by John Burdett
My dead partner Pichai was there at the stakeout, as were I and half the cops from District 8, not to mention all the TV networks. Joey appeared unarmed on the bedroom balcony, insulting Vikorn's manhood and goading him into a duel, while Vikorn crouched behind one of the police vans clutching a hunting rifle with infrared aiming device, which he fired before Joey finished proposing his rules of engagement. Maybe Joey had expected some such foul play, for he had placed himself at the very edge of the balcony, thus providing for a telegenic fall, including a backflip before the final splat. A few minutes later Mu appeared on the balcony waving a frilly Louis Quinze white handkerchief and smiling for the cameras. She held no grudges, she explained, beaming. After all, the house and cars were hers now, not to mention the furniture. A couple hours later at the station we discovered, to our astonishment, that the dumb moll who could hardly read and write possessed total recall. She was also apparently fearless and listed a total of three hundred and twenty-one names of her husband's business associates (a selective list even so: none of them were cops), while maintaining the same eager-to-please smile on her face and pointing her pyramids at us. With very little encouragement (well, an offer of immunity from prosecution, to be precise) she was able to confirm that, despite appearances, Joey had been secretly (and invisibly) armed and that Vikorn was correct in claiming he'd shot in self-defense, thus silencing bleeding-heart critics in the media. Her negotiating skills also proved superior to those of her late husband. Before she left the station, she pointed out to Vikorn that her life was now worth maybe one baht and that if she didn't have protection for the rest of it, she had as good as committed suicide by giving us that list of suspects.
"You need money" was Vikorn's response.
"Exactly."
"Okay," Vikorn said. Mu took this single foreign word as permission for her to continue to trade with the army. He also let her keep about ten percent of the drugs in the house. After all, the remainder was more than ample for the ritual photo-op with Vikorn standing in full Pol Colonel uniform smiling before a table laden with heroin, morphine, meth, and ganja, the street value of which was enough to buy a fleet of airliners.
All that was a few years ago. We still consult Mu now and then. Vikorn is no mean negotiator himself, and part of the deal was that she should remain an informant-particularly against Zinna, who was Joey's principal supplier. To keep her alive, our visits to her are restricted to no more than one a year, and total anonymity is required.
Money and time have shown her to be by nature neither a whore nor a crook but a true-born eccentric. Despite the security risk, she has refused to vacate the mansion, the grounds of which she has turned into a refuge for stray dogs and monkeys, which she feeds personally three times a day, usually in a blinding pink housecoat, except on anniversaries of her husband's death, when she wears mauve, Joey's favorite color. (One of the Roll-Royces is also mauve.) Armed and uniformed (mauve) security guards are everywhere and constantly patrol the perimeter of the grounds. There is even a sentry box where I had to flash our IDs, and a digital camera that enabled her to examine my and Lek's faces before letting us in.
Now we're standing on the tennis-court carpet in the main reception room while she sits on a glittering beige five-seater sofa, fondling a young and very sleepy female Dalmatian. I happen to know, for Vikorn likes to keep tabs, that she has no regular lover, unless it is one of the security guards, which is unlikely. She is like a billionaire nun with a weakness for animals. The solitude has all but dissolved self-consciousness, and the unrestricted play of emotion across her face, from sad to gay and back again, is quite childlike.
Lek is in shock at the vulgarity of the decor and stands rooted to the spot.
Mu says: "I remember you. You are the half-caste who was at the shoot-out. Did you kill my husband?"
"You know very well it was Colonel Vikorn."
"Ah, yes. At least, he took the credit in the media, but he's a very cunning man. Perhaps it was you or one of your colleagues who pulled the trigger." I say nothing. "Would you like to see him?" I cough. "Come along, I'm sure he'll be delighted." She lays the Dalmatian down in one of the lounge chairs, then casts a glance at Lek. "Is the beautiful boy coming?"
In a room adjacent to the lounge, Joey is embalmed a l'americaine in a characteristic pose from life, sitting in a director's chair holding a mobile to his ear, a cigar in the other hand, an open-neck Gucci shirt and jacket, smart YSL slacks, and multicolored loafers. His huge smile, acrylic in intensity, perfectly fits the house theme. In a neat melding of cultures, Mu has surrounded him with gold images of the Buddha in his various postures, and electric imitation votive candles flicker everywhere. The decor is the house standard, and the dominant color-you guessed. She changed into a mauve housecoat before entering the shrine. I have the disturbing sense that there is nothing but modified naked body underneath.
A finely manicured hand flits to her mouth. "You know, every time I think of that day I feel awful."
"We really didn't want to do it," I explain. "Vikorn would have made a deal if Joey hadn't wanted to die."
"I know. But afterward. At the station. You must have thought me so stupid, so naIve, so much the typical country girl out of her depth in the big city."
"Not at all. We were all pretty impressed, actually."
"You were?" A deprecating laugh. "Don't sweet-talk me, Detective. You were all laughing behind my back."
"Why should we have done that?"
"The silicone, of course. Joey was always so busy making money, he never inquired about proper enhancements. Look."
She pulls open the housecoat, and there they are. For the first time Lek shows an interest in the case. I feel it will be a load off her mind if I follow her directions and examine them, although I've already seen the point. The stiff silicone is all gone, replaced no doubt with saline bags or collagen, which, I can report, yield nicely to the touch, bounce and swing beautifully, and really are more or less indistinguishable from the real thing, although a purist might complain they belong on a woman ten years younger.
"Can I?" Lek asks. Mu smiles and nods. With great reverence he handles both breasts, as if examining art objects that he soon will own himself. "They're amazing."
"Yes," I say, "excellent. You must be very proud."
"Yes," as she does up the coat with a quick glance at Joey. "Now, what d'you want to know? About once a year Vikorn sends someone to me, but I'm really very out of touch now."
"In front of Joey?"
"Of course not. Let's go upstairs-I like to look at the animals."
The bedroom is so large, it is like the bedding department of a great store. Everything is high schlock. For a moment my tortured eye rests with optimism on a modest set of bookshelves. I'm impressed that the books are all Buddhist; my heart sinks, however, when I see they are all the same book.
We three sit demurely on a window seat, which I think must be her favorite in the house, and look out onto the courtyard, where a monkey is riding a Great Dane, just like a jockey, even using his long arm to urge him forward. All is going well-even the dog seems to be enjoying the privilege of transporting a higher species from place to place, when another monkey, a chimp I think, somewhat older and shrewder looking, wants to hitch a ride.
"That's Vikorn," Mu explains.
Vikorn's first thought is to swing from the tail, which has the effect of halting the dog. Now he jumps on his back, joining his colleague, while other monkeys gather round. Mu pronounces their names softly from time to time. The whole of District 8 is here, it seems.
One by one Mu names the dogs. They are all well-known drug dealers. "That's how I remember people. I think which of my dogs they most resemble. Unless they're cops, then they have to be monkeys. The monkeys are smarter, but they're not very happy. There's always a problem with them, but the dogs are pretty content unless the monkeys start giving them a hard time."
"Is there a dog named Denise?"
She flicks me a glanc
e. "Denise?" Pointing to a female bulldog: "Yes, there she is. Is she the one you want to know about?"
"If you don't mind."
She hesitates. "Is this authorized? Vikorn is supposed to keep me alive."
"We took precautions, came in a cab; I'm sure we were not followed."
Agitated, she gets up to fetch a Chanel handbag and a large hand mirror in silver frame. Without a hint of self-consciousness she opens the bag, takes out a silver box that might have been designed for snuff, drizzles a line of the white contents onto the mirror, scrapes it all together with a razor blade, leans over, presses one nostril with her left index while sniffing through the right, switches nostrils, and rises again to replace handbag and mirror on a nearby table, all in a seamless movement. Catching Lek's eye: "For my nerves."
Flicking me another glance, she sighs. "There are more farang women in the business than there used to be. Denise has been around quite a while now. At first she was a minor player, quite scatty. The British intelligence people, MI6, were spying on her in Ko Samui and Phuket. She never carried herself but used men as mules-a variation on the usual method. The men were always clapped-out white men, mostly Brits and Australians with no brains, beach bums with habits to feed. More than half of them got caught, so her reputation suffered, and everyone who knew anything about the business was afraid to carry for her. Somehow she made contact with the army and reinvented herself. But she had to convince the mules that she was properly connected in Thailand. One of Zinna's men introduced her to me."
"You arrange her credibility sessions?"
A smile. "You could put it like that. She became very careful about the men she used. They were still stupid but much more experienced. They weren't the usual bums, they were part of the industry in their own countries, usually they had done jail time, but at least they knew the ropes. The last one, Chaz Buckle, knew a lot about Thailand and how the system works. He knew that the best way to leave the country with a suitcase full of dope was to have one of the authorities on your side. Cops or army."
"He was her lover?"
"Yes. They usually are. She uses sex like that-I think it's the way she gets her kicks."
"He has her name tattooed on his arm."
She shrugs. "Tattoos-what do they mean? They're like T-shirts. But maybe they had a real thing going. After all, she introduced him to Zinna himself."
"Why would Zinna agree to that?"
Locking eyes with me. "Because he suddenly found himself with more than a hundred kilos of morphine that he needed to move in a hurry. I think you know where the M came from. It's the same stuff Vikorn used to try to frame him in that court-martial. He wanted to get rid of it right away because he knew Vikorn would be on to him. He needed the carriers to take as much as twenty, thirty kilos at a time-you can't do that with amateurs; you have to use people who know what they're doing. And such people want security. In Thailand they want to know someone big is on their side to ensure a smooth passage out of the country. They tend to be wise to the scam that uses a small-time carrier as a sacrificial decoy while the big shipment goes undetected."
"The meeting took place here?"
"Yes. I'm the neutral ground."
"Zinna came with some of his men?"
"Of course. It was quite a show. The farang carrier Buckle was very impressed." She glances out the window, then back to me.
"Thank you," I say. "That's what I needed to know."
She smiles politely and gets up to lead us downstairs. Clearly this is as much risk as she can take. The interview is over. Outside, on the magnificent pillared porch, she rests her eyes on Lek. "Can you really take care of him? He's too beautiful, too innocent." Reaching out, she strokes his hair as if he were a dog. "Poor darling hasn't been wounded yet. I do hope you survive."
In the cab Lek controls himself for as long as he can, then blurts: "So when do I get to see Fatima?"
"I've got to prepare her. She may not want the responsibility. Give me a week or so." Softening my words with a smile: "I'm quite busy, you know."
22
I 'm feeling pretty good, farang. In fact, I'm feeling like a farang. Truth be told, I cannot recall ever carefully preparing a watertight case and generally going the whole investigative nine yards. I must admit it's not something I'd want to do more than once in a while, it's so damned time-consuming (I mean, nine times out of ten you know whodunit so you grow the evidence accordingly-it's one of those efficient Asian techniques you'll have to adopt as global competition heats up-can't have your law enforcement potting fewer perps per cop than us, can you-especially now you've dumped the rule of law in all cases where it proves inconvenient, right?), but Vikorn wants it done by the book this time. We're going to leak the evidence to the media and run it on the Internet, so the judges will have to nail Zinna or risk impeachment themselves-there will be no funny business behind the scenes like last time. So I'm sitting at my desk making one of those lists cops like me never make:
Evidence
1. The dope. Well, it's definitely morphine that Buckle was carrying, our forensic boys did all the tests, and Ruamsantiah called them on the telephone this morning: Of course it's morphine-is the Dalai Lama a Buddhist? They're happy to go into print, we'll have the report by this evening.
2. Chaz Buckle, with a little chemical inducement, is ready to sign off on his increasingly detailed revelation of the Denise operation and her connection to Zinna.
3. Khun Mu, with a guarantee of security from Vikorn and a sum of money that he won't discuss (but will have to be enough to buy Mu a new identity and a new life with no loss of amenities: I reckon well over a million dollars has changed hands), will testify that the meeting between Zinna, Denise, and Chaz Buckle did indeed take place on her land.
All I have to do is find Denise and bang her up for a week or so until she's ready to confess all she knows about Zinna in return for a dramatic reduction in what would otherwise be a death sentence. It doesn't get much neater and more satisfying than that, and I'm ready to concede there are times when your system has its merits, farang. (Promotion, here I come.)
Except that my mobile is ringing, and I'm having one of those gloomy glimpses into the immediate future. I see from the screen on the phone that the call is from Ruamsantiah.
In a depressed tone: "We had to let the farang Chaz Buckle go."
"Huh?"
"Our forensic boys decided the stuff he was carrying was just icing sugar after all. They claimed the first tests used contaminated instruments that misled them."
"Zinna paid them off?"
"Is there another explanation? The General sent some high-powered lawyer to explain to us that we have no legal right to hold Buckle. Then the Director of Police called Vikorn to tell him to let him go."
"How's Vikorn taking it?"
"He's in his office waving his gun around."
I close on Ruamsantiah and take a deep breath before I call Vikorn on his mobile.
Vikorn: "You've heard?"
"Yes. We had to let him go."
"Have you any idea what this is doing to my face?"
"Yes."
"I'll be a laughingstock."
"Not necessarily. We can call for a second opinion on the dope, maybe send it to a farang agency overseas."
"So then we end up with two conflicting forensic reports. That's all the wriggle room he needs."
"You can't give up now."
"Thais laugh at losers. I'm looking like the loser here. I frame him, he gets off. I grab one of his couriers, he springs him."
What can I say? This is all true.
"Be careful-he hasn't finished yet," Vikorn says despondently, and closes the phone.
I'm back at the bar in the evening. It's quite a slow night, and I'm thinking of closing early, when my mobile starts to ring. It is the colonel in charge of the Klong Toey district. It seems that a squat, muscular, unusually ugly, and tattooed farang has been found dumped in the river. Someone told him I might know something about i
t. I call Lek to tell him to pick me up in a cab.
23
A t the junction of Ratchadaphisek and Rama IV, Lek says: "I've never been to Klong Toey before. Is it as bad as they say?"
"Pretty much."
"You don't mind about going there at night, just the two of us?"
"We're cops, Lek."
"I know. I wasn't asking for myself. I feel so safe with you. You're like a kind of Buddha for me-just being with you banishes fear."
"You have to stop talking like that."
"Because it's not macho cop? But I love you for what you're doing for me-I can't deny my heart." I sigh. "Would you mind telling me when we're going to meet my Elder Sister?"
"When we're ready. You and me."
The truth is, I've still not found the stomach to introduce Lek to Fatima. Every time I pick up the phone to call her, I have a vision of her eating the kid alive. "Look, Lek, remember what you were telling me the other day, about the path of a katoey being the toughest, loneliest path a human being can choose?"
"I didn't choose it. The spirit who saved my life chose it."
"Right. And maybe that spirit has chosen Fatima-but I need to be sure. I feel like I'm holding your life in my hands here."
Lek stretches out a hand to rest on my knee for a moment. "The Buddha will give you enlightenment for this. You're so advanced, you're almost there."
"I don't feel advanced. I feel like I'm corrupting youth."
Lek smiles. "That only shows how holy you are. But I have to follow my path, don't I? This is my destiny we're talking about. My karma. My fate."
"Right."
"Will you lend me the money for the collagen implants in my buttocks and chest?"
I groan. "I guess so."
Klong Toey: grave crime at its most poetic. The talat (market) is the emotional center, a square acre of green umbrellas and tarps beneath which chilies lie short and wicked on poor women's shawls; chickens cram together dead or alive; ducks grumble in wooden cages; every kind of crab mimes death agonies in plastic bowls or gasps in the heat (both fresh- and saltwater, soft shell or hard); open-air butchers chop up whole buffalo; jackfruit, pineapple, orange, durian, grapefruit, bolts of cheap cotton, every kind of hand tool for the third-world handyman (generally of such inferior steel, they give out during the first hour-I have a personal vendetta against our screwdrivers, which bend like pewter-they would drive you totally nuts, farang); and so on. There are even some corrugated iron shacks nearby from the skulduggery school of architecture, joined clandestinely by precarious walkways that cry out for a chase scene, but most of the buildings surrounding the square are three-story shop-houses of the Chinese tradition. The sidewalks provide good clues as to the business of the shops: whole automobile engines pile up outside their ateliers dripping black oil; air-conditioning ducts of all dimensions stand proud outside another; CD rip-offs on stalls, the latest boom boxes block the way outside the stereo store. There are no farang here (either they don't know, or knowing, they stay away), these slow-moving crowds of brown folk are as local as somtam salad, common as rice. The point: Klong Toey district includes the main port on the Chao Phraya river, where ships have unloaded since the beginning of time. (There are sepia pix of our forefathers in traditional three-quarter black pants, naked to the waist, their long black hair tied back from their fine foreheads in magnificent ponytails, unloading by hand in the impossible heat, many emaciated from your opium, farang.) A couple of streets away: a fine big customs shed and a complex of buildings belonging to the Port Authority of Thailand. The river itself is no more than a stone's throw away, and many of the original inhabitants of this seething township have built their shacks on stilts on the other side of the water. Medieval riverboat men ferry the poor to and fro for twenty baht a trip in their modest hand-built canoes (with Yamaha outboards and millionaire bow-waves). In short, everyone knows the main industry is pharmaceuticals, for there is probably nowhere in Thailand where dealers, kingpins, addicts, cops, and customs are so conveniently massed together in one square mile of business-friendly riverfront real estate. Inevitably spin-off industries such as contract slaying, loan-sharking, and extortion have moved their headquarters here. I'm a little surprised that Colonel Bumgrad is troubling himself with a mere Trance 808. I was afraid of hostility on his part, for he is one of Vikorn's many enemies, but he's the incarnation of charm as he greets me when Lek and I get out of the cab.
