"They have a fleet of yellow-shirt shuttle buses. You can go anywhere you choose in Bangkok free of charge."
"So, why are you still there?"
"Where would I go in Bangkok? It's an awful place."
"You're still banking on having something to tell the grandchildren, aren't you?"
"I'm keeping a notebook diary. So far, the only excitement has been the barging and yelling from the disgruntled passengers and my table tennis victories. I might have to embellish."
"So, are you free now?"
"I have another match in twenty minutes. A baggage handler. Strong wrists. Lovely smile."
"All right. Never mind the table tennis. You remember the coverage of the Iraq war? A journalist a million miles inside the desert. Not a communication tower in sight. And he charges up his laptop computer and files a live report. And it's all wobbly and the words don't all connect up, but there he is, live in the middle of nowhere."
"Technology's come a long way since then."
"So, would it work if you were, say, in the middle of the ocean?"
"Same principle. As long as you're on the BGAN network with multiple voice and data interfaces, including WLAN connectivity."
"All right. I have no idea what you just said. I don't actually need the serial numbers and stock codes. Where do I get hold of one?"
"Can't you just video it?"
"No. It has to be live."
"Then you'd need a multi-user satellite phone with extensive functionality. Thane and Thane do a really top-"
"All right. Where do I find one?"
"You don't just stroll into an appliance store and pick one up. You certainly won't find one on the shelf at Tesco Lang Suan. They usually have to be ordered. When do you need it?"
"Tomorrow. Maybe sooner."
"I sense another menopausal, heterosexual mad rush to the head. Take a deep breath and tell your old sister exactly what you have in mind here."
Dinner was served with a very fine cardboard cask of Chilean red in the room of our friends from Bangkok. Because I didn't want to overwhelm them with too many annoying visitors, I told the rest of my family they weren't invited. This was my game. Beneath the shuddering light of an oil lamp, with the rain still pattering against the glass of the windows, the Noys looked drained of their natural beauty. Since there was no electricity, they hadn't showered or blow-dried or freshened up from the day's ordeals. They'd assumed an unmistakably helpless demeanor, like the last two polar bears on the last block of glacier. They didn't attack their ginger chicken with the enthusiasm I thought it deserved. I felt like I was eating for the three of us.
Between bites, I asked, "So where did you think you'd go from here?"
Neither answered.
"You realize how insulting today's little drama was, I suppose?" I added. "It was a bit late to stop trusting us. If we'd been likely to turn you in, you'd have been busted long ago."
"That wasn't the reason," said Noy. "We did. We do trust you. We love you, even. We feel safe here. We didn't want to leave."
"Then…why?"
"We were afraid for you," said Mamanoy. "We were afraid they'd find us, and harm would come to you because you'd been sheltering us."
I so desperately wanted to know who "they" were, but I was supposed to know the whole story already. If I admitted ignorance now, they'd clam up.
"They're not as powerful as you think," I guessed.
"How would you know?" asked Mamanoy.
Good question.
"Because power is an illusion. Most people who act tough are just…acting."
"Not these. They have people looking for us. Professionals."
"How could you know that for sure?"
"It's the way powerful people work. You lose face, so you have to let your associates know you've 'fixed' the problem. Not doing so would be a sign of weakness."
"So you think running and hiding is the answer? When would it all end?"
"When somebody's dead," said Noy, calmly.
None of us was eating.
"You really think…?"
"Yes. I know what they want me to do. When I refuse, they'll have no choice."
Whatever happened over there in the States had followed them back home and traumatized them.
"They've already sent a message," said Mamanoy.
"What sort?"
"We left two cats behind. Before we fled, we asked the neighbors to take them in. We thought they'd be safe. But som-somebody went to the neighbors' house and killed our cats."
"What? But that could have been some random psychopath," I said.
I knew no end of people who would gladly torture cats.
"The neighbors had three cats of their own. They weren't touched. The next day some people went to their house claiming to be local police officers investigating the cat killings. But the neighbors hadn't reported it to anyone. They told the men they didn't know us. They said they just noticed the cats weren't being fed and took them in. The officers left a phone number and told them to get in touch if they had any contact from us."
"How do you know this?"
"The neighbors are actually close to us. The husband is in e-mail contact with my husband. He writes from his office."
"And what machine does your husband write from?"
"He uses Internet cafes," said Noy. "We all have notebooks, but we've agreed not to use them with cell-phone dongles. Neither do we use our cell phones. Once every two days we call him from a pay phone. Here we used the one at the end of the lane. It's underwater now. We usually call him at a land number in-"
"Shh," said Mamanoy, and blushed immediately.
I smiled.
"I'm so sorry," she said.
"No problem," I replied.
Once paranoia sets in, it's hard to keep it under control.
"We knew they'd be looking for a mother, father, and daughter, so we went in different directions," said Noy. "We came down Highway 41. After Hua Hin we started traveling at night on back roads to avoid highway cameras. We'd find small resorts like yours to rest in in the daytime. We'd drive past, remove the plates, then drive back. We didn't want anyone reporting our registration details. We only stayed at places that didn't insist on seeing our IDs. On the day we came here, we'd been driving all the previous night. We'd stopped at two resorts where they said they had to write down our citizenship card details. They said it was the local regulation."
"Well, you're here now," I said. "And I don't want you pulling any more stunts like today. Now think back. Did you do anything in Pak Nam to draw attention to yourselves?"
"No," said Noy.
"Tell me exactly what you did there."
"We waited for the passenger truck and realized we didn't have money. We'd given your mother the last of our cash for the room here. We hadn't taken the car because we couldn't buy petrol."
"Where was the last place you used your credit card or ATM?"
"Hua Hin."
"That's four hundred kilometers away. Technically they could have traced you to there. All they'd need is someone at the bank to check the records. Either way they'll probably have assumed you were heading south. So, since Hua Hin?"
"All cash."
"We underestimated the costs of food and petrol," said Mamanoy. "We should have taken out more. Enough to get us to Malaysia. We hoped we could use the ATM today and be on a bus before they could trace it."
"So in Pak Nam, you tried the ATM and it was down. You tried to get money on your credit card, but they needed a guarantor. The bank phoned us. At no stage did anyone note down your card number or ask for personal details?"
"No," said Noy.
"Good."
"Not at the bank."
I gasped.
"Somewhere else?"
"I did send a letter EMS while we were waiting to be delivered back here."
"How did you pay for that?"
"We didn't. I told the manager I'd left my wallet at your resort. When we arrived, I borrowed
the money from your mother. We'll pay you back."
"I hope you didn't put your actual name in the sender box."
"I left it blank on the EMS form."
"Good. The post office can track that. That's why it costs extra. When the power comes back on, they'll type the details onto the computer."
I was getting as paranoid as them. I mean, who was going to hack the post office express delivery details?
"Tell me you didn't give this resort as your return address."
"Of course not," said Noy. "I put c/o the post office."
"Well, that's something, I suppose."
"Mair!" I shouted. I could hardly hear myself. There was a backhoe twenty meters away digging an escape channel for the flooded river. The local administration had decided my vegetable garden would be the perfect spot for it. Mair was on the veranda of her hut surrounded by creatures like some kindly lady in an old Disney animation. The three dogs were wrestling with her. Sticky had taken an immediate liking to little Beer and seemed to be unaware of how diseased she was. Even antisocial Gogo was tag-teaming with Mair. The monkey lounged on the rattan table above them, unpeeling tiny lady finger bananas. A toad hopped unimpeded across the deck. Two daring parakeets sat on the railing opposite, waiting for dropped bananas, and a whole parliament of ceiling lizards hung above, ever hopeful that the electric light might be switched on. The paraffin lamp attracted, then fricasseed any insects that made it through the drizzle.
"Mair!"
Gogo growled. The others ignored me.
"Yes, child?"
"Do you have the number for your friend at the post office?"
"Nat? Of course I do."
"Can I have it?"
"It's in my phone."
"Where's your phone?"
"Phuket."
"Phuket?"
"I'm assuming so. I contacted the gibbon rehabilitation center at Bang Pae. I'd taken some pictures of Elain here, and I wanted them to see her. See if they'd agree to take her on."
"So naturally you put the phone in the envelope so they could take a look."
"There's probably a way to send the pictures separately, but I couldn't for the life of me get them out. So I'll let them sort it out in Phuket."
"Did you, at least, turn it off?"
"The phone? Naturally. Do you think I'm completely useless? I'm sure animal activists will be able to work out how to turn on a telephone."
Sticky was mating with Mair's foot. He had an impressive erection for a young fellow. I had to turn away.
"Mair, I think the dogs are getting too excited."
"Well, somebody didn't take them for their evening walk, did somebody?"
"Mair, I'm a little bit bogged down here with stuff."
"I forgive you, darling."
"Have you seen Captain Kow around?"
She twitched.
"No. Why should I have?"
"I just want to talk to him."
"He won't tell you anything."
I tell you. Weird is a difficult concept to get your head around. If I ever wanted to waste a few years on a Ph.D. I'd probably look at signs in early life that point to the inevitability of Alzheimer's. Mair had always been that fringe character. Like me, her school and university mates had liked her, I suppose. She was funny, friendly, but too odd to join those cliques that linger later in life. The old school network didn't have a seat for Jitmanat Gesuwan. Her communist jungle years put her in touch with like-minded outcasts, most of whom sought respectability once the armistice was agreed.
Mair never really lusted after respectability. That's what I'd loved about her. Her joy. Her total disregard for Thai etiquette. Not caring what people thought of her. She'd been so unlike all the other mothers. She'd turn up at parent-teacher meetings in shorts and a T-shirt and boots. Unmade up. Unadorned. Unencumbered by shallow considerations. No show at all. And if the headmistress said something stupid-and they all did and everyone in the hall would know it-it would be Mair's hand in the air.
Mair's voice saying what everyone thought. Damn, I loved her at those meetings. I didn't care that I was the daughter of the odd woman. I'd push it to its limits. My trademark dark brown nail varnish, for example. If anyone else had tried that, they'd be dragged in front of the discipline mistress. But me? I was "the daughter." I needed tolerance. They probably had teachers' meetings just about me. I was top in most subjects, so the mother-daughter relationship hadn't retarded me at all. It just made me culturally dubious. If Mair had been Chinese or farang-a white foreigner-the faculty would have had no problem at all in labeling me. Ostentation was commonplace in foreigners. My defect lay in the fact that I was Thai, born of Thai parents from a long, inexhaustible line of Thais. They put the accident of me down to my mother. Neither of us fit. We'd gone our own ways. Me, into the unquenchable fascination of study. Her, into-wherever she was now. She came back to visit us on Earth from time to time, but I knew she had a happier place. I just wondered whether I was headed there too.
The monkey, aka Elain, climbed down from the table and started to pick imaginary ticks out of my mother's hair.
"I've rented a room," said Mair.
"For what?"
"Our Burmese school."
"Mair, we don't have-"
"Don't worry. It was only a hundred baht a month."
"Oh? What type of room can you rent for cheaper than a three-pack of toilet rolls?"
"Well, when I say room, perhaps I mean space. It's the unused back corner of the ice works down at the docks."
The same factory I'd visited earlier.
"Wouldn't that be a bit noisy?"
"It's a start. And to start badly is better than never to start at all."
That was, of course, so not true.
I doubted whether my TV would have been much more entertaining had there been power. I lay on my bed staring at it anyway. The screen reflected the tiny glow of the mosquito coil burning on the floor beside me. Beyond the window was a sort of final blackness. It suited my purpose: a clean slate.
Here we go.
The Noys. An upper-middle-class family. Father a successful businessman. Mother, the head of a large suburban middle school. Daughter, as bright as the Big Dipper. She gets a scholarship to study in the U.S. She struggles right up until the final year, when suddenly she outscores everyone on her finals. Far from being elated, she runs away without collecting her degree and reappears in Thailand, where her entire family is forced to flee, pursued by some mysterious "they." If I didn't have such a problem with cliches, I might, at this point, have told myself I was missing something. So I didn't. Even though I obviously was. I wondered whether the father's gambling debts had something to do with it. But how would that follow Noy to the States? I wondered whether Noy really was hooking to pay her way through school. What if, suddenly, she got serious about her studies and-I don't know-missed a date with some Saudi oil sheik? But how many D.C. pimps had a network that would hound the Noys all the way back to Thailand? And what about the mysterious sex-change boyfriend? How did the clerical department of one of the country's top universities stuff that one up so badly? That, I decided, was the place to start.
I flicked on my all-night rechargeable electronic hurricane lamp-made in Taiwan. Guaranteed eight hours of almost daylight. The picture on the box showed Saddam Hussein and his officers in an underground bunker, plotting by the light of the Shinomax. It momentarily bathed my room in an impressive warm light before fading down to dim. It was just enough to help me thumb through the pile of handouts Sissi had e-mailed me from Chiang Mai. She'd pretty much cleared out the Georgetown files. There were financial records, course registrations, and what I was looking for, the student lists. I found the name Chaturaporn on all of Noy's class files. He did indeed begin his academic life as a Mr. before reappearing as a Ms. by semester two. That would have remained a mystery to me had I not come across the list of deposit receipts from overseas students. I paused only to boggle at the cost of overseas study. No wonder
my local education department sent me to Sydney Tech. Financial records rarely thrilled me, but that one list provided two fascinating discoveries that sent shudders through my knees.
First was the reason the clerks had initially classified our Ms. Chaturaporn as a man. They had condescendingly assumed that anyone from Thailand couldn't spell. Admittedly, we can't. But that wasn't the case in Chaturaporn's fee receipt. The name was not Mr. Chaturaporn but ML, Chaturaporn. The clerks had taken the liberty to adjust the spelling, but anyone who grew up in my country would know there was no error. The ML was an important clue. It painted the scenery an entirely different color.
I was about to put down the bank transfer details and move back to the lists when I noticed the second startling piece of information. According to the receipts, ML Chaturaporn had received her deposit via the Bangkok Bank Corporation. It made me curious about who had funded Noy s study. But I certainly wasn't expecting what I found. The wire had been from exactly the same account. The bank details for both girls were identical. And there, like that first ever orgasm from a totally unexpected donor, the stars burst before my eyes. I had it. I wanted to shout. I wanted to call the Chiang Mai Mail to remind them what a great head of the crime desk I would have made. But, of course, I could not announce what I had learned. I could, however, confront the lawbreaker.
My Shinomax offered little more than a gray puddle of light to guide me to the Noys. It felt like midnight in Transylvania, but my phone told me it was only 8:37 P.M. Candles still flickered behind the Noys' curtains. I knew what crime they'd committed and had an idea who was after them. I had to admit they were totally screwed. I didn't bother to knock. The Noys were on their beds, reading by candlelight. With no fan to cool them, they wore the flimsiest of sleepwear. But I didn't let their gorgeousness distract me from my task. They didn't seem at all flustered by my arrival.
"Sorry, ladies," I said, and sat down at the end of Mamanoy's bed. They both knew the story, so I guess my purpose there that night was to confirm that I knew it as well.
"Here's the drama as I see it," I began. "A straight-A student is hired by a family to be a study friend to their eldest daughter while overseas. Of course, they didn't employ you for your social skills. You were there to attend every class together with your new friend. Perhaps we should call her…the duchess. I was confused that the registrar's office had her listed as a male in the first semester, then changed to female in the second. It didn't seem like the kind of error a university clerk would make But our Ms. Chaturaporn had indeed intended to write ML. As you know, it had nothing to do with gender. It was the abbreviation of Mom Luang. ML Chaturaporn was a member of the aristocracy. Her father, I imagine, is a very powerful man, I'm sure you know that. You were a shadow student to a little duchess. And in return for you kindly keeping their daughter company, they agreed to pay off all your father's gambling debts, unmort-gage your house, and rescue you all from the threat of poverty."
Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach jj-2 Page 15
