by John Burdett
“That’s why you’re kikiat today?”
“Yes. I’m trying not to deal with it. At the same time I feel totally responsible. I should never have set up that night at your mum’s bar.”
“Why not? Dorothy’s a sociologist. She’s supposed to know something about human life.”
“No, she’s not. I’ve only recently realized what a freak I am. I’m a real person who happens to be studying sociology. Most of the rest are Dorothys-nonpeople who study people in the hope that one day they’ll be people too. I handled it all wrong. Instead of being confrontational, I should have grasped the existential reality, namely that I was the educating mother, not her. I should have spent time teaching her how to have sex, introducing her to different men, how to get the best out of them-that’s really why she’s over here, I see that now. She wants to be a real girl.” She tuts at herself. “To let the whole situation blow up like this-it’s unforgivable on my part.” She shakes her head. “But I didn’t know. She’s so big and dogged and speaks with farang certainty-I’d forgotten what a fraud it all is. I thought she was going to be the adult in the room helping with my thesis. I fell for the description instead of the reality-now I’m stuck with the mess on the floor.”
(At this point, DFR, I feel it no less than my chivalric duty to warn that at times of stress my darling tends to revert-temporarily-to an earlier incarnation; no, I did not say bitchy whore.) “It’s all because of her tits, of course.”
“Really? I thought they were good enough for polite company,” I opine. “Not your earth mother mammaries, I agree, but a lot of women are small and manage-like men.”
“She’s flat-chested. Worse, they’re tiny and flat but still flop around like a couple of half-fried eggs. She’s terribly self-conscious about it, which is why she wears a padded bra most of the time. Then she gets into a defiant mood and leaves it off so everyone sees what the problem is. Next day she’s crippled with embarrassment. Of course, she’s way too much of a feminist to have implants.”
“Aren’t you being a little premature? You haven’t even spoken to her this morning.”
Chanya closes her eyes and makes a screwed-up face to demonstrate psychic concentration. “She’s already called five times.” I frown. “I turned off the sound. Check the log.”
I check her cell phone. The log shows there have been seven calls from the same number already this morning. When I read out the number, Chanya says, “Dorothy,” and groans.
So I’m standing in the middle of the room still checking Chanya’s phone and about to ask if she wants the profile changed so she can hear the ring, or if she intends to just disappear for the day as far as the world is concerned, when I happen to glance through the window and see a sky-blue Rolls-Royce with tinted windows and other accoutrements, which to the cognoscenti says Five-star hotel limo. Sure enough, when it stops, a chauffeur in livery gets out to open the back door on the curb side. For a moment I cannot make out the tall figure who emerges. Then I can. I say, “Wow, how about that,” under my breath. Chanya hears but doesn’t want any narrative of mine to interfere with her Dorothy narrative for the moment. “I think we have a visitor.”
“Who?”
I watch a tall, slim woman in her early forties, a farang, cross the street. She’s in jeans, T-shirt, and sandals, but her hair is well under control. “It’s the woman I told you about from Vikorn’s election team. Her name is Linda.”
“Really? That superman woman who kicked the president of Russia in the balls?”
“Yes. That one.”
There is an extra-soft knock on the door. I drag on a pair of shorts while Chanya goes into a corner to pull on a dress. When she looks ready, I open the door.
“Good morning, Detective. Sorry about this-I should have called. If it’s even the teeniest bit inconvenient, say so and I’m out of here. It’s just that-”
“You happened to be passing?”
She smiles. “Of course not. I called the station, and they said you were at home. I remembered your wife is an academic and maybe at home with you-I took a chance.”
“You have something to say to my wife?”
“Nothing threatening. I’m here to ask for help.”
Frowning, I ask her in. “Chanya, this is Linda, Linda, Chanya.”
Chanya smiles graciously up at the tall American. She’s embarrassed there’s no chair to sit on-it’s occupied by her thesis again. She makes as if to clear it and dump the manuscript on the floor, but Linda stops her.
“It’s okay, I’ll sit on a cushion. The last thing I want is to inconvenience you.” But she remains standing with her hands in her jeans pockets. I think she’s shocked that fully evolved human beings live like this, but way too much of a pro to show it. She turns to me and says, “It’s about Colonel Vikorn.” She turns to Chanya. “He’s a great man but as elusive as the smile on a Cheshire cat. Sonchai probably told you, my team has been hired to get him elected governor of Bangkok. Translated, that means we’re being paid quite a lot of money to be good old American control freaks. But he won’t let us control him. Jack and Ben spent most of last night drinking with him, which has left them flat on their backs this morning. Apparently the Colonel has a hollow leg. Now I’m following up with a morning call to his most gifted detective.” She smiles warmly at us.
We stare at her with bug eyes until Chanya remembers to say, “Won’t you sit down?”
Linda sits on a cushion and leans against the wall with her long legs folded so that her face almost disappears behind her knees, while Chanya and I sit cross-legged in the middle of the room.
Linda does a cute little thing with her hands that ends up with the index fingers pointed upward and joined together. “I don’t drink myself, which is why I let the boys do their bonding with the Colonel last night. No reason why I should play Big Nurse at your house though.” At first I have no idea what she is talking about, until I realize that with supernatural speed she has taken in and registered a quite small reefer roach, which I must have left in the ashtray when I indulged in a joint after returning from Phuket.
Chanya doesn’t get it so I say, “You want to smoke?”
“Why not? Let’s us all do some bonding, hey? Been a damn long time, to tell you the truth. I was based in Kabul for a few months about five years ago, and man do they have some good stuff there. That was the last time, though. I’m wedded to the job.”
“I see.” I take our little plastic stash box down from a shelf. I’m thinking if she hasn’t smoked since Kabul, that’s going to be one high American. I start rolling.
She has impressive lungs. The joint diminishes by at least an inch with one long toke. She holds it well but splutters somewhat on the exhalation. To Chanya and me, it’s like watching a thriller and trying to guess the ending. We keep quiet and are careful not to share glances: Linda is hyperobservant with a built-in cutting-edge mood detector. We wait. After about five minutes I deduce the silence must be dope-driven: farang don’t tolerate it without assistance for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Is that not true, DFR?
Now Linda looks fondly at Chanya. “So, ah, tell me. I’ve always wanted to know. What’s it like being a real woman?”
Chanya is startled but recovers quickly. “I feel like asking you the same question.”
“Really? How about that. Well.” Linda takes another toke. “Let me put it this way. When I started with the CIA, I studied Standard Arabic-most of us did. We got to study the history too. The Islamic empire, which was really the Arab empire, once stretched from Pakistan and western India in the east to Spain and southwest France in the west. The civilization they put together in Andalusia was fabulous beyond anything we have today.
“At its peak it was run by a guy named Abd ar-Rahman III, who built an amazing palace called Az-Zahra. After he died, somebody found a note of his that read-see, I remember it pretty much word for word: ‘Fifty years have passed since I’ve been caliph. Treasures, honors, pleasures, I’ve enjoyed them all
to the point of exhaustion. Princes admire me, fear me, and envy me. Everything man desires has been mine for the asking. So I’ve calculated how many days of happiness I’ve enjoyed during all this time, and the number comes to fourteen.’ ” Linda takes another long toke and hands me the joint.
“Well, I’ve had pretty much the best America has to offer. I’ve had any man I ever really wanted, any job. When I was young, I intended to travel and learn foreign languages, which I did. When I moved from the CIA to the private sector, I went from well paid to extremely well paid-you could almost say excessively well paid. I’ve known the best of the world, and you know what? I envy that old caliph his fourteen days, ’cause I can’t remember more than a few hours of happiness myself, mostly when I’ve had the chance, which comes maybe once or twice a decade, to smoke some decent dope without risking my career. Too damned anxious staying ahead of the competition to even think about being happy-it would take up too much time.” She smiles again at Chanya. “That’s what being a fully liberated woman has done for me. How about you?”
I hand Chanya the joint, and she takes a few tokes before answering. “I’m Buddhist. We don’t think that way. The question has no meaning for me.”
“Uh-huh? How’s that?”
“The kind of happiness you’re talking about is a form of clinging-of greed, part of a cycle. Of course it leads to unhappiness in the end.”
Linda stares at her. “Well, I’ll be damned. I wish you’d been around when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution. They’ve got three hundred million of us chasing our own asses in the pursuit of that same happiness you Buddhists already knew didn’t exist.” She laughs. “I did always wonder why it was the pursuit of happiness-like you’re never really expected to get there. Kind of a Godot thing right at the center of the American mind. The best is always yet to come, yet to come, yet to come…”
The dope has reached her, and now she’s stuck in a vortex like the slow-spin phase of a washing machine. She shakes her head and smiles beatifically as if nothing unusual has happened. I think Chanya must be stoned too, because she gets a gleam in her eye and stands up.
“D’you get anonymous porn in your inbox, Linda?” she asks. “I got a prize yesterday. Want to look?”
Personally, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to show the American her porn collection. I guess she’s decided it must be the way farang women bond these days. She goes to her computer and jogs the mouse. “Come and see,” she says to Linda, who has to use the wall as support before she can stand. Now Chanya calls to me: “Sonchai, there’s another one. He must have just sent it. Want to see?”
I get up to stand with the two women. Chanya clicks on the new attachment to the latest e-mail. It seems the anonymous one is smarter than we thought. He’s not so much a random pornographer, more a focused campaign strategist. Now the image unfolds from the feet up, as before, and just as before, we are treated to a veritable fireworks display of male virility-but the revelation no longer stops at the neck; it continues unrolling until we have the full face.
Linda doesn’t have time to reach the yard before she throws up; as a resourceful American, she manages to open the window just in time before emptying her stomach’s contents. The room is filled with the sound of her retching while Chanya stares in fear and awe at the monitor, and I feel a strange kind of rage. At first I can hardly credit what I’m looking at. Then I have to shove a fist into my mouth. “Oh, no,” I mutter. “No, no. It can’t be.” Can’t be what? Can’t be a human face. Well it is. A face put together by a demon, to mock our species all the way to annihilation. Nothing is aligned properly, the ears, the eyes, the mouth-especially the mouth-and it’s hard to see anything that isn’t scar tissue. There is no nose, only a hole, and a chunk of the upper lip is missing, showing crooked teeth and crimson gum. This is man inside out. If I was that young fellow, I’d probably rape anything that moved.
“Sweet Buddha, such suffering,” Chanya whispers.
Linda has stopped retching but is still in cannabis-enhanced shock. She signals it’s time for her to go, and I help her cross the road to the blue Rolls-Royce. I have to admire the strength with which she pulls herself together. Apart from one unplanned stumble, you would never know she was stoned out of her skull. I note, with an ironic smile, that her limo is parked under one of General Zinna’s election posters. Just like Vikorn, he commands every third lamppost, but never the same one as the Colonel. I wait until the limo starts to move away and wave at the tinted windows. I’m a tad stoned, and I’ve got the munchies; I noticed we’re almost out of both fig rolls and three-in-one, so I stroll down to the 7-Eleven to buy some.
When I return to the house, I see that Chanya is holding her cell phone and staring at the street. She clears her throat. Her voice quivers when she says, “General Zinna just called me. I could hardly believe it was him-he sounded broken. He said there’s a risk Manu-apparently that’s his name-is headed this way.”
“Why would he be headed this way?”
She inhales. “Zinna is stuck in traffic. That’s why he called. He said Manu is following up contacts with women he’s met over the past few years. Apparently he met us once in Phuket-you remember, when we were celebrating our wedding anniversary, and we went to that five-star hotel for supper, and Zinna was there with his lover? He got our address from Zinna’s address book. He said Manu is unarmed but very strong. It seems he’s a big, muscular young man. He has already harassed a young army wife this morning, and yesterday he raped two women whose names also were in Zinna’s address book. The general says it’s all about Manu getting back at him for ruining his life. We should lock the door and protect ourselves.” She nods toward the sink where a carving knife is prominent. “I stood here for a few seconds just now with that in my hand, but I felt foolish. D’you have your gun?” I show her the gun. “I don’t want you to use it, Sonchai. Not to protect me. Protect yourself with it if you have to.” She goes to the window and leans on the frame. “Such suffering. Dear Buddha. And I thought I had problems.”
“He’s a killer,” I blurt. “He’s the one who killed those three at Vulture Peak.”
We stand at the window like two androids in a sci-fi movie and watch a late-model Benz draw up on the opposite side of the street. It’s a convertible with the top closed: some kind of famous sports model. I can just make out a man in the driver’s seat wearing a sports jacket and cravat, although I cannot see his features. He stops and sits in a composed posture staring straight ahead, no doubt with the engine running for the air-conditioning. He seems to be waiting for something specific to happen. We watch.
The man in the driver’s seat shifts to pull out a cell phone from his pocket. He seems unhurried, even serene. Now he punches in a number and raises the phone casually to his ear. Then something clicks in my head, and I’m seeing him in a different light: a man in a daze.
“Zinna?” Chanya asks, squinting at the car.
“I’m ninety percent certain-” I stop talking because a five-ton covered army truck has appeared. The driver of the Benz moves the car forward as far as he can, so the truck can park behind him.
“It is Zinna,” Chanya says, putting her hands on her hips and staring hard at the Benz and the army truck behind it. After a couple of minutes the man in the Benz opens his door and gets out. Yes, it is General Zinna of the Royal Thai Army, dressed in a sports jacket with brass buttons, open-neck shirt, and beige pants, hands thrust into his pockets; there’s no mistaking that strut, nor the broad chest in a short body. He seems uncertain, though, as to what to do. His strut droops. When he approaches the truck a sergeant jumps out to give him a stiff salute, but the General in civvies only thrusts his hands more deeply into his pockets and stares up and down the street. He seems frustrated, helpless.
Now Chanya and I gasp because some army privates have emerged from the back of the truck with a net. It could be a fishing net for large fish, but to me it most resembles the kind of thing they cover ammunition
dumps with in the jungle. About five of the young soldiers have rifles with bayonets fixed. Zinna stares at the bayonets for a moment, then starts to remonstrate with the sergeant. To my surprise, the sergeant remonstrates back, as if this is a private job he’s doing for Zinna, and therefore he has civil rights here. I have the feeling he’s protecting his men. No way will he tell them to put the bayonets and rifles away, and Zinna in civvies has no authority in this street at this time. The little General looks sad more than angry.
Now everyone suddenly turns to stare in the same direction, as if there has been a shout. Zinna seems scared and relieved at the same time. Now five of the soldiers run off with the net. There’s a commotion loud enough for us to hear in the hovel-a kind of roar, half animal, half human-excited and scared shouts from the soldiers, a moment of panic-someone has got away-no, it’s okay, got him-more commotion, he’s stronger than we thought — yells as if someone has escaped again-another scuffle, this time sounding more controlled, as if the soldiers have had enough and have started to apply real will. Now a group comes into view. A human figure is trussed up in the net and carried like a wriggling mummy, howling hideously. Zinna has looked away, extreme grief on his face. The soldiers lift the captive up into the back of the truck. The howls cease. Zinna walks quickly to his Benz and drives off. The truck follows.
I have been preoccupied with the street drama and not paid any attention to Chanya for about ten minutes. Now I turn to look at her, and I see she has followed every nuance. She has covered her face and is staring at me in horror. I blow out my cheeks. She backs away from the window to squat against a wall, her hands still pressed over her cheeks, staring. I squat next to her. Now she puts a hand on my forearm and nods toward the street. The Mercedes has returned, and the driver is parking in the same space as before. Chanya and I watch as the General gets out, locks the car with a remote, and struts across the road. There is a knock on the door. You get it, Chanya’s eyes say.