Bangkok Tattoo (7 page)

“You pay bar?” Ay wants to know, now massaging Greg’s member, which has begun visibly to swell under his shorts. The dark stranger turns away in visceral disgust to stare at the wall.

“Let’s go back to my hotel—at least there’s enough space to turn around in.” He takes a five-hundred-baht note out of his wallet and holds it up to the light. “Or maybe we’ll have a few more, what d’you say?”

Ay plucks the note from his fingers with amazing speed and hands it to me. I raise my eyebrows in a question to Greg. “Yeah, may as well, the kid’s right, I’ll only be too shit-faced later, probably make an arsehole of myself.” Looking at his fly. “Christ Ay, what you been doing down there while I’ve been having an intellectual conversation with Sonchai here?”

On his slim figure the protuberance is somewhat dramatic, drawing the interest of the other girls, all of whom want to measure the circumference and check for hardness. “Big banana,” Lalita confirms among the oohs and aahs of the others. “I hope you gentle with her.”

The Muslim grinds his jaw.

“What about me? I’m just a poor little Australian
farang
all alone in your big hard city.”

“You hard, not city.”

Greg bursts out laughing. “You can’t win.” A quick glance at the Muslim, then away. Greg catches my eye, I shake my head. Silence.

“I go change,” Ay says.

We all watch her backside under the bikini bottom as she walks down the bar on her high heels. Except the Muslim. The atmosphere starts to congeal.

Fortunately, Ay’s “dressing” was a simple matter of slipping on a skirt and T-shirt. Now she is back, and Greg has already paid for the drinks and her bar fine. “See you later,” he calls out.

The Muslim watches the couple’s exit with exquisite disdain.

Now the bald giant and his gang burst in, filling the bar. Hardly an improvement, I guess, from Allah’s point of view.

“Hey, Sonchai, what you do to the sounds, man? That stuff is about a thousand years old.”

I switch to the Moody Blues, “Nights in White Satin.”

“Better.”

I shift my attention to deal with this gang. They are in a fairly manageable state at the moment, but old men of this tribe require ceaseless vigilance. Fortunately more girls have begun to arrive—Marly, Kat, Pinung et al.—until there is one for each old man, who feels honor bound to show appreciation and virility by cooing and slobbering all over them. The girls, laughing, hardly have time to change. Their drinks are waiting for them when they return from their lockers, and I have to make a call to order more tequila.

Everyone knocks back their drinks except for me and the stranger, who purses his lips. He has refolded the picture, and I’m wondering why he remains sitting here when the old men so obviously get on his nerves. I’m deeply worried now, because I’m having one of my flashes.

I’ll have to explain. We were teenagers when my best friend and soul brother Pichai killed our
yaa baa
dealer. Our mothers arranged for us to spend a year at a monastery in the far North, run by a highly respected abbot who happens to be Vikorn’s elder brother. Pichai was killed in the cobra case (op. cit.) last year, by the way.

Twelve months of intensive meditation in that forest monastery changed both of us in a way that is impossible for nonmeditators to understand. Ever since, I have experienced flashes of insight into the past lives of others. Sometimes the information is precise and easy to interpret, but most of the time it consists of rather vague phantasmagoric glimpses of another person’s inner life. This Muslim’s is something else, something so rare in Bangkok, I’m in shock. I’m almost certain of it: we met at the great Buddhist University at Nalanda, India, oh, about seven hundred years ago. I have to admit he’s kept his glow.

From the corner of my eye, I see him put some money down on the counter under his empty Coke can and disappear out the door.

Light dawns somewhere in the bald giant’s brain. He remembers that Lalita knows how to jive.

“ ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ ” he yells.

The girls all remember from last time. “Yeah, Sonchai, give him Elvis.”

We start with “Blue Suede Shoes,” go on to “Jailhouse Rock,” “Nothing but a Hound Dog,” and most of the others. A few of the old men pick their partners and start to jive. We’re all clapping them on with plenty of oohs and aahs and whoops. Now the bald giant declares in a shout that all the old folk took a couple of Viagra each about half an hour ago. Screams of hilarity from the girls, who like to check and discuss the mysterious and creeping tumescence with their owners and with one another. The old folk’s vacation has hit the sweet spot:
This is really living
beams on those craggy old faces.

When I return to the spot where the Muslim was sitting, I see he has left exactly the cost of the Coke, plus a card with a telephone number and address, plus that photograph of Chanya’s victim neatly folded.

“Jai dum”
is Marly’s comment as she passes by the empty stool where the stranger sat and scowls at it. Black heart.

By now the playlist has progressed to the slow tunes. Elvis is singing “Love Me Tender,” and the ex-hippies are holding their partners close, clinging more than hugging.

“Old men,” Marly whispers to me in Thai. “Dead soon.”

9

A
t the beginning of this
kalpa,
three men traveled together, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. They were good friends, and when they discussed spiritual matters, they seemed to agree on all points. Only when they turned their gaze on the outer world did their perceptions differ. One day they passed over a mountain ridge to behold a fertile and populated valley below.

“How strange,” said the Christian. “In Village One down there the villagers are all fast asleep, whereas in Village Two they are lost in a hideous orgy of sin.”

“You are quite wrong,” said the Muslim, “in Village One everyone is in a perpetual state of ecstasy, whereas in Village Two everyone is asleep.”

“Idiots,” said the Buddhist. “There is only one village and only one set of villagers. They are dreaming themselves in and out of existence.”

10

T
he address on the Muslim’s card is of an apartment building a few minutes’ walk away, but there is nothing I can do while the old men are waiting for the miracle of medical science to rescue them from impotence, a period the girls see as a window of opportunity to persuade their increasingly ardent suitors to buy them more lady drinks. (The bar and the girls cut the profits of the drinks fifty-fifty—some girls prefer to make their money that way.) One by one the old codgers take their paramours to the rooms upstairs (we charge five hundred baht for two hours) or back to their hotels.

I’m now too preoccupied with the stranger’s card and the photograph of Mitch Turner to think of anything else. It is ten minutes to midnight by the clock on the fax machine, but I decide to try the number on the card anyway. Someone lifts the receiver on the first ring. The salutation, in a dialect from the deep South, is spoken softly, almost in a whisper. Not the voice of the young stranger: there is power and age in the tone I hear now, and the habit of authority.

“This is—”

He switches to standard Thai: “Yes, we know who it is. We were hoping you would do us the honor of coming to see us.”

A pause. “I’m scared.”

“I understand,” the old man says, somehow managing to convey compassion over the telephone line. “What guarantee can we offer that would reassure you?” Although obviously older than me, he uses a polite form of address normally reserved for youth when addressing age. In other words, he knows I’m a cop. Interesting and, in the circumstances, disturbingly subtle. Why do I get the feeling he’s smarter than me? “Would you like to bring a colleague? Of course, you can make a telephone call to inform Colonel Vikorn where you are going. We don’t really mind, although we would prefer not.”

I feel like a man in a blindfold: is the next step an abyss or merely level ground? I take a long time to reply. “No, it’s okay. I’ll come now. Shall I come to the address on the card?”

“Yes, if that’s all right. And thank you.”

I call my mother to tell her to come mind the bar. She is in the middle of watching a soap (a family of wizards who live in a mysterious region above the earth and intervene in earthly affairs from time to time, especially in the love life of the lead couple, who are perpetually pursued by a light-stepping human skeleton—we like realism in our entertainment). My argument is compelling, however, and she arrives in about fifteen minutes in her Chanel business suit and her discreet perfume by Van Cleef and Arpels, dripping in gold. Some of the girls are returning one by one from their romantic trysts and, surprised to see the matriarch herself behind the bar, give her deep, respectful
wais.

The apartment is close to Soi Cowboy, and it takes me only ten minutes to walk there. It is in Soi 23, a street famous for its restaurants, which cater to every conceivable taste (fussy French, flaky Chinese, Vietnamese, British, German, American, Japanese—we call it the “street of the hungry johns”). As I stroll up the
soi,
I have frequently to step off the pavement to avoid bumping into romantic couples, most of whom consist of middle-aged white men and Thai women in their twenties. (Cultural note: look closely, and you will see the girls are flinching away from embraces, despite what they are about to do, or have recently been doing, in private: a matter of
face, farang.
)

A modest building guarded by a few guys in security uniforms with handcuffs and night sticks hanging from their belts. Two of them are sitting at a makeshift table playing Thai checkers with bottle tops. I flash my ID and take the lift.

A door like any other opens onto something quite different. I count eight prayer rugs (richly colored in greens and golds, geometrical patterns only) laid out in parallel at an odd angle to the room as the young man from the bar lets me in. Something in his manner suggests an ancient Arab tradition of hospitality (he has suspended the heavy judgments for the time being, even morphed into gracious host), and he manages a
wai,
which I return. I’m distracted, though, by the other person in the room, a man in his sixties with a long robe and a skullcap, who rises from a chair to
wai
me mindfully. I
wai
back.
Wais
are more than just a matter of placing your hands together and raising them to your face, however; they are a social semaphore with a whole alphabet of meaning. Let me be frank, those who embark on the spiritual path have ways of recognizing each other’s rank, and this imam impresses me immediately. (Thin and straight, there is depth and fire in those coal-black eyes.) I raise my pressed palms as high as my forehead and pause there for a moment, a form of homage that pleases and impresses the young man. (Under the rules a Buddhist cop need not show such reverence to a southern Muslim, however senior.)

“Welcome, stranger. Our house is your house.” The old man offers the traditional welcome in that power whisper I recognize from my phone call. He nods to the young man.

“My name is Mustafa Jaema,” the young man says, “and this is my father, the cleric Nusee Jaema.”

I do not disguise my surprise. Although rarely photographed, Nusee Jaema is often in the news these days as a moderate voice in the far South, respected by Buddhists as well as his Muslim followers. There are those who believe that he alone holds back the threat of insurrection—for now. I know he lives in a town in the far South called Songai Kolok.

“I am Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep,” I say, “but then you already know that.”

“Let us sit,” says the imam, elegantly descending to one of the prayer rugs and tucking in his feet. His son and I do likewise.

“Please do not be afraid,” Mustafa says.

The imam raises a hand. “Forgive my son, he is thinking of the American, Mr. Mitch Turner.” To Mustafa: “The Honorable Detective is not afraid, his intuition is too good, and anyway there are only the three of us.” To me: “We asked the others to leave us in peace. I’m afraid that too many Muslims in one room these days sends shivers down Buddhist spines. Is that not so, Detective?” I shrug. He studies me for a moment. “I give thanks that Allah has blessed us with a man tonight.” Darting eyes from his son. “Let us cut to the chase, as Americans love to say. Why are we here? Why have we invited you? Mustafa, tell the Detective everything.”

In the presence of his father, Mustafa has become self-conscious. He garbles his words. “As you know, Songai Kolok is on the border with Malaysia, where half the world’s computer components are made.” A glance at the old man. “We were eavesdropping on the American. We followed him here.”

A sigh from the old man. “It is in the nature of youth to begin at the end and work backward. The beginning, Mustafa, if you please.”

I watch Mustafa compose himself. “We knew Mitch Turner. Everyone in Songai Kolok knew him. That was his problem. Our problem too.” I half-expect the old man to interrupt again, but both are questioning me with their eyes. Do I understand? How smart am I? Smart enough to be trusted?

The old man coughs. “I think I do not need to bore a man of your discernment with irrelevant detail. Will it suffice to say that our people called my attention to his presence the minute he arrived in our town?”

“My father has organized an intelligence network,” Mustafa says proudly. “It is necessary.”

“You guessed the American’s profession,” I supply. “Perhaps not all of your fellow townspeople were hospitably inclined toward a
farang
spy?”

“Exactly,” from the imam in a tone of relief. “He was a source of great anxiety to me and my supporters. Can you guess the rest?”

“Word spread locally, then down into Malaysia? Perhaps as far as Indonesia?”

A profound nod from the imam. “I cannot control all the young men in Southeast Asia. We received many requests, some more polite than others, some barely disguised demands with menaces . . .”

“For assistance in killing him?”