Thirty-Three Teeth

She could barely make out the slow breathing shape at the rear of the cage. Its face was away from her. All she could see were the contrasting black and white markings and the piles of uneaten fruit. She would have stayed longer till her eyes became accustomed to the dark, but she was suddenly aware that Mr. Ivanic’s hand was moving from her back slowly south. It was time to get out.

Phot was waiting for them, smoking a cigarette.

“See anything?”

“Not much. It was too dark. I thought pandas were bigger than that.”

“It will be. He’s still quite young. Nurse Chundee…”

“Call me Dtui.”

“Dtui, if you don’t mind, it would be better if not too many people knew about our panda. It hasn’t exactly cleared customs.”

“Illegal alien?”

“It came in on a transporter overnight from Kun Ming. The paperwork would have taken weeks. The thing would have starved to death in Customs if we’d done it officially. You understand?”

“My lips are sealed.”

He interpreted their conversation.

“Mr. Ivanic thanks you for your cooperation. He would like to show his gratitude by inviting you for lunch at his private rooms.”

“I’m sure he would. But I’m afraid that although Mr. Ivanic is marvelous with animals, he doesn’t have nice manners when it comes to Lao women.”

“You want me to translate that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good for you.” Second Sunrise

The second sunrise came at around 8 a.m. It was when the first sun had risen high enough to reflect from the golden dome of Xiang Thong temple. For many in Luang Prabang, this marked the time to head for work-which, in turn, explained why so many people stayed in bed on cloudy days.

Siri sat on the white steps in front of Pak Ou cave. It was a pocket in the face of the cliff that overlooked the confluence of the Mekhong and the Nam Xuang rivers. Its most remarkable characteristic was what it contained: there were thousands upon thousands of Buddha images of all shapes and sizes. The coroner had been up to look at this unguarded population that dated back hundreds of years. He wondered how long it would be before some disreputable pirate rowed in under the cover of darkness to fill orders for Thai antique shops.

He wondered from which direction his shaman friend would be coming. As far as he’d seen, the cave wasn’t deep. It ended at a rock face. That’s probably why he was startled to hear Tik’s voice behind and above him.

“What are you doing down there, Yeh Ming?”

“I’m waiting for you. How did you get up there, Brother?”

“I live here.”

“Then I can’t think how I missed you, unless I mistook you for a Buddha.”

Siri climbed back up the steps. The old guru wore nothing more than a small cloth knotted around his organ and its appendages. Siri shook a hand that clicked like knitting needles, and the two men went into the cave. The doctor nodded toward the images. “I was thinking of a curse to protect these gentlemen.”

“You’re several hundred years too late, boy. These are better protected than the national treasury.”

“How? Anyone can walk off with them.”

He was being led slowly into the shadows at the rear of the cave.

“Walk off, yes, and many have been walked off with over the years. But believe me, not one thief has lived a happy life as a result of it. I can’t tell you how gruesome are the fates that await he who harbors a Pak Ou Buddha. And through the marvelous sense of direction they possess, these statuettes will all gradually find their way back here where they belong.”

They reached a rock wall that Siri had inspected earlier. It appeared sheer and unbroken, but Tik walked confidently toward it at an angle and exposed the optical illusion. It was as if he were being swallowed by a solid rock. Siri approached it more carefully, and it wasn’t until he was almost nose-first into the wall that the gap showed itself.

He followed close on the bare heels of the old man. They walked along a tunnel lit by scattering fireflies until they arrived at a small cavern, which was illuminated from above. Somehow, natural light filtered down through crevices in the rock, even though they must have been deep into the mountain.

The hollow was littered with scavenged refuse; cans and bottles, flotsam from the river, piles of rescued royal street signs, cloths of various hues and patterns, bleached animal bones, and piles of indescribable rubbish, all meticulously cleaned.

Tik scooped a half coconut on the end of a stick into a pool and handed the water to Siri, who took a sip. It was curiously effervescent, quite delicious as water went. It gave him a slight thrill and he decided not to drink too much of it. He hadn’t come looking for excitement.

Tik sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at his guest. He was a man who didn’t waste time creeping up on the point. “I feel you should be dead.”

Siri joined him on the ground. “How could you know?”

“How could I not? How could I miss the incredible force you drag behind you? A powerful shaman and a wild pack of angry spirits could hardly arrive in Luang Prabang without my knowing. Tell me. Begin with this morning.”

Siri related the events leading up to his death: the sound, the stupa closing around him, and the feeling of being dragged below the earth. He told him how he knew beyond a whisper of a doubt that he was dead. Tik gave an admiring chuckle.

“Ahh. They’re devious, the Phibob. Those from the south especially so. Yeh Ming has obviously made some powerful enemies over the past thousand years.”

In two hands he took up a large square tin with the words Huntly and Palmer Biscuits printed on the front and slowly began to circle it clockwise in front of him. Something inside seemed to be rolling around.

“Then you don’t think this is just revenge for my helping the soldiers cutting the forest in Khamuan?” Siri asked.

“Goodness me, no. Yeh Ming has been exorcising malevolent spirits for many centuries. He has a sizeable opposition in the spirit world.”

“And this morning was an attempt to get even?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

The tin was rotating faster, and Tik muttered an incantation under his breath before turning it upside down on the earth floor. He pulled it away like a child hoping to see a completed sandcastle. Instead, Siri noticed a broken egg, some small bones, and a slither of animal entrails. Tik studied them.

“In a way, Yeh Ming is in his twilight era. Perhaps that’s why he’s chosen such an unimpressive host.”

“Thank you.”

“He has been dormant for a while, am I right?”

“Apart from the dreams, I didn’t know he existed until last year.”

“And recently, certain abilities have awoken in you?”

“Yes.”

“That is what has alerted the Phibob. You should never have taken him back to Khamuan. There were too many memories there, too much hostile spirit activity. The Phibob have the scent now. It’s like the wildcat who senses that the deer is wounded. They won’t settle until they have destroyed Yeh Ming’s final temple.”

“Where’s that?”

“Not where, who. You are the temple in which he has chosen to end his centuries.”

“Oh shit. Why?”

Tik looked up from the reading.

“What do you know of your father?”

“Not a damned thing.”

“Your birth father was Lao Heu, a renowned Hmong shaman and a direct descendent of Yeh Ming. Before you, he had hosted the soul. Between them, they put together a… how can I put it? Tbey put together a retirement plan, and you were it.”

Siri’s mind was spinning. After seventy-two years, he suddenly had a father and a history. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Ignorance had served him well enough all those years.

“I don’t…”

“As soon as you were born, a ceremony was held to make Yeh Ming your guardian spirit. Naturally, that put you in a very dangerous situation. They sent you away from your home so you wouldn’t suspect you had a connection with the spirit world. Not knowing and not pursuing witchcraft was the insurance policy that kept you and Yeh Ming safe.

“The life of the soul is cyclical. If left to its own devices, it would never end. You would have carried it, then it would have passed on to another. But Yeh Ming had caused something unheard of in the world beyond. He had created an enemy of the Phibob that over the years became powerful in its own right.

“It was dangerous and needed to be destroyed. As it was created out of revenge for Yeh Ming, the only way to stop the Phibob was to end the reign of your guardian. It was hoped you would go through your life as a simple man, never calling on the great shaman to perform. It was hoped you would achieve a nonviolent death and allow Yeh Ming to crumble peacefully with his temple.”

“How do you know all this?”

“The details I see here in the bones and the entrails, but the story is already folklore.” “I’m a legend?”

“Don’t be conceited. It is Yeh Ming who is the legend.”

“How did I cheat death this morning?”

“Good fortune-or, more accurately, good karma. The Phibob cannot inflict direct harm. No one is physically struck down by an evil spirit. But they are able to get into your mind. There are many unexplained deaths, usually of men in their sleep without plausible cause. This is the mischief of the malevolent spirits.

“The Phibob can convince a sleeping person he has died. This morning they dragged your mind below the earth, confined you inside a stupa. It was so real, so convincing that your subconscious was certain you could no longer breathe. Once your mind has lost that battle, there is no point in your body continuing to function. It shuts down in defeat. Dastardly clever.”

“So, how…?”

Tik used a chicken bone to draw a line of yolk from the egg to the intestines.

“You had performed a selfless act earlier in the day.”

Siri thought back.

“The elephant?”

“Its soul wished to repay your kindness. The spirit of the elephant is a thing of marvel. The Lord Buddha said ‘Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme.”‘

“It kept me breathing?”

“It reminded you to start again. That and the golden Buddha beneath which you slept. I doubt the Elephant God could have saved you alone.”

“I was actually dead. I know it.”

“Welcome back. You appear to have a second sunrise.”

“What can I do to keep the Phibob from doing me in again?”

“That’s more complicated. To do their damage, they need a trigger. Is there something that symbolizes them to you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“A black amulet. They used it to get to me. It was destroyed in Khamuan, then re-emerged in Vientiane, whole.”

“It certainly wasn’t the same one.”

“It was.”

“Oh, in your mind it may have been. But if you had asked someone else to describe what they saw, it would not have been a black amulet.”

Siri’s thoughts raced back to the day of the date, to Lah and to the gift. Was it possible she’d given him something else? Was the amulet in the box a mirage the Phibob had put there? He felt foolish.

“And you saw it again here?” Tik asked.

“I felt it. It was buried in the destroyed stupa. I didn’t actually see it, but I knew it was there.”

“Then that is the portal through which the Phibob can enter your soul.”

“What can I do?”

“At the source there is usually a reverse image. It could be a mantra or an object that negates the effects of the black amulet.”

“There is. They gave me a white talisman in Khamuan.”

“Show me.”

“I don’t carry it.”

“You’re foolish. It must be with you always. Where is it?”

“In Vientiane. In my house.”

“Then I suggest you get there as soon as you can. I don’t value your chances of cheating death twice. Remember this: if you die a natural death, Yeh Ming can rest in peace; if you suffer a violent unnatural death, he will be cursed to eternal hell amongst the evil spirits. You must avoid the latter at all costs.”

“Right. I’ll see what I can do.” The Man of His Dreams

It was while he was searching for Mr. Inthanet’s house on Kitsalat, while simultaneously endeavoring to avoid a violent and unnatural death, that Siri ran into the man from his dream. It was so unusual for living people to appear in his dreams that his natural first assumption was that this was a dead person walking along the main street.

It was the footman who’d served the king beneath the fig tree and exploded messily after introducing the helicopter pilots. He had the same straggly chin beard and hair that hung like a hula skirt around a bald dome. If anything, he looked more Ceylonese than Chinese and, to Siri’s professional eye, very much alive.

Without putting too much thought into why, he changed direction and followed the man at a distance. He had a confident Western swing to his gait, and his clothes suggested that some thought had gone into their selection. His large stomach was accentuated by the tonic sheen of his traditional Lao shirt. It was as if he wore such clothes through choice, not obligation.

The man crossed the street and walked along the short drive into the Hotel Phousy. Through the glass door, Siri saw him take a newspaper from the stand at reception, exchange a few friendly words with the clerk, and walk through another door into the dining room. This told Siri one or two things.

A man would only eat in a sophisticated hotel if he were a guest or comparatively wealthy. As the newspaper was Lao, he wasn’t a foreign tourist. And the cut of his clothes announced that he wasn’t a waiter or cook.

Siri pushed open the double doors and walked into the small lobby. The receptionist was a middle-aged man whose spectacles only had a lens on the left side. The right was open to the elements.

“Good day, Comrade,” he said, suspicious of this bagless visitor.

“Good health. I was just passing and I thought I saw someone I once knew come in here: a dark man with a beard and a stomach.”

“That would be Mr. Kumron?”

“Kumron-that’s right. I haven’t seen him for such a long time, I wasn’t sure it was him. He’s put on weight. What’s he doing these days?”

“You can go and ask him yourself. He’s in the restaurant.”

“Oh, I don’t want to trouble him. I doubt he’d remember me. But my sister would probably be interested to hear how he got on. They once had a… relationship.”

“I see. Well, she’d be pleased to hear he’s done very nicely for himself, very nicely indeed.”

“Oh, good.”

“In fact, until recently, he was an adviser and confidant to…” he lowered his voice “… the Royal Family.”

“You don’t say?”

“I do. He and the king were like this.” He crossed his fingers in front of his nose.

“Goodness.”

It was then that the clerk seemed to suddenly remember some advice he’d once been given about not trusting strangers. Although it may not have been exactly memorized, he did have a speech at hand for such an occasion.

“The Royal Family has been sucking the blood from the country and its people for centuries. It’s a relief that we’re now free of the tyrant and can work together to rebuild our great land.”

It was an uninspired rendition.

“So, old Kumron’s probably on his way to re-education too, if he was part of that blood-sucking.”

“Ah, no, Comrade. Mr. Kumron is a very intelligent human being. The party has found a way to use his expertise to further its advances in the northern region.”

“The Party gave him a job?”

“He’s running several large projects, I believe.”

It all became crystal-clear: the king’s adviser, the attempted rescue, the removal of the Royal Family, and the payoff. The pilots had said it: “We were betrayed.”

For what other reason would a living man appear in his dream, if not that he had died in some other way? Siri was no fan of royalty; he wasn’t even that fond of communism; but he was a man of principle. He believed that whatever creed a man chose, he was dependent on the trust and honor of the men and women who followed the same creed. In Siri’s mind, a betrayal of that trust was sinful.

He’d survived his forty-odd years of jungle warfare not only because of his ability to fight when necessary or run when necessary-any animal could do that; he’d survived because of the people around him. Their lives were interconnected. You had to know that a comrade was good to his word and would sooner give up his own life than sacrifice yours. That’s how it had been in the early days, anyway.

Kumron had achieved the exalted position of adviser to the king. He had earned a place in the old man’s soul. But in order to save his own status, he’d given up information about the escape attempt. He had ended the Royal Family’s last hope of survival. With so few true friends left, this betrayal would have been a final poisonous arrow in the kwun of the Royals. The man shouldn’t have been rewarded. If honor meant anything in this day and age, he should have been executed. But did anyone know?

Siri realized that he was still at the counter and the clerk was staring through his single lens, waiting for the next question. He also realized that he was the only one in a position to do anything.

“You know?” Siri said. “Perhaps I will go and say hello after all.”

He walked through to the brown wood and red vinyl dining room. Its air was being conditioned by a large grumbling machine along the back wall. The small tables were unlaid, apart from one. There Kumron sat with his back to the door reading the newspaper. In front of him was a sight rarer in Laos than a two-headed naga serpent-a cool bottle of beer.

Siri knew that what little success this attack might have depended on how cleanly Kumron believed he had gotten away with his betrayal and how guilty he felt about it. The doctor walked around the table and cast a shadow on the newspaper. When Kumron realized he wasn’t the waiter, he looked up.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Comrade Kumron?”

Kumron was a calm, dignified man who seemed unflustered by this question from a stranger. He smiled politely. “Perhaps I could ask the name of the person asking the question.”

“In the long run, my name won’t make any difference. I’m just a messenger.”

The waiter in a short-sleeved once-white shirt and kipper tie assumed Siri was joining Kumron and dragged over a second chair.

“Please,” the waiter said, but Siri didn’t sit. The boy retired to the kitchen doorway.

“On the evening of the tenth, I spent his last night with a mutual friend at an orchard in Pak Xang.”

“I see. Then won’t you join me?”

There was something slightly less authoritative about his voice. “No. We talked of a number of things. He surprised me at how forgiving he was when it came to the dealings of the pl. He held no animosity toward the local cadres here who had thrown him out of his palace. There was only-”

“Sir, if this is a private conversation I think it would be better conducted elsewhere. Would you like to join me in a beer?”

He no longer looked at Siri’s green eyes, which had burned uncomfortably into his own.

“No. I’m nearly finished.”

And here came the lie Siri hoped might destroy the destroyer.

“He said there was only one person he could never find it in his heart to forgive.”

Although his expression remained passive, Kumron’s face drained of color like whiskey poured from a bottle.

“You betrayed him.”

“I don’t know who you are, sir, or why you came to me.”

His voice trembled. The suddenness of the accusation had overwhelmed him. He’d had no time to compose himself. It was as if the king were standing before him, exposing his treachery.

“You thought you were too clever to be found out, Comrade Kumron. You thought he would never suspect you, his most trusted confidant. He believed you were a friend. I’m disgusted with you, as was the whole family.”

“I…”

Kumron could put up no fight because he was certain he had been undone. Siri walked around the table and leaned into his ear.

“The reason I asked you about ghosts, Comrade Kumron, is because I believe the remnants of the Royal spirits will ruin you sooner or later. I’m sure you know of their power.”

And his piиce de rйsistance, “Prince Phetsarath and I will see to that.”

And he left.

He had been about to add “We both have thirty-three teeth,” but as yet he wasn’t sure he did, and he decided enough damage had been done. Through the dining room window he could see the man crumpled in his seat, no longer the successful dignitary. This old man would now have to haul the twin burdens of guilt and revenge. Siri decided that a small battle for loyalty had been won and he dedicated the victory to his gardening friend. He didn’t know whether the king knew of Kumron’s role in his downfall, but it didn’t actually matter. A good lie in the right place can make up for any number of wrongs.

Dtui had been sitting for an hour in front of the office of the politburo member. She hadn’t made an appointment with Civilai. That wasn’t a particularly Lao thing to do. Appointments were rarely kept. She knew he had to come to his office eventually, and much sooner than she’d expected she was proven right. He walked along the corridor, flanked by two officious men who seemed much more flustered than their boss ever had.

“Nurse Dtui,” he said. “You brighten my day with your smile.”

“Comrade Civilai, can I have a quick word?”

The two aides protested.

“Why, certainly. I’m informed someone else is on his way to see me, but you’re most certainly my priority.”

In his office, Dtui told him about the talk with Ivanic.

“So,” she concluded, “do you think we can call off the ‘shoot to kill’ order on the bear? It’s been worrying me sick.”

“Dtui, my darling, remember where you are. It’s incredibly hard to get the simplest things done here. But it’s next to impossible to get anything undone. By the time the order’s filtered down to the bozos with the guns, it’ll certainly be too late.”

“Can we change it to a tiger hunt?”

Civilai laughed. Despite the difficult life he’d lived, he remained a jocular man who was intelligent enough to take his status and circumstances without too much seriousness. He had the presence of mind to greet all his disasters with a Lao laugh. This attitude worried many of the more somber Party members.

Some wondered if he was really interested but, in fact, he cared deeply about most things.

“The Department of Interior already thinks I’ve got a few screws loose. If I start announcing open season on all varieties of wild animals roaming the city, they’ll have me in a straitjacket. Don’t forget, this is all on the say-so of a Soviet circus performer.”

He could see that the matter was starting to depress her.

“Don’t you worry. Our army sharpshooters are all terrible shots. They’ll probably miss.”

“I know this all looks really silly, but our office is responsible for fingering that bear. I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink if I thought she got herself shot on our recommendation.”

“When’s your boss coming back?”

“I’m off to meet him at Wattay now. He got a regular flight, I guess, thanks to you.”

“It’s who you know. Is this a new morgue service, going to meet Siri at the airport? Or do you just miss him?”

“He called. He wants me to go and take care of a guest. He’s bringing someone, but he wouldn’t say who.”

“Whatever next?”

There was a knock at the door and one of the aides poked in his head.

“He’s here, Comrade.”

“All right.”

Civilai escorted Dtui from the room. In the waiting area a round-faced Chinese-looking man with a paper fan sat on a bench between two others sweating in suits. His curly hair sat on top of his head as if he were balancing a bunch of black grapes there. He was out of shape and wore a tight safari suit that proved it.

Civilai went over to him and shook his hand. He looked up through his unfashionable glasses but didn’t bother to stand.

“Comrade Kim, how nice to see you again,” said Civilai without enthusiasm.

It was translated by one of the damp shirts, but there was no verbal reply, just a nod. Civilai dragged Dtui up beside him.

“This is Nurse Dtui. She’s a soldier in the revolution to cure the sick, toiling day and night to look after our small but blossoming proletariat and make them well enough to further the cause of the blah, blah, blah, etcetera, etcetera. You know the lines,” he said to his Korean-speaking aide. The man had recently returned from Pyong Yang.

“Just keep the bull going till I get back.”

He smiled at the visitor and walked Dtui to the door.

“Who was that?”

“Secretary of the North Korean Workers’ Party. Next president. Son of present President Kim, a.k.a. ‘Living God.’ I’m supposed to keep the bundle of joy entertained while he’s in town.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“Really? If you knew what cultural delights the boy finds entertaining, you wouldn’t be enthusiastic either.”

“I tell you one thing, Uncle.”

“What’s that?”

“He wouldn’t get a date if he wasn’t the son of a Living God.”

At Wattay in the late afternoon, the Antonov 12 bounced along the runway until it came to a skidding halt. The previous year, in one of the major policy decisions of the Transport Department, perhaps the only one, Air Lao had become Lao Aviation. But the only investment that entailed was a few pots of paint. Bits still fell off during turbulence and on the few days it was working, passengers still vanished in a fog of air-conditioning.

The plane purred with achievement some eighty meters from the arrival shed so the passengers would have to plod across the sticky tarmac with their bags. As per Siri’s confusing instruction, Dtui had commandeered a songtaew taxi and told the driver to wait with her. She saw her boss come down the wobbly airplane steps from the rear door. He waited at the bottom until a sprightly old man with cropped white hair joined him. They walked quickly toward the shed, engaged in a serious conversation.

Siri gave a pleased smile and waved when he saw his assistant perspiring in the uncooled arrival lounge. She was behind a short barrier that separated the arrivers from the waiters. This was a domestic flight, but there were two officers in a booth checking every passenger’s laissez passer.

Siri was escorting an illegal traveler bereft of paperwork, so this could have been the start of a bureaucratic nightmare. But as he’d assumed, it turned out to be quite simple. The officers only checked the papers of those who crowded around them waving their travel documents and their house registrations and their birth certificates and their lists of signatures. One could avoid this melee by not going to the booth at all.

Siri and his friend skirted around the riot and walked past the man on the barrier with the confidence of travelers whose documentation was in order. It helped to be met by a nurse in uniform and a driver. You had to be someone for such a reception.

“Dtui, this is Mr. Inthanet. He’s-”

Before Siri could complete the introduction, two policemen in non-matching uniforms strode up to the group. One of them held a small passport-sized photograph. Dtui recognized the men.

“Dr. Siri Paiboun?” one policeman asked, although he apparently knew already.

“Yes.”

“You are under arrest, Comrade. Please come with us.”

Everyone but Siri seemed surprised.

“May I ask you what the charges are?”

“They’ll tell you at the police station, Doctor.”

The other policeman took Siri’s arm lightly and gestured for him to head outside with them. The prisoner looked back at the amazed faces of Inthanet, Dtui, and the songtaew driver. He held up four fingers to his traveling companion and winked.

“Don’t panic,” he said, smiling. “Please take Mr. Inthanet to my house and make him comfortable. I’ll be there shortly.”

But the last they saw of Siri that day was the back of his head in the police truck being driven out of the airport carpark. Dtui looked at the mysterious visitor, smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and said:

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot,” he replied.

“So, how do you know Dr. Siri?” A Land Without Lawyers

On the Saturday morning, the three observers watched the condemned man eat three hearty breakfasts. There were metal bars between Siri and his friends. Dtui, Phosy, and Civilai watched him chewing happily on glutinous rice, and raw fish in a sauce spicy enough to self-combust. None of them spoke because they were still too dumbfounded.

It was Phosy who first learned of the heinous crime Siri was accused of. He called Civilai and told him. Dtui only found out about it when she turned up at the jail. She couldn’t believe her ears. They were all too shocked to discuss it. So they merely watched Siri eat the breakfasts each of them had brought for him.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Siri asked at last looking up from his food. “It is hard to eat in front of a committee… Hot, isn’t it?”

Still there was silence. Even though the door to the cell was open and the guard had gone for coffee, the guests had preferred to sit outside. This made Siri feel like one of the animal exhibits at the Lan Xang Hotel. Eventually, Civilai gave in. He shook his head and said “Siri, you’re the national coroner.”

“That’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to be.”

Civilai found this response to be amazingly flippant, even for Siri.

“Fault or no fault, you are it. You represent the Party. Whatever entered your head to do such a thing?”

Siri wiped chili sauce from his chin.

“Now there you go. What happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Thank goodness I’m not being judged by a jury of my peers. You’d all see me to the gallows.”

“Then tell us you didn’t do it.”

“I’m not making any statements until my lawyer gets here.” “You haven’t got a lawyer. In fact, I doubt whether there are any left in Laos. They’re damned fine swimmers, I hear.”

“What about you? You studied law.”

“I’m not representing you. I think you’re as guilty as Nixon himself.”

Dtui couldn’t hold back a little laugh. Siri didn’t notice.

“It shouldn’t make any difference what you believe,” he said. “You just have to convince them.”

“Siri, in two hours you have to go up in front of Haeng. You may recall that you haven’t exactly endeared yourself to the judge over the past six months. In fact, it could be said that you’ve crawled under his skin at every opportunity. And you have to defend yourself against charges that could very well result in your incarceration on Don Thao for the remainder of your sorry life. Personally, I think it’s time you started to take this seriously.”

“Hear, hear,” Dtui agreed.

Siri put out the spice fires burning in his chest with a swig of Dtui’s home-squeezed juice.

“Ah, Dtui. Your mom squeezes a grand guava.”

“Siri!”

“Relax, brother. They won’t get me. Even if they try, all I have to do is point them in the direction of January 1976.”

“And what’s that?”

“That’s the day your revolutionary council set a match to all the books. And one of those books happened to have the national constitution written in it. And once that had gone up in smoke, all the laws went up with it. Remember?”

Phosy felt obliged to enlighten the good doctor. He was a policeman, after all, and he knew about abuse of the system only too well.

“Comrade, let’s for a second forget about laws. Let’s imagine instead that you’ve pissed off the people that run the country. Let’s suppose that they can make up a fitting punishment off the top of their heads. What if they decide that letting you off will be a signal to all the other citizens to do anything they like and get away with it? Not having laws goes in their favor. They can do what they like with you.”

“You’re still all assuming I’m guilty.”

“I’m not,” Dtui said faithfully.

“Thank you.”

Trials were a rarity in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in those days. The hearing of Siri’s case was closed to the public to avoid hysteria. In fact, beyond the police and the Department of Justice, nobody knew about it. Not much negative publicity for Party members made it into the Siang Pasason newspaper.

As this was merely a hearing, it was conducted in the Justice canteen. The tables had been rearranged to give it the feeling of a real courtroom. Judge Haeng, in a nice pink shirt with collar buttons, sat at the front table by himself.

Young Mr. Sounieng, arguing for the State, sat at another table with the chief witness to Haeng’s left. Siri, arguing for himself, had his own table to the right. The small official group of onlookers sat on chairs facing them all. Civilai and Phosy were amongst them.

The accuser, and the insistent pursuer of action on the matter, was Siri’s silent neighbor, Soth, the crooked official from Oudom Xay. He glared across at the accused with a half toothpick protruding from his snarling gray teeth.

Credit had to be given to Judge Haeng. He was certainly out of his depth, still having presided over nothing more taxing than divorces and domestic disputes. But he had all the formal language down and he kept order quite nicely.

Everything sank or floated on the evidence of the only witness. Haeng called him to describe in his own words what he’d seen on the night of the ninth. Soth was obviously a man who considered the outcome of the trial a formality.

“It was about four of the morning,” he said. “I’m a light sleeper, so when I heard the sound it woke me up straight off. I forgot where I was for a minute and thought someone was chopping down trees in the forest. Then I remembered we was in the suburbs. So I grabbed me handgun and walked out into the-”

“Did anyone else hear this supposed sound?” Siri interrupted.

“He can’t ask me questions,” Soth protested.

“In fact he can,” said Haeng. “Dr. Siri is representing himself at this hearing, so he has a right to cross-examine.”

“Good on you, son,” Siri mumbled.

The man glared at them both.

“Don’t seem fair, if he’s the accused.”

“Just answer,” Haeng said. “We’d all appreciate it.”

“I sleep at the front. Me wife and the kids sleep at the back.”

“So in fact they didn’t hear?” the judge asked.

“Doubt it. I didn’t ask them. But I certainly did. I went out to the lane and looked up the end of it. And I see him standin’-”

“For the court’s benefit, would you be kind enough to give us a name? For the records.”

Actually this wasn’t a trial and there wasn’t a stenographer, so there were no records, but the judge certainly had a handle on the proceedings.

“Him. Dr. Siri Paiboun,” said the man. “He was standing down the end of the lane with a machete, and he was chopping away at the pole what holds up the government speaker.”

“The radio speaker?”

“That’s it.” “So, what did you do?”

“Do?”

“Yes. You had a gun. Did you try to stop him?”

“Yeah, of course. Well, no, not exactly stop him. It was too late. He’d cut a sizeable bite out of the pole, so when I went out it was already swaying back and forward. The wire was stretching till it was the only thing holding the pole up. Then it snapped and the whole lot come crashing down. The speaker got smashed to bits. It was total vandalistic desecration of government property; an act of treason against the great lprp.”

“So then what did you do?”

“Went back to bed. Nothing you can do at four in the morning. I reported it the next day, but the perpetrator had already fled the city in panic.”

“Thank you.”

Judge Haeng tapped his pencil loudly on the desk in front of him as he chewed over the facts. It annoyed everybody in the canteen. He finally looked up at Siri.

“Dr. Siri, these are indeed serious charges. Do you have anything to say?” Siri stood. “Doctor, this is a hearing, you don’t have to stand up.”

“I prefer to. If I may, I’d like to ask the witness one or two further questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“Now, sir. You say this dream you-”

“Dr. Siri!”

“Sorry, your honor… this scene you witnessed was at four a.m.”

“You know it was.”

“Just yes or no will do.”

“Yes,” Soth snarled.

“Well, as far as I can recall, the area around the radio post is overhung with large trees. On the ninth the moon was already quite full.”

“If you say so.”

“Then the trees must have cast quite a shadow. It would have been very difficult to identify a person standing there.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I saw what I saw.”

“Just yes or no.”

“I saw you.”

“Even though the pole is… was fifty meters from your front gate?”

“I saw you.”

“I’m sure you saw something, sir. But you must agree that everything comes down to your eyesight.”

“It’s perfect.”

“Really? It wasn’t so perfect last night, was it?”

Civilai and Phosy exchanged a low-eyebrow glance. Judge Haeng stared quizzically at Siri.

“You think not?” the man said mockingly. “Well, it was good enough to see you. You think I didn’t see you?”

“You tell me.”

“I saw you all right, and I brought the evidence here. You think this kind of thing’s going to scare someone like me?”

He reached into his shoulder bag hooked over the back of the chair. Mr. Sounieng, the prosecutor, obviously wasn’t expecting any evidence. He shrugged toward the judge. Soth produced a small wooden image. It was porcupined with pins like a West Indian voudou doll.

“See, Judge?”

He held it up so that Haeng and the observers could get a good look at it.

“If this isn’t harassment of a key witness in a treason trial, I don’t know what is. He crept up and hung it off me front porch early this morning. I saw him.”

Haeng called for one of the guards to bring him the doll, even though he could have just reached out and got it himself. When it arrived, he studied it. It bore not the slightest resemblance to the witness.

“And you saw Dr. Siri hang it there this morning?”

“As clear as I see you, Your Honor.”

Of course, that was the end of the hearing. Siri was given back his belongings and allowed to go home. If the case hinged on the eyewitness, and the eye of the witness saw a man on his front porch who was actually under lock and key in the Sethathirat police station at the time, that had to be the end of the case. Even if one were convinced Siri had wielded the machete as most of the observers were, one would have to admit it was a thoroughly effective technicality. Even the witness was struck silent by its blow.

When Dtui-on her lunch break-arrived at the canteen, it was all over. Phosy filled her in with the details, and they had a cup of iced Chinese tea to toast the doctor’s survival.

“Of course, they’ll put up another pole,” Phosy said.

“Probably, but at least he’ll get a couple of weeks of peace.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t think it’d cause such a stink. He probably assumed the neighbors would be delighted and nobody’d report it.”

“I’m sure this has taught him a lesson. You have to love him, though, don’t you?”

“Certainly do.”

They sipped at their tea with smiles on their faces.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

“Phosy?”

“What, Dtui?”

“Can I ask you something about the bear chase?”

“All right.”

“I know we convinced you that the killings were done by the bear.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s the bear any more.”

“You think there’s something else running round biting big chunks out of people?”

“It’s all very odd. According to an expert, the marks aren’t from a bear’s teeth. They’re more likely to be from…”

“Go on.”

“A tiger.”

Phosy spat out the mouthful of tea he’d just taken and coughed a laugh to follow it.

“Really? So we now have a bear and a tiger and goodness knows how many other wild animals all running around Vientiane, and nobody’s seen any of them? What? Are they in disguise?”

“Right. It’s ridiculous, I know. But something’s killing people and if it isn’t the bear, what I want to know is what or who could be doing all this damage. If nobody’s seen an animal, it has to be a person. Phosy, I want to go to the islands on Nam Ngum Reservoir.”

“Whatever for?”

“Every convicted, known, or suspected murderer is locked up there. If it isn’t an animal doing these things, I want to know who could be capable of it.”

“There are two things you’re forgetting, Nurse Dtui.”

“What?”

“One, I’m a policeman, and you-and I’m not denigrating your calling-are a lab nurse. I investigate crimes. You look at pimples under a microscope. That’s the way of the world. If anyone were to go to Don Thao Jail, it would be me.”

“Great. When you going?”

“Second, if your killer were in Don Thao Jail, he’d be in Don Thao Jail. Anyone who got over the wall, got past the trigger-happy guards, and avoided the mines would doubtless drown on the swim to the mainland. And then there’s the teeth. Wouldn’t he have to have a mouth the size of a wok to keep those teeth in? What about that little problem?”

“I just look at pimples. You’re the investigator. That’s for you to work out. So?” “So?”

“Are you going? If you don’t, I will.”

Phosy blew out an exasperated breath.

“I tell you what. I’ll save us both a trip. There’s a man we can go and see right here in Vientiane who probably knows the crazies on the islands better than they know themselves.”

“Groovy. Let’s go.”

“Not so fast. He won’t be around till this evening. Anyway, shouldn’t you be at the morgue?”

“No problem. My boss just escaped a firing squad. I don’t think he’ll be coming in to work today.”

“When he does, I for one want to know how he pulled that Siri double trick.”

“Oh, I think I know the answer to that.” The Toad Impersonator

Inspector Phosy decided enough was enough. He’d given the doctor plenty of time to solve the mystery of the royal chest that still sat unopened at the Department of Culture. Siri had asked for a few days, but had said nothing upon his return other than “Be patient, Phosy. Be patient.”

Well, his patience was used up.

He went by the hospital to see Constable Nui, who was now sitting up in bed and talking but could remember nothing of the day he had tumbled down four flights of stairs. Neither could he recall the women gathered around his bed, nor the face of the person now asking him questions. His memory slate had been effectively wiped clean.

Phosy rode the lilac Vespa the few blocks to Nam Poo fountain and looked up at the ministry building, black and ominous against the purple sky. He felt the adrenaline pumping and was annoyed he’d let the talk of curses get to him. Like on all Vientiane nights, there was hardly any noise and precious little light. He took a clunky Russian flashlight from his pack and climbed down from the bike.

As the top two floors of the building were officially his crime scene, he was in possession of keys for the main door and the access door to the sixth and seventh levels. There was never an armed guard on duty in front of the building, as the authorities still believed they were in control of crime and insurgency in the capital. At ten, an elderly watchman would arrive from his fishing duties and camp down on the ground floor. It was a small and futile attempt to discourage trespassers.

Phosy was about to cross the road when he heard a rustle from the bushes that circled the waterless fountain behind him. He turned sharply and shone his flashlight there. He didn’t say “I know somebody’s in there” or “Come out with your hands up,” because the shudder in his voice would have given away his fear. Instead he ran the beam along the crispy brown leaves and saw nothing. He heard something, though. It was the burp of a toad. He lowered the light and thought to himself: “So now you’re afraid of frogs. If you jump a mile at every lizard and rat and moth, Officer, you might not even make it to the seventh floor.”

He turned his back on the embarrassment and started to walk across the road. This time he ignored the leaves that rustled behind him and the continued burping. In the near distance, he could see the spotlight of a Thai surveillance helicopter skirting the far bank of the Mekhong. The river was a block away, the only natural water to be had in that dry city in March. The fountain had spouted nothing but Morning Glory blossoms for a year. “So why…?”

The question of why a toad would be so far from water should probably have come to him sooner. It wouldn’t be answered. There were more urgent questions: What was it running barefoot behind him? How did it get so close without his noticing?

Before he could turn, the strong arms had hold of him. Before he fell, he recognized the distinctive scent.

At about the same time, Siri was in his office at the morgue. He’d neglected his duties for too many days. One corpse had come and gone, collected in pieces by her distraught husband who wanted to know why there had been no autopsy.

To avoid the loud glare of the fluorescents, he read Dtui’s reports by candlelight. She was very precise and neat, and she’d doubled the size of her letters so Siri could read everything. He laughed at her account of the visit to Silver City and her description of the fat Soviet with a head like uncooked noodles. She was wasted on morgue reports.

He read of her suspicions on the similarities between the two previous attacks and the killing of Mrs. Ounheuan. He was certain his nurse would make a very fine coroner, but it was unlikely to happen. The Health Ministry would never consider sending a nurse on one of the valuable Soviet scholarships. She had a certificate that was a long way short of a medical degree, and, rightly or wrongly, Party members appeared to get most of the plum placements. She was bright, but it would take her over a year just to make head or tail of the Eastern European textbooks.

He was about to reach into the drawer to take out the three sets of tooth prints when, in the flicker of the candle flame, he saw the same old woman sitting at Geung’s desk. She startled him at first. Chewing on her betel nut, red saliva dribbled like blood down her chin. He was no longer afraid of the spirits but could still get a jolt when they appeared suddenly. This old lady had been showing up unannounced in the office for months. In all that time, she’d done nothing but chew.

“If you want help,” he said calmly, “you’ll have to give me some sort of sign.”

But she did nothing. He didn’t recognize her from his dissection table. He’d never met her alive. She wore a Lao phasin and a white halter blouse. This gave him no clues as to from whence she came. Women in the country had been wearing this style for centuries.

“All right, my love. You just make yourself at home. I’ve got some work to do here. Yell out if you need anything.”

He smiled, and to his surprise she smiled back. It was a gory smile, showing some five teeth stained black from the betel nut addiction. More bloody saliva dribbled, and she was gone.

“‘Bye, then.”

Before going home, Siri stopped off to see Constable Nui, who seemed convinced that the doctor was his father, long departed. His tearful wife sat on the bed beside him.

“He’s been doing that all day, doctor. He thinks I’m his dog.”

Siri examined him briefly.

“I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “I suspect it’s just concussion, and if that’s the case it’ll slowly wear off as his mind puts the bits back together. His reflexes are fine. That’s a good sign. It takes time.”

“That’s what Inspector Phosy said.”

“He was here?”

“A bit earlier, Doctor. He tried to get some sense out of Nui about the job he was doing at the Ministry when he had his accident.”

“Well, as long as he doesn’t go there himself.”

“But that’s just what he planned to do, sir. He said he was off to get something to eat to build up his strength to open some box.”

“My God, no.”

Siri was out of his room faster than a man approaching his seventy-third birthday had a right to move. Nui’s wife and her sisters looked at each other in disbelief.

Nui looked up.

“‘Bye, Dad.” He then looked angrily at his wife. “And you. What have I told you about not getting up on the bed?”

Dtui had waited long enough. She wasn’t the kind of girl to be standing around on a dark corner in the middle of the night. Her appointment with Phosy had been for nine. It was now nine-forty, and even by Lao standards that was long enough to wait.

She asked the neighbors for directions and found her way to the pretty house that had a feel of the old regime about it. She creaked open the tall wooden gate and walked into the dirt yard. An overly friendly little dog came up to her and took an immediate fancy to her ankles. She trod carefully so as not to crush the fellow and called out as she neared the house: “Sorry. Is anyone home?”

There was a light inside.

“We’re home,” came a woman’s voice. “Come on in.”

Dtui had the feeling this lady was used to visitors dropping in at all hours. She got as far as the unlocked door, and still nobody had come to meet her. She knocked and eased the door open.

“Excuse me.”

“Welcome.”

A middle-aged couple sat on either side of the mat, on which a simple meal was spread out. They looked up and smiled.

“Have you eaten yet?”

“Already, thanks,” she lied.

“Come. Just have a little bit to keep us company.”

This was the way Dtui remembered neighbors being. Even the poorest family would invite you to eat the last few scraps with them. This couple didn’t know who she was. She hoped socialism wouldn’t destroy all this.

“I’m sorry to arrive like this,” she said, sitting at the mat on the loose parquet floor. “My name’s Chundee Chantavongheuan, but people call me Dtui. I’m a nurse at Mahosot.”

“Good health, Dtui,” said the wife as she pushed the small plates of vegetables and fish to within her reach. She removed the lid from the sticky rice container and put it near the other food. The man spoke for the first time. He and his wife had interchangeable masculine and feminine qualities about their faces.

“I assume you know I’m Dr. Vansana. This is my wife, Sam.”

Dtui nodded and smiled and helped herself to a small pinch of rice from the wedge.

“Good health to you both.” She dipped the rice into one of the sauces and popped it into her mouth. Sam went off to the back room.

“I work in the morgue,” Dtui said, breaking off more rice. “I work with Dr. Siri Paiboun.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him. Most of his practice was in the jungle, I believe.”

“That’s him. I’ve come to ask for a little help on one of the cases we’re working on; a recent spate of killings.”

“The bear?”

There really were so few secrets in Vientiane.

“Yes. Except I’m starting to believe it wasn’t the bear at all.”

“Is that so?”

“Dr. Vansana, you’re the visiting physician for the internment islands on Nam Ngum Reservoir?”

“That’s right. For over a year.”

“You must have come to know the inmates quite well by now.”

“Those that want to be known, yes.”

“Can you think of anyone there who might be capable of killing women violently? Any psychopathic murderers escaped lately?”

“Ahh, Dtui. People don’t escape from Don Thao. Virtually the only way to get off is in a bag with your name written on a tag. There are some psychotics there, and a number of murderers. But the really serious violent criminals all seem to have been… removed from the general population.”

“Removed? Do you mean executed?”

“I’m not even sure I should be discussing this. I’m really in no position to make such a claim.”

“But it’s possible?”

“I suppose.”

“And the ones they kill, do they do it on the island?”

“I haven’t said they do such a thing and I haven’t seen it happen. But the conditions there are barbaric. People die all the time of malaria, dysentery, and the like. The facilities are quite basic, and I don’t have enough medicines to treat even the most treatable illnesses. I go twice a week, and there’s a new pile of bodies every time I get there. I don’t have time to look at the cadavers, but I do hear rumors.”

“What kind?”

“Just comments like ‘You won’t have to check so-and-so’s lungs this week, Doc. He won’t be using them no more. He upset the warden last week.’”

“That’s terrible. Surely you’ve reported this to someone?”

“It’s in the weekly report I submit to the Health Department. They pass it on to Corrections. But I doubt if anyone reads them. Conditions haven’t improved at all, and I’ve been pushing for better sanitation and mosquito coils since I started. I just go there and do what I can. It isn’t much.”

Sam returned with some newly cubed papaya on a plate. She put it on the mat in front of the guest.

“Thank you.”

“Straight from the tree. I hope it’s ripe enough.”

She joined them on the floor and watched Dtui try the fruit.

“M’mm. It’s lovely. I wish we still had trees. My mom misses the fresh fruit.”

“There you are. I must be psychic. I’ve cut down a couple more for you to take home with you. They’re out back.”

Dtui thanked her and ate some more of the fruit before continuing her questioning.

“Dr. Vansana, how did you get this job? It sounds simply awful.”

“I suppose it’s my reward for not escaping to Thailand,” he laughed. “They probably think anyone with a degree who stuck around has to be a spy.”

“Why did you stick around?”

“We’re Lao, Dtui. We love our country. You don’t help a place you love by running away when times get tough. Sam’s a teacher. I’m a doctor. We didn’t choose these professions because we thought it would make our lives more comfortable. I’m quite sure you didn’t either.”

“No. But I wasn’t expecting it to be this difficult. Do you still feel like you’re contributing? All you see are patients dying because you haven’t got the resources to help.”

“I don’t kill all of them. There are those that I can help. Some get better. I focus on them.”

“But none get off the island.”

“I didn’t say that. I said none escape. There are those that are judged to no longer be a threat to society. Some of the addicts survive. Some of the petty criminals repent.”

“And they let them go?”

“It costs money to feed them all.”

“Don’t you think the really clever con-men get through the net, pretend to play the game just to get their backsides off the island?”

“I dare say some do.”

“Do any crazies get off?”

“Not the type of crazy you’re looking for.”

“What types?”

“Some people with mild retardation, some memory disorders, some with delusional conditions, some-”

“Any of these delusion victims released recently?”

“Dtui, these aren’t dangerous people.”

“Give me an example.”

“There are a few. There was an elderly lady who thought she was sixteen. She was flirting with all the male guards. Then, last week there was a young man called Seua. He’s probably the most placid man you could meet. He’s a big chap but calm as a catfish. He was very popular there. He was polite and helpful, so they decided to let him go.”

“What was he in for?”

“Like a lot of them, it was just a petty crime. He stole food because he was hungry. He just had the misfortune to steal it from a shop that belonged to an army officer.”

“What type of food?”

“Pardon?”

“What food did he take?”

“If I remember correctly, it was meat from a butcher’s stall.”

“And what was his delusion?”

“Dtui, this isn’t the man you’re looking for. I knew him and liked him very much. His disorder hadn’t reached the stage of schizophrenia. I think I can recognize latent violence.”

“What did he believe, Doctor?”

He looked at his wife, then at Dtui.

“He believed he was the host to an evil spirit. He always talked of it very matter-of-factly, as if he were talking about a loose tooth or a tattoo.”

“Did he say what spirit?”

“Yes, it was a weretiger.”

“Wait. He believed he hosted the spirit of a man who turned into a tiger?”

“No. The myth is that the weretiger is a tiger who from time to time can transform into the shape of a man. But Seua never showed any aggressive tendencies. It was all talk. Dtui?”

She was on her feet.

“Do you know what time the Corrections Department opens in the morning, Doctor?” Then the Moon Went Out

Crazy Rajid’s eyebrow had stopped bleeding at last. It had spouted enough blood to fill the Nam Poo fountain by itself. Phosy had never seen anyone who found his own blood so hilarious. He laughed so hard Phosy had no choice but to laugh with him. Perhaps, Phosy wondered, this is the letting of the mad blood. Perhaps, at the end of it, Crazy Rajid will be as sane as the next man. They could discuss worldly issues as equals. But there was no sign of it.

He wrapped a makeshift bandage around Rajid’s head which seemed to simultaneously stop the bleeding and turn him into a Sikh. He dropped the Indian at the hospital, left a few kip with the reception nurse, and confirmed that the split would need some seven stitches. It wasn’t till a patient behind him let out a startled scream that he realized his back was drenched with blood.

When the crazy Indian had first grabbed him, their heads had clashed and then the bleeding began. They’d fallen to the ground with Phosy unable to shake off his attacker. At that stage, he’d still been fearing for his life until he smelled the odor of the unwashed and heard the familiar giggle. That’s when he knew it was no attack. It was a gesture of friendship; a joke, if you like. Who could tell? When you befriend a man whose mind lives on a distant star, you deserve whatever you get.

By the time Phosy had persuaded his friend to get the hell off, he was already soaked in blood. They sat together on the lip of the fountain, Phosy binding the wound, Rajid going through his impressive repertoire of amphibian impersonations.

Phosy stopped off at the station to change his shirt. There were four or five policemen there who listened spellbound to his story of how he’d fought off the giant grizzly. Then he told the true story and they booted him out.

It was an hour after the first attempt that he arrived at the Ministry to give it another go. As he parked his scooter, he looked up at the seventh floor. It seemed to glow like the elements in a toaster. He took four paces to his right and looked again. The light was gone. This was the penultimate night of the full moon. It hung large in the cloudless sky. From certain angles, it reflected from the glass windows of the building. It was time to be sensible, but he didn’t retrace those four steps and look again.

His master key unlocked the main door and he stepped inside. His footsteps echoed around the empty foyer. The windows were all shuttered down there. The beam from his flashlight was so straight and slim, it only illuminated what was directly in its path. All else around him was charcoal black. He picked out the teak steps and went toward them.

There came a creak from above that he rapidly assumed had to be the old floorboards stretching out after a day of work. He hurried upward. After the first flight, the steps were coconut wood and they, too, groaned under each step.

He browsed, but didn’t stop, at the first three levels. The moonlight through the odd unshuttered window cast long clawing shadows that unnerved him. But at the fourth floor he was drawn by a sound. It was faint, yet he could tell it had nothing to do with the natural aches and pains of an old building. It was melodic.

He strafed his light across the large central area and shone it into the doorway of each office. All were ajar but one. He walked toward it. The closer he got, the more clearly he heard the sound. It was definitely traditional music. If it were not for the hour, he would have assumed a careless employee had forgotten to turn off her radio. But national broadcasts stopped at nine and, given the current state of animosity, he couldn’t imagine the Thais entertaining their neighbors with Lao country music.

He stood at the door and instinctively reached for a gun he didn’t have. Under a recent directive, inspectors had to apply for weapons from the armory on an “as needed” basis. A total of nine signatures was called for. Uniformed officers still carried guns, but they had to get thirteen signatures if they wanted to put bullets in them. Their weapons were for show. God help them if there was a spontaneous firefight: there were guns everywhere in this country fresh from civil war.

Anyway, what good was a gun against music? He continued to annoy himself with his lack of control. He took a deep breath and threw open the door. His flashlight picked out a desk, a chair, and a cabinet: not a musician in sight. But the refrain was plainly there, hanging in the air. He walked around the desk in search of its source and came to an insulated pipe that ran from the ceiling to the ground. Perhaps in the time of the French it had carried water to the top floors, but the insulation had frayed and at one point the metal had rusted away completely. It left a large gaping hole from which leaked the sounds of a Lao harp, a xylophone, and a pipe.

As the lower floors were silent, he knew the music had to be coming from above. He had a nasty feeling that he knew from which floor. Siri’s warning rang in his ears along with the wooden sounds of the instruments, but this, like it or not, was his duty. He had to lead the men through example. If he didn’t arrive at the station the next day with the contents of the chest, they’d know he was as chicken as the rest of them.

He arrived at the fifth floor just as the moon went out. Where that one huge gray cloud had come from on such a clear night, he couldn’t begin to explain. But he could imagine, and tonight his imagination was by far his worst enemy. The blackness dropped on him like a burned crиme caramel, and all his willpower went into keeping the flashlight steady.

His hand trembled as he unlocked the door that would lead him to the top two floors. The tape across the frame was still stuck securely and confirmed that nobody had gone up since the second “accident.” But as soon as he opened the door, that same mournful dirge oozed down the stairwell to greet him.

He took a step back.

“All right. There’s music. So what? Pull yourself together and stop talking to yourself. There’s nothing threatening about music, and there’s likely a very logical reason for it.”

But rack his brain as he did, that reason didn’t come to him. Slowly and deliberately he followed the quivering beam up the stairs to the seventh floor. The discordant strains filled the darkness around him, growing louder and more forceful. He could almost feel the vibrations of the hammers against the wooden tiles of the xylophone.

At the top door he put his hand on the knob and it seemed to shimmer.

“Phosy, you’re a policeman,” he reminded himself and wished to the devil he’d taken the time to collect those nine signatures. “You are not afraid.”

Voices. He heard them clear as anything beyond the door, deep mumbled male voices beneath the music.

“Go back down, Phosy. Go get support. Bring back a unit of men. And tell them what? You heard music? They’d laugh at you. Stop talking to yourself.”

There was only one way to go. He squeezed the doorknob, took one more deep breath, and strode into the room.

Crockery shards crunched beneath his feet, and a scream came from all around him that was no human sound. Although his flashlight was clearly still on, it illuminated nothing. He held it up to his face. The bulb burned brightly but it no longer shed the type of light that could reflect. It had been disarmed.

“What…?”

In the otherwise absolute blackness, four pinpricks of light punctured the dark. His eyes slowly learned to read the blurred shadows in front of him. Each light was a flame on a yellow candle. They formed a square in front of the royal chest. Hidden within a thick fog of taper smoke, two white figures sat cross-legged on the ground. One looked up angrily at the intruder.

“Good God, boy. What kept you?”

Phosy finally took a breath.

“Siri?”

“That’s a relief. I was sure you were already a goner. Get your bum over here. We need one more.”

Phosy crunched over to the misty square of candles.

“I don’t…”

The second white figure was deep in prayer, oblivious to anything else.

“This,” whispered Siri, “is Inthanet. He’s going to open your box for you. Sit yourself down.”

Phosy, still high on fear, took in every detail of the surroundings. The music was playing loudly from an old cassette recorder that sat on the workbench. The play button was obviously faulty. It was taped down with cellophane tape.

Between Siri and Inthanet was a white sheet spread on the ground. It was stained red here and there from the severed head of a pig and a small butcher’s display of other dismembered internal organs. Phosy hoped they were animal. This orgy of blood was set off prettily with bananas and mangosteen and young coconuts, all laid out like decorations on a large wedding cake.

A tray holding a ceremonial banana-leaf cone sat atop the chest. Other leaves fanned out from its base interspersed with ripe banana slices. Four pairs of beeswax tapers, a cut flower, and a stick of magic incense jutted from the cone-like quills. Unspun cotton threads and pungent jasmine hung from the structure as if they’d fallen there by chance.

On the tray base were a silver knife, coins, and several brightly polished stones, and defying gravity at the apex of the cone sat an egg. Phosy had seen similar constructions often at weddings and birthdays and he knew there was to be a basee ceremony. But this one was much fancier than any he’d seen in his life.

“Siri, I…”

“Shush. He’s coming back.”

Inthanet emerged from his prayer trance and seemed to notice Phosy for the first time, even though he’d been staring straight at him the whole time.

“How are you, son?” he asked.

“Fine.”

Not true.

Inthanet took the egg from the cone and held it out to Phosy, who let it lay in his palm. The old man then lit the tapers from each of the four victory candles and held them between his palms. He caused the smoke to waft three times around the basee cone and once around Phosy’s face. He passed the tapers to Siri who repeated the procedure while Inthanet recited a Pali incantation.

After a few minutes, Inthanet took hold of the basee tray with his right hand and Phosy’s egg hand with his left. His eyelids flickered shut. Phosy raised his right hand with his palm facing his right ear. Siri returned the tapers to the cone and rested one hand on each man to complete the circuit. Inthanet continued to chant with a seriousness befitting the situation.

When he re-emerged from his trance, he took a thread from the cone. He dragged it three times across Phosy’s wrist before looping and tying it there. The three men then took strings from the cone and continued to tie them around each other’s wrists until all the thread was used up.

Inthanet, with one final flourish of language, took the egg from Phosy, broke it on the ground, and inspected the inside of the shell. It was unstained, almost perfect. He smiled at his co-mediums, and they knew the signs were good. Their leader removed the tray from the chest and laid his palm flat on the lid.

Mumbling quietly to himself, he slowly raised his hand. The lid creaked and lifted with it, as if his palm were a strong magnet. It was evidently powerful enough to raise even the eyebrows of the watchers. When the lid was open and leaning against the workbench, Inthanet looked down into the chest and smiled as if he were greeting old friends.

“So, how have you been, my lovelies?”

He nodded to Siri, who opened a bottle of rice whiskey that had been sitting amongst the road-kill on the sheet. He poured some into a plastic cup and handed it to Inthanet. He in turn knocked back one or two sips before filling his mouth with the remainder. He leaned over the casket and blew out a fine spray of the liquid through tight lips.

“There, that should wake you up.”

Phosy was dying to take a look inside the chest, but he felt too much like a part of the ceremonial display to change his position. However, things soon became clear. While Siri lit a cigarette from one victory candle, Inthanet reached gently into the box and lifted out the leader of the Xiang Thong puppets. He was a pearl-faced prince in once-glittering robes. He was eighteen inches from the tip of his bare feet to the top of his winged helmet.

Inthanet took a second swig of whiskey and sprayed the puppet’s face. It almost seemed to grin with its new shine. Siri had seen this face before. It had been in his dreams. He hadn’t imagined it was a puppet. It had cheered from the roof as the ministry official plummeted to his death. It had danced for him and the king. It had looked down at Siri when he was trapped in the box. He realized now that he had been inside the royal chest looking out through the matte black eyes of these marionettes.

Siri handed the lighted cigarette to the old man, who took a drag and blew smoke into the prince’s face. These indignities were apparently gestures of respect to the puppet spirits. Phosy thought how at-home they would be in some seedy puppet bar. The gesture was repeated lovingly for each of the forty figures.

He called them all by name and passed on funny anecdotes about them to his audience. He told of how the green-faced demon was a devil with the ladies. Once, the troupe had hired a particularly pretty puppeteer. On a number of occasions she would wake up in the morning to find the demon’s white fangs smiling beside her on the pillow. The girl’s door was always locked and there was no way for anyone to bring the demon into her room. She soon deserted the troupe.

Another puppet was a slim dancing girl with a pointed headdress. One day an old puppet master was so carried away with the drama of a scene that he accidentally let go of the puppet’s stick as she was leaping. She soared up to the rafter and was embedded into the wood by her hat. She was soon rescued, but the indignity was too much for the dancing girl. The next morning, they found the puppet master wedged at the top of a tall champac tree with no recollection of how he had gotten there.

One, a smoking puppet, refused to go back into the chest unless he was allowed to take a puff of the cigarette himself with his big cheeks. The cigarette burned bright when it touched his lips and smoke came from the puppet’s ears, even though he was as solid as soap.

Time seemed to be of no importance. When all the puppets were laid out across the workbench in neat rows, Phosy looked at his watch and realized the sun would soon be rising. The cigarettes had all been smoked. Two whiskey bottles lay on their sides empty. The final candle huffed its final sliver of gray smoke just as the lid of the chest was being shut.

“You won’t have any more trouble with them,” Inthanet sighed. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m tuckered out. Can we go home now?” The Inthanet Connection

The two white-haired men woke in a sweat at noon. It was the devil of a hot day without a whisper of a breeze to be had anywhere. It was the type of day that could wilt a metal gatepost. The only thing preventing Siri and Inthanet from waking earlier was the mental exertion of last night’s ceremony. They were so drained, they could have slept through a house fire.

Siri looked over from his cot, Inthanet from his hammock.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

They smiled and scratched and sat up.

“You’ll be keen to get back to Luang Prabang now, I suppose,” Siri said. In their brief time together, Siri and the old showman had become good friends.

“Not at all. Not at all. I’m sixty-eight, brother, and this is my first time away from the north. This is like winning the provincial lottery. How else would I get a free ride on my first-ever airplane? How else would I get to see the great southern capital and reside in a splendid mansion? This is the most fun I’ve had in decades. We found the puppets and got them settled and we pulled a magnificent fast one over your grumpy neighbor. All fun, Siri. All fun. I intend to drag this out for as long as I can. May even do a bit of sightseeing. In fact, you may never get rid of me.”

“You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Just let me know when you’ve had enough, and I’ll put you on the flight home.”

“That’s a deal.”

Siri stared at his roommate and seemed to be weighing up just how close their friendship had become.

“Inthanet.”

“Yes, brother.”

“Could I ask a favor of you?”

“Certainly.”

“It’s quite an unusual one.”

“As if this isn’t wholly an unusual trip.”

“Okay. Don’t go away.”

Siri went into the room where he had piled his clothes and fished his flashlight out of his pack. He came back to the cot where Inthanet now sat and plonked himself beside him.

“I want you to count my teeth.”

Inthanet rolled back with laughter. When it eventually subsided and he realized this was no joke, he took the light and shined it into the doctor’s open mouth.

“Wah, you certainly have a healthy looking set there, brother. I’ve lost most of mine, but this is quite a plantation. Do you mind if I use a finger? I don’t want to lose count.”

Siri could only gargle an okay, as the finger was already on the back molar and sliding around to the incisors on the bottom deck.

“But I suppose that’s one of the benefits of living with nature all those years. No sweets to rot your teeth away. I’m a sucker for candy, I am. We used to give sweets to the kiddies who came to the puppet shows, but I ended up eating more than they did.”

Siri wanted him to stop talking and concentrate on the counting. He didn’t know anyone who could do both at the same time with any accuracy. The finger continued to trip along the row.

“I was going to get some of those false ones, but I thought better of it. I mean, you never really knew whose mouth they’d been in before yours or what they’d been chewing on. So I make do with the dozen I’m left with. Yours are beautiful, though. Just gorgeous. Better than a lot of young fellows.”

He pulled out the finger and wiped it on his loincloth. “Sorry, I suppose I really should have washed this before I put it in your mouth. Still, no harm done.”

“Did you count them?”

“Not much point being in there if I didn’t, brother.”

“How many have I got?”

“Thirty-three, brother. Thirty-three.”

“You don’t s… ”

“Cooee.” The sound of a woman calling them came not from outside the house, but from the back room a few feet away from where they sat on the porch.

“Anyone home?”

The men looked around to see the annoying Miss Vong in the back doorway.

“Yes, I thought I heard voices.”

“Miss Vong, come in, why don’t you?” Siri mumbled.

“Good morning, Mr. Inthanet.”

“Good morning to you, Miss Vong.”

They exchanged a warm smile that surprised Siri.

“You two are acquainted?”

“Of course,” she said. “You abandoned the poor man on his first night here. He was all alone. He would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for me.”

“It’s true, Siri. Miss Vong brought me a super home-cooked dinner, and she even cleaned up the place a bit.”

“I’m sure she did.”

“I’ve brought you two lonely bachelors another little treat. I just fixed up a batch of spicy minced fish.”

As she went into painful detail of how she had prepared this unspectacular dish, Siri lamented the ground that had been lost. Over the previous month, he’d triumphantly reduced the number of charity housework invasions to a trickle. Now,

Inthanet’s arrival had given her new incentive. Inthanet would have to go.

Her arrival also poured soapy water over his revelation. He had thirty-three teeth: him, Prince Phetsarath, and the Lord Buddha. He wanted to shout it. He wanted to celebrate without Miss Vong.

“Vong, this isn’t the weekend, is it? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Not this morning, Comrade. We’re off on a fact-finding mission to the southern provinces. We’ll be traveling overnight, so we’ve got the morning off to pack.”

His spirits rose.

“Will you be gone for many months?”

“Only four days. I’ll be back before you know it. I’ll take this into the kitchen and cover it.” She walked inside with the bowl of fish lahp. In the distance they heard her say “Whoo, this kitchen could do with a good dusting.”

“Not necessary, Miss Vong.”

Siri and Inthanet smiled at each other and made faces as they probably had behind the teacher’s back in primary school. Siri lowered his voice to ask: “What did you do with the dinner she brought you?”

“Not even your dog could get through it. I thought she might check the garbage can, so I gave it a decent burial over there under the papaya tree.”

“Then I should abandon hope of papayas growing any time soon.”

It reminded Siri he should dig up the machete before it started to rust. They laughed again and listened to the swish of the duster and the humming of a happy woman, born to clean.

It was as Siri was riding off on his motorcycle and Inthanet was closing the gate behind him that Mr. Soth, the neighbor, realized how cruelly he’d been cheated. He stood on a chair on his veranda and could see over the wall. There was a pair of them. He was mortified. How dare they? How dare anyone make fun of him?

Of course, it hadn’t just been a case of mistaken identity. Inthanet had had to go to some effort to look like Siri. There was the walk of course, that tumbling forward walk that moved Siri around as fast as it did. But Inthanet had been a very fine actor in his day. There were some minor kapok additions to his eyebrows and the donning of Siri’s favorite blue peasant suit, and Inthanet didn’t even recognize himself. How could the neighbor know it wasn’t Siri?

The doctor had seen Soth on the morning of the felling of the speaker pole. After all the secrecy and planning, it was infuriating to be caught red-handed in a suburb where not a soul wandered after midnight. He’d honed his machete to an edge so fine, it could slice through communist red tape. He’d figured on no more than ten swings to bring down the nasty speaker and he’d be back in his cot before the world was any the wiser.

How could he have taken account of mysterious Mr. Soth? How was he to know the man’s habits? What right did he have to be awake at such an unhealthy hour? There was nothing to do in that place before dawn. But there he was, awake and brimming with vigilance.

On the flight from Luang Prabang, Siri and Inthanet had hatched this plot, along with several other contingencies. Dtui had told her boss on the phone about the visiting policemen and Tik, the old shaman, had been overwhelmed with a premonition of Siri rotting in jail. So Mr. Soth’s initiative and Siri’s arrest were both inevitable. The play was written and the action followed the script. But there was to be an unexpected last act.

Apart from being a creep, Mr. Soth was also a bad loser. He hadn’t reached the economic heights and moral depths he occupied today by accepting humiliation. Revenge didn’t have to be too complicated. A simple killing would do.

It was lunchtime, so Siri drove directly to the river, parked beneath a golden shower tree, and walked over to Civilai and Phosy on their regular log. Both men were eating with their right hands and fanning themselves, geisha-like, with their left. The cheap Singha Beer logo fans from Thailand barely managed to slide the sweat across their foreheads. There was no natural movement in the air, and the river edged along so slowly it threatened to stop completely.

“Got anything to eat?” Siri asked.

“Will you listen to that.” Civilai looked at Phosy without bothering to greet the newcomer. “The man makes over fifteen dollars a month, and he still has the gall to mooch off poor folk like us.”

“Come on, you old miser. I know you’ve got a stash there in that bag.”

Civilai reluctantly reached into the brown paper parcel and pulled out one of his wife’s healthy sandwiches. Their bread habit had taken hold in France during their studies. Rightly or wrongly, but mostly wrongly, doughy white bread had been one of the few luxuries they’d dreamed of through their decades in the jungle.

Where the young men had baser, more animal priorities when sent to Hanoi for training or meetings, Siri and Civilai’s first saliva-ridden thoughts were of crusty French baguettes and sumptuous fillings. They’d been delighted to see the cheap bread industry alive and well when they marched into Vientiane in ‘75, and proceeded to make up for time lost in the wilds of Houaphan.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

“Damned hot.”

“I’ve got thirty-three teeth.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, really, I-”

“I think this temperature’s driving everyone a little batty,” Civilai said.

“What’s the latest?” Phosy asked.

“Well, top of the loony list is that most of the politburo are talking about banning festivals because they encourage spontaneity. ‘Over my dead body,’ I say. Then this morning, the Thai foreign minister announced that the Lao king, whom we all know is presently holidaying in the sunny wilds of Houaphan, was rescued from Luang Prabang by a crack Thai guerrilla unit and would see out his days on Thailand’s sunny southern island of Phuket.”

“I really do have-”

“Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pacific, the Yanks, following a brief experiment with enlightenment, have reintroduced corporal punishment. I think everyone needs to take a nice cold shower. I even got a peculiar phone call from your nurse this morning, Siri.”

Siri was sulking and didn’t respond.

“I’d settle for an air-conditioned office,” Phosy lamented.

“The cutting room at the morgue’s got ac,” Siri reminded them. “You could both come and hang out there. I’d even let you-”

“I don’t think we need to know, thanks.”

“How’s your body double?” Civilai asked.

“I can’t think what you mean.” Siri sat between the two men and unwrapped his lunch. “I personally don’t see any similarity between Mr. Inthanet and myself. Do you, Inspector?”

“You’re both conniving old bastards.”

“I mean, physically.”

“Come on, old fellow. We’re waiting to hear about your friend and the complete royal puppet story.”

“And a few missing details about last night,” Phosy added.

Siri washed down a mouthful of bread with a swig from Phosy’s iced coffee flask. The ice hadn’t survived the day.

“Well, it isn’t really that complicated, boys. Older Brother, do you think you could wave that thing a bit harder? It’s hot here.”

Civilai hit him with the fan.

“Thank you. Where should I start? When I was in Luang Prabang, I asked around about the chest I’d seen at the Ministry. When I described it, I was put in touch with our friend Inthanet. He was one of the five surviving keepers of the Royal Xiang Thong temple puppets. They’d been quiet for a while.”

“I seem to recall that my cabinet banned them from using royal language in performances, and the puppets refused,” Civilai grinned.

“That’s right. The chest was ceremonially closed and stored at Xiang Thong. It was your classic puppet-politburo standoff. But the puppets had no intention of coming out, so it looks like the government went in after them.

“Some men in safari suits came one day and grabbed the chest. Nobody was sure who they were or where they were planning to take the puppets. The abbot charged with their safekeeping was shown a government directive that the chest was to be moved for security reasons. When the abbot asked for details, they told him it was all confidential. There wasn’t much he could do about it.

“And that’s how the chest ended up in the archive department of the Ministry and why all hell broke loose. You see, the chest can’t be opened by just anyone whenever they feel like it. The spirits of the puppets are incredibly powerful and amazingly temperamental. They were already-”

“How can puppets have spirits?” Civilai interrupted.

“What?”

“Puppets aren’t people, and they aren’t dead. So how-?”

“Ah, but the puppets are made of balsa, and before the wood to carve them is cut from the tree, the puppet-maker has to get permission from the tree spirits. The balsa is a gentle wood and spirits are plentiful in it. When they learn that the wood is going to be made into the image of a person, it’s awfully tempting for the more nostalgic spirits to jump ship and settle in the form of the puppet. It’s as if they’ve returned to their lost host.

“The balsa spirits attract others to the puppets: dead puppeteers, artisans, dancers, until each one has a personality and a force of its own. Inthanet knows all of them and how to open and close the chest without offending them. When I told him I’d seen the royal seal on a box at the Ministry, he was only too pleased to come with me to Vientiane. He’s quite a character. You’d like him, brother. He’d never been out of Luang Prabang in his life.”

Phosy stood and walked toward the crest of the riverbank before it dropped steeply to the shallow river.

“All right. That explains who Inthanet is. Now let’s cut to last night. I still have one or two little mysteries of my own to solve. When was this ceremony planned, may I ask?”

“Originally we weren’t going to do it until the weekend. We’d booked a little orchestra, and they weren’t free till Saturday.”

“You booked an orchestra?”

“Just half a dozen traditional instruments. And we should have spent longer paying respect to local balsa trees. But you messed all those plans up with your impatience.”

“Impatience? I’d been making excuses to my boss for a week.”

“Patience shouldn’t expire, son. Everything comes to he who waits.”

“Especially early retirement.”

“When I heard at Mahosot that you were on your way to open the chest, I knew you were in trouble. I raced home and picked up Inthanet and whatever paraphernalia he had ready. We were really pushing our luck with the cassette recorder. The spirits much prefer live music. We swung by a balsa copse and briefly explained what we intended, and got a sort of emergency go-ahead from the spirits there.

“All the time, I was picturing you, haunted by some angry spirits, leaping headfirst through the upstairs window. I was so relieved when we got there and didn’t see your effeminate motor scooter parked nearby or your impatient body splattered in the road.”

“I bet I could have made it all the way to the fountain. But, tell me, how did you get up to the seventh floor without going through the damned door?”

“Inthanet recited a magic mantra and spirited us up through time and space. I felt my body dissolve like sugar in water, and all the parts rose into the air. It was the most wonderful sensation. One minute we were at the fountain, the next we were with the chest.”

They stared at him, open-mouthed.

“You can not be serious.”

“No. Just kidding. We broke in through the side door on the ground floor.” Civilai hit him again with the fan. “Then we used the other stairwell from the fifth to the seventh.”

“What other stairwell?”

“Funny you, as a clever detective, didn’t notice a whole staircase.”

“There was no-”

“Certainly was. We came to the locked door and I thought we’d have to break it down. But Inthanet sensed there was another way. It was at the other end of the building, boarded off, didn’t have a door. The hardboard was just glued on. It came away very easily. The stairs were riddled with white ant, but if you kept to the sides… There was another board at the top.”

“I’m embarrassed.”

“No need to be. I’m sure the people working there had no idea either. It was probably boarded over long ago when the steps got dangerous. Now, give me a break. I’m getting hungry.”

He smiled and took a large bite out of the sandwich.

“I guess I was lucky, then,” Phosy decided. “Thank you. But you really should have told me what you had lined up.”

“You’re quite right,” Siri chewed. “I apologize. But I was a little preoccupied with being arrested and put on trial.”

“Darned lucky you weren’t convicted to go with it,” Civilai added.

“Surely you don’t still believe I’m guilty.”

“I tell you, Younger Brother, I certainly wouldn’t want to live next door to that man after all the embarrassment you’ve caused him.”

“Don’t worry, Brother. I’ve met people like him before. They talk a lot, but deep down they’re all cowards. I’m more afraid of living next door to Miss Vong. By the way, did I mention to anyone that I have thirty-three teeth?”

It was too hot to drag lunch out any longer, and Siri wheeled his motorcycle to the hospital parking lot. It was already around two, and he was feeling like a schoolboy who’d skipped classes for half a day. He hadn’t seen Mr. Geung for over a week, and he hoped the poor fellow wasn’t bogged down with bodies.

As he walked into the low concrete building, he called out in his friendliest voice: “Anybody in this morgue still alive?” There was no reply. “Hello?”

Mr. Geung came scurrying out of the office half in panic, half in relief at seeing Siri. He was too flustered to speak. He was rocking fit to roll over.

“Calm down, Geung. Calm down.”

Siri led him back into the office, sat him down, and rubbed his shoulders till his breathing returned.

“Now, slowly.”

“It… it… it’s Dtui.”

“Yes?”

“Shhh… she’s dis… appeared.”

Saloop, the lifesaver, had eaten a healthy rice-and-scrap lunch with his fiancйe at the ice-works yard. The owners there liked him and encouraged him to hang around. He was different from the other dogs who seemed to only have one thing on their minds.

But today it was too hot to sit around and spoon and she wasn’t in the mood for romance, so he took a leisurely stroll back home. He’d been enjoying the company of the man from the north and felt he should be there more to look after him. People were hopeless on their own.

He stopped to sniff at an occasional post and wall to make sure there were no interlopers in his territory. But sniffing stale urine on a full stomach in that heat naturally made him feel queasy. That’s probably why his canine senses weren’t as keen as usual. It probably explains why he didn’t notice the movement in the yard before he smelled the scent. But the scent was unmistakable.

He hadn’t had a great many opportunities to sample chocolate. It was a luxury so rare, they didn’t even have any at the Lan Xang Hotel. Yet once, when he was a puppy, some rich foreign lady had given him just enough to get him hooked. He’d followed that lady for blocks until she shook him off, but the taste was with him for life.

He didn’t get his second fix until fifteen years later when he and Siri moved out here to the suburbs. Those neighbors-the kids that ate better than the president-they had chocolate one day. The scent wafted through the air and pulled him by his nose out of a deep sleep. He went to their gate and saw them chewing on bars of the stuff. They teased and taunted him, pretending to give him some, then pulling it away.

It was more than he could take. He feigned a loss of interest, coiled the inside of his neck like a spring then just as the boy was about to pull the bar away he snapped at it. The kid only just got his fingers away in time. He dropped the bar and Saloop strode off with it, victorious. The children ran inside to tell their mother of the vicious dog that attacked them and took their chocolate.

That was a fortnight ago, and he’d been waiting for a chance to get back into his new drug of choice. This was it. Their gate was open and one of the kids had left a half bar of chocolate right there in the middle of the path, melting under the hot sun. It was too easy. He’d probably be as sick as a… well, he’d probably be sick, but anyone who’s ever suffered an addiction knows you can’t fight it.

He walked slowly along the rock pathway, listening carefully for movement inside the house, but not many people were planning on coming out into the sun on a day like this. And suddenly it was under his nose. He sniffed at its glorious milky sweetness, let his tongue dip into the gooey paste and slurped it up.

Life didn’t get any better than this: a house in the suburbs, a caring master, the love of a good bitch, and chocolate. For a second he wondered if he’d ever been happier. In Search of Dtui

“A fat one?”

“She is quite large, I suppose.”

“Yeah. She was here. You know where she works?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“For the RR29.”

“RR29?”

“It’s the regulation complaint form that accompanies official telephone calls to law enforcement departments.”

“What did she do?”

“Illegal access to government documents. They said I’d need to find out where she works before they can do anything-especially seeing as she didn’t technically steal anything. So, do you?”

The man sat at a small desk in a room so crammed with piles and boxes of papers, one match would have sent the whole building to ashes in minutes.

So, this was it, Siri thought to himself looking at the vaguely Chinese features of a face slowly adopting the shape and color of a sheet of paper. This was what all the triplicates and quadruplicates came to. Hundreds of officious cadres like this, processing endless documents by hand, passing them on to other paper-faced clerks in other offices, and filing them away in rooms like this. What a system.

This was the filing section of the Department of Corrections. The only appointment marked in Dtui’s log for today was: