Daeng announced that everyone was invited back to the restaurant to drink a toast to their old friend. That afternoon, Madam Nong had driven to Daeng’s in Civilai’s yellow Citroën jam-packed with her husband’s leftover bottles, so there was plenty to drink that night. The temple was only four blocks from the restaurant so very few of the guests refused the invitation. One of those apologizing was Cindy. She approached Siri with a large brown envelope under her arm. Ugly sniffed at her leg. She was clearly one of the police department’s favorite suspects for the killings but Siri felt no fear. It was as if Civilai’s death had made him not invincible but indifferent to attempts on his life.
“Dr. Siri,” she said. Already she was slurring. “You asked me if I could find you information on the downed pilot. I was able to pull this file after the parade. It seems to me there are a lot of inquiries going on about the . . . I don’t know, about the accidents? The journalists and now Civilai. You know? Perhaps if you could confide in me what you’re looking for exactly, I could help. I have resources.”
“So it seems,” said Siri, holding up the envelope. “Perhaps after I’ve looked through this I’ll have requests. Are you not going to join us for the wake?”
“I’m obliged to attend the closing ceremony, however briefly,” she said. “Then I have to pack.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m on my way to Phnom Penh,” she said. “This was just a temporary posting.”
“You’re fluent in Lao and they send you to Cambodia?”
“I speak a fair bit of Cambodian too.”
“Multitalented.”
“My offer of help still stands.”
“You’ve only been here, what? Nine days?”
“Fourteen,” she said, “but my work here is done.”
“Two weeks? That’s most efficient of you,” said Siri.
Chapter Sixteen
The Wake
“Bruce, my boy, you don’t have to film the wake,” said Siri.
“It’s like they say back home in Sydney,” said Bruce. “You can make a bit of money filming a wedding, but you make a hell of a lot more filming the honeymoon.”
Siri laughed and slapped him on the back. The restaurant was packed to the point where they’d had to move the tables out to the roadside so the guests could fit inside. Daeng had felt obliged to make noodles for everyone, but Siri had put his foot down. Instead they chewed on baguettes with assorted dips and salads.
“You think this gathering might degenerate into an orgy?” Siri asked.
“You never know, Doctor,” said Bruce. “Sometimes you just have to point the camera and it makes things happen.”
Daeng arrived, put her arm around her husband and asked to borrow him.
“Phosy and Dtui and Sihot are upstairs,” she said. “We’re looking at the US documents. You want to join us?”
“It’s Civilai’s wake,” said Siri.
“He’ll understand.”
They sat cross-legged on the floor in the skirt-bank room. With Malee asleep on a pile of sins, Dtui did her best to translate the relevant documents. There were a lot of them.
“All right,” said Phosy. “Originally, I thought we were down to the last threat. We can pretty much discount the first—the Corsican in Paris. I’ll get back to the second suspect later.”
“What do you mean?” said Siri.
“One at a time,” said Phosy. “We’ll start with Henry in Hanoi in ’72. The last contact you had with him was Christmas that year. He sent a Christmas card to you, Doctor. You picked it up on your next visit to Hanoi. What do you remember about that card?”
“Reindeer. Glitter,” said Siri.
“Not helpful,” said Daeng.
“Let me remind you,” said Phosy. “The message read ‘To you and your loved ones. With nothing but unnatural death to look forward to. I shall kill you all. I’ll be seeing you, Siri Paiboun. I promise you that.’ Once the pilot had been exposed as a fraud, the North Vietnamese plan was to fly him to Saigon with the other three pilots and let the US military sort out the punishment.”
“That’s the last I knew,” said Siri.
“The records we got from the US embassy start on December twenty-eighth,” said Dtui. “Apart from a break for Christmas Day so the pilots could have some nice roasted chicken and a cold beer, Hanoi was spattered with ordnance for eleven days straight. As they couldn’t leave, Henry was still in a cell at the clinic where you met him. The US bombed the fuel plant and missed. They leveled a suburb for four blocks in either direction. The clinic was reduced to rubble. One of the pilots was killed but not Henry.”
“What happened to him?” Daeng asked.
“In the chaos of the bombing, thousands were killed, communication networks were destroyed and the surviving MIA pilots were forgotten and left to fend for themselves. Despite the fact that their country was raining bombs from B-52s on the Vietnamese, they gave themselves up to the authorities. I’m guessing they had no other choice. Henry wasn’t amongst them. He’d fled.”
“How could an American remain unnoticed in Hanoi?” asked Daeng.
“There were foreigners in Hanoi, even through the bombing,” said Siri. “There were Eastern European advisors, press, tourists. All he needed to do was get a change of clothes.”
“Even so, he wasn’t about to walk out of Vietnam during the heaviest bombing of the war,” said Phosy.
“But he could fly,” said Dtui, flipping over the page. “The last entry in Henry’s file is this mention of a group of American folk singers staying at the Reunification. While they were down in the bunker hiding from the air raids, someone broke into the room of a guitar player and stole his passport and air ticket as well as a large sum of money. When they noticed the robbery the next day it took forever to find someone to report it to. The Committee for Solidarity with the American People in Hanoi was obviously not quite as enamored of their American guests as they had been before the bombings. It would have taken some time to arrange replacement travel documents for the guitarist. But, that morning, a commercial flight left for southern China. On board, having successfully changed the date of his flight was someone claiming to be the guitarist. That same person made an ongoing flight to Bangkok. There’s no firm evidence that it was Henry who stole the passport, but there was no trace of him in Hanoi.”
“When I interviewed him he had a two-month old beard,” said Siri. “He could have easily passed for a folk singer. I’m sure Immigration didn’t look too closely.”
“And that brings us back to his Thai family,” said Daeng. “His plan had failed. He was still poor. But by now the Thai authorities would have been alerted to look out for him. The Americans were on his trail.”
“If he was thirty-three in ’72 he’d be forty-one now,” said Phosy. “Even married to a Thai he’d need a passport to stay there all this time. He’d have to apply for residence every year.”
“Or pay a local cop to keep his mouth shut,” said Sihot.
“He couldn’t take on the guitarist’s ID because the passport had been reported stolen,” said Phosy. “But it’s Thailand. You can buy a whole new identity there.”
“He’d need money for that,” said Siri. “He stole some in Hanoi but not enough to start up a new life.”
“I don’t know,” said Phosy. “He’s a conman. He almost convinced two governments he was a POW. He’s cunning. His type is never short of a money-making scam. He could get away with anything. He might be in Vientiane as a diplomat or a journalist or an aid worker. You never know.”
“He’d still need documents to get into the country,” said Daeng.
“Or a boat,” said Sihot.
“All right, so what’s the other news?” asked Daeng.
“What other news?” asked Phosy.
“You said there was information about the se
cond suspect.”
“The Frenchman, right.”
“He drowned,” said Siri.
“Presumably,” said Phosy. “Again, no evidence. But following your suspicions I sent some men to your friend Dr. Porn’s house. She’s bolted. It looked like she’d packed in a hurry.”
“Front door was open. Lights were still on,” said Sihot. “Something had spooked her.”
“Perhaps the fact that we were on to her,” said Phosy.
“I don’t believe Dr. Porn’s involved in all this,” said Daeng.
“Well, she’s certainly hiding something,” said Sihot. “Her motor scooter was gone. I couldn’t find a passport. But I did talk to a neighbor. What do you know about your Dr. Porn?”
“Not a lot,” said Siri. “I first met her here in ’75. The Women’s Union trusted her enough to give her a top position. I know she was with the resistance for a while.”
“Did you know that she was in Saigon?”
“I don’t recall her mentioning that,” said Daeng.
“She was there for quite a while during the French occupation, evidently. Long enough to take a French lover.”
It was then that Siri remembered where he’d seen the tube that had contained the original note. The one tied to Ugly’s tail or one very similar to it had sat in a glass souvenir cabinet in Dr. Porn’s office.
“This information is from the neighbor?” said Daeng. “Hardly a secret then.”
“She was a bit sketchy on details,” said Phosy. “I’ve called for the records from the Union. Evidently, the lover was multilingual. Spoke Lao.”
“You don’t think . . . ?” said Siri.
“Brokenhearted,” said Sihot. “Her lover arrested and shipped to France. The thought of revenge the only thing keeping her going. I don’t—”
Bruce and his camera appeared in the doorway. He was drunk and giggly.
“Afraid you have to either look soused for the camera or come down and poin the . . . join the party,” he said. “People are leaving. No hosts. Bloody poor show.”
“He’s right,” said Daeng. “There’s nothing we can do tonight. Come, young Bruce. Follow me from guest to guest and I’ll disclose their most intimate secrets for the camera.”
“Bravo,” said Bruce. “I’ll have enough footage to produce my own documentary. In fact, that’s a bloody good idea.”
“Stay with Daeng,” Phosy told Sihot.
“Not so close her husband will get jealous but near enough to take a bullet for her,” said Siri.
The party was over and nobody had died. Siri and Daeng lay on a patch of grass at the river’s edge, close enough to feel the spray from the water dashing against the rocks and getting whisked up on the breeze. They were holding hands and had been since they staggered down the bank. They heard a splash. Crazy Rahjid had abandoned his white nightshirt and was backstroking naked against the current. He should have been carried away by the force of the water but he remained, neither ebbing nor flowing, as if he were anchored.
“Will you have a wake for me?” Daeng asked her husband.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not dead.”
“When I am.”
“I’ll be dead ten years before you, and I’ll be in far too advanced a state of decay to think about all that organizing.”
“He said I’m next, Siri.”
“I know. You’re not the type to worry about dying.”
She sighed. “I just don’t want to go without knowing who he was and how he did it. How sad will it be if our final mystery together remains unsolved.”
“I’m afraid to say Dr. Porn isn’t looking that innocent,” he said. “Maybe it is solved.”
“But so many questions are still unanswered.”
Rajhid vanished below the surface of the water. He was something of an aquatic animal, but, instinctively, Siri and Daeng began to mentally count the seconds. Siri must have lost count because when the Indian reappeared near the far bank, the doctor had him under for an hour.
“Have you seen him?” Daeng asked.
“He’s over there,” said Siri.
“No, I mean, Civilai. Since . . .”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Sorry. We had a bit of a chat the night he died. I disappeared in Dr. Porn’s office when she went to get her motor scooter.”
“Was he . . . natural?”
“He was suspended at the end of a rope with lava lamp effects all around him.”
“No, I mean, did he seem different? Is the other world like an afterlife?”
Siri gave it some thought. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I mean we won’t be lying there hand in hand in our halos sipping cocktails.”
“But we can communicate?”
“Until eternity.”
“Then that’s good enough.”
With the help of Rajhid, Siri and Daeng climbed the riverbank, crossed the dusty road and negotiated the challenge of the staircase to bed. Rajhid turned off the downstairs lights and closed the shutters. Daeng collapsed fully dressed—for now—on the mattress. Siri, always orally aware, went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He smiled at himself in the mirror as the toothpaste dribbled down his chin. His teeth always seemed more desperate for a good clean when he was drunk, and he had time on his hands. He opened the medicine cabinet, which usually contained nothing but old razor blades and various balms and ointments for the elderly. But that night he saw four bottles he didn’t recognize. Still brushing, he focused on the label of one of them. He was confused. He read it again and the brush dropped from his hand and into the toilet. He grabbed the bottle, ran into the bedroom and shook Daeng awake. She came to reluctantly and in poor humor.
“Look at this,” Siri shouted, holding the bottle in front of her face. “Look.”
She tried to focus.
“How many of these have you taken?” he asked.
“What?”
“How many?”
Chapter Seventeen
Porn
By midday on Wednesday they had all the evidence they needed to convict Dr. Porn. All they were missing was the doctor herself. Phosy and his team had worked since sun up to put together all the pieces. The fisherman at Ban Donhai had caught two inhalers. The refills in both were empty. But the label on the newer one was clearly from the office of Dr. Porn.
The sons of Lah, the bread woman, recalled that their mother had obtained her benzodiazepine from Dr. Porn’s surgery as well. The locked cabinet in Porn’s office contained a bunch of keys that were labeled “Silver City/USAID.” And the final clue had been in Siri’s bathroom all along. Since Daeng first started seeing Dr. Porn, she’d been prescribed methotrexate: 7.5mg to be taken once a week to treat her arthritis. It would have been far too difficult to explain how she had been cured of an incurable condition so she’d said nothing. She’d stopped off at the doctor’s surgery and picked up her prescription from the housekeeper. Daeng didn’t notice at the time, but the doctor had upped the dosage to 10mg a day. At least that was the amount handwritten on the label. That concentration would be fatal in a woman of Daeng’s age. Daeng accepted and paid for the medication—but she had no reason to take it. So it sat there, unopened in the cabinet until Siri brushed his teeth the night before. The only element missing now was motive, and they agreed the French lover angle was now worth pursuing more than ever.
The morning noodle rush had not helped remove the pain that frog marched back and forth across the brains of Dr. Siri and Madam Daeng. They had the headaches they deserved.
“It’s this,” said Siri, as he dipped the tips of his old chicken bones in a pot of yellow paint. Daeng had sent Mr. Geung and Tukta on some unnecessary errand to stop their overly loud laughter. They regretted having promised Bruce
access to their heads to complete his documentary, but at least he and his camera were silent.
“What?” she said.
“This is the reason we shouldn’t drink,” he said. “Not liver failure and death. Death is by far the better option. The hangover. That should be our incentive to give it up. Why do we persist on having mornings after, given how horrible they are?”
“No, I can’t use any of this,” said Bruce, switching off his camera and loading a new three-minute cartridge. “We’re reaching the climax here. You have to focus. The world wants to know—”
“The world’s watching your film?” asked Siri.
“Are you kidding?” said Bruce. “This could be compelling. You’re about to tell the audience how you unmasked a killer. We need your thoughts. We need to know why a woman you trusted and liked should want you and your loved ones dead.”
“But we don’t know why,” said Daeng. “I thought we were all friends.”
“That’s fine,” said Bruce turning the camera back on. “That’s the relationship we need to establish. But first, we need atmosphere. Something undeniably Lao. I know. Follow me.”
Bruce settled on the skirt-bank room for background. He draped the sins elegantly and had Siri and Daeng sit cross-legged on the floor in front of them. They were concerned that his decision to have them drinking coconut water from actual coconuts was a little hokey. But Bruce convinced them Aussie audiences lapped up all that sentimental ethnic content. And they couldn’t deny the cool sweet water was exactly what they needed to douse the cinders in their brains.
“I’ll edit this all in the right order after,” he said. “We’ll get to the ‘why’ later. Let’s start with what you think happened.”
Their cameraman was far more energized than the old couple in front of him. He could obviously picture commercial success and personal fame. The more excited he became, the more pronounced his Aussie-tainted accent was.
“Start with the dead Australians,” he said.
The Second Biggest Nothing Page 17
