The Godfather of Kathmandu (21 page)

“Oh, he was really lapping it up, fondling and kissing and telling us how happy he was and that we were his only family and could it get any better than this, that a man could have ten beautiful lovers as close family? Then, later on, the Viagra wore off and he burst into tears and we all left. He didn’t seem to react to alcohol very well, and he’d drunk almost a whole bottle of champagne because none of us liked it. He said it was the most expensive champagne in Bangkok and it cost more than three hundred dollars and he had a refrigerator full of it for the party, but to me it tasted awful, like drinking perfume or something, and none of the other girls drink alcohol either.”

“Did he suffer from mood shifts generally?”

Pong thinks about that, then shrugs. “How can I know?”

“You slept with him regularly? More than the others?”

She nods. “Yes. At least, I was his favorite at that time. He went through phases, as if he was looking for a wife but got addicted to the search.”

“After sex, was he melancholy?”

Now Pong is concentrating. I think she wants to make sure she’s got the right
farang
when she says, “I’ve worked here five years and I’ve never met a
farang
who was at peace. I suppose it’s because they’re not Buddhist like us? Sometimes I wondered …”

“What? If he was gay?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I wondered if he was looking for a mother.” She flashes me a self-conscious look: amateur psychology is not popular with our working girls. “He talked about a film, once. One he was making. I think he said it was in the Himalayas. He told me it was the most important thing in his life. But he couldn’t complete it. He told me he kept a copy of a half-finished version in his safe and watched it every day hoping for inspiration. He said if he ever did finish it, he would feel whole again and would probably find a Thai wife to live with. I think he wanted me to believe there was hope for me. But when I talked to other girls who had been his favorite, they said he spoke to them in the same way. So I suppose it all depended if you were the flavor of the month or not. I guess the film really was the most important thing in his life. But sometimes he
would let slip something about a woman in Nepal.” She shrugs. “It was all so vague, though. After sex men go vague, if they don’t fall asleep.”

I ask if Frank Charles ever mentioned me, or asked for the name of a Thai cop—or if, generally, she knew of any connection at all between him and me. She shakes her head with the right element of confusion—why would he have anything to do with me?—so I get her to run through all the girls who attended the American’s sixtieth birthday party, and any others who she knows to have gone with Frank Charles. Then, one by one, I call the girls over, slip them a hundred baht, and ask the same questions. The exercise takes up the whole morning with zero results: none of the girls is aware of any connection between the dead man and me, and they certainly would have remembered if the American had ever used my name. I am experiencing guilt by association, as if I have been fingered as a suspect. I need to speak again to Doctor Mimi Moi. I call the travel agent to cancel the Nepal trip.

Doctor Moi has vacated the Oriental and returned to her place by the river. (Sukum has reluctantly admitted she was probably not on the run after all, merely playing one of her elaborate games with him—or maybe she really was having her house refurbished?) I could make an appointment to see her, but her capacity to elude is legendary and I have a feeling she was not planning to grant me a second interview. Everyone knows that witches are best approached by water at night without prior warning, right?

Which, in the case of Doctor Mimi Moi, just happens to be possible. I know the address because I once had to spend a few days at a crime scene over in Thonburi, not far from her house. After she collected on the deaths of the two husbands she denies murdering, she broke yet another taboo of her class by buying a piece of land on the unfashionable side of the river right next to a
klong
, a canal, along which a large shantytown had grown up. Mad Moi’s land abuts the shantytown: rickety wooden huts on stilts, filthy kids, and subsistence car-repair businesses, which spread inland for at least one square mile. Little by little she has built up a position of godmother to the locals. She is known to provide free medicine for the needy, communal feasts on holidays, and even legal advice for those who have fallen foul of the cops. Everyone owes her, everyone worships her, and no one is going to betray her if they intend to go on living in the shantytown. Nobody knows how many packages containing what chemical exoticum are carried to and from her house by little old ladies paddling sampans across the river and up the
klong
.

I take a cab to Klong Toey, to a point on the river, then walk down a path by the side of a bridge that brings me out on the riverbank where a couple of motorized canoes are waiting. I agree on a price with the ferryboat man—an emaciated alcoholic in his late sixties who has not shaved for three days—and he starts the tinny little motor with a pull on a cord. Now we are turning upstream in order to take account of the current, with the high black bows of cargo ships, mostly Chinese and Korean, looming up at us as we pass the docks.

Although the Doctor’s land abuts the Chao Phraya River, it sits on a loop which forms a kind of bay and protects her from the wash of heavy ships. As we navigate the river, slowing to allow a loud and brightly lit restaurant boat to pass on its way to the Grand Palace, we head for a specific patch of dark emptiness on the other side, then slow the motor to a tick as we slip across what could be a black lagoon.

When we turn toward the bank, I see the house. Although constructed of modern materials, it is strictly in the old style, sitting on high stilts with a riverfront terrace about twenty feet deep which runs the length of the building and gables that look like garudas’ beaks. As we approach it is obvious that Doctor Moi’s fine eye has produced a kind of perfection of form: a soft golden light illuminates a generous window through a gauze curtain; classic Chinese furniture in blackwood can be glimpsed from moment to moment, along with chaise longues with pastel upholstery. There is a vast abundance of hanging plants on the balcony, mostly orchids, which gives a forest atmosphere, and a maid in full livery appears for a second to serve a beverage to the figure in a rocking chair, a bare-shouldered form in white jacquard silk cheongsam (high collar, pearl dragons writhing), smoking a cheroot and reading a magazine. When she hears our motor she looks up languidly. It is not until we have docked at her jetty that she sees it is me, but she shows no sign of surprise. Indeed, she even sends the maid down to the jetty to greet me and bring me to the house. Little Red Riding Hood must have felt the way I do now.

The maid is about ten years older than her mistress, which is to say in her fifties, quite tall and slim like Moi, silent—she does not speak to me—and very Chinese; I doubt there is a single Thai gene in her porcelain flesh. She wears the white cap, white blouse, black skirt, and white apron of domestic service, as if she works for an English duchess.

Doctor Moi gets up to welcome me as I climb the stairs onto the balcony, and I give her a high
wai
. She does not seem put out by my visit; on
the contrary, a faint smile hovers around her thin lips. Nevertheless, she says, “What a surprise, Detective.” She is way too cool to ask why I didn’t telephone first. “Won’t you sit down to join me? I’ve just told the maid to bring a pot of cocoa with cognac.”

“Thanks. I thought you didn’t drink.”

“My British husband got me addicted to cognac in cocoa before he tragically died. Something about brandy makes one feel rich.”

I sit down on a wicker chair with a silk cushion in exactly the right place to support the lower back; the sense of instant relaxation is increased by the silence. A gibbous moon hangs over the black river, the rest is emptiness; I can see why Moi likes it here. When the maid comes back, a ginger tomcat emerges with her and jumps heavily into the Doctor’s lap. I mumble, “I was expecting a Persian female,” because I can’t think of anything else to say. While the maid is pouring the cocoa—her hand is long, pale, with skinny fingers; there is a curious ring on the index finger of her right hand, a band of silver in which eight tiny orangey-pink gems have been set—Moi clears her throat. “I haven’t even had him neutered. He’s the happiest tom in Thailand. He goes slumming and gets laid twenty times a night, but comes back here for silk sheets and gourmet fish.”

“What’s his name?”

“Hofmann, after the chemist who first synthesized LSD. But Hofmann prefers smack, don’t you sweetheart?”

Right on cue, Hofmann growls and buries his head under her arm. I let a few beats pass. When she makes no attempt to speak, I say, “Doctor, I have a document here signed by Colonel Vikorn—”

To my surprise she holds up a hand. “Please, let’s not do business yet. So few distinguished visitors come by river, I feel a need to show you around. And it’s such a beautiful moment in the evening.” A gracious smile without a hint of irony.

So we just hang there for a while, the Doctor and I, suspended in the night as if we were swinging on hammocks slung between stars, drinking our cocoa. Moi seems in a kind of trance, unwilling to face the practical challenge of standing up again. It occurs to me that by this time in the evening she might have taken something stronger than cocoa with cognac. I insert my first forensic question as gently as I can, hoping to reach a mind which has dropped its defenses.

“Did Frank Charles often join you here?”

“Mmm.” The murmur is so low it is almost inaudible. “Lots. He loved it here. He even tried to buy me out. I said no. Anyway, he could never have survived next to the shantytown—they would have eaten him alive. He was a bourgeois, he didn’t know how to deal with slaves. He would have been too nice.” She lets a beat pass. “He used to smoke cannabis here that I got for him from Humboldt County. He would smoke dope, get despondent—his love problem kept cropping up—and then, of course, the whole beautiful evening was forgotten. One would have to watch his mind shrink all the way back into his testicles—which, being a
farang
, he mistook for his heart.” A grimace. “You know, I would never consent to be a man. I’d simply have it all cut off and become a
katoey.”

“You’ve never wanted children, Doctor?”

She shudders by way of answer. “Pets die. Children are a pain in the ass for the duration.”

She seems unwilling to leave the balcony or to waste time on talk, and I feel pretty much the same way. I try to intuit my way into the skin of Frank Charles: how exotic it must have seemed to him at first, to hang out under a tropical moon with an authentic Chinese murderess—and a beauty, in her austere way—who spoke better English than he and whose conversation was wittier than his. And a pharmacist, too! Surely he would have wanted to develop the relationship further? Not sexually, of course—Moi was not joking when she said she despised carnal love—but I think he sought one of those kinds of friendships
farang
nowadays dream of: more reliable than family, and a lot more fun. “Did he talk much about his film?” I mumble, hardly audible even to myself, but I’ve noticed how good Moi’s hearing is.

“Mmm.”

“You know the one I mean, Doctor?”

“Mmm.”

“What did he say about it?”

“I can’t remember. Mostly it was the artistic self-pity thing with him. How much he’d put into it in money and effort. How it consumed him but he never got it finished. He liked to make sure I realized it was not a schmaltz production like the others, it was serious, he was giving it his best shot, every detail had to be perfect.”

She takes a toke of her cheroot and exhales so slowly I’ve given up
hope of more information, when she adds, “He couldn’t seem to get the ending right.”

Maybe she feels she’s said too much, for she stands slowly and invites me into the house. We cross the great polished teak balcony together and she steps inside to formally welcome me with a
wai
.

A finely carved Taoist temple table in blackwood: incense writhes upward and curls around two portraits of a man and woman in Qing dynasty costume, with their hair pulled back in queues, staring at us out of the past. I cast an eye at Doctor Moi.

“My great-grandfather on my father’s side, with his third wife, my grandfather’s mother. If not for Mao and the revolution I probably would have been brought up on the family estate in Swatow, with ornamental gardens and pavilions where one spent the summer. I might have had my feet bound, and I would certainly have been an opium addict.” She looks at me. “I long for that lost elegance. After all, I love opium and I never walk anywhere.”

She has taken the cheroot out of her mouth and straightened her back, as if the portraits are realer to her than the living and more deserving of respect, while I take in the rest of the room. There’s an underlying masculinity in the discipline, but the colors are subtle and fine. I say, “I’m looking for a teddy bear.”

She nods thoughtfully, as if in agreement. “I know. For the past twenty years I’ve kept him in a syringe.”

She takes me to a small and cozy library and even offers me a peek at the main bedroom. I’m wondering why she is being so hospitable, when I feel a sudden lift in the area of my brow. I turn to her in surprise.

“That wasn’t cognac in the cocoa, Doctor.”

“Did I say cognac? I must have had a blonde moment. Don’t worry, you didn’t drink anything I didn’t also drink.” She snorts. “And anyway, we’re not married, so there’s no need to kill you.”

“Can I at least know what it is?”

“No, it’s too rare and exciting, and the name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“What’s it going to do?”

“It’s going to solve the case for you. Isn’t that what you want?”

I don’t know if the reason I can’t concentrate is because the drug has started to work on me or because I’m afraid it has started to work on me. “Can we go back out on the balcony?”