Bangkok Tattoo

27

It’s early afternoon by the time I reach Soi Cowboy and open the bar. I’m keen to check with Lek after his evening with Fatima, but first I need to discuss Chanya’s diary with Nong.

I wai the Buddha as soon as I’ve switched the lights on. The important thing, always, is to keep the beer and spirits replenished. Most customers drink Kloster or Singha or Heineken, and the girls of course make half their money through lady drinks, a fact which is never far from my mother’s mind. She has left a message telling me to order more Kloster and tequila from the wholesalers as soon as I get in. The tequila is not a problem, in the worst case we can always buy a few bottles retail, but the Kloster is dangerously low.

When I look up at the Buddha statue, I finally understand why I’m feeling so edgy. The little guy is fresh out of marigolds. Out in the street I find a flower vendor, from whom I buy as many garlands as I can carry. (Wherever you go in my country there will be a flower vendor, her stall laden with Buddha garlands: it’s a sure bet in a land populated by sixty-one million gamblers.) As soon as I’ve smothered him in flowers, I light a bunch of incense, which my mother keeps under the counter, wai him mindfully three times, and stick the incense in the little sand pit we keep for that purpose and beg him to switch the luck back on. The minute I’ve finished, my mother Nong arrives with her arms full of marigolds.

“I was so busy yesterday I forgot to feed him,” she explains from behind all the flowers. I don’t say anything, merely watch while she takes in the garlands I’ve just hung all over him. “Oh. Well, he’ll forgive us now.” A beam. “We should be in for some really good luck. How did you get on in Songai Kolok?”

I make a face and tell her to sit down at one of the tables. I tell her about the diary and the all-important fact that Chanya knew Mitch Turner in the United States. Had a passionate affair with him. Nong gets the point immediately. “There could be evidence linking her to him? If the Americans investigate, they’ll surely find out he was seeing a Thai girl in Washington. Even though she was traveling on someone else’s passport, they might find out who she really is?”

“Exactly.”

I gaze up at the Buddha and make a face. How many marigolds will it take before he forgives us for neglecting him? Nong follows the direction of my gaze, goes up to him, lights a bunch of incense, and wais mindfully, with rather more piety than I was able to muster.

“I’m sure you didn’t wai him properly,” she scolds. “It’ll be okay now.”

Now “Satisfaction” is playing on my mobile. It’s Vikorn, wanting to know how I got on in Songai Kolok. “You better get over here,” he tells me, and closes the phone.

The public area of the station is crowded with the usual collection: beggars, whores, monks, wives complaining about their violent husbands, husbands complaining about their thieving, lying wives, lost children, the bewildered, the ruthless, the poor. Everyone here is poor. Vikorn’s corridor is empty, though, as is his room apart from him. He listens while I tell him more about Chanya’s diary and the CIA men Hudson and Bright who turned up in Songai Kolok. He stands after a while, then walks up and down with his hands in his pockets.

“Look at it this way. You’re a brilliant scholar with at least a Ph.D. in something hideously complicated. While still an idealistic student, you decide to serve your country by joining the CIA, which eagerly recruits you. Ten years down the track you are no longer a naÏve student. Everyone you knew at college is earning twice your salary and having fun spending money. Men and women who were twenty percent dumber than you in school are now captains of industry, technology billionaires-maybe they’ve retired already from their first careers. They don’t have to worry about what they do and don’t say to their wives and families, they don’t need to think that the order could come from on high any minute for them to pack their bags and spend four or five years of their lives in some godforsaken dump like Songai Kolok. They don’t suffer polygraph tests every six months, random drug tests, electronic eavesdropping. You, on the other hand, are snared in the organization. Promotion is the only hope, the only way out of an incredibly frustrating trap. Now, spying is just the same as soldiering in one respect. What you need is a nice big war to open up the promotion prospects. Since 9/11, there is only one way anyone in the Agency is going to get promotion, and that is by nabbing a few Al Qaeda operatives. Tell me, how did they strike you, those guys you met who were sniffing around Mitch Turner’s apartment?”

As usual, my master has effortlessly demonstrated his strategic genius, the superiority of his mind, his encyclopedic grasp of human weakness in all its guises. “The older one, Hudson, was exactly like that,” I admit.

“Middle-aged, frustrated, desperate for promotion, sick to death of the tedium of small-scale spying, wondering what the hell he’s doing in the third world when he expected to be driving a nice big desk in Washington at this stage in his career, ideologically jaded?”

“Yes.” It does not seem appropriate to mention Hudson ’s extraterrestrial origins at this moment.

“And the other one?”

“Typical socially immature farang male with big ideas and tendency to walk into elephant traps.” There seems no need to go into the poor boy’s antecedents; people simply do not realize how boring most past lives are. Like so many of our species, Bright has been a herd animal for more than a thousand years, getting himself honorably killed in most of history’s great battles. Doubt did not enter his soul until he lay limbless and dying at Da Nang, when he entertained the unthinkable: Had he been misled?

“Hmm.” Looking at me brightly: “The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that. What is the West but a gigantic supermarket? And who really wants to die for a supermarket?” He stares at me. I shrug. “It’s simply a matter of being careful.” He makes that obscene fish-tickling gesture and grins.

When I check on Lek, I find he has called in sick for two days. Nobody knows where he is. When I call Fatima, she doesn’t know, either.

“Should we be worried?” I ask her.

“Darling, it was his moment. I had to kick him out of his comfortable little nest. Did he fly or not? There are no rules. If he survives, he’ll be back. He can’t do without me now.”

“You didn’t even check on him?”

“Don’t be a child, darling.”

Chanya in my dreams again last night. An artificial lake of the kind only seen in Rajasthan, a perfect square with a temple apparently floating on a white raft in the center. On shore, a line of forlorn young men. Each pilgrim is ferried out to the island for an interview with a Buddhist monk who resides there. When it is my turn, I find I cannot look into the monk’s eyes. My hand holds out a photograph of Chanya. I wake up in a sweat.

The dream has shaken me. I don’t think I’d admitted to myself how desperately I wanted her, and now I’m going through that disgusting form of anguish that is so entertaining when it happens to someone else. Having Vikorn make snide references to my emotional life is one thing, but to be outed by the transcendent is quite a different kettle of pla. Even so, I take a good couple of hours before I open my mobile and flick through the names until I reach C.

“Sonchai?” she says in that designed-to-melt tone that makes you want to kill her when she uses it on other men.

“I was just wondering how you were getting on.”

“Were you? Did you read my diary?”

A hoarse whisper: “Yes.”

“I suppose it’s not that interesting, really. I just thought you would want to know the background, in case…”

“Sure. I understand. There are a couple of things, though, maybe we should talk about.”

“There are? Like what?”

“Hard to talk over the phone, don’t you think?”

“In case we’re being listened to? Is it that bad already?”

“Ah, maybe, we just don’t know.”

“What d’you want to do?”

“Maybe we should have a bite to eat?”

28

Forget it, farang, I’m not telling you what happened at supper. Let’s say I made a total needy, clumsy, nerve-racked asshole of myself (there’s a reason why love is female in all responsible cosmologies, it turns men into clowns), but the steamed bass with lime was excellent, the cold Australian white out of this world, and my uncompromising kiss smack on the divine lips when we said goodbye better than both. (If she didn’t know before that I was gaga, she does now.) I’ll leave it at that for the moment, if you don’t mind. I’m taking it as a manifestation of cosmic compassion that she’s not working anymore. No, of course I didn’t tell her about the dream.

It is about ten in the evening when I return to the Old Man’s Club, where my mother has been in charge. She is nowhere to be seen, but many of the customers are wrinkling their noses in judgmental style.

I trace the aroma to the covered area in the yard where Nong is sitting. She does something furtive with her hands when she sees me, but it is too late.

“I thought you were on a diet.”

“I am. It includes fruit.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t just say fruit. I bet it says citrus fruit or something. You were eating apples only a few days ago.”

“Fruit is fruit. What’s the difference?”

I decide to play this delicate moment artfully and put on a charming smile as I approach. Despite her suspicions, she responds to my affectionate peck on the cheek and is too slow to stop my left hand as it makes a grab for the odiferous yellow splotch on her plate.

“Thieving brat.”

I munch cheerfully. Ah, durian, its exquisite melancholy decadence, its haunting viscous sensuality, its naked raw unashamed primeval pungency, its triumphantly morbid allure-oh, never mind, farang, no way you’ll understand durian without spending half a lifetime out here.

“It’s got to be the most fattening fruit in the world. Whatever farang concocted your diet has probably never even heard of it.”

“There’s an e-mail,” she says, not without a tone of relief. “He’s going to be delayed at least another week. Some case he’s got to be in the States for.”

May Buddha forgive me, I’d forgotten all about Superman. I rush to the PC and check the e-mail.

My dearest Nong and Sonchai, I’m so terribly sorry, but I’m going to be delayed. The Court of Appeals just informed me that they’ve moved one of my big three cases forward for hearing over the next few days. I’m representing one of the firm’s biggest clients and there’s just no way I can avoid being here for it. I’m going to come as soon as it’s over-and I mean as soon. I’m keeping a bag packed and I’m going straight from the office to the airport the minute the case ends. I’m burning up about you two. My god, Nong… My god (I love you too, Sonchai, even if we’ve never met).

I’m mulling this over (he said: I love you, but then he added too) when all of a sudden everyone freezes because two strangers have walked into the bar.

Well, not strangers exactly. America is certainly a tribal society, isn’t it? The effect they have on the old codgers in the bar makes me think of a couple of Cheyenne coming around a turning in a forest to find a band of Crow having lunch. Hudson and Bright and all the customers hitch their pants simultaneously. Hudson turns away from the wrinkled hippies with a sour look and stares me in the eye.

“Hello, Detective. Remember us?” Hudson says, almost without moving his lips, as hard, gaunt, and haunted as ever.

“Songai Kolok. You were businessmen at the time.”

“And you were an American resident with a green card. Let’s cut to the chase. You know why we’re here?”

Wordlessly I lead them out back. Hudson wrinkles his nose, and Bright sniffs ostentatiously. (That’s a third-world stink if ever there was one.)

“Mother, these are the two CIA spies I met in Songai Kolok, when they were pretending to be businessmen in the telecommunications industry,” I explain in Thai.

Have I told you before that in our primitive society we still have courtesy? My mother takes my introduction as a signal that these two men are higher up the pyramid than she. She stands and wais them mindfully. Hudson, I think, wishes he had a hat to lift, and Bright is confused. He thinks about a wai, then gives up.

“You mean they lied to you?” my mother asks, still maintaining the polite smile.

“Lying is what they do. They’re spies.”

“How disgusting.” Nodding politely at Hudson. “Do they speak Thai?”

“Not a word.”

Returning Bright’s respectful nod with a beam. “Does the Colonel know about them? Are we going to bump them off?”

“Mother, please, that would not be a good idea. The CIA is quite powerful.”

“I don’t like the way that young one keeps sniffing at my durian. Maybe I’ll bump him off myself if he keeps doing that.” In English: “Gentlemen, do sit down, my house is your home.”

I see that Bright is not at all certain that it would be safe to sit in a place with such a pervasive odor. Bravely he pulls up a chair, though, and Hudson does the same. Hudson has not failed to notice that he is in the presence of an attractive Thai woman of about his age group. (I see a terrible bitterness that he would be prepared to melt down and recycle for the right lady, maybe a womanly Asian with courtesy and gentleness? Could this be her?)

“The older one fancies you.”

“D’you want me to seduce him, find out how much he knows?”

“You’re supposed to be retired.”

“The young one really thinks he’s the bee’s knees, doesn’t he? Shall we set one of the girls onto him? I don’t think he’ll look like that when we show him the video of his performance with his pants down.”

I have an expression of filial adoration on my face. “That’s really not a bad idea. Is room ten still rigged up?”

“Yes it is, despite your puritanical objections.”

Explanatory note: Dear Nong has never forgiven me for refusing to join a syndicate that broadcasts pay-by-the-minute porn over the Net, usually without the consent or knowledge of the erection owner. The secret digital camera was all rigged up and ready to go when I found out and put a stop to it.

“Who shall we ask? What is his profile?”

“Easily aroused, good basic performer with not much imagination, probably can keep it up for the full twenty minutes if he needs to, a jaw-grinder on the home stretch, a triumphalist, resents it if the lady doesn’t climax. We don’t want submissive, he’d only get arrogant and contemptuous. Someone smart and subtle who will drive him crazy: Oh, I hope you’ll return soon, I get so horny when I don’t come, shall I get you some Viagra next time?”

“Nat?”

“She’s so flighty, but I agree she’s got the talent. In the right mood she would be perfect. I’ll see if she’s around.” In English: “Excuse me, gentlemen, I must get back to work.”

“We’ll put our cards on the table,” Hudson says in a flat, neutral tone as soon as my mother has gone. “You have information about the disappearance of one Mitch Turner. We think he was murdered in a hotel not far from here. We think he was with one of your workers at the time.” He looks at Bright. “Have I left anything out?”

Bright looks me intensely in the eye. (He really intends for me to really get what he’s saying.) “See, we’re Americans at war, and we don’t leave our dead in the field, no matter what. It’s as simple as that. We just don’t do it. So it’s in everybody’s interest to cut the crap, cut out all the-ah-little cover-ups and conspiracies and cooperate, get the thing over and done with and bring the perp to justice, because we will get to the bottom of this, one way or the other.” Out of the corner of my eye I see that Hudson has the grace to wince. “I hope you understand what I’m saying, Detective?”

I am obliging with Third World Fear and Awe when Nat appears with a smile to ask if anyone would like something to drink. Bright does not appreciate the distraction and snaps “Water” in the same tone of Stern. He flicks his eyes up at her. She is wearing a knee-length white cotton dress of relatively modest cut, although it does dip quite a bit, and she doesn’t seem to be wearing anything underneath. His eyes do not ransack her body, but the very pleasing contrast of stark white with her creamy brown legs and shoulders is hard to ignore. Contact the first.

“I’ll take a Coke if that’s okay?” Hudson says with considerable courtesy. (I think he was hoping for Nong to return.)

I shake my head with a smile, and Nat makes a cute wai to Hudson and Bright. Bright wrestles with distraction and wins. “Maybe the detective can confirm that we’re all agreed.”

“On what?” I ask with a smile.

“Yeah,” Hudson says, “you lost me a bit. What are we agreeing on here?” Why do I sense that these two partners are not enjoying a totally satisfactory relationship?

Bright goes-well, bright crimson. “I was just trying to-”

“I know what you were trying to do. Thailand is probably our greatest ally in this part of the world. If the president wants to screw up every international friendship we have, that’s up to him, but you’re not the president.” He looks as if he is about to say something more, then changes his mind. I am expecting Bright to turn volcanic, maybe shoot Hudson with a Magnum, but instead he makes a face of childish pique. Hudson leans forward a little, engages my eyes rather gently, even gives his own a slightly pleading hue. “Detective, look, we know what probably happened. You know who we are. Why are we here? We are here because the organization we work for is not going to rest until the disappearance of Mitch Turner is accounted for. Until then, officially no one can say if this is a case of international terrorism, a case of domestic violence, a mugging that went wrong-or what? See what I’m getting at? If something happened between Turner and one of your girls, if that’s all there is to it, if there are mitigating circumstances as there probably were, after all he was a big, strong guy-we think he disappeared on a Saturday night-he was known to have a very low resistance to alcohol-he shouldn’t have been in Bangkok at all-you see where I’m heading? If there are grounds for reducing the charge to manslaughter, maybe even entering a plea of self-defense, we would be able to make the prosecution listen to you, maybe cut a deal. We just need to clear the thing up one way or the other. Americans are very tidy minded. We just can’t have an open file with Unsolved stamped on it, not in a time of war, not in the case of someone like Mitch Turner. We would like you to help us. Please.”

Nat returns with the water. By leaning over Hudson to pour, she reveals much of her upper body to Bright, who is now ripe for distraction after the reprimand from Hudson. He catches himself in a stare, looks up, and finds her eyes on him. He blushes all over again. Contact the second.

“I see,” I say, wondering what to do. This whole situation cries out for Vikorn’s skills. What does a monk manqué know? Are we playing three-dimensional chess or two-card brag? “The thing is, it’s not in my hands.”

Now Hudson is distracted. He is no fool, and Nat’s skills have not escaped his notice. He and I both watch with clinical interest as she leans over Bright to pour his water. There is nothing flirtatious in her manner, but she does pour the water with unusual slowness. It’s a very hot night under our crude strip lights in the yard. Everyone is sweating. Almost drop by drop the pure, clear ice-cold water fills the glass, which turns opaque with condensation. The moment seems to last forever. Nat shows no mercy while Bright concentrates on the glass so as not to glance sideways at the two brown young breasts hanging very near his face. He looks swiftly up when she is done, says thankyou in a gruff tone. She makes a cute little bow, keeping her face serious. Contact the third.

Farang, I’ll bet you Wall Street against a Thai mango he’ll be back, if for no other reason than to play the card of virile youth against Hudson’s superior rank and thus restore his ego after that humiliating reprimand. Hudson thinks so too. He turns away with a mixture of amusement and irritation. (Why did they have to send him a boy?) Now he is waiting for me to say more. I don’t. A sigh. “Okay, whose hands is it in? This Colonel Vikorn character? He has one hell of a reputation, and it’s not for being an honest cop.”

“A sleazebag,” Bright mutters, avoiding Hudson ’s glare.

I make a submissive face. “Shall I tell him you want to make a treaty?”

Bright is not at all sure if I’m being sarcastic or simply inept in my use of English. He oscillates between rage and contempt with a bias toward contempt. Hudson covers his reaction with a cough. “Yeah, tell him we want to talk. I’m sure we can work something out. It would help a lot if we were able to speak to the last person to see Mitch Turner alive. That would impress us considerably.”

They both finish their water in a few gulps, then stand up to leave. I follow them through the club to the front door, keeping my eyes on Bright. Yep, there it goes, that scan of the room he told himself he wasn’t going to make. Nat, of course, is nowhere to be seen.

As soon as they’re safely into a taxi, I call Vikorn. He’s silent for a full minute, then: “What’s your instinct?”

“We’re the Indians, they’re the cowboys, they want to make a treaty. They want Chanya at the meeting, Colonel.”

He coughs. “Tell them to come to the bar tomorrow night. We’ll close it for as long as the meeting takes.”

“Will Chanya be there?”

“I don’t know.”

In the dead of night my mobile rings. It is Lek at last. A desperate tone (he sounds as if he’s dying): “You have to help me.”

Lumpini Park (named for the Buddha’s birthplace) at night: love at its cheapest, but the incidence of HIV is said to be over sixty percent. In the darkness: furtive movements on benches and on the grass, muted moans and whispers, rustlings of large animals in heat, the intensity of the atomic fusion (highly addictive, they say) of sex and death. It is past midnight in this tropical garden. At the edge of the park, I have to call Lek on his mobile to find out his exact location. He is standing alone by the artificial lake, staring at a reflection of the moon in the water. When I touch him, his body seems half frozen.

“She told me to come here,” he whispers after a while. “She insisted that I see it at its worst.”

“She’s right. That’s exactly what a good Elder Sister is supposed to do.”

“I feel dreadful. She totally destroyed me.”

“She’s just testing you. Better you see the worst before you take the big step. You have to be sure you won’t end up here.”

“Half of the whores here are katoeys,” he blurts. “They’ve lost everything, even basic humanity. They’re just… just creatures. I’ve seen them hanging out on the benches, waiting for customers, just like starving demons. Some of them have lesions. They service taxi drivers.”

“What did Fatima say, exactly?”

“She said she would help me if I would drink the full cup of bitterness. She said the path of a katoey is sacred, only katoeys and Buddhas really see the world for what it is. She said I had to be strong as steel, soft as air.”

When I put my arm around him, he bursts into sobs. “I don’t think I have the strength. I only wanted to dance.”

“You think dancing is easy?”

Looking up at me with those big eyes of his: “Thanks for coming. I had a moment of weakness. I better stay here for a while. I need to see it all, don’t I?”

“Yes.” There’s really nothing more to say.

29

The Old Man’s Club would not, under normal circumstances, be anyone’s choice of venue for such grim negotiations, but it is the best we can do. The CIA, who are not officially here at all, do not possess an office, nobody wants to do it in a hotel room, and the District 8 police station is hardly appropriate. The only reason I am present is because Vikorn needs an interpreter whose discretion can be relied upon. The only reason Chanya is present is to take the opportunity to prove she didn’t do it. (She spent the whole of yesterday locked up with Vikorn in his office.) The only reason my mother is here is that it is her club and no way is she going to miss out.

Although both Hudson and Bright have read it many times before, they take a minute to study Chanya’s confession, the one that Vikorn dictated and I wrote, which they have in English translation as well as the original Thai. They both look up at the same time, and it is the young and ferociously eager Bright who speaks first. I am surprised he begins by addressing me not as the official interpreter but in my capacity as humble scribe.

“You were present when this statement was taken, Detective?”

“Yes.”

“You are the one who wrote it down?”

“Yes.”

“While Colonel Vikorn was present?”

“Yes.”

“And these are the true words of Ms. Chanya Phongchit as spoken at that time?”

“Certainly.”

“Did you think anything odd about her story?”

“No. You have to remember-”

A peremptory wave of the hand. “I know, I know, this is Bangkok, and these kinds of things happen all the time. Let me cut to the chase, Detective.” He leans forward, thighs pried open by the pressure of magnificent balls (obviously). “Detective, have you ever had sexual intercourse?”

A baffled pause. “It has been my good fortune from time to time.”

“And have you ever had the good fortune to do it from behind? Never mind what part of the lady’s anatomy is most interesting, let’s just concentrate on the position.”

Chanya inexplicably covering a grin, my mother frowning and staring at me, then from me to the Colonel. I think she has seen the drift quicker than anyone. The Colonel has not understood a word.

“Yes. It’s not my preferred-”

Another peremptory wave. “Spare us the comment, Detective. Let me ask you this. When you exploited your good fortune in this way, did you notice that the front of your thighs were really rather close to the backs of the lady’s? Putting it bluntly, Detective, unless you have a two-foot dick, your body would have been pressing against hers most of the time for the purpose of maintaining penetration?”

My heart sinks, and my mother looks away in disgust, I think, that the Colonel and I (her son of all people) should have committed such a gaffe. Only Chanya is unperturbed. On Vikorn’s order I translate the interrogation so far. To my astonishment, he also is unperturbed and responds with an avuncular smile. I should add that since the arrival of the CIA he has scrupulously and impeccably maintained the part of every farang’s idea of a crumpled, corrupt, incompetent, and less-than-intelligent third-world cop who only dimly grasps what is being said and who lost the plot some time ago. A slight shaking has been introduced in his left hand-a subtle addition, artistically done-and he has a half-empty bottle of Mekong whiskey on a table next to his chair. He has not shaved this morning; gray stubble catches the light nicely. A few deft touches, in other words, and the master has transformed himself-an astonishing achievement when you consider that in actual fact he is a decadent sleazebag third-world cop, but of an entirely different order. Any fool can play his opposite, but to play the character who is only a couple of shades away from the person you really are-now that shows real talent, in my humble opinion. Bright has been ignoring him with exaggerated contempt. This is exactly what he expected from us. Hudson so far is carefully noncommittal in his body language. Bright grinds relentlessly on, his voice rising through the full gamut of triumphalism to find its level in an excited squeak.

“Any woman who decided to castrate you from such a position, even if she had the muscles of an Olympic weight lifter, would have to cut off one of your thighs first, wouldn’t she?” Just in case he is not being explicit enough for my poor understanding, he stands up, folds Chanya’s statement I suppose as representing the knife, bends forward, and swings backward with his hand a couple of times. “It’s the one position where a man need fear no attack at all,” he adds with a triumphant smile, “not even if the lady had access to a samurai sword,” and sits down.

I translate for Vikorn, who has been watching the performance with a twinkle in his eye and who, to everyone’s astonishment except Chanya’s, bursts out laughing and clumsily claps a few times. Bright is seriously taken aback.

“Please tell our American colleagues how smart I think they are,” Vikorn instructs, his left hand shaking as he reaches for the whiskey bottle. When I have done so, I see that Hudson has finally decided to take an interest in Vikorn and stares at him for the next few minutes. “They saw this obvious flaw immediately, on the first reading I am sure.” A sip from his shaking glass. “What were we thinking that we produced such an amateurish statement? How could anyone hope to fool the CIA?”

I translate. Bright is lost now and checks with Hudson, who does not take his eyes off Vikorn.

“But what were we to do, gentlemen?” Vikorn raises his hands helplessly, an impotent old man caught in something way too big for him. “Chanya, my dear, please tell them exactly what happened.”

Chanya looks at me demurely. “Should I speak in English or Thai? My English isn’t really that good.”

I’ve had no warning about this development and do not know how I’m supposed to reply. “Your English is fine,” I say testily. She gives me one of her smiles. I disgust myself by melting and smiling back. She speaks in Thai, I translate.

“I always wanted to tell the truth about what happened to Mitch, but I was firmly instructed that for reasons of security I should keep my mouth shut.”

“That’s quite correct,” Vikorn corroborates.

“As soon as we left this bar that night, Mitch became certain we were being followed.”

“Oh no,” from Bright when I translate, who buries his head in his hands and shakes it from side to side. “Wouldn’t have been two men with long black beards, would it?”

“Shut up,” Hudson tells him, and nods for Chanya to go on.

“I didn’t see their beards until later-only Mitch saw them at that point. He said he’d been followed before, down in Songai Kolok, that he was sure his cover was blown and that maybe there was some kind of fatwa on his head.”

“I just can’t believe they’re even trying-”

“Will you shut it?” from Hudson. An I’ll get even glare from Bright.

“We thought about running away, but Mitch said that wouldn’t do any good. The worst would be for them to catch up out in the street. He was sure they wouldn’t have guns. He thought that in his hotel room he would be able to handle them.” Bright is staring incredulously, making a great drama of holding his head, rocking from side to side.

Hudson interrupts, looking at Chanya. “Okay, I get the picture. You went back to his hotel, they burst in with at least one knife, slice him up, and cut his cock off. You’re embroiled in the battle, but no one wants to hurt you, so you end up covered in blood but unharmed. Let’s say all that is a given. Why in hell would you have concocted that statement?”

I translate for Vikorn, who takes up the story. “Think about it, gentlemen. What has your government been saying about the security risk here in Thailand from Islamic fanatics? And what has that done to our tourist trade already? How much worse could it get if there’s a report of a genuine terrorist atrocity, right here in Bangkok? This was not something I’m qualified to deal with myself. I had to go to the highest levels of government, to the chief of our homeland defense.”

Hudson sighs. “So you’re saying you were told to cover up?”

“Yes. What else were they going to say? The entire story depended on the evidence of a whore.”

A pause. “That’s all you’ve got?”

“Well, there’s the knife. The murder weapon.”

Now Bright’s jaw has dropped, but Hudson ’s thin lips have opened just a tad. “Right. We were going to ask you about that. You have it here to show us?”

“It’s in the fridge,” says Chanya, and stands up to bring it. It is carefully preserved in a plastic bag, which Hudson holds up to the light. He seems to be wrestling with a smile as he hands it to Bright, who also holds it up to the light. He shakes his head and hands it back. “I still don’t buy it. So they found some frizzy black hairs to stick on it. What does that prove?”

“Anything else?” Hudson asks Chanya.

“Well, Mitch fought very bravely, and at one point he managed to get the knife off them.”

“He did?”

“Yes, and when one of them tried to grab it, he sliced off two fingers before they overwhelmed him again.”

Hudson ’s gaze is steady now, and the smile has gone from his mouth, but there is a subtle difference in the way he is looking at her. “Kept the fingers, did you? In the fridge, by any chance?”

Chanya walks to the fridge and comes back with another plastic bag and hands it to him. Bright is trying to follow Hudson ’s lead, but Hudson isn’t giving anything away at all. He examines the frozen fingers in the bag, then hands them to Bright. “And when we send the knife and fingers away to the lab, the lab will confirm that these fingers produced some of the prints on the knife, right?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“So they found some fingers and some hairs from a black beard-you’re not gonna-”

All Hudson needs to do is stare at him this time. Things have taken an unexpected turn, after all, and Bright is no longer so sure of his cynicism. He closes his mouth and leans back on his chair, thighs splayed: Okay, wise guy, it’s your show and your funeral if you screw up.

Hudson stands and beckons to me to join him at the bar. In a whisper: “Please ask your Colonel to join us.” I beckon to the Colonel, who is in the process of pouring himself another drink. Vikorn joins us, bending forward and holding his lower back. Hudson says: “Just ask him one question, please. If he were to place a bet on these hairs and fingers turning out to have DNA that the CIA database will confirm is that of a known Islamic terrorist, perhaps one who died recently-if I were to open a book on it, how much would he place?”

“Three million dollars, even money,” Vikorn says brightly, forgetting his backache. “Want to?”

“No,” Hudson says slowly, “we don’t have that kind of cash to play with. Certainly not on a stone cold loser.” He gives me a nod, surprisingly friendly.

“What will you do about your colleague?” I ask in my most polite tone. He doesn’t answer except with a subtle alteration in his facial muscles. I’m not an expert on encryption, but I think that look might translate as: Bright doesn’t want to spend the rest of his career in the field either. I say sotto voce: “Would a video help?”

A true pro, he takes in my meaning with lightning speed and shakes his head. “Keep it as backup.”

“He’s a jaw-grinder on the home stretch,” I report, still deeply in awe of my mother’s detailed knowledge of the male rampant.

A quick grin builds around Hudson ’s mouth and is as quickly wiped off by professional discipline. “She could tell that just by looking at him, couldn’t she?”

I have a feeling Hudson will be back.

“Well,” says Hudson in a louder voice, indicating to Bright to stand up, “obviously, this evidence isn’t something we can afford to ignore. At the same time, our government is sensitive to any economic damage Thailand might suffer if this sort of thing hits the news.” A look at Bright. “Frankly, this is going to take a while to sort out. There will be top-level meetings, Homeland Security will be involved, it’ll go to the Joint Chiefs, probably the president. Any officers associated with it will attract attention.” A smile. “Hopefully of a positive kind.”

Bright nods thoughtfully. Perhaps he deserves his name, for his change of posture is instant and very convincing. He shakes Chanya’s hand, calls her and my mother ma’am, and generally demonstrates courtesy all around, even gratitude as he makes for the door.

When they have gone, I confront Vikorn. “You’ve put the blame on Muslims. You could start a war.”

He shakes his head. “Grow up, Sonchai. I took your delicate little heart into account and fingered the Indonesians. None of your new friends in Songai Kolok is implicated. You should be pleased.”

When I call Mustafa, I make the same point. “But he blamed Muslims,” he says, and hangs up.

30

In case you didn’t get it, farang, that was the end of the Main Plot. (You remember, the Cover-up-but don’t worry, I feel a Coda coming on.) Vikorn did not, of course, expect to be believed with his cock-and-bull story, but as we all know, that is not the way the intelligence industry operates. Belief is for choirboys. What you need (apparently) is a fantastically complicated and enticing distraction that will make it quite impossible for anyone to draw a conclusion one way or the other but at the same time will offer itself as a vehicle for promotion. (I don’t need to tell you this, farang. I think you invented this game, no?) I guess Chanya is safe for a couple of decades while they mull it over. Doesn’t Vikorn just take your breath away sometimes?

As a consequence, things are a little slow here, but just at the moment I’m rather fascinated by the homely family atmosphere that has been developing at the club this past week, thanks to Hudson and Bright.

Bright first. Nat reports to my mother, who reports to me, that he’s quite a good boy really. Nat’s challenge to his virility punched a nice big hole through his ego, and with the ensuing flood of light we now have a brand-new picture of dear Steve, who fell apart immediately after coitus on the third date and confessed that he’s not the great tough larger-than-life patriot he appears to be (You’re not? exclaimed Nat with an expression of shock; No, he admitted in a tone that recognized that some people would find that hard to believe); au contraire, as Truffaut used to say, the poor young fellow is all bent out of shape from a particularly ugly divorce in which she made the usual baseless allegations of abuse in order to get the house, the car, and the bank account and full custody of his toddler daughter, with only supervised access for him.

We watched while he went through a schizophrenic period when he was not at all sure whether he should keep up appearances or not (or whom he should keep them up for; I myself was treated to a testosteronic strut and a sad droopy shamble in the space of an hour), but I’m happy to report that thanks to Thai therapy, he did not take more than a week to return to the human family and now he arrives every night on the dot at eight, pays Nat’s bar fine, and takes her upstairs, where she rewards him with an orgasm including all bells and whistles. (We can hear her in the bar if we turn the system down. Bright knows this, of course, because Hudson told him, but cured of hubris by my country and my women, the dear lad reappears after his heroic coupling with no more than a grateful beam on his square Nordic features.) Nat asked me to ask Vikorn how much American spies get paid these days.

But Hudson, of course, is a different kettle of fish. Talk about many-layered (and multifaceted). I have to be humble here and admit I don’t know any Asian who could keep a column of oiled billiard balls in the air from day to day the way he does-or who would want to. In the finer points of mental self-abuse, farang lead the world. He does it all by remaining close-lipped and secretive, of course, which provided a challenge for my mother, the courting of whom has been so unobtrusive-and secretive-that no one knows if they’ve actually done it yet-or even if he is actually courting her or not. (Nong turns uncharacteristically coy whenever I challenge her on the point, which is more than academic to me considering how close we are now to the visit from Superman. I wouldn’t put it past her to use Hudson in order to get back in form for Dad-or vice versa, depending on what sort of shape Dad is in after all these years. She hasn’t resumed her diet yet, which is certainly a clue of some kind, if indecipherable at the time of writing.) No, my mother has been no use at all in the Hudson study, and I have had to build on what I’ve been able to glean during those very brief and few moments when he has let his guard down. See if you can work it out, farang. He:

1. Brightened once when he heard Wan and Pat talking in their native tongue, which is Lao;

2. Spared a glance which was neither negative nor judgmental when one of the old codgers inadvertently flashed a large bag of dope in the bar one night;

3. Has found it necessary to interview Vikorn unaccompanied by Bright or any interpreter on numerous occasions, which seemed to leave both he and Vikorn in good spirits;

4. Is fifty-six years old;

5. Joined the CIA in his early twenties and was sent to Laos after graduating from the academy.

Oh, and there’s a sixth point. In a quiet moment in the bar one evening, when I was forlornly checking the e-mail for signs of Superman, he leaned over my shoulder.

“Want to do a deal? I’ll tell you something you need to know if you put in a good word for me with your mum.”

“Fuck off. I don’t pimp for my mother.”

“Sorry, that’s not at all what I meant. I admire her, I respect her. She makes me tingle in places I thought were dead. So I’ll tell you anyway. Listen. D’you really think Mitch Turner sat twiddling his thumbs all day down there in Songai Kolok without making any contribution at all to our glorious Agency?”

“I did wonder about that.”

“Of course you did, you’re a first-class cop in your own very unique way. So think about it. What do all members of the secret world have in common? We’re compulsive gossips, that’s what. And who can we gossip to? Only each other. Security clearance can be a pain in the ass. You’ve no idea what total junk most so-called intelligence really is. Now with encryption and e-mail, a guy with Turner’s clearance can listen in to every damn piece of trivia that our bugs and agents pick up all over Asia. An American woman mugged in Nepal, a dumb Yank gets into a brawl in downtown Tokyo, an American child abducted in Shanghai-stuff that shouldn’t be part of our work at all but still flashes across our screens.”

“Turner sat reading that junk? It doesn’t sound like him.”

“He had no choice. Intelligence sifting was part of his job. He would have to give an opinion on it all: valuable or not, if valuable how many stars? The whole game is basically as dumb as that. Because of the need for security clearance, guys with Ph.D.’s do stuff a schoolkid wouldn’t find challenging.” That thin smile of his starts to build. “Drugs too, of course. We still have to do a lot of narcotics work, the DEA are such dummies.”

I stare at him, not having the faintest idea where he’s going here.

He leans a little closer. “What the hell do you think she was doing with herself while he was stoned out of his brain on the opium she brought him? All she needed was his log-in code. He probably told her the number himself when he was on the dope. Opium can do that-you see the world from a whole different perspective, one hundred and eighty degrees different. Yes, I’ve had my moments.” I’ve stopped working the mouse. “She’s a very very smart lady. For supersmart street sense, Chanya’s the finest I’ve ever seen.” He lets the smile spread some more. “Put in a good word for me, and I’ll tell you more.”

“I don’t care.”

A chuckle as he grasps my shoulder in a manly grip. “You’re a lousy liar, and I love you for it.”

With the CIA apparently on my side, I take the opportunity to ask that question that never seems to go away: “Does the name Don Buri mean anything to you?” He looks convincingly blank and shakes his head.

Later that night, with Hudson gone and the bar almost empty, Su emerges from one of the upstairs rooms with something in her hand.

“Know what this is?” Su asks when I’m half in, half out of the bar, fishing something out of her handbag. Instantly I step back in, breaking into a sweat of excitement and relief, for it is none other than the Super Secret Sony Micro Vault. You wondered about that, didn’t you, farang? You said to yourself: where is that damned Micro Vault he made such a fuss about chapters and chapters ago, surely that was a Road Sign if ever there was one? Well, the embarrassing truth is that I lost the damned thing, and I’ve been searching all over for it ever since. Of course Hudson and Bright have been grinding on at me daily forever (nag, nag, nag: Has he found it yet? Nah: how typical, dah dumb third-world cop lost dah Micro Vault), but I wasn’t going to put that on record out of sheer shame. I’ve practically turned the club upside down-now our laziest whore is holding it in the palm of her hand.

“The john was humping me so hard in room five a couple of hours ago, I had to hold on to the mattress, and this thing dropped out. I thought maybe it would vibrate, but it doesn’t.”

“No,” I say, taking it and stepping behind the bar, “it doesn’t.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s a Micro Vault.”

“Oh.”

She leans over me while I slot it into the computer and double-click with bated breath. Su and I exchange an astounded glance.

“It’s a man’s back,” she explains, drawing on deep experience.

“I can see that.”

“Pretty muscular, damned good bod, actually. What are all those green lines?”

“It’s a kind of grid.”

I click and click, but there really is nothing more to it.

31

One night, after the two a.m. curfew, the bar is empty save for Hudson and me. He is drunker than I’ve seen before, though still more or less in control. Sitting on a stool, he starts to talk, as if continuing a conversation, probably with himself.

“Freedom? What kind of dumb all-purpose Band-Aid is that?” With pleading eyes: “I mean, what are we selling exactly? Money is the state religion of the West. We pray to it every waking minute-and we’re gonna make damned sure every last human on earth gets down on their knees with us. All our wars are wars of religion.” A pause. “Want to know why I’m still here, at my age? I’m just a few hundred miles away from where I was thirty years ago in Laos. Look, I’ve made no progress at all, not financially, professionally not much, romantically not at all, not even geographically. Why am I still here?”

I shrug.

“Same reason the other guys couldn’t go back. All over Southeast Asia there are American men who never go home. We simply can’t. Because when we look into the eyes of your people, we see something, call it what you like. Soul? The human mind before fragmentation? Something sacred we farang habitually amputate like tonsils because we don’t understand its function? Maybe it’s your damned Buddhism. But we see something. Now tell me this, Detective. When you look into the eyes of farang, what do you see?”

When I fail to reply, he sniggers. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Three days after this conversation, everything changed. Hudson and Bright arrived at the bar that evening, looking gloomy. They ordered a couple of beers, which they took to a corner table, where they whispered together. Finally, Hudson came over to the bar with his news.

“Your Colonel’s little game worked too well. Maybe he’s a kind of a genius. Well, we’ll see. They’re sending the Boss.”

32

I’ve been summoned to the police station, and I’m on the back of a motorbike listening to Pisit, who is on the warpath over a Hollywood film star who headed a campaign to stop a factory in the north of Thailand from employing underage children. She put pressure on a certain sportswear retailer, who canceled orders to the factory, which had to close down. Now the parents of the newly unemployed kids are having to sell their daughters into sex slavery in Malaysia because of lost revenue from the factory:

Anyone out there with information on those algorithms in the English language that make its native speakers so self-righteous, or indeed on the psychopathology of crusading in general, give me a ring on soon nung nung soon soon nung nung soon soon.

I pull off the headphones as we near the station. There was something in Vikorn’s tone when he told me about this meeting last night. Apparently yet another CIA has arrived, supposedly to kick ass. The alleged Al Qaeda connection has got Langley salivating. Things are not looking so good today.

She is tall, close to six feet, slim with a military bearing, a fit and handsome fortysomething, although her face and neck suffer from that drawn quality characteristic of those beset by the vice of jogging. Her hair is very short, gray and spiky: I wonder if she and Hudson share a barber? She does not waste time or money on cosmetics; her hygienic odor includes carbolic references. The suit is iron gray with baggy pants. We are in Vikorn’s office, but it might as well be hers.

Vikorn, diminished, has let her take over, at least for now. A woman was the last thing he expected. (But I think he’s working on a plan.) She keeps her hands in her trouser pockets, thoughtfully pacing up and down as she talks. There is about her the restrained superiority of a senior librarian with access to secret catalogs. Hudson sits uncomfortably, perhaps even resentfully. Bright has not been invited. Nobody interrupts. I translate for Vikorn in a whisper, so as not to disturb her concentration. She has been trained to smile frequently-and inexplicably-perhaps on the same course where she learned unarmed combat?

“This is serious intelligence. Detective, I want to thank you and your Colonel for bringing this evidence to us. This is a new direction for Al Qaeda, and a surprising one. We’ve never seen a castration theme before, but it makes a lot of sense from their point of view.” She pauses, frowns fussily, continues. “And of course there might be a revenge theme from the Abu Ghraib fiasco. How does the world perceive America, especially the Muslim developing world? As some kind of Superman caricature-with emphasis on man-an overmasculine society obsessed with its power and virility. If they start cutting off our male organs, it will send one of those crude, potent messages that the young, ignorant, and fanatical tend to embrace. Actually, exactly the same technique of intimidation was used by the Ching emperors, who invariably cut off the testicles of prisoners of war, which certainly wore down the enemy’s morale. It’s smart. Very smart. We cannot let it go unanswered.”

Hudson grunts. She pauses, leans her butt against a wall, and gives Hudson a cool but collegial nod before turning to me. “Did that all get translated? Am I going too fast? I’m sorry I don’t speak Thai. Standard Arabic, Spanish, and Russian are my only foreign languages.”

I pass the question on to Vikorn, who looks her in the eye for the first time, then turns to me. “Ask her where she is on the U.S. Army pay scale.”

She allows a quick, patronizing smile at this typical third-world question. “Tell your Colonel I’m not in the army.”

“I know she’s not in the fucking army,” Vikorn retorts. “They’re paid on the same scale. What is her equivalent rank? That’s what they never stopped talking about in Laos. Has she gotten above the warrant officer grades? Is she on the O scale or not?”

She flicks a glacial glance at Hudson. “It’s quicker to just answer the question,” Hudson advises, staring at the floor.

“It doesn’t work like that anymore,” she explains to me. Slowing her speech and with still more careful deliberation: “Your Colonel is referring to thirty years ago, when the Agency was running a secret war, so the pay scale was roughly equivalent to the military pay scale. Nowadays we tend to be paid according to the Federal Government General Schedule.”

“Okay, the GS,” Vikorn says, fishing in his desk drawer. “The military scale is based on that anyway. What grade is she?” He takes a sheet of paper out and studies it.

She absorbs this covert attack effortlessly, as a professional boxer might absorb a punch from an amateur, and raises her eyebrows to Hudson as the man on the ground who understands the local peasants.

“He didn’t like the way you were walking up and down his office. He’s checking that you understand the rules of trade. Best give him what he wants.”

“I see,” she says with a decisive nod. To me: “You can tell him I’m Grade Eleven if that will help.”

I translate. Vikorn checks with his sheet of paper. “What Step?”

“Grade Eleven Step One.” Horizontal wrinkles appear in her upper forehead while he traces her position on the scale with his fingers. “But the GS can be misleading,” she adds, taking control by appearing to help, in accordance with the manual. “You get extras for locality, risk, that kind of thing.”

Vikorn raises his eyebrows at Hudson. “Grade Eight Step Ten,” Hudson confesses.

“So she starts at a base of $42,976 before locality, while he starts at $41,808. There’s hardly any difference.” Vikorn is beaming.

When I translate, she shakes her head, then closes her eyes to enforce patience. In a somnambulant voice (the subject may be close to her heart despite its spectacular irrelevance): “There’s a drive to change the whole package, make it more result-oriented, more competitive, more like the private sector.”

“There’s a lot of resistance to the proposed changes though,” says Hudson. “The BENS report is not so popular.”

“You read it cover to cover?”

“Yeah, there are some practical challenges, like how do you measure results in the intelligence community? The greatest successes are things that didn’t go wrong. How do you give credit for that?”

She shakes her head. “It’s a problem.”

“You see,” Vikorn says when I’ve translated, “nothing has changed. They were moaning about the same stuff in Laos, until they learned how to make deals with the Kuomintang and the Hmong. They only took a ten percent cut for transporting the dope, though, in their Air America transport planes, which the Hmong thought was terrific considering what the Chiu Chow Chinese and the Vietnamese and the French used to take. It was the increase in revenue thanks to the CIA that enabled the Hmong to go on fighting for as long as they did. That was one of the most successful CIA operations. Capitalism at its best. Actually, the only successful operation in that theater.” I translate.

She smiles with glacial grace. “Let’s take the excesses of Laos as read. I’d like to get back to the matter in hand. Does the Colonel have any questions about that?”

“Ask her if Mitch Turner was the deceased’s real name.”

After a pause: “It was one of them.”

Vikorn smiles and nods. “Now ask her who he was.”

Slowly, deliberately, politely: “Classified.”

Vikorn nods again. Inexplicable silence. She turns to Hudson.

“People can be subtle in this part of the world,” Hudson explains. “He has just pointed out that in his scheme of things, which you might call feudal capitalism or realpolitik depending on your point of view, we are both underpaid slaves whom he could buy twenty times over without noticing, who are engaged in an investigation into the death of someone who probably entered the country on a false name and who, for the purposes of police investigation, may not even have existed. In other words, we may not have a lot of leverage.”

I have to admire her lightning adaptation to the situation on the ground: she finds a chair, pulls it up to Vikorn’s desk, and sits on it. Leaning forward with a half-smile: “Mitch Turner was one of the names used by a nonofficial cover operator, a NOC, who was based in the south of this country who was murdered in a hotel room and who was somehow found by the detective here. I never met him myself.” A glance at Hudson.

“Me, either. He was too new. They threw him at me while I was stateside. I was supposed to meet him for the first time the week he died.”

“From what I’ve been able to understand, he was a brilliant officer, maybe too brilliant. There are remarks in his file to suggest he would have been better used in research. He had zero resistance to alcohol, which could be a security risk, and a tendency to confuse his cover stories. I’ve been sent over here not because he was murdered but because of the Al Qaeda connection, which your Colonel so effectively demonstrated with those fingers and black hairs.”

“He confused his cover stories? I didn’t know that.” From Hudson.

“I’m afraid so.” To me, as if I matter (but at least I speak English): “It’s an occupational hazard, especially for people with a precarious sense of identity. You stay under cover long enough, you become the cover. There are some research papers on it. Sometimes a previous cover intrudes into the present cover-after all, identity is just a repetition of cultural triggers. He also had a dysfunctional personal life, but so does every NOC. They crave intimacy, but how can one have intimacy when one is a state secret? Some of the sacrifices we require are too much for our less stable officers. And then he had an intermittent religious streak, which didn’t help. I am told we took him on because of his Japanese and his high IQ, but he wasn’t going anywhere in the Agency. He was seen as a potential liability and a candidate for early retirement. The kindest thing to say is that his mind was too broad, he was an intellectual, a born liberal, he probably joined us as part of his romantic search for self. Speaking off the record, his death at the hands of Al Qaeda is more important than he was. Can we get back to that now?”

“Of course,” Vikorn says with a patronizing smile.

The CIA woman-she told me her name is Elizabeth Hatch, but who knows?-nods a thank you. “Al Qaeda killed Mitch Turner because they knew what he was, but we don’t have any record of him contacting them. His few attempts at recruiting down there seem to have been futile. Are we looking at a kidnapping or a recruitment attempt that went wrong? Or are we looking at a sincere attempt to join them, which they didn’t believe in? We were eavesdropping on his communications. He was going through a personal crisis. We need to know what he was thinking, what his true intentions were, minute to minute. You’re the only one we have who might be able to help. And there’s this.”

With marvelous cool she takes a photograph out of her pocket to show to me. I jump, show it to Vikorn, who also jumps. It is Mitch Turner’s corpse, taken after they turned him over, clearly showing the bloody mass of skinless flesh where someone flayed him.

She’s played her trump card with considerable finesse, without a touch of triumphalism. In a level, glacial tone: “Don’t ask me how I obtained it, and I won’t ask you why you suppressed it.” She looks at the pic curiously. “I don’t know why you did that, exactly. It does rather complicate the whole thing doesn’t it?” Nodding at me. “Perhaps that will do for now. You are our man in the field, I think you’ll be wanting to go south again soon. Would a written report be feasible this time? If your Colonel doesn’t mind, I would like you to report to me directly.”

“Do I have to do this?” I ask Vikorn.

He nods reluctantly. “It’s a deal. They’ve promised to leave Chanya alone, so long as we play ball.”

That night, before going to bed, I smoke a big fat spliff, kneel before the Buddha image that I keep on a shelf in my hovel, and form an intention to contact my dead soul brother Pichai. Everyone’s personal rituals are hedged about with idiosyncrasies and customized talismans, which I won’t go into. Casting aside all padding, my appeal to Pichai’s superior forensic insight could be translated: Where the fuck do I go from here?

Sure enough, that night he comes to me exuding his usual golden glow. We stand together on a high mountain over which clouds are passing at amazing speed. There is a cosmic roar in the background caused by the intense energy of this location. Pichai points to a cloud formation, which immediately takes on the crescent shape of a gigantic beaked fish leaping over a wave. Pichai is urgently trying to tell me something, but his voice is drowned by the roar of the universe…

Next morning I make Chanya stand before me in one of our upstairs humping rooms, stripped to the waist. I do not resist the temptation to handle her left breast, over which that particularly elegant dolphin continuously jumps.

“Where did you get it?”

She shakes her head petulantly. “I’m not telling you.”

I rub her nipple between thumb and forefinger as if it were money, causing it to swell under the dolphin. “The workmanship is fantastic.”

She pushes me away. “Get lost.”

“If I don’t find out who really killed Mitch Turner, those morons will start another war.”

“I said get lost.”

Well, maybe it wasn’t Chanya’s dolphin Pichai had in mind. Maybe it wasn’t a dolphin at all, but it’s the only lead I’ve got.