Calvino spotted the Thai man in Bow’s Facebook photo. The tag on her Facebook page identified the man as Bow’s father.
Several children chasing each other cut in front of him. They were playing with helium-filled balloons with happy faces on them. Bow’s mother—stocky, round-faced, her eyes behind glasses—clutched a bouquet of flowers. Fake flowers with millions of specs of glitter caught sunrays that reflected off the middle-aged woman’s eyeglasses. Calvino noticed a young woman standing in high heels a couple of feet away, wearing a crown of fake flowers—pink, yellow, white and red. She was a princess for that day. The woman wasn’t Bow, though as it turned out, she was talking to Bow. Only at that moment Calvino didn’t know it.
Calvino closed in on the family surrounding another young graduate—a man. Medium height, wearing a dark suit and tie and a mortarboard. The square academic cap sat snuggly, properly squared at the right angle on the head; the tiny peak dipped to the unlined forehead, the tassel hanging on the right side. The young man’s face smiled into the camera as he flashed the V-sign. His young face had the long, elegant chiseled features of a model, with full and sensual lips. His chin had a dimple in the center. The fingers on his hands were long, and the nails had a clear polish. The graduate’s face had a hint of makeup.
“Nueng, song, sam!”
The photographer shouted “one, two, three” in Thai and then clicked off several shots. He wore a funny white cloth hat on the back of his head as shade against the sun. A young man next to the graduate, wearing a pair of large aviator sunglasses, leaned into the shot, flashing the victory sign. The photographer hadn’t finished. He held up his index finger. Snap. He raised his thumb.
“Dee. Dee, Dee.”
Good. Snap. That was the end of his combo hand and verbal vocabulary.
The shoot appeared to have finished as the photographer started storing his camera gear. Calvino walked over to Bow’s father, who had found a spot of shade with her mother.
“I am looking for Bow. A friend asked me to send her best wishes for her graduation,” he said, showing him the photo on his cell phone. “Have you seen her?”
It was a small white lie—one that the father wouldn’t question.
Bow’s father nodded at the young man in a black robe.
“That’s Bow,” he said, smiling.
He looked happy, proud and nervous as he smoked a cigarette.
“What is the name of the friend?”
“Ploy,” said Calvino.
The father smiled with recognition of the name.
“Bow taught her Thai. They are friends from yoga class.”
“That’s the one.”
“Where is Ploy?” Bow’s father asked. “I thought she’d come to Bow’s graduation.”
“She’s gone away,” said Calvino.
“That’s too bad. Bow liked her very much. She will be disappointed.”
McPhail tapped a cigarette out of a pack, lit it, and offered one to Bow’s father, which he took. McPhail lit it for the father. They both blew smoke.
Turning to Calvino, he said under his breath, “Bow, huh? You could’ve fooled me. I thought she was a woman. That’s a guy.”
Bow’s father called to her, gestured with his hand for her to join him. The person in the black robe walked over with the friend in aviator sunglasses trailing like a bodyguard.
“This farang wants to talk to you.”
“My name is Vincent. I’d like to take a couple of minutes to ask you a couple of questions about your friend Ploy.”
“Didn’t we talk on the phone?” she asked. “And I said I was busy.”
“I need information about Ploy,” he said, offering no apology.
Bow raised her hand to her throat.
“Is she in some kind of trouble?”
She obviously had no idea what had happened.
“There is a problem. You might help solve it.”
“How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t easy. I was looking for this woman,” Calvino said, showing her the Facebook photo.
As Bow glanced at her Facebook photo, the smile wiped away, and a serious, sad look replaced it.
“The most important day of my life, and they insist I dress as a man. It’s terrible for me. I feel sorry for my poor parents, my family and my boyfriend. The university has this strict, stupid rule. If you are transgender, you have to wear the clothes of your gender at birth. No exceptions. Primitive thinking for a university, don’t you agree?”
“Terrible,” said Calvino. “Let’s talk about Ploy.”
“Not here,” she said. “Over there is better.”
After a brief exchange of words with her father, she led Calvino away.
McPhail kept staring at Bow. The transformation of the woman on Facebook into the young man walking alongside Calvino made his head hurt. His black and white world was dissolving in the heat. He trailed behind, trying to see if the way Bow walked was male or female.
They walked beside a small granite wall with palms planted in large rectangular stone containers, passing other students who smiled at the camera. Bow stopped, clutched the brown railing and stared down at the small canal. Other students lined the railing farther down, taking over a private space for their photo moment.
“Let’s stop here,” said Calvino.
He looked back at McPhail, who kept Bow’s boyfriend in aviator sunglasses at a distance, talking about astrology, horse racing and massage parlors. The distraction gave Calvino the chance to talk with Bow without outside interference.
“When was the last time you saw Ploy?”
Bow thought, rolling her tongue against the inside of her cheek.
“Maybe two weeks. Something like that.”
Calvino shrugged his shoulders.
“Before Songkran?”
“Definitely before.”
“I saw her at yoga class twice a week. I helped her with her Thai. But I’ve been busy. She missed a couple of yoga classes. And some Thai lessons.”
“Yoshi Nagata said you two were good friends.”
The mention of the yoga teacher surprised her at first but soon gave her comfort that she was talking to someone who was part of her circle.
“We sometimes had lunch. She had a lot of free time. Often it was a last-moment thing. I phoned her and we’d meet at a restaurant. She always paid the bill.”
“She was generous.”
Bow nodded.
“Yes, jai dee.” She had a good heart.
“She had a tattoo with a jai,” said Calvino.
“It doesn’t surprise me. Tattoos are in fashion.”
“Did you teach her the jai phrases?”
“Ploy knew hundreds. She was a very good student with lots of time to study.”
“Did she say who was supporting her?”
Bow smiled.
“A rich man. She never told me his name.”
“That’s strange. It never slipped out? James or John or Jason?”
“Not that I remember. She referred to him as nai. I don’t think she’d call a farang nai,” Bow said.
She sounded honest, looking him in the eye as she spoke. He couldn’t identify a tell that betrayed her as a liar. “Nai” was Thai word Thais used to refer to a man of rank, power and influence, the master of a private realm, a person to be deferred to and respected. Farang mostly didn’t fall into that category.
“Her nai was Thai?”
Bow stared at him.
“I don’t know. I assumed he was. But I never thought much about it.”
“Did you know Ploy escaped from a refugee camp?”
Bow closed her eyes and nodded.
“She told me about the camp. It was horrible. She never said anything about escaping. She sometimes talked about her family.”
“They died recently in a fire. Except for her sister. Ploy’s sister said a helicopter targeted the family house. Dropped a bomb on it. Any idea why someone would want to do that?”
“How would I know that?”
Bow’s hands were shaking.
“When you last saw her, did she talk about her plans?”
“She had more plastic surgery scheduled.”
“Plastic surgery?”
“That’s why I didn’t think too much about her being away. A labiaplasty puts you out of action for a week. I had mine done last year. I lost almost two weeks.”
Calvino resisted showing surprise or ignorance about what was involved in a labiaplasty. He filed the medical term away for a later Google search. He wondered why a woman who was six weeks pregnant would undergo plastic surgery.
“Which hospital did she use?”
“She didn’t go to a hospital. She went to my doctor, Dr. Nattapong. He has a private clinic. He’s done a lot of work for my friends.”
“You recommended the doctor?”
Bow nodded with pride.
“Dr. Nattapong is the best.”
Calvino translated “the best” into a doctor who showed basic competence and paid kickback commissions for new patients referred by his old ones. The best plastic surgeon worked with his clippers and knives and scissors to create a large garden of trimmed, cut, pruned flowers.
“Where’s his clinic?”
Bow turned slightly and pointed at a series of buildings across the road from the lake.
“His clinic is on the third floor of that one.”
“You taught Ploy Thai. How was she doing?”
“Ploy’s a very good student. My father said you told him Ploy has gone away.”
“Actually, she’s dead. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
Bow’s face crumbled as the lips quivered. She shook her head.
“Ploy? You’re joking!”
“Khwam jing”—it’s true. “One more thing, Bow. Did you know Ploy was pregnant?”
She tried to say something but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead Bow shook her head from side to side as if to shake off the impact of Calvino’s words.
She’d just received her diploma, launching her into a scary world where even young people sometimes died, and two strangers came to her graduation to ask her questions without ever hinting that the death of a friend was the reason they’d appeared.
TWENTY-FIVE
CALVINO GOOGLED “LABIAPLASTY” as McPhail poured a two finger shot of late morning whiskey from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. He reached around and slipped the bottle back into the drawer of the office desk.
“It sounds like a French pastry,” said McPhail.
“It’s medical talk for surgery to redesign a woman’s vagina,” said Calvino, reading from the screen.
“Get out of here.”
McPhail walked around to Calvino’s side of the desk and read an article on the screen.
“What’s ‘clitoral unhooding’? It sounds like a street gang membership ritual.”
“It’s a simple procedure. Twenty minutes with a laser under general or local anesthetic and the hood comes off.”
“Why would a pregnant teenager want her pussy redesigned?” asked McPhail.
“I don’t know. But I intend to find out,” said Calvino.
Calvino looked up to find Ratana standing frozen in the doorway.
“I made an appointment with Dr. Nattapong on Saturday at 3:00 p.m.,” she finally said.
“Hey, Ratana, sorry,” McPhail said, slamming back the rest of the whiskey. “Vinny, I’m moving on. You can handle things from here. Do you mind settling up? I’m a bit short of cash.”
Calvino took out his wallet and removed two thousand baht. He handed the cash to McPhail, who folded the two notes and stuffed them in his shirt pocket.
“She looked like a man. That’s why we kept walking past her. You think she was cut? Some ladyboys are, but some of them like to keep their weenie. Like switch hitters in baseball—left hand against that pitcher, right hand against another one.”
After he left, Ratana returned to Calvino’s office. She sat in the chair McPhail had vacated. It was still warm.
“Here’s how we play it,” he said. “You introduce me as your husband. Use the word ‘fan.’ That leaves it ambiguous. The daughter of your friend, Khun Bow, recommended him.”
“I already mentioned Bow. That’s how I got a Saturday appointment.”
Calvino saw the troubled expression that Ratana tried to conceal when she had a problem and expected him to detect what it was without being asked.
“You’re worried,” he said.
“If Ploy was in his office and something bad happened, he’s not going to tell us. He’ll throw us out. If we don’t ask about Ploy, what is the point of talking to him?”
“We’re going to leave a little present in his office.”
Calvino showed her a small black shell that looked like a piece of rock candy. It was an electronic device that monitored conversations in the room. He had a second device that monitored keystrokes.
“While we wait in reception, I’ll put this one in place. It will give us remote access to his receptionist’s computer.”
She looked uncertain.
“If Dr. Nattapong has something to hide,” he said, “I’ll know soon enough. If not, then I move on. It’ll be okay, Ratana.”
“What is he hiding?”
Calvino glanced at his screen, where Dr. Nattapong’s face stared out.
“What are the odds he’s doing abortions for the wealthy?”
TWENTY-SIX
From: Vincent Calvino
To: Dr. Apinya
Confidential: Patient/Doctor Privilege
Date/Time: 19 April, 23:37
To keep myself occupied and to reduce the chance of new visitations, I’ve been looking into the plastic surgery business in Bangkok. It’s big business. Nose jobs, eye jobs, facelifts, breast implants, ass jobs -- all of these I’ve heard about. You can’t take the BTS or MRT without seeing a wide selection of women who’ve had a nose job, Botox or an eye job. In my line of work, you learn something new most days. Labiaplasty, for instance, wasn’t something I’d heard about. There’s a debate about where to draw the line between necessity and aesthetic considerations. The face culture obviously extends below the waist, if what I’ve read about the huge increase of this procedure on Thai women is true.
Some women want to reshape overly large labia, other women want to fix damage caused by childbirth or by masturbation or from that drunken night when they thought it would be cool to have a piercing down there and a gold ring inserted. There is a long list of reasons. As with PTSD, the causes are multiple and depend on the patient’s history.
How does an experienced private investigator with years in the field in Bangkok acquire PTSD? Why would a pregnant teenage girl from Burma want labiaplasty? Two mysteries don’t make a library.
In the case of the Burmese girl, I doubt she wanted the operation because she found it uncomfortable riding a bicycle. I’ve been wondering if it might have had something to with her sexual partner. Could intercourse have caused her pain? Or maybe she or he didn’t like the natural shape and look of her genitalia. Some women are embarrassed when they wear a bikini and large, protruding lips press against their bikini bottom. Or one of the lips is larger than the other, giving a lopsided appearance.
With a little study a man begins to learn that a woman’s relationship with her sexual organs isn’t all that different from a man’s relationship with his. The comparison can be pushed too far. I’ve never heard of a man lining up to get the male equivalent of labiaplasty. Is there a surgery like this for me? Just asking. Because men don’t talk about changing nature’s shape. Why are women more open to such talk?
Plastic surgery is fed by strong emotions. The desire for control over one’s body is as strong as one’s desire for control over other people’s lives and events. How we adjust to the lack of control determines how sane or crazy we end up.
I am starting to understand that superficial change doesn’t really change anything. Data-mining
the interior of my mind for clues about the images I see yields little more than low-grade ore. You say I’ve not been honestly mining the data. I’ve put large parts of the old minefields off limits. I’m afraid that if I dig in those spaces, I will find not gold but bones that I’ve buried in the middle of the night. It might not seem so, but I am getting closer to lifting that yellow crime scene tape and walking inside a room that’s been sealed off. Investigations are about timing, observation, luck and knowing how to read the evidence, without getting distracted by the personality of the person who left it behind. I need to reach a point where the PI in me wants to look inside and understand why I needed to close that room off for so long.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE DOCTOR’S CLINIC was a hole-in-the-wall operation. Like many Bangkok doctors, Dr. Nattapong was attached to one of the well-known private hospitals, big profit centers with large advertising budgets to bring in medical tourists for hip replacements, heart surgery and plastic surgery—the money spinners. Calvino and Ratana took the elevator to the third floor of the building. Walking down the corridor, they passed a Thai girl who emerged from Dr. Nattapong’s office a few feet ahead. Her face heavily bandaged, she wore thick green sandals and carried her high heels like someone with false teeth rushing toward a buffet table and timing the insertion for the last moment.
Trailing behind her, as if on an invisible leash, a Thai man with more tics than a Kentucky hunting dog dragged a carry-on roller behind him like a ball and chain. Just as he passed Calvino, he froze and started to roll the carry-on back and forth, as if testing the wheels, his head tilted to the tiled floor, listening. He held out a half dozen shopping bags like a man with a divining rod searching for water. His cargo shorts exposed calves tattooed with fire-breathing dragons and colorful peacocks, tails fanned out in full display. Looking upset, he mumbled to himself, face twitching.
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