“Don’t worry about that,” Tom says with a lump in his throat. “There wouldn’t be any fucking point, would there?” Now his eyes too are weepy. They blend the salt for a while, before starting again. This time she manages to get both his face and groin in camera range while she works on him.
“Did she use that trick on you?” Chanya wants to know. So does the FBI, to judge by the way she’s looking at me.
“No,” I say, not sure how I feel. “Not at all. I guess he has a lot more money than me.”
“Hm,” the FBI says thoughtfully, “kind of over the top, somehow, unless she wanted more than just money.”
“Like what? Not marriage, surely.”
“No,” Kimberley agrees, “not that.”
I take a deep breath. “Last one,” I say.
It is the same room, but the atmosphere is quite different. The man is clearly Oriental, and that is all we know about him for the first seven minutes. Damrong has adapted perfectly to her ruthless Asian master, absorbing his remorseless thrusts with helpless cries and groans. When he becomes too aggressive, she bites him hard on one hand: a warning shot or an invitation to still more combative sex? Certainly, without antique fragments of the courtly love tradition to cloud his judgment, this client is not so easy to maneuver. When she finally has his mug in the camera lens, Chanya and I exchange a glance, and I freeze the frame. There he is, face turned beautifully in full frontal ecstasy while she works his member. The sexual angle is suddenly quite irrelevant, however.
“What?” the FBI wants to know.
“I’ll need a still of that,” I say.
Kimberley shrugs, plays with the software for a moment, downloads the still, and folds her arms. “Will someone tell me what’s so different about this guy? I mean, I can see he’s Asian with a lot of Chinese blood. Quite a dish, actually.”
“It’s Khun Tanakan,” Chanya whispers, careful, even in the midst of her contempt, to use the respectful Khun in accordance with feudal law.
“Who?”
“He’s big in banking,” I explain with a gulp. “About as big as they get. We’re talking HiSo all the way to the top of the pyramid. Him and his buddies control the economy. All big deals go through them.”
Chanya and I switch to Thai for a telling moment:
Chanya: What are you going to do? This could get you killed.
Me: I know that.
Chanya: You’ll have to tell Colonel Vikorn.
Me, gloomily: How safe d’you think that will be? You know what he’ll want to do.
Chanya: I’m pregnant, Sonchai. I don’t want to bring up our child all on my own.
Me, passing a hand over my brow: I’ll have to think about it. I’ll do whatever’s safest.
Chanya: Start by getting that laptop out of here. I’m scared, Sonchai, I really am.
Me: Okay.
Now I’m hurriedly unplugging the laptop and sliding it into its case under the gaze of the FBI.
“Wow,” Kimberley says when I’m finished and about to leave the house, all in less than five minutes. “When you guys spook, you really spook. How about letting me in on some background?”
“In the cab,” I say.
Now Kimberley and I are standing in the street, hailing a passing taxi. Chanya has remained in the house. “I’ll let you off at the Grand Britannia,” I tell the FBI.
“Where are you going with that thing?”
“The police station,” I grunt.
In the back of the cab I explain, “Damrong had that stuff shot for blackmail purposes. There can be no other explanation.”
“I agree. So what?”
“If she had started putting on the screws, Tanakan will have his people looking all over the city.”
“But you’re a cop. Doesn’t that count for anything over here?”
I smile ironically. “Sure.”
“So?”
“So, Chanya’s right. The smart thing has to be to tell Vikorn. At least I’ll have him on my side that way.”
“Why is that a difficult decision to make?”
I turn to her. “What d’you think he’ll want to do with the video?”
I think the FBI has mastered this little cultural conundrum by the time I let her out at her hotel. She pauses while the door is open and pops her head inside for a moment. “Kind of strange, don’t you think?”
“What is?”
“That two or three easy steps is all it needed to get you this far. You did no more than the obvious, right?”
“Looked up Damrong’s name on the database, which led to Baker.”
“Which led to the most dangerous scoop of your career. Strange. I don’t know about Bangkok, but policing is rarely that simple stateside.”
On the way to the station, with the laptop next to me on the seat, I’m thinking, Simple? I fish out my cell phone to call Vikorn on his. He’s cavorting at one of his clubs not far from the station. When I tell him in coded language what I have sitting next to me, he says he’ll get dressed and be with me in thirty minutes. At the station I’m so nervous about the laptop, I don’t release it from my grip. Once I read about a courier who brought two bottles of Mouton Rothschild ‘45 from London to Hong Kong and for security reasons had the briefcase containing them cuffed to his wrist. Well, this is the porn industry’s equivalent of Mouton Rothschild ’45. I have to wait about an hour before I get the call: he’s arrived.
We’re sitting in his office now, having carefully reviewed Damrong’s performance with Khun Tanakan. It’s around midnight. When Vikorn turns to me, I cannot read the expression on his face. There is a frown of sorts, but it is complex and nuanced by what might be a smile flickering over his lips from time to time. I’ve known him so long, though, all I need do is check his eyes: bright and shiny. He speaks very softly, like a lover. There is gratitude and caress in his tone.
“Sonchai, I might need a witness.”
“Yes?”
“Someone with the smarts to understand what’s going on, and at the same time the foresight to realize that any breach of confidence could be fatal.”
“I’m not following, Colonel,” I say.
“You know the way our country is, Sonchai, ti-soong, ti-tam.” The reference is to the Thai feudal system, called high-low or, if you prefer, top and bottom. “If I do this alone, he’ll find a way of pulling rank.”
Light breaks in my frontal lobes. I feel a delicious frisson of fear and excitement. “You want me to be there when you put the squeeze on Khun Tanakan?”
Vikorn raises a finger to his lips. “He won’t know you’re there.”
“Why don’t you video it?”
“Because he will insist on meeting in his office.”
“So how can I be present?”
“You’ll come as my assistant and bodyguard. He will not allow you into the room during negotiations, so I’ll be wired. You’ll have the recorder. You will also listen over a headset so you can claim to be a live witness if things go wrong. We’ll make it look like you’re listening to music—what are those stupid things called?”
“iPods.”
“Right. You’ll be one of those switched-on cops, like in the recruitment posters.”
“This could put my life at risk, Colonel.”
He raises his eyebrows, then looks away. “Ten percent for the relief of poverty.”
“Twenty.”
“Done.”
I shrug. If it is the Buddha’s will that Khun Tanakan’s wealth be more equitably distributed, who am I to argue? Anyway, I wouldn’t want to miss Vikorn doing what he does best.
“You better tell me about the case again,” Vikorn says. “It’s a murder investigation, isn’t it, or have I got that wrong?”
“Sort of.”
“Anyway, one thing is for sure. We can’t let this Baker character hang out unprotected. Have someone arrest him on pornography charges. I want him in the cells, where I can keep an eye on him.”
“Okay,” I say, “okay.”
As I’m preparing to go home, with most of the station in darkness, I realize I’ve not given much thought to Baker these last few hours. Hanging the laptop out of his window like that was humorously amateurish, the kind of dumb reaction of a born loser. But losers scare easily, and now I know what is on the hard disk. I call the guard at Baker’s apartment building.
“He left with a rucksack more than an hour ago, after that Englishman left.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You only bribed me for one call.” I groan, hang up, then dial the station operator to get me Immigration.
“He can’t get far without his passport,” a cheery voice advises.
“He’s running for his life. Maybe he has a forged passport. Maybe he bought a spare one in Kaosan Road.”
“Okay, send me a good copy of his passport mug shot in the morning, and we’ll send it out in digital form to all major entry points.”
I say something sarcastic that repeats the words all major and in the morning. Thais don’t react well to sarcasm, though, and he grunts non-committally before closing the phone. I call Vikorn, who promises to kick ass; after all, he’s the one who wants Baker arrested.
11
I expected Vikorn to use his Bentley, which only goes to show how vulgar and unsophisticated I am. Of course, he is visiting the great Khun as Humble Cop, so we sit in the back of a particularly banged-up patrol car. Fortunately, the journey lasts only ten minutes, which is just about the upper limit of the Colonel’s tolerance as we bounce around on the torn-up backseat. He is in full police colonel uniform, though, and looks quite trim in the brown tunic with gold shoulder boards. Throughout the journey he has been making curious, delicate hand gestures, which are an expression of the infinite subtlety of his mind. I follow him into the vast lobby of the bank. He uses charm, not authority, on the receptionist, who makes a call. From the look on her face when she puts the phone down, the instruction must be to get the two cops out of the banking hall and into some private room, pronto. We are taken in a lift to an oak-and-green-leather conference room on a high floor, where we sit at the board table. Normally, one would expect a secretary to appear at this stage, but Tanakan didn’t get where he is today without knowing how to play every gambit of the game. The door opens, and there is the man himself. The Colonel and I both stand immediately, hands held together at our foreheads in a high wai.
The Khun shows his humility by giving us a high wai back. This cookie is way too smart to try to defend the indefensible.
Chinese genes are taken for granted among Thai high society, especially in banking. Khun Tanakan’s porcelain skin, small intense dark eyes —more slitted than those of an ethnic Thai —jet-black hair, sophisticated manners, and beautifully cut suit all place him at the highest level of Thai-Chinese movers and shakers. But Tanakan has something extra: surely his forefathers were not all diminutive Chiu Chow from the Swatow region of fishing folk, for he is almost six feet tall, indicative of ancestors from the north, Manchuria perhaps. It is nearly impossible to imagine uncontrollable passion in this man, but I’ve seen Baker’s video; I have watched that intense, focused ambition morph into a lust of reptilian intensity. In his early fifties, he owns an excellent physique and —ref. the video—a smooth ivory member of respectable dimensions.
“Allow me to introduce my assistant Detective Jitpleecheep,” Vikorn is saying. At the subtlest shift of the banker’s eyes, Vikorn adds, “He will wait here, or perhaps in your own suite, while we chat.”
Tanakan nods. Graciously: “He can sit wherever he pleases. My secretary has her own office. He can sit there, or he can stay here.”
“I think he would prefer your secretary’s hospitality,” Vikorn says, thinking of the range of his equipment.
“Yes,” the banker says, turning to me with a smile of such warmth and hospitality, I could be his favorite nephew. Once in his suite, he introduces me to his secretary at the same time as he shows Vikorn into his office, then firmly closes the door.
She is, I am afraid, quite amazingly attractive. If Tanakan is banging her (which I bet Wall Street against a Thai mango he is), you have to wonder why he needed Damrong.
Or do you? Her long black hair floats on the air when she moves, exactly like a shampoo advertisement. She is dressed in the very latest HiSo business combination (black and white with a dash of color in the jewelry). I’m sure that’s Van Cleef and Arpels distributing subtly perfumed vectors into the air-conditioning. She does not make a single move, or even blink, without reference to some beautician’s code of conduct, and she seems able to type. On the other hand, I have my own insight into the kind of service Damrong provided to the master banker, the likes of which might have shocked this girl into confessing all to her mother; unlikely that she could satisfy Tanakan’s darker needs.
Her instructions include seducing me, at least to the point of bringing me to heel. She has never flirted with a cop before, though, and is having trouble covering her revulsion. I have not helped her dilemma by fishing out my iPod and my Bluetooth earpiece and lounging on the Italian leather sofa under the porcelain lions with my feet stretched out like the yobcop she had me down as from the start.
“Welcome to my humble office,” Tanakan is saying in my right ear.
“It is a great honor, Khun Tanakan,” Vikorn says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an office of such beauty. Your taste is impeccable, Khun Tanakan.”
“Oh, you must not be so modest, Colonel. What am I? A banker, a moneyman. Compared to the service a senior police officer of your caliber renders to society, I am the one who should be congratulating you.”
“Ah, Khun Tanakan is too kind. Let us be frank, we belong to different classes. You are porcelain, and I am earthenware.”
“Even if I were to accept that admirably modest statement, Colonel, I would have to add the rider that when porcelain collides with earthenware, it is the porcelain that suffers the most damage.”
“I was coming to that,” Vikorn says softly.
Meanwhile Tanakan’s secretary has started to worry that she might not be following instructions to the letter. She has found an excuse to stand up, turn to the side, inhale, and square her shoulders; her breasts are, of course, perfect, but what am I supposed to do about it? Now she has emerged fully from behind her desk and sees an urgent need to tidy up the glossy magazines on the coffee table just in front of the sofa. She frowns in concentration with Fortune in one hand, then finds she has to explain herself by turning to me with a confused smile. When even that fails to bring me to my knees, she swallows before speaking. “I can’t remember where this goes,” she says sweetly. More than ever I can see why Tanakan needed Damrong.
“Of course,” Vikorn is saying, “there is an attraction between opposites, as the Buddha taught.”
“Correct,” Tanakan admits.
“It goes without saying that humble earthenware feels awe, admiration, even passion for porcelain, not to mention envy, but the attraction that porcelain feels for earthenware is less well documented.”
“Colonel Vikorn’s forensic genius is well known. Your insight into even the subtlest shades is amazing.”