When we lie down to sleep, I close my eyes and observe my mind slip into denial. Of course, it didn’t happen, right? Right. Such things are impossible, they are the imaginative creations of bored and ignorant peasants, right? Right. You’re only half Thai, for Buddha’s sake, you don’t need to be sucked into this primitive sorcery, right? Right. By the time I fall asleep, the incident has been dismantled and stored somewhere dark and deep.
10
I am at my desk watching Lek weave between the other desks on his way to me. He is carrying a plastic bag of iced orange tea, of a hue I associate with Chernobyl, and sips from time to time from a straw sticking out of the top, which is tied with an elastic band. I note with approval that he avoids the desk of Detective Constable Gasorn, who has developed a crush on him. Well, perhaps not a crush exactly, for Gasorn’s private e-mails to my assistant, while affectionate, hint at something more radical than a passionate affair. There are statistics and theories in great measure concerning the tendency, troubling to some, of young Thai men to change sex. In a nutshell, the ancient system, by which a Thai man has to worry about Everything while his Thai wife gets to live on a more hospitable planet at his expense, may be breaking down. DC Gasorn is one of those who incline to the view that it would be better to have the lot chopped off and find a sponsor: let some sucker of sterner stuff fight it out with market forces. He’s not sure, though, and I’ve instructed Lek not to talk to him or reply to his e-mails. Lek survives only because I protect him and Vikorn protects me. If it looks as if we’re starting a subversive fashion, Vikorn will hang us both out to dry.
Off duty, Lek has started rolling his buttocks a la Marilyn Monroe, but he controls his gait in the station. Nevertheless, he is unable to avoid a quick glance at DC Gasorn on the opposite side of the room. The more he takes of the estrogen, the less defense he possesses against idle flattery. On the other hand, he’s coping much better in so many ways these days. He has passed through the ordeal of accepting that even in Thailand he is a freak in the eyes of the world; now he’s much harder inside and stares down villains effortlessly: gender reassignment has been good for his career, in a sense. Not that he’ll ever get promoted beyond humble constable.
When he reaches my desk, he takes the straw out of his mouth long enough to wai me with the straw somehow—miraculously—held between his hands. I tell him I want to know where Damrong was working at the time she died, and hand him a photograph. It must be the most recent, because the FBI showed me how to make a still from the video, using her laptop. The face in the pic has about three minutes left to live. Lek will flash it around the bars, starting with Soi Cowboy, then up to Nana, then across to Pat Pong; if he hasn’t gotten anywhere by then, we’ll have to dig deeper, perhaps try the escort agencies. I guess about twenty percent of women who are eligible to sell their bodies in Bangkok do exactly that; it makes for a big haystack in which to go looking for a needle. Damrong was special, though; people will remember her. Me, for example. I remember her very well. I think there must be quite a few other men who might be able to help with inquiries. I’m thinking about saving time by doing some of the footwork myself, when Colonel Vikorn calls me into his office.
On my way up the stairs I’m preparing a summary of the Damrong case, on the assumption that the Colonel has finally developed an interest in it. When I’m sitting opposite him, with the big anticorruption poster behind his chair and a little to the right, and the photograph of His Majesty the King in full regalia immediately above his head, I start into my report. Vikorn imposes a mask of patience while I speak, but it doesn’t last long. When I tell him about Baker’s high-tech equipment in his squalid little rented room, and the laptop I stole, he sees an opportunity to cut short my report.
“So, it was him. You’ve cracked the case in less than a day. No wonder you’re our best detective.”
“But he wasn’t even in Thailand when she was killed, and I haven’t checked the laptop yet.”
Vikorn gives a benevolent smile and wags a finger. “Don’t spoil a great case with too much perfectionism. Of course Baker did it. He knew her, he’d been married to her, he’d pimped for her, he’d sold her porn for her. Why don’t you charge him, offer him a deal in exchange for a confession? I could probably get the death sentence reduced to eight years if he gives us the names of the accomplices. If he resists, you can copy that snuff movie onto his laptop. It’s a wrap.”
“The laptop will show the date when the movie was copied.”
“So don’t let the defense team examine the laptop.”
“Suppose he didn’t do it?”
“Then you’ve imprisoned an honest man. How likely is that?”
I don’t want to argue. He knows I’m not satisfied and that I’ll work my buns off before I charge Baker, and in his eyes this makes me profoundly pathetic. Any self-respecting Thai cop would be in a girlie bar congratulating himself on having solved the case in a matter of hours. My Colonel doesn’t much care if Baker did it or not—he’s the kind of farang who gets into trouble anyway, adds no value to Thai society, and would probably benefit from a third-world course in social responsibility at the university of Lard Yao.
Now that he’s got my business out of the way, he rubs his hands.
“Sonchai, I think we’re making progress with our project. I had someone check out what that Jap Yammy is up to in his new studio. Did I tell you I rented a property in Chinatown next to the river?”
“No. That was quick.”
“You got me all excited with that report in The New York Times. I had no idea there might be more dough in porn than in yaa baa.”
“Great.”
He leans forward confidentially, the way he does when he needs a favor. “Sonchai, I’m appointing you as my eyes and ears. I’m sorry to have to add to your duties, but you’re the only cop in District Eight who might have an idea how a good porn movie gets made. I want you to pay regular visits to Yammy, make friends with him. Will you do that for me?”
No one says no to Vikorn, so I nod. Out in the corridor I figure I should probably consider myself lucky—at least I’m allowed to carry °n with the Damrong case undisturbed. Down in the canteen, over a ?UP, it occurs to me that it might be fun to take the FBI on a field trip to the river. Before that, though, I want to check out Baker’s laptop. I tell Manny I’m going to the river on a special assignment for Vikorn and I’m not to be disturbed. I call the FBI at the Grand Britannia, who has just received the gadget she calls the can opener, then call my partner, Chanya, on her cell phone. She is just returning from the temple so she should be back by the time I get home.
As it happens, both women have arrived at our little house before me. This is the first time they’ve been alone together for any length of time, and I’m curious to see how they’ve been relating. So far each has been in awe of the other. Chanya can hardly believe that a woman can cope with the world in such a masculine way and achieve such authority and power; the FBI still gapes at the effortless elegance with which Chanya walks, talks, and smiles; she really cannot understand why my true love isn’t in Hollywood making billions. Nor is she sure her serenity is entirely terrestrial. Nothing bothers her, the FBI complained after the first couple of meetings. She has the sangfroid of a leopard. And then, of course, Chanya is heavily pregnant, which mystic state the FBI seems to find disturbing.
Sangfroid translates literally as luak yen: same phrase, same concept. I thought about that. The two most important women in my life have luak yen to an unusual degree: my mother, Nong, and Chanya. The thought leads naturally to the Third Woman. Damrong possessed an effortless sangfroid: cruel, enticing, immense, a real leopard. But there was nothing petty about her. Both my mother and I expected her to act superior to the other girls when she first came to work for us, because she so obviously outclassed them; not so. She humbled herself, bought them presents on their birthdays, showed many kindnesses, gave free advice to those who wanted to ply their trade overseas, loved them. The general consensus was that she possessed jai dee, or good heart, in great measure. My stomach is fluttering because I don’t know how I’m going to react to scenes of her naked and performing for other men. “Hi,” I say, “I’m home.”
At some level I was expecting them to be talking about me. It’s a little humbling to find them huddled together in the kitchen listening to the radio. The program is called Thinking in Modem Ways, and for Chanya listening to it has become a religious ritual. She is translating for the FBI: “You see, instead of just starting cooking and then looking for all the ingredients, you gather all the ingredients together first and put them in proper order on the bench. Now they’re talking about washing clothes. Instead of just putting all the clothes in a pile, you use three laundry baskets: one for whites, one for colors, one for delicates. See?”
Chanya turns to Kimberley with a triumphant beam. The FBI has trouble hiding her confusion. She knows Chanya is no fool, so why is it necessary to have instructions on such primitive time-and-motion issues? “Great,” she says. “Efficiency makes life easier.” She’s relieved that I’ve appeared and looks at me expectantly. How to explain that a nation which has been surviving on intuition and custom for a thousand years doesn’t pick up Aristotelian logic just like that? The revelation that “A cannot be not-A” does not come naturally to undivided minds.
It’s easier to change the subject. I go to a suitcase in the space under the stairs where I have locked Baker’s laptop. Both women stop to stare when I take it out. I bought a charger for it in Pantip Plaza so now I plug it into a socket in the living room. So they had been talking about me after all. The FBI has explained that the laptop will likely contain clips of Damrong performing with other men. The looks on their faces are a fine expression of puerile curiosity: How’s he going to take it? How much suffering are we going to see? We don’t have any chairs, so they huddle around me on the floor at the coffee table on which I have placed the computer. The FBI fishes a gadget out of her pocket that is about six inches long with a plug that fits into the USB port of the computer. The FBI switches on the gadget at the same time as pressing the boot button on the laptop. An LCD display on the gadget, which has space for about thirty digits, starts racing through numbers, letters, and punctuation marks at lightning speed. Eventually it stops at: {{jack***rongdam’t‘t’t29===forty. I never would have thought of that. Now the Windows icons come alive, and we are welcomed with the cheery music.
In the MS Explorer screen I experiment with a few files before I realize that Baker uses the prefix X for his porn stuff. “Original,” the FBI says.
A double-click, and there we are: a close-up of Damrong with an erect penis in her mouth. Probably Baker’s, for the clip, which lasts only forty seconds, seems experimental in nature. It is quite a jolt to be taken so rapidly into the unbearable frisson of a beautiful woman practicing an obscenity with such joie de vivre. She grins at the camera whenever she takes it out of her mouth. “I’m okay,” I tell the two women, who are even more interested in my reaction than in the porn.
“She’s not even pretty,” Chanya says. This is not merely a reflex of jealousy; I think Chanya sees a very different image on the monitor: a common Cambodian face, browner than Chanya’s, with the somewhat pouting lips of the Khmer. To me Damrong’s is a gaunt, haughty beauty, whereas Chanya’s is full-bodied and jolly. But the FBI too is shaking her head. “Only men think that’s irresistible,” she grunts.
We go through all of Baker’s X files, starting with the shortest. In about ten minutes we have covered Damrong’s full sexual repertoire, without observing any demonstration of passion on her part. The men’s faces rarely appear; when they do, it is by way of hairy pink foils to her performance. I have shrugged, inwardly, and bought myself a certain amount of cheap immunity thereby. I am even congratulating myself on my Buddhist self-control when I start into the first of the two longer clips.
The atmosphere is quite different. One senses immediately that this recording has been made furtively, without the John’s knowledge. At first the couple move in and out of camera range, until Damrong has maneuvered her client to a specific position on the bed. Here she is giving oral pleasure with great enthusiasm; indeed, there is an intensity to her performance that hacks a hole in my guts. (Sexual jealousy started in the reptilian incarnations and is firmly embedded in the brain stem; its distorting effect on the personality has been studied for millennia.) “You okay, Sonchai?” the FBI says. Chanya stares at me in disgust: “He’s still in love with her, look at him.”
“I’m okay,” I croak. “Really.”
“So why have you turned green?” my pregnant partner wants to know.
“I haven’t” is the best I can manage by way of reply. I’m struggling with an internal tornado during the first five minutes of the clip, though, and don’t start to come out of it until we begin to get flashes of the man’s face.
“Look,” Kimberley says, “look how she’s moving under him to bring his face in range of the camera.”
It is very subtly done, each pelvic shift on the bed made to look like a reaction to the exquisite torture of sexual frenzy. Now he is in full view. It does not help that he is a handsome farcing with a strong jaw, auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a masterful manner. “You sucker,” I mutter, avoiding the women’s eyes. “That’s the way she worked,” I explain hoarsely. “She’s let him think he’s dominated her mind, that he’s so good and his cock’s so big she’s totally fallen for him, body and soul.”
“That’s not a technique she invented, Sonchai,” the FBI advises. Chanya nods in agreement, still maintaining a sneer for my benefit. It’s the postcoital sequence that grabs all three pairs of eyeballs, though.
“Amazing,” the FBI says.
“Genius,” from Chanya, former bar queen.
I’m rubbing my eyes. “Play it again,” Chanya instructs.
“Real tears,” from the FBI.
It’s true. Damrong has managed a delicate, reluctant trickle from both retinas, which she quickly, bravely wipes away. She pretends she cannot look him in the eye when she says, “Tom, you’re just amazing.” A slight wobble around the chin, then: “I don’t think I can stand the thought of you with another woman. I just can’t.”