Fools' River

by Timothy Hallinan

  Lutanh is standing, although she has no memory of having gotten up. Like her customer, all the girls on the stage are laughing. And she sees what they’re laughing at.

  The girl who’s just pushed her way though the hanging cloth at the back of the stage, the one who calls herself Ying, or “woman,” even though anyone whose eyes work can tell she began life as a big, ugly male, is waving her arms around like a drunken bird, making high, trilling sounds, and on her arms are Lutanh’s wings.

  Seeing them up there freezes Lutanh where she stands. When she wore them onstage as Peetapan, they felt transparent, airy, light enough to lift her from the ground. On Ying’s big, loose-fleshed arms, under these horrible pink lights, they look cheap and childish. They’re not even the same size.

  But Dr. Srisai . . . He’d said . . .

  Lutanh feels the foulest insults she knows rise inside her and rip at her throat, and as the other girls on the stage look at her wide-eyed, Ying turns her back, the wings catching the light, and yanks her pants down, giving Lutanh a deeply unwanted look at her big, fat ass.

  Lutanh is on the stage in a blink, pushing girls right and left. Ying is at least a foot taller than she is, but Lutanh grabs her hair and yanks her around so they’re face-to-face, and then reaches back as far as she can, balls up her fist, screams, and with Than Taeng’s careful instructions in her ears, hits Ying’s upper lip squarely on a slight downward angle, feeling it split like a grape beneath her knuckles. As Ying’s blood, brilliant in the pink light, cascades down over her costume, Lutanh’s friends swarm the stage behind her, and she’s in a world of fists and elbows and screams and sweat and perfume and high-heeled shoes brought down on insteps.

  Twenty minutes later she’s shoved onto the sidewalk, still buttoning her denim shorts, four deep scratches making parallel tracks down her left cheek and her stage eye makeup smeared all the way to her chin. Her backpack hangs from her left shoulder—they didn’t even give her time to work her arms through the straps—containing her violet dress, her stage shoes and costume, and her club makeup. Her shredded wings stick out at odd angles from the top of the pack. Behind her, seven or eight of Ying’s friends shout curses from the doorway, and the fire kicks up inside her again. She whirls around and finds herself facing one of the street’s “peacekeepers,” mostly cops and former cops who are trained to apply just the right amount of violence to prevent worse violence on a street where hormones, rivalries, jealousy, and blood-alcohol levels run high. This one, who wears an amulet that looks like it weighs half a kilo hanging outside his striped polo shirt, gives her a flat stare that, she understands immediately, is the only alternative to punch in the face she’ll be offered. He says, “Keep going.”

  She keeps going, her heart pounding in her ears, heading toward Silom and who knows what. She’s been fired and cheated of the money she was owed for the week: her tiny salary, her cut of the drinks she’s cadged, and a token piece of the bar fines customers shelled out for an hour or two of her time. She’s been told it will be difficult, if not impossible, for her to get hired anywhere else. Her wings are destroyed, the plastic wrap sliced into a tangle of glistening ribbons by vengeful fingernails. The joy she’d felt after Dr. Srisai’s class feels like a cruel joke played by malign spirits: first make her float on air, then bring her down and pull the floor out from under her at the same time.

  She has no job, she’s spent most of her money on Miaow’s watch and her new violet eyes—only this morning?—her rent is weeks overdue and promised, against the threat of eviction, for this very night. And she knows the guy with the weird hair helmet and tattooed legs is following her. As she reaches Silom, she stops, turns, and gives him a glare that drives him back a full stride.

  She steps down from the curb and holds out a hand to flag a motorcycle taxi, thinking that she’ll get home, slip past the landlady somehow, and wash her face, and tomorrow she’ll call Miaow and try to borrow some money. And get her to talk about Edwudd. A moto swerves toward her and she’s moving aside for it when—like magic, because she’s just thought about him—Edwudd comes up the stairs from one of the basement-level restaurants across the street, with Poke and Miaow flanking him. She turns quickly and bumps into the man with the tattooed legs.

  Who puts his arms around her. Who says, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  9

  Tomcatting

  “One more stop,” Rafferty says, pocketing his cell phone and settling into the cab’s backseat. “You have to be home at any special time, Edward?”

  “I don’t have to be home at all,” Edward says from the front. “Auntie Pancake won’t be back until we learn my father’s coming. Then I’m supposed to phone her.”

  “Phone her where?” Miaow asks. She’s beside Rafferty in the backseat.

  “She says it’s her sister’s place,” Edward says, “but a man answers the phone.”

  “Sister’s husband,” Rafferty suggests tactfully.

  “Auntie’s Thai boyfriend,” Edward says. “I’ve heard her and my father yelling at each other about it.”

  “So you’re alone in the house.”

  “I’m used to it.” His tone closes the topic.

  Miaow barges in anyway. “But what about the burglars?”

  “Nothing left to take,” he says. “Bunch of crap, fake antiques, cheap furniture. My dad has money, but he doesn’t care where he lives. Anyway, they’d be dumb to come back. They got everything that’s worth anything.”

  “Uh-uh,” Miaow says. “They didn’t get you.”

  Edward turns to look at her, and she settles into the seat, blushing furiously, eyes wide at her own courage.

  Arthit has traded his police lieutenant colonel’s uniform for a Boston Red Sox T-shirt, loose shorts, and gray workout socks, not a style Rafferty would suggest to anyone he liked, but it’s Arthit’s house. Arthit crosses a hairy calf over his knee, the sole of his foot pointed politely away from everyone in the room, and leans back, a short, dark, heavyset man in an unflattering yellow circle of light from the table lamp beside the sofa. He’s got a beer in his hand. “First,” he says, focusing on Edward, “just to give you an overview, here’s what we’re doing in the way of routine.”

  Edward says, as though the word hurts, “Routine?” He and Miaow occupy the pair of easy chairs that face the coffee table and the couch behind it. Rafferty and Arthit share the couch as though they’ve done it for years, which they have. Edward is leaning forward in his chair, hands clasped between his thighs. For all his bravado up until now, it’s a vulnerable-looking position. The three of them had declined a drink when Arthit popped his beer.

  Arthit lifts a hand. “I know, I know. There’s nothing routine about this for you. To a cop, ‘routine’ refers to a checklist of things, important things, that have to be done because they often produce results. So here’s the routine. We’re checking immigration to make sure your father hasn’t left the country. We’re talking to immigration in the other countries in the region to rule out his having entered any of those. Thailand has some very porous river and mountain borders, so he could have left . . . umm, unofficially. I don’t know why he would, but we’re not making assumptions. His photograph and personal details have been sent as part of a priority be-on-the-lookout list to every police station in the country. We’ll be showing his picture to bar employees in Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy, and Patpong to see who might remember him and who might have seen him leave with anyone. Same routine with massage parlors in those areas. Cops on foot patrol here in Bangkok have his photograph. And there are other things we’re doing and will be doing as we develop information. Hundreds of us, all over the country.”

  He hoists his beer, which is sheathed in a thick, clumsy-looking plastic sleeve that keeps the beer cold and prevents rings on the highly polished coffee table by filling up with condensation that spills out onto his shirt every time he drinks. The table is one of
several new pieces in the room, brought in by his current partner, Anna, to replace the furniture that had stood there all the years Arthit had shared the place with his late wife, Noi. Since Noi died and Anna moved in, she’s been claiming the house for herself, a few square meters at a time.

  Arthit swallows, blots his wet shirt with his free hand, looks over at Poke and then at Edward. “I’m telling you all this just so you know we’re not missing any bets. But we, by which I mean mainly Poke and I and a few others, are also going to pay a lot of attention to the men found in the canals.”

  Edward says, “Why?”

  “I’ve been on the phone nonstop since Poke called from his apartment . . . what? Three hours ago? I put a couple of people I trust onto finding out what they could about the canal cases. What sticks out are, first, the robbery at your house and, second, the credit-card use. Two of the canal victims had apartments here, and both were burglarized immediately after they disappeared. Two more, who lived in hotels, had their rooms ransacked. And every one of them—at least all the ones we could identify and whose survivors we could locate—well, the survivors said that the victims’ credit cards had been maxed. And finally there’s been some work done on these cases, although not much, and we may find information we can use locked up in various files and in the boxes of the victims’ effects.” He sits back and exhales heavily. “So that’s why.”

  Rafferty says, “You said two lived in hotels and two lived in apartments. How many have there been?”

  “Twelve,” Arthit says. “That I know of. Could be more.”

  Miaow says, “Twelve what, exactly?”

  “Sorry,” Arthit says. “Twelve dead men with casts, found in klongs. The brain-dead man you described to me, Poke, and the one your friend read about in the newspaper, plus ten whose files I’ve had people dig up since you called. And, who knows, maybe the man who left the country—”

  “The guys I talked to only knew about two,” Rafferty says. “Plus, as you say, maybe the one who ran away. And the bartender at the Expat—well, what used to be the Expat—said there were more.”

  “There are,” Arthit says. “And the most recent was only a few months ago, so there’s no reason to think the people behind it have folded their tents and moved up-country.” He sits forward and uses the bottom of his T-shirt to mop a minuscule drop of water or beer from the table’s surface. Anna, Rafferty knows, is particular about things like that. To Edward, Arthit says, “Sorry to have to tell you this.”

  Rafferty says, “Wait a minute. I live here. I’m not a hermit. I get out once in a while, and I even read the newspaper occasionally. If there were an army of men drowned in canals with casts on their legs, wouldn’t I have heard about it?”

  Arthit sighs. “There hasn’t actually been much publicity.”

  Knowing he’s just accidentally opened up a sore subject, Rafferty says, “Shit.”

  “So maybe thirteen in all, counting your one who got away. Ten Caucasians, if the one who escaped was.”

  “He was.”

  “And three Asians. And I have to ask you, the one who got away, had he been wearing a cast?”

  “I didn’t ask.” Rafferty says. “I’m not sure the guys who told me about him would know.”

  “Well, then either he has nothing to do with this or else he’s uniquely fortunate. And there might be a few more that the cops I talked to just haven’t heard about yet.”

  Rafferty says, “Over what period of time?”

  “A little less than eight years,” Arthit says, looking uneasy.

  “Excuse me,” Edward says, moving through the opening Rafferty inadvertently created, “why hasn’t there been much publicity?”

  Arthit shifts as though his seat is uneven and lumpy. He says, “This is awkward.” He clears his throat, probably just to get a moment to organize his thoughts. “The least venal reason is that the media are under a certain amount of pressure not to focus on events that would dampen tourist enthusiasm. Bad for the economy.” He’s using the impersonal, official voice the police use to explain why yet another rich drunk driver has been set free, but then he looks down at his lap, and when he looks back up, his expression has changed. “One of the more venal reasons is that my colleagues—by which I mean the Royal Thai Police—haven’t done much, if anything, to solve the crimes. In fact, there’s been an ongoing effort to deny that crimes were committed at all. In six of the cases I’ve learned about since Poke’s phone call, details like the canals and the casts were omitted from the official reports and the cause of death was listed as ‘heart stopped.’”

  “That’s pretty generic,” Edward says.

  “Yes, it covers what the New Testament describes as ‘a multitude of sins.’ In a world where so many murders go unsolved, it’s a very useful phrase.”

  “Why?” Edward’s face has tightened in a way that makes him look older. “Why do so many murders go unsolved?”

  “Good question,” Arthit says. He takes a deep, resigned-sounding breath, uncrosses his legs, and leans forward, giving Edward all his attention. “I’m sorry if I sounded flip. I know, this might be your father we’re talking about—let’s hope not—but I forget how strange this appears to people who don’t live here. Cases go unsolved for several reasons. The main one is money, or the lack of it. Police at the bottom of the pyramid make less than minimum wage, not even ten dollars a day, nowhere near enough to feed a family and pay rent, and they have to pay for things like their uniforms and their guns, so they devote quite a lot of energy to supplementing their income. It’s hard to do that if you’re spending too much time on cases that don’t pay off, and there doesn’t seem to be any money in this one.”

  “Why aren’t they paid better?”

  Arthit’s glance at Poke says he holds his friend responsible for the conversation. “I’m not big on conspiracy theories,” he says, “so I’ll deny ever having said this. Looked at in one way, putting thousands of underpaid, overarmed cops on the street, with all the authority of uniforms everywhere, might satisfy two objectives. First, it reduces the budget of the police force, makes it look ‘cost-effective,’ a phrase politicians love. Second, with thousands of them out there, soliciting and taking small bribes all day, you create a substantial flow of money. Some of that money goes upstairs, and some of what goes upstairs goes farther upstairs, and you wind up with high-ranking cops retiring with tens of millions of baht when their salary would barely keep a large American family in shoes. I am not, of course, suggesting that such a scheme actually exists.” He looks around the living room. “But this house? I could never afford it on my salary. My wife’s family had the money.”

  Edward is rubbing his face with both hands.

  “So if you’re going to operate like that,” Arthit continues, “sitting on some cases and perhaps even profiting from others, you don’t want a bunch of unsolved murders cluttering up the records.”

  “Profiting?” Edward says.

  “It’s not unknown, it’s not even uncommon, for a cop who stumbles over a particularly juicy scheme to make himself a kind of partner. He’ll deflect inquiries, and if other cops seem to be getting close, he’ll hold up a warning sign and give the crooks a chance to disappear. All, naturally, in exchange for a cut. This kind of thing is, of course, solid gold for crusading journalists and ambitions politicians. The official cause of death ‘heart stopped’ keeps the record looking respectable, makes it harder for some would-be hero with his own agenda to characterize the police as venal and fumbling.”

  “But they are,” Miaow says, and Edward, who has opened his mouth to reply, sits back an inch or two.

  Arthit nods. “I know dozens of cops who hold a second full-time job, working sixteen or more hours a day, just to stay afloat, and many of them do the best they can. But that’s not true of all of them.” He lifts the beer and then puts if down again. “Obviously. What I’m telling you, I s
uppose, is that it’s more complex than you might think.” Poke can hear the clipped edges of Arthit’s old British accent, earned decades ago during his years at an English university. It’s a sign that his friend dislikes the direction the conversation has taken.

  “I still don’t know how you can work in a . . . in an outfit like that,” Edward says.

  Arthit regards the boy for a moment before he says, “By not doing any of that.” Rafferty starts to say something, but Arthit, with a barely visible gesture, waves him off. “And by listening to people like you here, rather than at the station.”

  Edward nods and then lowers his head further, a gesture that looks something like an apology.

  Rafferty lets the silence stretch out.

  The dining room is rich with the fragrance of coffee. “I’m not widely seen as a team player,” Arthit says, “so I’m intentionally kept out of the flow of information on things that don’t concern me. That means all this is new to me and all I really know is what I learned from my friends on the force after Poke called me.” He puts his cup down, empty, after two gulps. He’s brewed two cups of a dark Vietnamese roast for himself and Poke and poured some kind of juice for Miaow, but at the last moment Edward said he wanted coffee, too, so Arthit divided two cups’ worth into three smaller cups and put another pot on to brew. With the cups and glasses in hand, they’re more comfortable at the dining-room table, so highly polished that they can look down, if they want to, at rippled, oddly colored versions of their own faces.

  Arthit opens a small black notebook covered in imitation leather that’s already split in several places to reveal the cardboard beneath. “Okay, this isn’t encouraging stuff. As I said, twelve or thirteen victims so far, and probably more that we don’t know about. Here’s what they have in common: They’re all older men, non-Thai, who arrived alone in Bangkok and, to some extent or another, participated in the commercial sex scene, usually the gaudier, more public variety, where anyone who’s looking could spot a good prospect.”