending show of the latest military disorientation devices going off outside the cell: noise, zinging like you wouldn’t believe, flashes to blind you, quite a few real-sounding bullets from small arms, a few glimpses of some very serious-looking soldiers dressed in black, like Chinese special forces. Then our cell door gets busted open with a small explosive device, and we’re dragged out and frog-marched to a light aircraft. I just have time to see a few bodies on the tarmac before we’re thrown in the plane, and next thing you know we’re over Thai airspace and about to land in Bangkok. On the plane they told us that a special services agent of your build pretended to deliver the dough about five minutes before the attack. They needed the evidence for the prosecution. But you must have guessed all that.”
“Yes, I guessed all that. But the deal with To-that sounds like a very expensive operation. Vikorn must have mortgaged more than his Bentley.”
The sergeant looked at me with a frank expression that seemed to ask for counsel: had I pampered, spoiled, and indulged him to the point where it would have been unreasonable for anyone to expect him to keep the secret-or should he have held out for more? I didn’t know how to signal that I’d spent more than a thousand dollars on him, and no way anyone could seriously expect him not to share his most intimate secrets with me after accepting such hospitality, but he sagged anyway. “The deal? It was open-ended.” I blinked. “You know how the Chinese work: they leave one enormous favor on the table, which they remind you of from time to time-until the moment comes for payback.”
“Vikorn pledged to do just about anything, when the time came?”
Ruamsantiah shrugged. “We were in a tight spot. No matter what face the Colonel put on it, and he really is made of steel, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of getting out of there in one piece. Sure, he promised the world-because he knew that was the price.”
“And am I right in thinking it’s Beijing, through To, who forced him to run for governor?”
Ruamsantiah stared me in the eye for a long, serious moment; then his girls started to arrive, and he relaxed.
There are women so beautiful, the glittering bikinis they wear on stage only distract from their charms, and it’s not until you see them in plain old skintight jeans, T-shirt, and flip-flops that your jaw really drops. I was jealous as hell of what he was about to do with her and for a wobbly moment wondered if I should use the BlackAm to hire a couple of girls for myself, but he had managed to choose the two most beautiful in the bar, so no matter what I did, he was going to end up as alpha-male apex feeder.
At that moment the sergeant and I were sitting next to each other on a padded bench with our bodies touching, so I was able to decipher his movements as he undid the waistband of his pants, reached down to rescue his member, which had stiffened in an awkward position and was now stuck painfully between pocket and inner thigh, then did up the button again, all while beaming with appreciation at the first half of his forthcoming orgy.
“Well?” I said.
Ruamsantiah stopped grinning at the girl in jeans and T-shirt long enough to say, “I don’t know. Let’s say I was very surprised when he told me he was going to run, and I came to the conclusion that it was not a decision he made all on his own. Khun To is a wild card, a money genius with guanxi, ganqing, and renqing coming out of his ears, but he may be out of control. They say he plays hard and weird.”
Then the second girl arrived. If anything, she was even more stunning in her street clothes than the first, but my libido had switched off. I watched in a distracted way as he led them out of the bar.
21
So who says life is all bad? I’m up, washed and shaved, and ready to put on my organ trafficker’s outfit to wear to the bank. Chanya can’t resist ogling me, and to raise the libido level, I refuse to tell her where I’m going, even though the question that cracked open the mystery came from her. Yep, DFR, I am telling you to put that suspect list away now, because Jitpleecheep has solved the case. Excuse me while I go out into the yard in my shorts to do my victory dance. (It’s from my Lakota incarnation: wood fires around the wigwams at dawn, a squaw who looked a lot like Chanya and another who looked like Om, white men with killing machines on the horizon, Red Horse and the braves grinning to crack their faces. What a fantastic day to die!) Chanya knows what I’m up to but takes no notice. She’s seen it before.
Just in case you haven’t worked it out, DFR, let me hand it to you on a plate:
The man who is not To (hereafter “Notto”) is not only a highranking Hong Kong banker who runs the Bangkok office sotto voce in the Confucian style; he is not only an ace troubleshooter for said bank and whoever of its most highly valued clients may need him from time to time-I bet Vikorn has close to a billion tied up there for him to get that kind of service; but Notto is also the incarnation of guanxi with some of the oldies who run China. That much, I trust, is clear. So, when a very fat cat like Vikorn needs the kind of help he needed with General Xie (deceased), dollar signs light up in Notto’s eyes. Perhaps his first impulse was to charge the Colonel a few million for the hostage-busting service, but then he talked to Beijing, who had a better idea. Or maybe Notto had the idea all on his own and simply made a phone call to Beijing for approval. Either way, somebody senior saw a senior-size opportunity to make a lot of dough. Everyone knows how corrupt our civil service is (we came in behind Malaysia in the how-dirty-is-your-country statistics last year-which only leaves Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and Laos for us to sneer at), and everyone knows how lucrative for a merchant bank big infrastructure projects can be. Instead of bleeding Vikorn white in the old-style subprime-mortgage win-lose equation in which so many have lost their homes, they used the enlightened win-win equation that, as we know from the news networks, all of which are large corporations with vested interests, is saving the world. “You are the next governor of Bangkok,” Notto said to Vikorn the day after he got back from Yunnan, or words to that effect. I imagine the conversation running like this: Vikorn: What? No way. Notto: Have you any idea how much a commando operation like that costs these days? Highly trained men, specialist equipment, state-of-the-art communications, stealth, airtight secrecy? And you know what, they’re going to have to go public because someone in the foreign media got hold of the story. Vikorn: You mean they weren’t allowed to just shoot the b
astard? I thought you said airtight security. Notto: They charge a two-hundred-percent markup fee if they have to go public, whether it’s their screw-up or not. It’s to repair the army’s tarnished image and pay for the legal expenses. Vikorn: Okay, I’ll run for governor. What do I have to do? Notto: Nothing. That’s what I want you to know. You do nothing at all except what our experienced team will tell you to do. You just obey them, and Bob is your uncle. Vikorn: What experience do your guanxi have with democracy? Notto: None. What do you think American friends are for? Vikorn: So I’m governor of Bangkok, then what? Notto: Then you extend the Skytrain and similar stuff. Vikorn: Got it.
I’m pretty confident that’s how it went, DFR-you agree? It’s a wrap that explains everything, including the clumsy way Beijing and the Americans are going about the Colonel’s election campaign, and including sending me on some photo-op in Dubai with those crazy Twins, but especially dumping those three bodies in that house on Vulture Peak. Can’t you see the way the meeting went? Linda: Ah, we do go along with the idea that the Colonel should be running a high-profile case at the time of the election. Jack: Yeah, we all go along with that, right, Ben? Ben: Right. Linda: But we discussed it at length, and we don’t know of any evidence that Thailand is a center for organ trafficking. Jack: Yeah, that does introduce a, ah, what you might call an unwelcome variable. Notto: Just a minute. (Notto finds his cell phone and speaks into it. Perhaps he has to be patched on to a few other phones before he gets the right one. He speaks quickly in Putonghua. The Americans are all ears. Now Notto closes his phone and smiles.) Linda: Okay, I guess Thailand is about to be a center for organ trafficking. Jack: I didn’t quite catch what he said. Ben: Me either. Linda: I didn’t get all of it word for word, but the guy he spoke to runs the corrections services’ pre-sales unit. Ben: Pre-sales? Linda: Yeah, pre-sales of organs of prisoners on death row. Everybody wants fresh. I guess a few bodies with the organs ripped out and delivered to a Thai location would be no problem for him at all. Jack (shaking his head): The magic of guanxi. Ben: Right. Linda (to Notto): You sure they won’t be identified as executed Chinese felons? Notto: Yes.
Now I’m back in the hovel dressing and combing my hair, which the victory dance disheveled somewhat, at the same time as I’m putting a few finishing touches to what, if I may say so, is an impeccable piece of detection, when my attention is suddenly diverted against my will. It’s called possessiveness. I can’t help it-with conjugal alienation, I’ve become sensitive to little things, such as the fact that her telephone just rang and she turned away from the door and began speaking too softly for me to hear.
“Who was that, darling?” I say, putting on my Zegna jacket and trying to look as if I’m just making conversation.
“Ah, that was Colonel Vikorn, darling.”
I turn, aghast and confused. Why didn’t he talk to me? Controlling myself: “Really, what did he want?”
“He wanted to know what you were wearing, so I told him.”
“He wanted to know-”
My phone rings. It’s Vikorn. “Why are you wearing that getup?”
“To go to the bank.”
A pause. “Don’t go to the bank. Isn’t there a General Zinna line for you to follow up?”
“Yes, but-”
“Good. Go see Zinna. And change out of that crap. He’ll think you’ve turned gay and try to screw you.” He closes the phone.
Now I’m sitting bewildered on a chair. Chanya stands behind me and strokes my hair, then starts to massage my head.
“You were spying on me,” I say.
She giggles. “Honey, if you’ve worked out what I think you’ve worked out, then d’you think Vikorn and the Americans would want you making contact with the person I think you are trying to make contact with?”
“I’m a murder squad detective,” I say. “I got carried away. For a moment I was a real cop.”
“I understand that,” Chanya says, still massaging. “But-and do correct me if I’m wrong-isn’t there a genuine Zinna line? I mean, how is it that he has so many connections in Phuket? Isn’t that worth following up?”
I hear myself saying, “Yes. I guess I’ll have to make another trip down there.”
She freezes for a moment, then transforms. At lightning speed she has processed the thought that I might cheat on her in Phuket, closed all emotional hatches, and refocused with 200 percent attention on her ambition. “Of course you will,” she says, staring at the street. The massage is over.
Now my phone rings again. It’s Vikorn. “Have you been to the morgue yet?”
“Of course I went to the morgue.”
“I mean after the first time? Dr. Supatra called yesterday, I forgot to tell you. She says she has made progress with identification of the three victims.”
22
In Dr. Supatra’s underground lair, death imbues everyday tools with an outlandish dignity: giant pruning shears; those big handsaws normally used for cutting up logs; and rotary electric saws of various sizes. The one that gives me the creeps more than any other is the longhandled wire cutter, the kind you see in war movies when the sappers crawl on their bellies to cut through barbed wire: Supatra uses it to bust her way through rib cages. In the case of the three anonymous ones, though, there wasn’t a lot left to investigate.
The doctor is in her office next to the autopsy room. She smiles when she sees me through the glass wall and stands to come to the door to greet me. “Detective, that software I told you about finally arrived. I’m halfway through. It’s quite exciting.”
She leads me to her desk and gestures for me to pull up a chair. She is finding it difficult to suppress a girlish glee in her new toy. When she jogs her mouse, a human head appears on her monitor in stark ghost white against a green background: eyeless, faceless, thin neck.
“It’s the second girl, the thin one.”
“I thought you said it was two men and a woman?”
Dr. Supatra shifts her gaze to something on the wall. “We all make mistakes. We thought she was a young male who had been castrated. It turns out she had very poorly developed genitals-not uncommon.” She glances at my face, then turns back to the computer. “Sometimes even the Olympic organizers can’t tell a man from a woman. It’s not always totally clear. She had no breast development at all.” She pauses to look at me. “Of course, in reality sexual identity is merely another illusion we seize on in our pathetic need to be someone. You know that.”
She clicks on the mouse, and a second portrait appears. “You see, the computer takes a three-D photograph of the skull, or rather a whole series of photographs turning three-hundred-sixty degrees, then puts together a three-D image. That’s the easy part. Then we have to input other details, such as approximate age, genetic origins, et cetera. I wasn’t sure so I simply clicked on ‘Southeast Asian.’ ”
Now we are looking at a generic bald Southeast Asian with somewhat slit eyes, flat nose, and high cheekbones. It’s a boyish face with no distinguishing features.
“That’s as far as we’ve gone with that one. There’s still a lot of data to input.” She clicks on a side panel a few times, then types something on her keyboard. “I’ve reached about the same point with the other woman. But the man is nearly finished. Now, here is the untouched three-hundred-sixty-degree image of the male.”
The screen is filled with another eyeless, faceless skull, somewhat fuller and stronger-looking than the other. At the next click we are staring at the skull-plus-eyes-and-skin phase. Once again the eyes are slightly mongoloid in the Thai style and the nose small and flared. I nod.
“Now, here he is after I’ve put in all the data.”
The next window produces an individuated male face with black hair, oval eyes with black pupils, and a well-modeled nose, still small but slightly aquiline. My jaw is hanging open.
“What’s the matter? D’you recognize him?”
“Can you squash the eyes a bit more, make them more Mongoloid-I mean Chinese, not Thai?” A few clicks, and t
he eyes stretch. “A moustache, tightly clipped, very thin, jet black, for the whole length of the upper lip.” More clicks. “Make the hair a bit longer at the front with a cowlick that crosses his forehead from left to right, and a beauty spot just under his left eye.” More clicks. I’m riveted by the screen. “Can you make him smile? The teeth are perfect, slightly large for the mouth, and brilliant white. Good, now darken his skin just a little, not Thai brown, but not Chinese porcelain either-between the two.” I’m squashing my own face between my palms.
“Do you know his name?”
“Not To.”
“Not To? You mean Notto, or his name is not To?”
“Yes. Can we work on the other two together?”
It takes about an hour, with Supatra constantly cross-referring to her base data to make sure I’m not straying from what is scientifically justified. Now we have Notto and his two female assistants, one hardly distinguishable from a boy, the other full-bodied and voluptuous with black-rimmed spectacles. I stand up and pace the room, throwing wild glances at the monitor, as Supatra clicks, and To with his two assistants appear one by one in a revolving show.
There goes my beautiful theory; I make a note of the life lesson: that’s what you get from premature victory dances. “Can you do a group portrait with the man in the middle, the young woman on his right, the older woman on his left? Perfect.” I am transfixed. As I pass and repass the screen, Notto’s eyes follow me. I can almost hear him speak: Oh no, you do not go anywhere. You stay here in Bangkok. “Please print everything. I need copies of each plus copies of the three together.”