by John Burdett
"What do you mean?"
"Of him being crushed by the elephant."
"Who took it?"
"Who do you think? Actually, there are lots of pictures. She used up a whole roll of film. I'll scan a few and send you a sequence."
29
He sent me the pix by e-mail. I was expecting a few amateurish snaps in which an out-of-focus elephant steps on something indistinguishable. Not so. Whatever camera she used, it had an impressive zoom. Here's Jumbo close up, sniffing around a gigantic bamboo latticework ball with a clearly discernible human form inside. Now she's homed in on her dad, all trussed up. He was naked apart from a baggy pair of shorts; his elaborate esoteric tattoos are clearly visible. Now here's a cruel sequence: the elephant with trunk upraised; elephant bringing trunk down on helpless human; close-up of helpless human's big terrified eyes; split-second snap of furious elephant with trunk raised high in the air; trunk splintering the ball with bamboo shards flying; right foreleg lifted as high as it can manage; right foreleg squashing human.
I cross-examine myself thus: You of all people must have seen some clue, some pattern of behavior, that would have revealed her true nature. You, who have spent your whole life with women, who understand women better than you ever understood men, who have been known to cause hardened prostitutes to fall in love with you exactly because you're the only man they ever meet who does understand them, you of all people: why couldn't you read her?
Because I was in love is a pathetic reply, but it is probably no more than the truth. We didn't talk much, few thoughts and feelings were shared, but she did not give the impression of a bored professional going through a pantomime of love. She was interested in me; with hindsight I guess the interest was that of a praying mantis for her doomed lover. She was interested in me as food; I invented a heart for her.
After sex, usually, when she had really made an effort to deliver the experience of a lifetime-not for my benefit, of course, but with exactly the same meticulous self-criticism a world-class ballerina might apply when dancing in front of a mirror-her long black hair would end up tangled and wild. She could get wild-eyed too with the frenzy of sex, and I have a snapshot of her in that state: black hair flying, madness in her eyes, naked, hunched like a witch over her breasts, her brown skin glistening with sweat, the room redolent with the stench of our lovemaking-even at such times to deny her power would have been as futile as denying our pagan origins. A hundred thousand years our ancestors spent carefully adding to the stock of irresistible allurements in the collective subconscious: her real art was to take men back to that forbidden jungle of lethal pleasure. Choosing the most vulnerable men was easy after a lifetime of practice.
Generally I was too intimidated, too concerned that my performance was not up to scratch-terrified, I guess, that she would come out with some cutting remark, some comparison with another lover that would destroy my face. She never did-she merely had to look as if she were about to.
This morning, in addition to the elephant pix, the monk sent the DVD of his conversation with the masked man.
The scene is Stanislaus Kowlovski's apartment in Phnom Penh where he killed himself; I recognize the rip in the sofa. I think Phra Titanaka bought a DVD camera with his new wealth and learned to screw it to a tripod. It does not move throughout the interview, so that the monitor is full of our handsome buck, who is no longer so handsome after however many hours and days spent with a merciless interrogator of the soul. It is impossible to know if the camera is hidden or not. Perhaps the monk didn't read the handbook too well, because the disk seems to begin in the middle of the interview. Phra Titanaka's English is surprisingly grammatical, although his accent is thick Thai:
S.K.: I want to know how you found out about me, how you knew where to contact me in L.A. You still haven't told me.
Monk: I have contacts on the other side.
S.K.: Oh, yeah, we're not getting into that spiritual thing again are we?
Monk: Not necessarily.
S.K., shaking his head: This is weird, man, very very strange. First I thought you were putting the squeeze on me. That's how you got me here. You know stuff about me, but I don't know how much you know. Let's say you convinced me it was in my best interests to get a plane to Phnom Penh. Then I thought you were going to kill me. Then I thought just for a moment you wanted to save my soul-you are wearing a monk's robes after all.
Monk: Why would I want to kill you? You've been dead for a thousand years already.
S.K.: Shit, man, I don't know if I can do that again today. Just tell me how much you want. I'll borrow the dough.
Monk: Let's say I'm a collector of stories of cause and effect. Let's go back to that moment-that white-out we're calling it, I believe-when you were, how old?
S.K., with a reluctant grunt: Thirteen. Yeah. I was pubescent all over. I finally knew what I was. A prick. A big, hard-
Monk: But why?
S.K.: I told you, sport was the only official way out, but I wasn't any good at it. Gigolo was the only role left. It was the Columbine syndrome.
Monk: Deeper, Stan, please.
S.K.: Deeper? What can be deeper than that?
Monk: Was that the moment you decided there was no morality in the world?
S.K.: Yeah, that was it. I didn't really give it a second thought I would have had to get into some born-again racket if I wanted to do moral. For what?
Monk: I think there was something else.
S.K.: What else?
Monk: I think there was a certain taste of nausea. Wasn't there?
S.K.: Nausea? You mean like after sex with a bad performer?
Monk: More like a feeling of despair, but actually in the stomach.
S.K., surprised: Yeah, I remember that. How'd you know? Nauseous, yeah, that's how I felt most of the time in a small town in Kansas. It disappeared the day I hit LA.
Monk: How was it, this nausea?
S.K.: Everybody knew about it. We called it small-town blues, but it was more than that.
Monk: Something missing inside?
S.K., nodding: Yeah. A vacuum on Main Street as far as the eye could see.
I realize I have underestimated the monk's electronic prowess. He has edited the interview at least to the extent that it is in two parts. We jump now to the second part. Kowlovski is quite transformed, sweating, extremely nervous. A dozen twitches work his face. He gives the impression of a man in a state of chronic terror.
Monk: It's okay, you're still here, aren't you?
S.K.: No. I'm not still here. I'm in a thousand pieces. You've fucked my head, man.
Monk: Did I? What did I fuck it with?
S.K.: My crime, fuck it, my crime. How in hell did you find out? How?
Monk: You really want to know?
S.K.: Yeah, I really want to know.
Monk: Are you sure you really want to know?
S.K.: Fuck you.
A long pause.
Monk: She was my sister. Before she died, she sent me an e-mail with the names and addresses of all the major players.
S.K., aghast but disbelieving: No!
Monk: Here, this is a snapshot of her in her prime, aged about twenty-four.
The monk hands over a passport-size photo. The masked man stares at it.
Monk: Of course, her neck is in a lot better condition than when you last saw it.
Screams come from Kowlovski. Then the picture dies.
Miraculously the camera switches on again. It is impossible to know how much time has passed, perhaps a minute, perhaps hours, but the sequence makes a kind of emotional sense. Kowlovski is slumped on that cheap sofa. He seems quite exhausted, but there is no peace in his baby-blue eyes. They dart from one place to another even while his body rests immobile.
"How often did you work with her?" the monk's voice asks.
"That was the only time."
"Is that the only snuff movie you ever made?"
"The only one. I don't do that kind of stuff. I don't even un
derstand it. Someone was squeezing me."
"Who?"
"You have the list, don't you? She sent you a list of all the major players."
"Names only. I'm a simple monk-how do I know what these names represent?"
"Well, that's one question I can answer. Big, is what they represent. Power. Money. Not them, but what stands behind them. The invisible men."
"Invisible men?"
"Sure. Why else would the world be so fucked up?"
"Ah! You only recently began to think like that, am I right?"
"You and her-you're so alike, you could be the same person."
"So you did talk to her before you strangled her?"
"Don't keep saying that. If you'd seen the movie, you would know."
"Know what?"
A pause while Kowlovski licks his dry lips. "She had to encourage me. I was permanently on the point of chickening out. We were supposed to film the thing in under two hours, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't control my bowels, and I had to take so much Viagra I couldn't stop farting. I had this ridiculous erection I was too stressed to use. I kept bursting into tears, and I kind of collapsed, and they seemed to think about abandoning it all, but she insisted. It was incredible."
"What was?"
"Her will. The Asian will, it's truly amazing."
"It's not Asian. It's third world. Two hundred years of misery and degradation can produce some strong spirits."
"She was the strongest I ever met. She wasn't human. Maybe you are, but she wasn't."
"I was human before you killed her."
Screaming: "I didn't kill her! She killed herself! Can't you face that?"
A pause.
"So, you collapsed, the invisible men were thinking about cutting their losses and getting out, but she took you in hand. Tell me about that."
"She told them we would start again same time next day. She didn't ask, she just told them. The whole thing was falling apart, and she was the only one with a plan, so they said okay, talk to him. Take him home and sleep with him. Do what you have to do."
A long pause.
Monk: 'I see. You spent the night with her."
It is a statement made in a compassionate voice. For a moment the monk seems to sympathize with Kowlovski, causing him to raise his eyes and steady them.
"Right. I spent the night with her."
"She did something to you to strengthen your resolve. What did she do?"
"She explained the world to me, as she saw it. I never met a woman or man who could ever do that and reach me. Everything they ever told us, the Christian stuff, was just junk, you know, like everything else. What she said, I don't know where she got it, but it wasn't junk." Looking frankly into the monk's eyes. "If corresponded, you know?"
"Corresponded?"
"With everything that ever happened to me. The mother who wasn't a mother, just some strange woman acting a part in a soap because she didn't know what else to do with me. The father who wasn't there even when he was. All the stuff people talk about. She said the invisible men control everything on the planet. The misery they make in the West is opposite and equal to what they do in the East: in the West the high standard of living but no heart at all; elsewhere you get the big heart steadily eaten away by the poverty. It was the most convincing theory of everything I ever heard."
"And?"
"It's a bust, according to her. A total bust. The biggest mistake of all is to value being alive." Looking away at a wall and apparently quotes: "Once you stop wanting to live, you become free." Looking back at the monk. "It was the best sex I ever had. The price she made me pay was to agree to kill her. I don't have to tell you I was in love with her by morning."
"But you went ahead with it?"
"I promised her, didn't I? And after that night, even I could see there was no other way."
"She gave you a little something to help?"
"Heroin. Never used it before. I thought it would neutralize the Viagra. It didn't."
There's a pause for so long you wonder if the interview is over. Then Phra Titanaka says in a soft voice, as sly as a snake:
"You dream about her, don't you?"
"Every night, man."
"Except they are not dreams."
"Don't say that."
"Even you know they're not dreams. She's glowing when she visits you, isn't she?"
"How d'you know that?"
"And she fucks you. You wake up all wet."
Screams.
The monitor turns blank. I stare at it for ten minutes before I can rouse myself to leave the darkened room and return to my desk.
I've not yet told you how the Damrong video ends, farang. Well, I never did bring myself to watch it again, and I don't suppose I ever will. I don't need to — it is etched into my memory for a thousand lifetimes:
He is having her from behind while she supports herself on a trestle, thrusting back eagerly with her loins. His timing apparently is equal to the challenge of simultaneous orgasms, and she really does seem to be enjoying it more than he is. In the terrible moment during which he unwinds the orange cord that is coiled around his left wrist, he loses it. The hand holding the rope shudders, and it is quite obvious that his nerve has failed. He does not so much drop it as allow it to fall in a gesture of defeat. She notices immediately and delicately disengages in order to pick it up. She turns to him and holds his masked mug with one firm little hand for a moment while she says a few words, then hands him back the cord. Still he hesitates, so she cleverly makes a feature out of his reluctance and elaborately, with the utmost narcissism, takes the cord from him. She finds the center and presses it against her Adam's apple, at the same time throwing the two ends over her shoulders. Now watch while he so reluctantly pulls on the orange cord, highlighting every sculpted muscle in those massive forearms that gleam under the lights from Johnson's baby oil. Her face fills the screen: the supreme bliss of the last climax morphs into the bloated paroxysm of death.
It is my misfortune that I can hear her shout of triumph long after her heart has stopped beating.
3
Elephant Traps
30
My desk phone rings. It is Vikorn's secretary, Manny, summoning me to his office, pronto. In a whisper she lets me know that something has gone wrong with the Tanakan case. He does not speak when I enter, merely hands me a sheet of paper, which is a printout of a photograph that has been sent by e-mail. In the picture an elephant is about to bring its trunk down on a bamboo ball in which a trussed-up, tattooed man has been imprisoned.
"Where did you get it?" Guess.
"Tanakan? Someone sent it to him?"
Turning away from the window. "This is serious stuff, Sonchai. I was working him to the limit of his tolerances. As it was, Tanakan was only a couple centimeters from having me assassinated — I had to calculate the figure pretty precisely."
"Five dragons?"
My Colonel nods gravely. "I was keeping within my rights, but only just. Another million, and he would have felt entitled to take the risk of a hit team." He points at the photocopy I'm holding. "Now this."
"He thinks it comes from you?"
"Of course he does. He thinks I'm inventing a third party to protect him from so I can keep squeezing. He thinks he's going to have to fork out a few million every year. He thinks I'm a low-rent crook who'll just keep sucking his blood forever." I refrain from comment. "That's what happens when the lines start to get blurred. Honor and respect are the first casualties."
"What d'you want to do?"
"It's what I have to do. We're going to see him now. We're going down on our knees. We're acknowledging that the situation has swung in his favor. We are even reducing our fee." Pointing at the photograph: "We have to convince him this isn't us."
In back of the battered old patrol car I watch Vikorn move the assemblage point of his mind to a position of total humility. The receptionist at the bank was charmed enough on our first visit; now she's overwhelmed at the Buddhist quality
of this senior cop: so self-effacing yet at the same time firmly professional. We are whisked up to Tanakan's suite at lightning speed by a couple of heavily built guards. As before, we wait in a conference room. This time it is the perfect secretary, not the man himself, who arrives to call us into his office. There is no offer of tea, coffee, or soft drinks, and she doesn't look at me. Tanakan does not bother to stand up when we enter, and the secretary closes the door behind us without a word. Vikorn sinks to his knees on the carpet, at the same time showing a high wai, and I have to do the same. This does have the effect of warming the atmosphere, from maybe minus five to zero.
"Khun Tanakan," Vikorn says, "I am aware of what Khun Tanakan must be thinking, but it is not so." Vikorn is careful to keep his hands together at his forehead. "Your humble servant is an honest trader."
Tanakan glowers, somewhat theatrically in my view. "I wish I could believe the Colonel. What began as an honest negotiation between men of honor seems to have — "
"Not at my instigation, Khun Tanakan. Would Khun Tanakan take it as evidence of my sincerity that I am prepared to lower the value of the vase?"
Tanakan stands up and emerges from behind his desk.
"From now on the vase has no value, Vikorn. From now on if I hear anything in relation to the vase, I will press a certain autodial number on my cell phone. A cell phone belonging to the owner of a motorcycle and his armed assistant will ring somewhere in the city. I am sure the Colonel understands. Certainly one always prefers to play the game and avoid loss of life. When someone starts to break the rules, however, one must take one's chances. After all, I have a position to defend, and I thought it was implicit in our discussions that you were my principal defender. You have failed, Colonel. You're not doing your job, man."
Vikorn has turned gray. However, he masters himself, bows his head, stands, and all of a sudden we are on our feet at the door. Tanakan calls us back for a moment, however. He reaches into his drawer to take something out and chuck it across his desk at Vikorn. It is an elephant-hair bracelet. "It came with that abominable picture," he snaps, then turns his back to look out of the window.