The Godfather of Kathmandu (10 page)

I stand up to go. At the door I say in a humble, half-dead voice, “Let Sukum keep the case, I’ll solve it for him—I just don’t want the stress of all the paperwork.”

He purses his lips ambiguously, and I’m forced to leave it at that.

Now, back at my desk in the open-plan office I’m logged on to Yahoo! to check my horoscope. Apparently, I should avoid antique collectors for the next two days, along with other claustrophobic situations. When I check my Chinese horoscope on one of the other clairvoyant sites, I find that Wood Rabbits like me can expect a clear run of good luck. The online I-Ching (I always use the Wilhelm translation) is less positive:

That sounds more like it. I’m just through the commentary when I spy Sukum, purple and apoplectic with rage, charging toward me, drawing disapproving glances from our Buddhist colleagues. The open-plan office makes it possible to prepare for attack from a distant desk. I find myself wanting to huddle, somehow, while I watch him negotiate desk after desk, monitor after monitor, where mostly uniformed cops try to figure out how best to prioritize the relentless storm of crime reports. He is too Thai to really make a scene in public, so when he finally arrives at my desk he hisses rather than yells.

“You brown-nosing hypocritical asshole, you just forced the Old Man to give you the Hollywood case because you cut a big drug deal wherever you went last month and now he’s eating out of your hand. You make me want to vomit. You’re not fit to be a cop. You should be in jail.”

“Would you like to repeat that to Colonel Vikorn, Khun Sukum?” I ask softly.

Now he’s all crestfallen, and I feel pity for him. He so very, very much wants this next promotion, so very, very much wants to show his wife and best friends he can beat me at the art of detection, that he has violated my mourning without even thinking about it. I feel sorry that he is so deeply in the grip of the third chakra, the one responsible for greed, aggression, and dominance. (I’m afraid I often think of it as the
farang
chakra, which is horribly unfair to you, I know; after all, look how it is destroying poor Sukum’s peace of mind, and they don’t come more Thai than him.) I sigh, pick up the phone, watch Sukum’s eyes as I speak to Manny, Vikorn’s secretary, of whom we are all terrified.

“Khun Manny, forgive the question, but did you just call Detective Sukum to tell him he has been taken off the Hollywood case in favor of me?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell Colonel Vikorn I am not accepting the Hollywood case.
He can sack me if he likes, but Detective Sukum has already put in more than three weeks’ work and is doing a very fine job.”

“What did you say?”

“Just tell the Old Man what I just told you.”

“Did you just call him
the Old Man
in my hearing?”

“Yes. Now get on with it,” I say, and replace the receiver.

Not only Sukum, but the whole office is staring at me, expecting the roof to fall. Now the phone is ringing on Sukum’s desk. He looks at me in bewilderment, then races back to his post. We all watch while his face goes through a fascinating collection of emotions, from enraged to obsequious in less than two seconds. To give him his due, when he’s put the phone down he walks back over to me, gives a high
wai
, and says, “Thank you. I will be grateful for any assistance you can offer. I know you are very busy and a better detective than I. I humbly apologize for troubling you in your time of grief. I hereby admit I now have
gatdanyu
with you.”

I wave a hand. “Please,” I tell him, “it’s not
gatdanyu
—you can’t owe a blood debt to a half-caste. I’m just not in the mood for promotion this year.”

He gives me a baffled glance and shakes his head. As he’s about to leave, I give him the name of Thomas Harris and recommend
The Silence of the Lambs
and
Hannibal
—in Thai translation, of course. He’s never heard of the learned author or his works. He never reads novels. I tell him he can get the idea just as well from the DVDs, which they sell in counterfeit versions at a hundred and fifty baht (you have to bargain them down from two hundred,
farang)
on Sukhumvit at the stalls opposite Starbucks in the Nana area.

My generosity is too much for him; it’s too Buddhist, too un-cop. “A minute ago I hated your guts and was fighting the temptation to have you bumped off,” he whispers in a disorientated voice. “Now you might be the biggest benefactor of my life. It must be your
farang
blood that makes you so incomprehensible.”

“Must be,” I agree genially. Instead of going back to his desk immediately, as he would like to, he hangs around, looking even more apologetic. “What is it, Khun Sukum? If you are stuck, I’ll try to help.”

He fidgets a bit and does a sort of dance. “I did a little preliminary research.”

“Yes.”

“The victim’s name was Frank Charles. He owned a luxury condominium on Soi Eight.”

“Yes?”

“But if you remember, he was found in that flophouse on Soi Four/ Four.”

I push back on my chair until it balances on the rear legs, and I’m using my feet on the desk to maintain balance. “Khun Sukum, did I not already explain, when
farang
get money they often stop thinking about waste. I mean, other factors come into operation.”

“Like what?”

“Like perhaps he was embarrassed that the security at his condo would know he brought a different woman back every night, or maybe more than one. Or perhaps he thought if he behaved like that someone would tell his circle in Hollywood.”

“They don’t have prostitutes over there?”

“Of course, but
farang
suffer greatly from a disease called hypocrisy. That may be why he was here in the first place. What does his passport show? How often did he visit Thailand?”

“Four times a year for the past ten years.”

I open my arms in a sort of invitation to Detective Sukum to share my dubious expertise on the subject. “It may be a safe working hypothesis that he was one of those famous
farang
who are also sex addicts, who make regular visits to Bangkok while pretending to be working on their laptops at home. There are quite a few literary figures like that, and even more from the California entertainment industry, and lots of judgmental British journalists as well, not to mention Hong Kong lawyers. That being so, he might have bought his condo for its proximity to Soi Seven.”

“What happens in Soi Seven?”

“The Rose Garden.”

“It’s a brothel?”

How to explain the Rose Garden? “Not exactly. It’s full of freelancers. It suits young mothers who need spending money whether they’re married or not, girls with boyfriends they need to service during the evening, women with part-time jobs who can slip out of the office to turn a trick or two before going home to supper.” It occurs to me that a homily is called for: “The unpalatable truth is that promiscuity makes men happy, and quite a few women, too, especially when they get paid.”

“It’s full of
farang?”

I notice the telltale signs of Thai shyness overcome him. “Do you want me to go with you?” I ask.

He nods in relief and lets me have another of those smiles. Before leaving my desk I send off an e-mail to Kimberley Jones:

Like a lot of Thais, Detective Sukum has never spent much time in the Nana area, although he has passed through it often enough and reads about it almost daily in the newspapers. Perhaps we got the idea of invisible screens from the Chinese, before they kicked us out of their country about fifteen hundred years ago. The invisible screens in this case produce a kind of psychological enclave for the benefit of
farang
men—men like Frank Charles, for example—who do not know how to be discreet, and so we have to be discreet for them, letting them get away with poor public behavior in a restricted area in the hope it will not corrupt our kids. Therefore I deliberately stop the cab at the Sukhumvit/Soi 4 junction and walk Sukum past the stalls that line the pavement where you can buy DVDs of the latest movies, some of them clearly marked as being for the eyes of the Oscar committee members only. (Not only DVDs,
farang:
designer clothes, fake Rolexes, and every martial-arts weapon of the kind strictly prohibited in your country, including nunchakus,
bokken, tonfa
, focus mitts, kick shields, and full-length swords in scabbards you would kill for, which you won’t be allowed to take on the plane, not even in your checked luggage—but then you know all this already; it’s all there especially for you.)

When it comes to buying, Sukum and I both examine our consciences—no, not in the way you are thinking,
farang
(I wish I could get hot under the collar about designer fakes the way you do): I mean we have to decide whether to reveal that we are cops and thereby get the DVDs for
free, or whether we bring good karma to the case by letting the poor Isaan hustler, in this case a young woman with a disfiguring harelip who is also deaf and dumb, have her hundred and fifty baht. It’s a no-brainer because Sukum, when not suffering from the vice of ambition, is a good Buddhist. I direct him to buy
The Silence of the Lambs
and
Hannibal
. When the woman with the harelip shows him the lurid covers of her porn collection, the good detective actually blushes. Well, I guess the covers are pretty raw if you’re not used to that kind of thing. Then it happens, as I suppose I knew it would.

They are a perfectly ordinary young couple, she Thai, he
farang
, of the kind you see often in this area. It’s their son, about six years old, who throws me. He bears only a passing resemblance to Pichai, but that’s enough. I feel my lips quivering and something happening to my lower jaw. Sukum has only just finished buying his movies and is shocked to see the transformation of my mood. May Buddha bless him, he’s able to make the connection with the kid who just passed us and touches me gently on the elbow. I say, “I’m sorry, I better sit down for a moment.”

In Starbucks I order a cold mint mocha, medium size, and a mineral water for Sukum. He politely avoids looking at me, waiting for me to recover. How to explain that at times like this it is not merely grief that gnaws at my guts, but Tietsin’s mantra as well? I see his blade wheel vividly, as if it were a physical object, its tiny spadelike edges whirring and ripping through the illusion of identity.

“D’you want to go home?” Sukum asks doubtfully. The idea of visiting the Rose Garden alone is pretty daunting.

“I’ll be okay,” I say. I do not add,
I wish I could light up a joint
.

The moment passes, as such moments do, leaving me purged and strangely light-headed. Relief even brings a sort of wan joy. Sukum has been watching me in wonder, and I think he has decided I’m totally psycho. I understand. He is a simple man who got upward mobility in a limited form and doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He is the only cop in District 8 who bought a car out of his own salary; he cleans it about five times a week. Nobody has seen it in anything less than mint condition, and it forms a large part of his conversation. He is also famous for his underarm deodorant and for cleaning his teeth three times a day; we know all this because he is obliged to carry out these ablutions in the men’s room at the station. According to Lek, who, when not urging me on
to Buddhahood, can be a terrific gossip, Sukum also has a problem with flatulence, which he deals with through an elaborate exercise involving his stomach muscles and a great deal of inexplicable swallowing. Lek sits near him and frequently bears witness to tiny, nearly inaudible ziplike farts emanating from under Sukum’s desk. To top it all, Sukum has adopted the Chinese habit of extended hoiking first thing in the morning, to chase away the throat demons. I’m not telling you all this,
farang
, to be malicious, but rather to reveal the flaw in my own perception, for now Sukum shocks me with his penetration.

“I don’t know how you feel. I can only imagine. If my son was killed, I would resign and go to a monastery.” I stare at him. “I know what you think of me, I know you laugh at me, just like all the others, especially your
katoey
assistant. I didn’t choose the smallness of this lifetime. Don’t you think I also would like to live a bigger life? Why do you think I want promotion so much? But it’s my karma, what can I do?” He adds, “I often wish I hadn’t married and had a child.”

“Your home life is not entirely what you hoped for, Khun Sukum?” I ask, rather disingenuously; the detective’s fights with his wife are legendary.

“You know very well it’s not. Let’s face it, this is the age of the booby-trapped pussy. If I tread on her toe, I’m violent. If I smack the kid, I’m a sadist. If I look at another woman, I’m a sex addict and she starts talking about HIV. If I don’t want to go to the filthy beach at Pattaya fifty times a year, I’m stifling her and the kids. At the same time I get it in the neck for not standing up for her when she gets into an argument with the neighbors, and if I don’t dominate her ruthlessly in sex she can’t reach orgasm. Then there’s always the threat of bankruptcy if she files for divorce.”

He gives me a glance. “Go ahead, laugh.” He shakes his head and glances around the coffee shop. Out of the corner of his mouth: “If I could have held out against the sex instinct for a little longer, I might have gotten mature enough to be a monk. But I couldn’t, and what can I do now? My whole mind is cramped; there’s nothing I don’t worry about, and I have no idea where the worry comes from. I don’t like my social identity. I don’t like identity. I hate having to be somebody, it’s so burdensome.”

My jaw has dropped, and for a moment all I can manage is a high
wai
to honor his wisdom. On the way, now, to the Rose Garden, with Sukum
holding his illegal DVDs in a green plastic bag, I’m thinking,
Hold out against the sex instinct, hmm
.