The Marriage Tree

by Christopher G. Moore

  “Plastic surgery isn’t for everyone,” said Calvino, as Ratana looked back at the couple.

  “He didn’t look well.”

  Calvino grunted agreement.

  “Both of them looked like walking wounded.”

  “It’s not a joke,” said Calvino.

  “That’s why it made me sad. “

  Ratana had been briefed on her part as patient and wife. He’d play the supporting role of the caring husband who would foot the bill.

  Ratana entered first into the reception area of Dr. Nattapong’s private clinic. The doctor’s receptionist wore a plastic photo name-tag with her name in English and Thai. Calvino trailed behind Ratana, keeping his head down. He’d noticed the woman’s name and was thinking how it was a great name for a plastic surgeon’s assistant—Sukanya translated as Perfect Woman. She wore a pair of large earrings, and her skin was a shade of copper that suggested she had some Indian blood. Seeing Ratana, she blinked her large brown eyes and asked for her name.

  “My name is Ratana. I have an appointment.”

  “The doctor will be with you in a moment. Please take a seat.”

  “I’m with her,” said Calvino. “Nice office.”

  The receptionist smiled.

  “We like it,” she said, exhaling a small amount of pride. “And we like it when a woman brings her husband too.”

  The corporate “We like it” from a doctor’s receptionist was a short sentence that opened an encyclopedia of possibilities. He couldn’t imagine Ratana using those three words.

  Calvino sat on a sofa opposite the reception desk. Sukanya’s cell phone rang. He watched her lean over and open a blue metal box with the Honda logo on top. She removed a cell phone. Why would she stash her iPhone inside a Honda box? Was it a weird personal habit? Or was the secrecy of the office such that it automatically spilled over into her personal life?

  He waited until Sukanya’s attention focused on her call. Then he opened his briefcase, removed an iPad and switched on the power.

  “Do you have Wi-Fi?” he asked Sukanya.

  She nodded.

  “You’ll need a password,” she said.

  She told him the password: “beauty101.” A moment later, Calvino had his head down over the iPad. The receptionist glanced over and smiled, satisfied that Calvino was doing what most farang husbands did while their Thai wives waited. He reached inside his briefcase, palmed a listening device the size of a thumb—a video camera with a motion sensor and full audio—and as Sukanya returned her attention to the phone, he planted it beneath the table next to the sofa. Ratana held a copy of Matichon, turning the pages slowly and giving Calvino cover as he positioned the small camera with a color that matched the chrome tubing of the table. He turned on the camera and checked the view of the camera on his iPad screen—he was looking at a 140-degree arc of the room. Satisfied, he closed the window and opened the browser for the Bangkok Post.

  Some serious cash had been pumped into the elegant, modern design and furnishings of the doctor’s lobby area—Italian sofas, designer tables made from metal and glass, potted exotic plants and an aquarium with tropical fish in a backlit paradise. Polished floors clean enough to eat from were topped by a bank of windows overlooking the road toward Lake Ratchada. They weren’t running a charity for orphans. It also didn’t look like a backroom abortion clinic. Something didn’t calculate. The money sunk into the office, the cost of plastic surgery... weighed against the risk of performing illegal abortions.

  From a pair of hidden speakers the sound of soft, ambient music filtered through the reception area—the slightly ethereal, zen-tingling themes performed on a sitar, flute and harpsichord. Calvino discreetly watched Sukanya. She was an elegantly dressed Thai-Indian woman roaring out of the tunnel of her twenties and into the wall of her thirties. She worked without glancing up. Young, diligent and beautiful, Sukanya looked like an advertisement for the doctor’s services.

  Ratana nudged him.

  “That’s Bank,” said Ratana.

  She pointed at one of the photos among two rows of headshots of celebrities and hi-so clients, framed and hung on one wall. They seemed to be there to announce the doctor’s importance, like trophies or award certificates.

  “He plays a hero on a Channel 3 daytime show. And next to him is a singer named Benz. She’s in a shampoo commercial on TV. And that one is Joey, a katoey who has won a game show. They are all very famous people. And there’s—”

  “I get it,” said Calvino, “the doctor gives face to the stars.”

  The receptionist, who’d been listening in, laughed.

  “We have many celebrity clients. Word of mouth brings in new business.”

  “You collect their autographs?”

  “I have signed photos from all of them,” Sukanya replied.

  It was a little dig at Ratana to pay Sukanya absolute respect as someone connected with the stars.

  Calvino considered what she’d said. Confident to the point where she head-butted with the wild beast of arrogance. He studied the photos. None of the faces meant anything to him. In his experience Thai celebrities rarely leaked through to the expat world. Celebrity, he thought, is like time in that it’s relative to the position of the observer.

  Just as a person’s handwriting has an identifiable signature, a plastic surgeon has a signature too. Dr. Nattapong’s signature was in evidence within the photo display and on the receptionist’s nose, eyes, lips, breasts and chin. Sukanya’s features had an unnatural balance and shape, as if she had emerged fully formed from the music. It was as if she’d popped out of a frame on the wall and had gone to work at the desk. Calvino could only guess about the breasts but would have bet some money that they would pretty much look like Ploy’s.

  Calvino saw two doors. The first led to the doctor’s office. About the second, as he stared at it, the receptionist helpfully provided full information.

  “That goes to the surgery room. Fully equipped. Everything you would find in the best hospital.”

  “Yeah?” asked Calvino. “All run by just the two of you? The doctor and you?”

  Sukanya flashed a million-dollar smile, like someone who’d picked the right door and won the grand prize.

  After a fifteen-minute wait they were shown into the doctor’s office. Medical degree framed on the wall behind his desk. More celebrity photos with pursed lips, signed with hearts, framed and positioned on the credenza. The collection was a bit like a Chinese shrine, with all of the angels gathered around to watch the doctor’s back.

  “My wife wants surgery. Labiaplasty is what I think it’s called.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “That’s the correct medical term.”

  “But she doesn’t want to go to a hospital—do you, darling?”

  “I really don’t like hospitals,” said Ratana.

  “I’ve read that it’s a straightforward operation. It takes under half an hour. Can you perform the operation at the office?”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “Hey, that’s good news, darling.”

  He squeezed Ratana’s hand.

  “She’s been so nervous about the hospital.”

  “Just like Ploy said, Dr. Nattapong is the best…” said Ratana, smiling at the doctor.

  Calvino cut her off.

  “No, darling, it wasn’t Ploy, it was Ploy’s friend Bow who said that. Remember? Jesus, sometimes I wonder about your memory. You ever notice that about women? How they can get confused over who told them what and when? It happens with my wife all the time.”

  Dr. Nattapong’s nose had twitched at the mention of Ploy’s name. A flash of guilt crossed his eyes as he became conscious of Calvino’s stare. The doctor tried to divert attention by turning around his computer screen.

  “Here’s a list of the charges for a labiaplasty.”

  Calvino removed his wallet.

  “I can pay you now.”

  The doctor looked ill, his eyes glazed. The name Pl
oy had fired a couple of million neurons, simultaneously lighting up his brain like a Christmas tree. He recovered long enough to pull up his schedule on the computer screen.

  “I can schedule you next Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. It is important that you don’t eat anything twenty-four hours before the appointment.”

  “I don’t want a local. I would hate being awake and knowing everything that was happening to me,” said Ratana.

  “Is it possible to use a general to put her out?” asked Calvino.

  The doctor studied Calvino’s face for a moment, looking for something. Or maybe thinking that he could use a nose job after being beat up in Rangoon.

  “It is possible to arrange.”

  Calvino stood up, stretching out his hand.

  “Good, then we have a deal. See you next Wednesday.”

  Ratana was on her feet, giving the doctor a deep wai.

  “It won’t hurt, will it, doctor?”

  “No, it won’t hurt. You may feel a bit of discomfort after, but I will prescribe pain pills.”

  “There we go,” said Calvino. “Full service. That’s why the stars come here. That’s why we’ve come here—right, darling?”

  He gently patted Ratana’s hand.

  After they left the office, Calvino stopped at the staircase at the end of the corridor. He opened the lid on his iPad. He still had a connection to the doctor’s Wi-Fi server. He logged in and opened the app that gave him a live feed from the tiny camera in the reception area. Dr. Nattapong’s office door opened and he emerged into reception. He looked visibly shaken, his face ashen, his hands trembling.

  He was also angry.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that referral came from Ploy?”

  “She never said anything about Ploy.”

  “What about Bow?”

  Sukanya shrugged, the smile wiped off her face.

  “Her name never came up.”

  “How did that woman and her husband find me?”

  The receptionist pulled out the questionnaire that Ratana had completed. At the bottom, she had written, “Referred by Bow, your favorite katoey patient.”

  “Why did that woman use Ploy’s name? Her husband corrected her and said it was Bow who recommended me. This isn’t right.”

  “You worry too much. Bow and Ploy were friends. She got them mixed up,” she said. “You’ve had farang and their girlfriends mixing up things before.”

  “This is different. You should’ve seen the way he looked at me. Like he knew exactly what had happened with Ploy. He comes asking for the same operation for his wife. No, no. I am not crazy. He knows something.”

  “You’re tired.”

  He ignored her, walking around her desk and typing on her keyboard.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to make sure Ploy’s computer files are updated.”

  “You’ve checked them a hundred times.”

  “I want to check her file again.”

  He read the words written in Thai—“Failed to show for her scheduled appointment. Did not phone to cancel.”

  There were no holes or inconsistencies. There was nothing to connect Ploy to his office on the day she died except a canceled appointment. The maddening thing was someone had filled in the blanks anyway. Someone knew she had died suddenly in the surgery. It happened to the best of doctors: a random, unforeseeable death.

  “What happened wasn’t your fault. It was Ploy’s fault. She ate an hour before the operation. You told her not to, but she didn’t listen. Som na nah,” Sukanya said—served her right.

  “I should have called the police.”

  “The media would have ruined you. We did the right thing.”

  Calvino pulled up the doctor’s email address and attached three digital photos of Ploy’s dead body—a headshot, the tattoo on the breast and her full body on the morgue slab shot. He cc’d the general office email, figuring that one reached the receptionist, and pressed Send. He positioned the iPad to share the reaction with Ratana. The email was sent from a John Doe account using an anonymous proxy server. They watched as the receptionist opened the email and read, “Things didn’t work out as planned. Ploy.” Then she opened the attachments.

  Both hands covered her mouth as she shook her head.

  “No!”

  “I told you something was wrong,” said Dr. Nattapong. “You didn’t believe me. Now we’re being blackmailed. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I paid three hundred thousand baht for the problem to disappear. You said Jaruk could do that. He was the one person who could guarantee no complications, no problem. Phone him. Tell him I want to meet him, now.”

  “In your office?”

  “Of course not. Tell him Starbucks on the ground floor of the Exchange Tower. In thirty minutes. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

  A person who scrubs a crime scene clean of all incriminating evidence is called a cleaner. The doctor had given Calvino his cleaner’s name: Jaruk. Also the doctor had told him that Jaruk hadn’t dropped out of the sky; Sukanya was his go-to person for contacting him. She had the cleaner’s direct phone number. Cleaners, Calvino knew, are careful about giving out phone numbers. Either Sukanya slept with the guy or ran with the crowd whose line of work required the services of a professional cleaner to quickly handle the mess left behind in a killing. Men in this profession are systematic. Nothing is left behind after they finish with a job. After a cleaner closes the door, the location is no longer a crime scene—it is just another room.

  In Calvino’s experience, the best cleaners in Bangkok disposed of bodies in two ways. The first option was dumping it in the sea or an incinerator or a larger meat grinder; the second option was leaving the body in precisely the place they wanted the cops to find it. In the trade the second option is called the Magician’s Solution, a kind of sleight of hand. To make the problem disappear in this way is to turn it into a new problem, one that belongs to someone else.

  By the time they reached the ground floor of the doctor’s building, Calvino had phoned McPhail and told him to go to the Starbucks in the Exchange Tower and follow a Thai named Jaruk.

  “He’s with the doctor and his office assistant, receptionist, nurse... whatever she is. The doctor is late thirties, slim, thick black hair, Chinese looking. He wears glasses. Black frames. His assistant isn’t hard on the eyes. When you spot them, phone me. I’ll be on the second floor.”

  “Give me a description of this guy, Jaruk. Fuck, that’s a new name.”

  He applied a Scottish rolled R to the name.

  “I don’t know what he looks like.”

  “Then how am I supposed to follow him?”

  “You’ll see him at Starbucks. He’s meeting the doctor and his receptionist there. She’ll be wearing a name-tag that says Sukanya. Can you be there? It’s important.”

  “One thing: what’s with this Jaruk?”

  “He’s the cleaner who dumped Ploy’s body at the Tobacco Monopoly.”

  “That’s a good reason.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  RATANA CHANGED OUT of the clothes she had worn at the doctor’s office and slipped into a security guard’s uniform with a hat. She wore a badge and a photo ID tag on a plastic cord around her neck. She stood next to the fruit juice counter on the ground floor of the Exchange Tower, talking with the vendor about the price of fruit. Around the corner from the fruit juice seller were the restrooms. The constant foot traffic there screened her from the main lobby. From her position she had a direct line of sight to the elevator leading to the parking floors.

  Jaruk sat with Sukanya and Dr. Nattapong at Starbucks for twenty minutes before he stood up to leave. None of them smiled. Jaruk waied Dr. Nattapong, exchanged a few more words and then walked to the bank of elevators and waited.

  Ratana moved forward a bit. When the elevator doors opened and Jaruk walked inside, she quickly slipped in with a couple of office workers. “B2” glowed red on the floor button panel. Jaruk stayed in the corner behind the chatting offi
ce workers until the doors opened on B2. He got out and Ratana followed. He pushed open the glass doors leading to the car park, turned right and disappeared around the corner. Ratana stood hunched over out of sight as Jaruk pulled out in a Lamborghini.

  She phoned Calvino and described the car.

  Jaruk swung a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo sports car out of the Exchange Tower parking lot and exited onto Sukhumvit Road. At the lights he moved into the left turn lane and headed onto Asoke. Calvino was waiting on a BMW 1200K racing motorcycle with McPhail seated on the back. Calvino had given the bike to McPhail. “If you were one of those kids with a rare, inoperative disease who could have anything,” he had said, “what would it be?” And McPhail had said, “Easy, a BMW 1200K racing bike. Fully loaded.”

  Calvino tailed the sports car, staying two, three cars behind. Jaruk swerved in and out of the traffic, bullying any car in front of him, pushing the nose of the Lamborghini inches from the rear bumper of any car he wanted out of the way. He drove like a man possessed, a man with a grievance or a man who had a second double espresso from Starbucks racing through his blood.

  McPhail shouted from behind, “The fucker’s crazy!”

  Calvino gunned the BMW bike, overtaking a white Honda Jazz as if it were driving underwater. At the Asoke and Rama IV intersection, the sports car was second from the red light. Just the fact that someone was ahead had Jaruk racing his engine.

  “What’s the deal?” asked McPhail, leaning forward. “No way that guy owns that car.”

  “Big odds it belongs to his boss. And that’s where he’s taking us.”

  The light changed. Jaruk moved to an outside lane and cut a sharp right turn onto Rama IV.

  Whatever the cause, Jaruk used the imported car to demand that every vehicle in his path—car, van, bus or SUV—give way. Like putting on a Ring of Power, driving a Lamborghini in the streets of Bangkok was an addiction. It was a symbol of the driver’s uncontested, naked supremacy. It was the driver’s license to be exempt from laws. Other drivers surrendered without resistance. It proved one of Calvino’s Laws—that the power of the engine and the make of the car determine whether the driver owns the road. A Lamborghini could own the streets of Bangkok.