Starting an investigation meant no end of problems.
It wasn’t opening a murder case file and sending out investigators to find the daughter’s killer; it was the possible opening of the floodgates holding back thousands of others who’d had relatives murdered during the war on drugs.
“So Tanny’s mother should just forget about it. Mai pen rai,” said Calvino.
“Let’s assume her daughter was murdered. Do you think a colonel like me can start an investigation without asking for higher approval? Or go around my commander and start a private investigation without him finding out? Because if I did that, you can be sure something would happen to me, Manee, my children—not to mention you, Tanny, and her mother. Is that what you want?”
Calvino stared at his friend, trying to find the answers to his questions. It was that patron-client relationship he’d tried to explain to Tanny that night at Government House. He broke into a smile, accepting that Pratt had confirmed his own instinctive reaction. “You’re right. Forget about it?” When it came down to it, inside Colonel Pratt’s world, Tanny had approximately the same odds of finding justice as a sixteenth-century leper chasing a cure.
Colonel Pratt had come to understand what that smile meant. “Vincent, you’ve retired from private investigations.
But say for some reason you’re thinking of going back into business. This isn’t the way to make a comeback.”
“In circles,” said Calvino. “Large, looping, endless circles.”
Colonel Pratt nodded. Around the eyes, he looked sad, wounded, and discouraged.
“It doesn’t matter, Pratt. I shouldn’t have brought it up. My mistake.” Calvino walked away as the rain started again.
“Vincent!” Colonel Pratt shouted after him.
Calvino turned around. “Yeah.”
“Dinner’s at seven-thirty.”
Calvino smiled, flipped the colonel a salute before walking back through the parked cars. He took out his key, leaned over the hood, watching the cops in the rain. It had been ordinary cops who’d gone out on the hunt. Men just like these. Men who’d taken the oath to protect and uphold the law. But oaths, like old forgotten books, the pages devoured by mites, often turned to powdery dust, leaving only the cover showing over missing pages.
Once Calvino climbed behind the wheel of his car, he reached into the backseat and pulled out the new bottle of Johnnie Walker Black that Brandon had given him. Technically it was a replacement for the office bottle. Twisting the cap, he opened it, took a whiff. Touching the rim to his lips, he drank, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Tanny had lost a sister in the war against drugs. He closed up the bottle and started the car engine. She hadn’t been the only one who’d lost a family member to the wave of killings.
February 2004 had been a month of many killings. Faa (who shared the same fate as Jeab, Tanny’s sister), a thirty-five-year-old mother, lived with her family in Phetchaburi. The police sent a notice saying her name had appeared on a blacklist for drugs and instructing her to report to the police to have her name removed from the list. Faa arrived at the police station thinking it would be a short meeting. Her name would be removed, and she could breathe easily. Once she was inside the police station, the police insisted she sign a document. But she was illiterate. When she asked the police what was in the document, they told her not to worry, that once she signed it, her name would be removed from the blacklist.
She signed the paper, touched the amulet that she wore around her neck—the one her mother had given her when she was fourteen years old. Less than a week later, several Thai males aged late twenties to early thirties, their hair cut military style, wearing wraparound sunglasses and black shirts and pants and polished boots, parked their pickup truck at the noodle vendor’s stand next to Faa’s house.
Two men from the pickup walked into the wood-frame house, the others taking up guard in front of it. One of the men pulled out a handgun and shot Faa at close range while her twelve-year-old daughter sat at the kitchen table. The girl also watched as the second man shot her mother four times in the upper back, hitting the lungs and heart. The house was twenty meters from a police call box on a main road, but when the family called, the police took two hours before they came to the house. The daughter was found crying, kneeling over her dead mother. There was blood splattered all over the kitchen, and it had stained the daughter’s white school blouse. But the police, when they finally arrived, collected no evidence and asked no questions about the murder. The amulet was still around Faa’s neck.
The killers were never caught. Threats were made to keep the daughter quiet. Threats worked. Intimidation worked. Violence worked without fail. The message to the daughter and to the family was that they shouldn’t cause a problem. They were told that Faa had signed a confession admitting to drug dealing. An illiterate woman, fingering an amulet for luck, had signed her death warrant with a smile.
The prime minister at the time said, “Because drug traders are ruthless to our children, so being ruthless back to them is not a big thing. It may be necessary to have casualties. If there are deaths among traitors, it’s normal.”
TWENTY-FIVE
RATANA USED A wet hand towel to clean John-John’s face; he sat passively enough in a chair, happily dribbling a glass of coconut juice down both sides of his mouth and over his book, opened to a drawing of a dragon. Dinner at Colonel Pratt’s house was a family affair that had become infrequent after the Chini collection was sold. The paintings were more than art; they had formed a history, a personal connection that deepened between all of them. Colonel Pratt had recovered the paintings on the night of the military coup, the same night Calvino shot the man who’d masterminded the hit on John-John’s father—strong cables that bound them.
Calvino arrived carrying a huge wicker basket brimming with red and white roses, white orchids, pink carnations, sprigs of tiny white flowers, looking like a burst of stars against a night sky. Manee put the basket on the dinner table, but it was too big, and leaves and petals hung over the plates.
“Mother, how can we find our food?” said their eldest, Suchin, a boy in university.
The two of them moved the portable jungle scene into the sitting room.
Colonel Pratt came in late, slipping off his shoes at the entrance, wearing his policeman’s uniform, then walked over and sat in his favorite chair. He groaned as if the weight of the world had temporarily been lifted from his shoulders.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Manee managed a thin smile before disappearing into the kitchen and instructing the live-in maid to warm up dinner. Calvino brought along a bottle of Scotch, set it on the table alongside a bucket of ice and several glasses. He’d been the only one drinking, and once Colonel Pratt had settled into his overstuffed leather chair, Calvino poured him a Scotch and dumped in a handful of ice.
The colonel glanced over his shoulder to see if Manee was watching—she wasn’t—then drained the glass.
“Hard day,” said Calvino.
Every day is hard if you’re a Thai cop, Colonel Pratt said to himself. But this day had transcended the normal definition of hardness, to the point where he wondered why he didn’t retire.
“Did you touch the gate to the enclosure?”
Calvino shrugged, pulling a pen from his jacket. “I used this to lift the padlock on the gate.”
Not that the yellow tape at the crime had stopped the curious neighbors, who’d climbed over it and into the crime scene to gawk at the lions in the enclosure, nudging one another, saying how clever and fierce the lions were. Eating a man gained their respect.
Working at the police lab with several technicians, Colonel Pratt had watched as the technicians ran tests on the scraps of clothing, the slipper, and the body parts. It would take days before the results of DNA samples came back. Meanwhile, one technician at the crime scene had found a fingerprint—one that hadn’t belonged to Achara or anyone who worked at the house. The print had been left on the g
ate—a single thumbprint from a right hand. And the lab was running a check against a database of fingerprints, including those of criminals and ex-military recruits—a military lottery meant that most Thai males served in the army and were fingerprinted in the induction process. No positive match had turned up—so far. It was possible that the print belonged to a woman.
By the time everyone was seated at the table, Suchin, who was a second-year engineering student at Chulalongkorn University, asked, “Dad, is it true a lion ate a man?”
Colonel Pratt, eyes bloodshot, nodded. “Where did you hear that?”
“It was on the news,” Suthorn said. As the daughter of the family, and a star on her university debating team, she came to life as the conversation at the table showed signs of turning into a lively debate.
“I heard it, too,” said Manee. “As an excuse for being late to your own dinner party, it is a good one.”
“Wasn’t Khun Achara a guest at Montri’s party?” asked Ratana. She had known the answer but raised the issue to change the subject of the matter of his death. “You gave me his business card, and I put his name in your client database.”
“He wasn’t a client,” said Calvino. “Not directly. He was the business partner of a client.”
“Brandon. Your only client,” said Ratana. That fact vested Achara with a larger connection to Calvino’s life, lending him special status.
Manee shivered, shook her head, and caught her husband’s eye. “It must’ve been a terrible death.” The more gruesome the murder, the more fascination she had with the details. And she wasn’t alone at the table in her appetite for further information about the murder.
Suchin rolled his eyes. “What if it wasn’t an accident? And someone threw him to the lions? That’s a possibility.”
Calvino thought Colonel Pratt’s son had a tiny streak of rebellion, nothing anyone could easily point to, but enough of the challenge to authority and the party line that gave him hope for the new generation of Thais.
“Khun Achara owned the lions,” said Colonel Pratt.
“And he let them roam around the garden?” Suthorn asked. “Like cats?”
She meant it as a joke, and the others at the table had a good laugh. Except for Colonel Pratt and Calvino, who’d seen what had been left of Achara after the lions got finished with him. There was nothing particularly amusing about the dismembered body inside the enclosure.
“The lions live in a large, enclosed, secure space on his premises. Khun Achara went inside the enclosure. The lions jumped him. So far that’s all we know. How he got there, we’re looking into it. I’d like to talk about something else.” Colonel Pratt rubbed his tired eyes as if this would erase the memory of the day.
A silence fell over everyone at the table. John-John threw a dumpling that landed on Calvino’s plate. “Two point corner shot,” said Calvino, sticking his fork into it and shoving the dumpling into his mouth as if such behavior were perfectly natural. The others kept their heads down, everyone chewing, lost in one collective thought: What does it feel like to be eaten by lions?
The colonel believed that this night would be his last before the carbon arc lamps had been switched on, throwing a spotlight on his investigation. Achara was a “somebody,” a man who occupied a prominent position, owned a large house and grounds, had significant ties to the Chinese community, was a friend of the rich and powerful. The public was accustomed to such men dying in car crashes, or of heart attacks in the arms of their mistresses, or of some rare cancer, and occasionally by gunshot. But being chewed up and swallowed by lions, even by Thai standards for death, that was biblical, mythical, and, most important, newsworthy. A Thai devoured by lions was the kind of story with racetrack wheels good for the long journey to the front pages of the foreign press. It would be all over the Internet. Video clips on YouTube. There was no way to clean the stain left on the reputation from this far-flung unofficial public record that was both everywhere and nowhere at the same time. And Achara’s dramatic death couldn’t have come at a worse moment for the police. Or the fragile government that sought to maintain the illusion of authority.
The top brass in the police department would turn up the temperature—that was what they did best—and the heat fell hard, burning some subordinates, threatening to fry others, as the lower ranks scrambled to commandeer resources away from the demonstrators and put them on the case. Colonel Pratt knew that the internal pressure had only started, and all he had was an unidentified thumbprint standing between a verdict of accidental death and one of murder. It did no good to point out that no investigation was being made into the death of a pro-government demonstrator the previous evening, or into the harm done to the forty people who’d been injured when the two sides clashed. Those were ordinary people. Those deaths, like the war-on-drug deaths, were political. Political deaths were the most difficult crimes to investigate. It was made worse by the atmosphere since the seizure of Government House and the declaration of a state of emergency. People halfway expected violence to erupt, and once it had, after surveying who’d been hurt and seeing no one important among the wounded or dead, everyone moved on. One Achara was worth hundreds of them.
Foreign governments from America, Canada, the UK, Japan, China, and Australia had been busy issuing advisories against unnecessary travel to Thailand. Stay away from demonstrations—the tone of the official warnings making Bangkok sound like a sister city to Gaza. People on the other side of the world would awake and, over coffee and toast, read about a man in Thailand eaten by lions as they’d slept. It was the kind of special feature news story that acted as a welcome diversion from politics. No government ever issued a travel warning about avoiding Thailand because of lions, elephants, snakes, and stingrays, though the chances of becoming a food treat or being shot by an off-duty upcountry cop who had too much whiskey and too little self-control were much higher than of getting caught up and killed in a political protest. People didn’t need their government to warn them about the lions.
Colonel Pratt saw the faces around the table, and no one looked hungry, no one was joking or laughing. The children had lapsed into silence, and John-John ignored his food to play with a toy robot. Pratt and Manee had come to think of Ratana and Calvino as more of a couple than a boss and secretary, though neither one had said anything to encourage that idea. Wishful thinking was always a sufficient basis for a delusion. Manee had taken matters into her own hands by referring to Calvino as if he were the father of John-John, even though she knew perfectly well that John-John’s father was a young American lawyer who’d been killed in Bangkok.
Pratt’s children seemed largely disinterested in politics.
The demonstrations could have been happening on the moon. It hadn’t affected their lives or their studies. But lions, wild animals, fur around the mouth rimmed with coagulated human blood—that had drawn and held their attention. “I wish I’d had a video to put on YouTube,” said Suchin. “You think anyone posted something?”
“Dad, did anyone take any video?” asked Suthorn, thinking her brother was quite brilliant to see the possibilities. Colonel Pratt inhaled and exhaled like a horse that the jockey was trying to back into the racing trap. “That wouldn’t be permitted.”
Blocked for national security.
Suchin and Suthorn locked eyes, the way siblings signal to each other that a parent has just given them a brush-off. The children knew that no one needed permission to post a video on the Internet but, like good Thai children, would not contradict their father.
First Suchin disappeared from the table, and a couple of moments later his sister followed. Suthorn had her handbag and car keys and left the house without saying anything to her father or mother. Manee watched at the window as her daughter’s car pulled out of the driveway. “The new generation,” she said, turning away from the window.
“Going out without a word. When they’re little children, they are so happy to see you come home every day. When they grow up, you become invis
ible. They slip away without saying good-bye. It’s what you and Vincent have to look forward to with John-John.”
Manee and Ratana were at odds over the demonstration. They hadn’t always disagreed. Before the coup they had attended demonstrations against the government together; they were like two sisters, committed, sure, and filled with the righteousness of their cause, and when the tanks came onto the streets of Bangkok, they believed they had won. But the coup hadn’t delivered the victory everyone had hoped for—new elections—and suddenly there was a new round of demonstrations to overthrow the new government. “Liberal democracy isn’t good for Thailand,” said Manee.
“We need to build up the people first so they cannot be fooled by corrupt politicians. Otherwise Thai people will lose who they are.”
Their instinctive closeness had gone missing the day after Calvino had come back with the poster banning Nueng from the grounds of Government House. Nueng was a massage-parlor ying, a mother in her mid-twenties, who’d signed on at One Hand Clapping and had been on the job for less than a year. She had gone to Government House not to hustle a trick but to meet her sister, and had been summarily tried and sentenced to banishment by the blackshirted security guards.
None of the other yings at the massage parlor had followed the political events. It was too remote from their daily need to earn a living. So far, none of them were aware of what had happened to Nueng and why she had suddenly become quiet and withdrawn. Being labeled a prostitute in public was about the worst thing (other than being labeled a drug dealer) that could happen to any Thai woman. She was spending more and more of her time watching the children in the day-care center. Since she’d been expelled from Government House’s grounds, she hadn’t worked at the massage parlor at all. Ratana knew that soon Nueng would run out of money, and pride would stop her from asking for a loan.
Calvino had noticed something else that existed between the women, something that manifested itself in the cool, formal way they spoke to each other. There wasn’t much he or Pratt could say or do. The thread of Thai politics was stitched from friendship obligations. People followed their friends. They didn’t much care about the details of the debate. Whenever ideology raised its head, no one except for a few leaders stayed awake two minutes into such a discussion.
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