Vulture Peak (19 page)

After meeting us at the door on his walker, he has eased himself into an armchair with a sigh of relief. He is not especially concerned that we are cops; I guess the imminence of death occupies all his psychic space. In pride of place on a mantelpiece is a more recent photo of him in a florid beach shirt with his arm around the
katoey
clerk at the Phuket land registry.

He speaks as slowly as he moves. I think he has not the energy to lie even if he needs to. His account of himself is plain enough:

“This is my second liver transplant, and it isn’t taking too well. The first, I had in the U.K. They frown a lot and wag their fingers and tell you what a bad boy you’ve been, but they’ll generally find a liver for you. They make it clear it’s a last chance, though. ‘You’re on your ninth life, mate, so lay off the booze and drugs.’ I can’t tell you how many times I heard that. But the thing is, what do you do when you’ve recovered and you want a life? Pub culture was
my
culture: down the boozer at least at the weekend. Without that I didn’t feel like I was on my ninth life, I felt like I was already dead. So little by little I weakened, didn’t I? Sal, my companion, nagged me about it. She’s very warm and loving and didn’t want me to die, but I didn’t listen.

“So a few years later I need another liver, don’t I? I thought,
This is it, I’ve really fucked myself this time
, but I heard about some setup on the Internet and sent them an e-mail.
Dr. Gray
was the name they used—a cover, of course. Next thing I know, a Chinese woman based in Hong Kong invites me to go see her. So I do, at her office over there: very elegant, very charming, very professional.”

“What did she call herself?”

“Lilly. Lilly Yip. She said she was an agent, a go-between. Once she saw I was serious and had the readies, she came over here to check me out a few times. To cut a long story short, if I sold the big place I used to have here in Pattaya and my yacht—it was a two-masted classic schooner, won the South China Sea Race in the 1930s—I’d just
have enough for the whole operation on the black market and to buy a floating gin palace, because I can’t stand being without a boat and nor can Sally-O. I had best-quality surgeons, mind you, a proper setup in a proper clinic.”

“In Thailand?”

“No. In China. I’m not saying where because I don’t know.” The effort is telling. He has to pause for energy.

“Did Sal—Sally-O—have anything to do with this Lilly?” I ask.

Freddie rubs his jaw. “Well, that was the strange thing. Sal was still a man at that stage, but he badly needed the reassignment so he could live out his true identity. I was very encouraging, and before I got sick the second time, I promised to pay his way—but then I found myself short of the readies and couldn’t. This Lilly seemed to think she could help out. I didn’t see the need, since there’s nothing black market about gender reassignment. I didn’t realize she’d got interested in Sal because of her job at the land registry.

“At that point it all went Oriental, if you see what I mean. They had a lot of private conversations I wasn’t party to, and the next thing I know, Sal’s taking the estrogen, growing breasts, and getting ready for the operation. When I asked him where the dough was coming from, he wouldn’t tell me. ‘Something Asian. Better you don’t know’ was what he said. Well, I wasn’t born yesterday. I could see Lilly wasn’t the kind to give anything away free, so Sal must have been doing something for it. And of course, you’re cops, you don’t need me to tell you how dodgy land transactions can be over here. And Sal working in the land registry in Phuket—I’m not giving the game away, am I? I’m not betraying anyone? I mean, this is stuff you would work out in three minutes, right?”

He gives Lek a particularly warm smile. I guess there are men who just naturally have a soft spot for the third sex.

“Did this Lilly say where the liver came from?”

Freddie looks uncomfortable. “Not in so many words.”

“But?”

“Well, since she was Hong Kong Chinese and spoke Mandarin fluently, and since the operation took place in China—you know what
they do with the bodies of executed prisoners … I didn’t see what else it could be. I mean, the timing was all guaranteed months in advance, it wasn’t like a last-minute traffic accident, it was all a lot more relaxed and sedate than that.” He frowns. “I don’t have anything to reproach myself for—the poor bugger was going to croak anyway, right? It wasn’t as if they were killing him just for me. And if it hadn’t been me got the liver, it would have been someone else, right? Not necessarily more deserving than me, either. I’m not the only bloke in the world fucked up his liver with booze and mainlining, am I?”

“Where in China did they take you?”

Freddie frowns again. “I already said I don’t know. There was a lot of talk about Shanghai, so it could have been there.”

“ ‘Could have been there’? What does that mean?”

Freddie opens his hands. “I just don’t know. See, once you’ve paid up the first slice of the money, they go to work on you, get you ready for the operation.”

“Who does?”

“Actually, it was Lilly herself. She also sedated me before the flight. That way they could wheel me off the private plane into the operating theater—so I suppose it was near an airport. It was all done in the just-in-time-delivery style. Could have been any airport. I was totally out a couple of minutes after we got on the plane. I didn’t know anything until I woke up in Phuket with a new liver.”

Lek and I exchange a glance. I enunciate the words slowly: “You—woke—up—in—Phuket?”

Freddie doesn’t understand the heavy emphasis, shakes his head, and shrugs. “That was part of the deal. After the operation they had me recuperate at some fantastic mansion on a hill there.” He scratches an itch on his neck. “Actually, the mansion wasn’t too far from where Sal works, so I wondered if there was a connection.”

“But the operation itself took place in China, maybe Shanghai?”

“That’s what they told me. That’s what I paid for. It must have been China ’cause that’s where they executed the prisoner whose liver I’m using.”

A pause. “Where is Sally-O now?”

He stares as if the question is without meaning. “At work, of course.”

I let my attention wander until it comes to rest on the oil painting. “Who’s that a portrait of?” I ask.

Freddie turns to follow my gaze. “You don’t recognize her? That’s Sal in her ancient Chinese costume. She’s dressed as a court eunuch in the late Ming dynasty.”

“Right. Why?”

Freddie allows himself a shrug. “She’s
katoey
, love. They’re all a bit that way.”

I tell Lek I don’t want him to come with me to Phuket. He’s already had a minor standoff with the clerk, and anyway two cops together look official and intimidating. I’m sitting at my desk in the open-plan office, thinking of a way to placate Lek, who has decided to sulk, and trying to decide whether to just show up at the airport or book the ticket using the Internet, which could easily take longer than simply taking a cab to the airport, when my cell phone rings.

“Hi, brother, how are things?” a male voice says in English with a Chinese accent.

“Inspector Chan?”

“The same. So, how’re things?”

“Up and down. How about you?”

“I’m on vacation—holiday, as the Brits say.”

I pause to stare at my cell phone. “Really? Where?”

“Oh, about a mile down the road from where you are now, assuming you’re at the station.”

“You’re in Thailand?”

“You’ve been taking intelligence-enhancing medication?”

“But I mean, why?”

“To see a couple of people, you being one of them.”

“You’ll have to wait.”

“Why?”

“I’m a busy third-world policeman. I have to cope with an existential reality that would have you messing your diaper, Spoiled Brat Hong Kong Cop.”

“Hey—”

“I’m back in two days.”

“Where are you going?”

“Not telling you.”

The clerk’s weekday pad in Phuket is in a back street on the third floor of an apartment building, but he’s not in. I knock quite a few times and make all the usual checks for signs of life, but the place has a deserted feel. Of course he could be out on the town, but I doubt it. I remember those dark, unsocial eyes, the quick temper before he remembered he was a public servant—and the whole feel about him of a young man who might have had himself mutilated by mistake. It’s a cop’s hunch that sends me to the Phuket Yacht Club. I arrive at twilight with the last of the sun sinking like a plutonium rod in an asphalt sea. The bartender knows who I’m talking about.

“He comes quite often to spend the night on his sponsor’s boat,” the barman tells me.

“He takes care of it?”

“No, there’s a full-time boat boy does that. He just comes and stays the night. If he’s not working the next day, he sits on it staring out to sea. He doesn’t like company.” The barman coughs. “He likes to dress up when he’s alone.”

I have the barman point the boat out to me. It’s hard to see clearly in the dusk, although the cabin lights are on.

“It’s a forty-foot twin-screw motor cruiser made in Taiwan. The
farang
used to have something really special, a two-masted schooner about seventy feet long. All teak and oak, a vintage sailboat that won some kind of competition in the thirties. Beautiful it was. Broke the old man’s heart when he had to sell it for some reason. Broke the
katoey
’s heart too. Actually, he wasn’t a
katoey
at that stage—just a sad young man who thought he was a woman but wasn’t sure.”

I stare at the dark and silent bay for a moment. I was expecting the
boat to be tied up to a berth on a jetty. I didn’t expect it to be on a permanent anchorage. “How can I get out there?”

“You can pay one of the boat boys to take you out on a skiff with an outboard—or you can get someone to row you out.” I suppose the last suggestion is somewhat exotic from the way he looks at me. Surely only a cop who wanted to retain the element of surprise, or an assassin, would go for the manual option.

“Can you find someone to row me out? It’s such a beautiful evening, I don’t want to pollute it with noise.”

He gives me a cynical glance and calls to someone behind the bar. A robust boy about sixteen years old appears. The barman speaks quickly in the local dialect, and the boy answers back in a low murmur. I don’t know how much he’s demanding, but it’s enough to make him shy.

“He’ll do it for five hundred baht,” the barman says, clearly expecting me to bargain.

“Okay, let’s go,” I say. Then I remember I have one more question for the barman. “Years ago, when the
farang
still owned the sailboat—did he have a lot of visitors? Boats like that are a great way of expanding your social life.”

“Sure. Every weekend a small crowd would come out. Mostly they were middle-aged showbiz people from the U.K.—I understand he used to be some kind of pop singer. It changed over the years, fewer and fewer guests. In the end he had to hire crew just to grind the winches when he took the boat out. He was a good skipper, though, knew how to sail. Not easy with an old two-master like that.”

“Were any of the people Chinese? I mean Chinese and female, who spoke Thai with a strong accent? Very elegant?”

“Her? Why didn’t you say it was her you were interested in? Sure, she came out a couple of times. But it wasn’t to socialize, as far as I know. Not the sort of woman you forget once you’ve seen her.”

“So what was it for?”

“She’s the one who bought the sailboat.”

I let a couple of beats pass to let that sink in. “She only came on her own? Not with another woman who looked like her?”

“I only ever saw her alone.”

“What did she do with the boat? I don’t see any two-masted schooners out there right now.”

“She had it shipped back to Hong Kong. That’s money. Any normal person would have hired crew to sail it over there for next to nothing, but she had it dismasted and packed onto a container ship. I didn’t see her as a sailor, myself.”

It’s a beautiful evening to be on the water. The moon is not yet up, the first stars are twinkling, and the water is so calm the kid’s oar strokes are the only disturbance, save for small fish that jump now and then. The boy knows I declined an outboard motor because I want to retain the element of surprise, so he diminishes his efforts when we’re about a hundred yards from the yacht; he doesn’t want to give me any excuse to renegotiate his exorbitant fee. He lets the rowboat glide for the last twenty yards so we’re almost at a natural halt when we reach the swimming platform. There is no sign of life anywhere on the boat. The boy whispers, “When do you want to come back?”

“I don’t know. I’ll flash a light or sound a horn—or maybe fire my gun.” Of course, he has seen my cop’s standard-issue pistol jammed down the back of my belt. He looks disappointed. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay next time you see me. I’m not likely to disappear, am I?”

He guides the boat around to make it easy for me to step onto the swimming platform. I climb up and sit on one of the padded seats where pampered guests drink champagne and tell the host what a wonderful weekend they’re having. Just in case the clerk is in a homicidal mood, I’ve taken the gun out of the back of my pants. But there is still no sign of him, so I begin to wonder if the barman was wrong. Maybe the clerk slipped away sometime in the afternoon without being spotted and left the cabin lights on by mistake. If there were someone else on the vessel, they would have felt my arrival for sure.

Like any cop, I check out the whole of the top deck: nobody. By now I’ve made the boat sway left and right simply by moving around; you’d expect anyone on board to notice. I open the sliding-glass door to the stairs that lead below. When I duck my head to check out the salon, I see a human figure sitting motionless in an upright chair that
is screwed to the floor with brass bolts. The figure is in a gray one-piece gown with extremely wide and long sleeves and a black hat with earpieces that stick out horizontally. It’s the clerk, and I’m quite sure he is dead, because I’ve never seen anyone sit so stiffly for such a long period of time without breathing. He is also wearing a lot of makeup, mostly rouge and some kind of whitening cream. Up close, I see he has developed a thousand-mile stare. When I put my ear close to his nose, I hear the faintest inhalation and exhalation.