The Godfather of Kathmandu (17 page)

After a low-speed chase that lasted for most of Sukum’s career as a detective, he was only able to bust her on cannabis cultivation and tax evasion, even though everyone knows she arranged for the deaths of two of her four ex-husbands and ran her own
yaa baa
production unit as a cottage industry for more than ten years. She took revenge on Sukum by paying a tea lady to slip LSD into the detective’s morning iced lemon tea; Lek mimes Sukum on a paranoid acid trip to a disturbing level of accuracy: Sukum crawled under his desk, curled up in fetal position, and shivered there for almost an hour, periodically yelling for his Toyota, before we called the medics to give him a tranquilizer and take him away. The LSD had to come from Moi—this was the midnineties, when acid had disappeared more or less completely from world markets and nobody except a trained chemist like the Doctor herself could have synthesized it.

When the cab finally passes the tollbooth and we’re speeding toward Suvarnabhum we’re entertaining each other with speculations of how Doctor Moi will stitch Sukum up this time. I have to say, it’s fun sometimes to watch Lek’s darker side. As he points out,
We’re all dual, darling
.

“But what’s so
amazing
about her is the way she always manages to look so
good
in those HiSo magazines. How does she even get
invited
to those fantastic parties, that’s what I would like to know.”

“She’s old money,” I explain. “Teochew—her people originally hailed from Swatow about a hundred and fifty years ago, where they were members of one of the triad societies. Apparently her family is quite senior in one of them. While she was growing up her grandfather maintained mob connections and ran the triad’s secret banking system in Bangkok, which has tentacles all over the Pacific Rim. Most of the capital came from opium in the thirties, so she and her sisters were brought up like princesses. Her father encouraged her to follow her interest in pharmacy right up to the doctorate level. He thought she was going to start a retail chain, financed by his money. He didn’t know she’d fallen in love with drugs for their own
sake in her midteens. She was one of those people who see life in terms of chemicals at an early age, and there’s nothing you can do about it. She started one corner shop on Soi Twenty-three, which was closed most of the time while she experimented with her stock. After being patient for nearly a decade, the respectable drug companies wouldn’t supply her anymore, and she let the business go bankrupt, even though she’s fantastically rich. Her family have not disowned her—after all, she’s only got convictions for minor offenses, and it’s not certain she killed two of her husbands.”

“Each of them died tragically in mysterious circumstances.”

“Right. While she was out of the country. But HiSo is HiSo. As long as she plays the game and turns up in those amazing ball gowns at those society events, they’ll protect her. They may even be proud of her. How can you tell with the Chinese?”

Lek and I fall to pondering in the taxi, which is speeding now on the highway to the airport. “When you think about the Fat
Farang
Case, though, and then you put Moi in it as a suspect, it does all seem to fall into place,” Lek opines with a yawn.

“It does. I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of anyone in Thailand who could possibly have done it, and Mad Moi simply didn’t occur to me. Now that Sukum’s onto her, though, I’m wondering why I never thought of her.”

“He’s going to claim all the credit, you do know that? Even though it was Nong who first mentioned Doctor Moi—if it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t even be thinking along those lines.”

I sigh. “It doesn’t matter, Lek, it really doesn’t. I don’t want promotion anyway. I’d feel even more of a fraud than I feel now.”

“Don’t talk like a fool, darling. The minute he gets his promotion they’ll start to put pressure on him to take money. White turns to gray at that level, and soon after that you get to black. They’ve only let him keep his innocence because he’s so junior. You watch, he’ll turn up to work one day in a Lexus, and you’ll know that’s another soul sold to the devil.”

While we are leisurely discussing Sukum and his imminent forensic triumph, he calls on my cell phone: his name is flashing on and off to Dylan’s heartfelt
There is too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
. I wink at Lek.

“I’ve traced her,” Sukum says.

“Well done, Detective.”

“She’s staying at the Somerset Maugham Suite at the Oriental.”

“Ah! Old money! Don’t you love it? They always know how to hide in full view. When are you going to take her in?”

“When are you free? They told me you’re on your way to the airport doing something dirty for Vikorn.”

I frown at the phone. “Why do you need me, Detective? Call the media, do what Vikorn does, make a career-building event of it.”

“Suppose she denies all involvement?”

I cough. “Detective, you will have to do some work. She might fight against the prospect of death row—some do, you know.”

“I know that,” he snaps. “I’m talking about how clever she is. She’s educated and thinks like a
farang
. I might not understand what she’s talking about. I want you to be there.”

“Is it the LSD from last time that’s got you all nervous, Khun Sukum?”

“You’re not kidding. Have you ever had someone slip you some acid and you think you’ve lost your mind for the rest of your life? And suppose she’s HIV-positive and she’s got spikes hidden in her hair like in that movie you made me watch.”

“Hannibal?
There were hair spikes laced with the AIDS virus?”

“I’ve watched it five times now. She was a black American named Evelda Drumgo. That’s put me right off, I can tell you. I’m just not qualified to deal with sophisticated foreign women, I don’t have the exposure. I only know Thai housewives and factory workers, the other kinds are more your field.”

I’m puzzled by his reluctance, given the decade he spent on the Mad Moi files. I shrug at Lek. “I might be a while. We’re not at the airport yet, and the traffic’s going to be pretty bad on the way back, I can tell from the way the cars are all slowing on the other side of the highway.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Suppose she makes a run for it?”

“Then I can arrest her, can’t I? But she’s so cunning, I bet she won’t commit a single crime while I’m watching.”

Lek can’t believe he said that and is repeating the phrase over and over and shaking his head while we arrive at the airport’s taxi drop-off.

They’re not supposed to keep a suspect for more than twenty-four hours without handing them over to the police. They’ve made an exception in Mary Smith’s case because they had to take her to the hospital for a laxative, where she was kept under tight supervision with a special toilet to catch the condoms. Now the condoms have all been sent off to forensics for tests and nobody thinks they contain anything less than high-quality smack.

Immigration took the opportunity to throw Mary Smith in with another offender, a French woman who was caught with a small amount of cannabis. The French woman speaks perfect English, and Immigration secretly filmed and voice-recorded Mary’s night with her. I watch the part of the video where Mary slips a hand between the French woman’s thighs and they turn to kiss like old lovers.

“Recidivists,” the customs officer says, “both of them. You can tell by looking. These girls love jail, they just don’t know that they love it.”

Smith is in her midtwenties, longish, light brown hair which needs washing, crumpled backpacker pants and shirt. An unhealthy paleness haunts her otherwise unremarkable features; she looks like a young woman who is frequently sick from junk. She speaks English in two shades of gray: estuary and Cockney. During my interview with her, I understand completely where the customs officer is coming from. It’s not something you can explain to anyone who is not in the business, but cops come across it all the time: people in the grip of a psychological need for
incarceration. It’s a fatal attraction like any other. Some people scare themselves to death with vertigo as a precursor to jumping off buildings; young men with a morbid fear of violence join the Marines and get themselves killed; there are leprophiles and AIDSphiles, most of whom succumb to their chosen diseases in the end; and there are recidivists, people who, from a fantastically early age, know that their destiny lies in prison. Mary Smith, for example, knows all about Thai jails, even though she’s never been in one. She knows they will likely hold her in the women’s holding prison at Thonburi, where Rosie is incarcerated. She also knows the name of the prison where she will likely serve out her time. She knows about the punishments, the occasional sexual assault by bull dykes, the likely effect eight or more years will have on her mind, and there is a quiet joy behind the shock, a slow-eyed relief that all the important decisions will be made by someone else from now on—and love will be simply a series of stolen opportunities with short shelf lives. The world recently got very simple for Mary Smith.

I say, “Maybe I can help with the sentence. There’s a huge difference between eight years and twelve—believe me, I’ve seen it.”

“What difference?”

“Eight years, there’s still something left, some tiny memory of how to function in a free society, something you might just be able to build on—and you’re still quite young. In eight years you’ll be—let me see—”

“Thirty-six.”

“Right. Thirty-six. Still of childbearing age. Still with a lot of future in front of you.”

“I don’t want a future. I hate future. I definitely don’t give a fuck about having kids.”

I nod sagely. “But twelve years, that’s something else, every programming you ever received out of jail, from birth onward, will have been erased from your mind. All of your responses, even the most basic, will have been replaced with jail responses, even down to using a toilet—you’re going to be doing it our way for the rest of your life.”

“Our
way?” She uses a sneer to convey the allegation of hypocrisy.

I scratch my left ear. “Let’s cut the crap, Mary. Twelve years is too long. As the jail’s little
farang
whore you might just about get away with eight and still be viable, after that you’ll be some toothless toy for the dykes to play with, you won’t even get to choose who uses the dildo or where they shove it, much less what they make you do with your mouth. Better talk.”

My plain words seem to have had an effect. “I don’t know anything. If I did I would have talked by now, wouldn’t I?”

“Who told you where to go when you got to Bangkok?”

“Someone on the road.”

“Where did they tell you to go?”

“Kaosan Road. Some little side street behind the Coca-Cola truck.”

The Coca-Cola truck is famous; it hasn’t moved for more than thirty years. Actually, it’s a
Pepsi-Cola
truck, but we always think
Coke
. “Where were you when you heard about business to be had on Kaosan Road?”

She shrugs. “Everybody knows. It’s one of those things people talk about on the road.”

“Backpackers?”

“Sure.”

“But the precise address—where did you get that?”

“Nepal. Kathmandu.”

“From?”

“The place where I was staying.”

“What was the name?”

“The Newar Guesthouse.”

I let a couple of beats pass. “The Newar? Where’s that?”

“Up the top of Thamel, just behind where they sell all those kukri knives.”

“Not Freak Street?”

“Freak Street? Of course not, nobody goes there anymore. The Newar is the other direction, I told you, at the top of Thamel, nowhere near the market. Freak Street is next to the market.”

“Who gave you the name and address to go to in Kaosan Road?”

“A backpacker.”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman.”

“Farang?”

“Yes,
farang
. But she was only fronting for someone else, someone who had shares in the guesthouse. She happened to be doing business when I got there. She left before I did. I never heard from her again.”

“And who owns the guesthouse? Who is the real supplier?” A shrug. Of course a girl like her would never be told a thing like that. “Ever heard of the Nixon Guesthouse?” She gives a blank stare.

•   •   •

On the way home the traffic moves like molasses, and it’s about eleven in the evening when I drop Lek off at the Asok-Sukhumvit interchange so he can take the subway to Klong Toey, where he recently took on a small illegal house at a knockdown rent. I think he’s finally settling his home base in preparation for the operation that will turn him into a woman.

The first thing I want to do at my hovel is check my Kathmandu guidebook. I am unable to find either the Newar Guesthouse or the Nixon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, except perhaps that these two establishments are too basic even to qualify for the “budget” category. Or maybe they don’t need to advertise?

Now I have a good reason to go back up to Kathmandu to investigate, and when I call Vikorn he’s enthusiastic: “Yeah, find out who’s doing the snitching up there.” I immediately
wai
my little red electric Buddha in the shrine I put up in my bedroom after Pichai died, roll a joint, and try to stop my mind from slipping, slipping, slipping away. Too late, a tiny dying body attached to a respirator pops up in my mind’s eye and I feel my heart starting to sink and hear the whirr of blade wheels. Then:
Businessmen, they drink my wine
. My cell phone is ringing. I forgot to turn it off before I lit the joint.

It’s Sukum. His voice is glum. “I finally managed to talk to her over the phone.”

“Who?”

“Mad Moi. Doctor Death.”

“At the Oriental? She talked to you?”

“Yes. Only to let me know she has a cast-iron alibi. At the time the American was killed, she was at one of those HiSo parties, with photographers everywhere. I didn’t need to question witnesses, there’s a whole webpage dedicated to the party, with pictures of her nearly naked in one of those ball gowns HiSo women wear, cleavage all the way down to her belly button. I guess her drug diet keeps her slim. She said the photographers will all have date and time features on their cameras, so I could probably work out to the minute where she was and who she was talking to for the whole of that night.”