The mamasan and half a dozen girls in jeans and T-shirts wai to the Colonel as we enter. They have set up a table in the seating area, with a tablecloth, forks, spoons. They immediately begin bringing an array of dishes from the restaurants and food stalls round about.
“D’you want to start with beer or shall we go straight into the whisky? Let’s have a beer, we sell Kloster for the tourists, which I have to admit gives a cleaner taste. It goes so well with chili too.”
I’ve eaten at the Colonel’s banquets before, it is one of the old man’s favorite ways of cementing the esprit de corps (trips on his boat are another), but never as the sole guest. I find it a little eerie to be served by girls who will be selling their bodies in a few hours’ time, as if they were a team of virginal housemaids. They go out of their way to please the Colonel, waiing and giving him their best innocent smiles. I know it is my duty to get drunk in pace with the Colonel, but I’m not sure how my body will react to alcohol after the ravages of the yaa baa the night before and more than twenty-four hours without sleep, not to mention those two cups of moonshine which sat in my stomach like burning coals. I sip at my Kloster, which I drink straight from the bottle, as does the Colonel. I watch him dip into a small wicker basket and bring out a portion of sticky rice which he makes into a compact ball and dips into a papaya salad, nodding to me to follow suit. Perhaps you have tormented your stomach with papaya pok-pok, farang, on one of your visits to my country? It is made with twelve chilies, ground up with the sauce so you cannot escape them. Even my Colonel is sniffing after the first mouthful. I let the pepper inflame my mouth slowly, before it trickles like fresh lava down to my empty stomach. I sip some more beer and immediately experience the delicious clash of the ice-cold beer with the fire of the chili. The Colonel is watching me closely. It is my duty to demonstrate heartiness.
I sample some tom-yum soup, which is almost as spicy as the salad, then start on the braised chicken with oyster sauce, which is more a Chinese dish than a Thai one, but popular with the Colonel. The fish is sea bass simply but expertly fried, with an excellent sauce of chili and fish paste, and the raw minced toad has been well prepared with spring onions and, of course, more chili. Deep in my empty, yaa baa-flayed stomach it is as if the chili were oozing over a wound, setting it alight. I quickly down the rest of my beer and one of the girls immediately brings another. I ask for water, too, raising a grin on the Colonel’s face. Now a girl brings a large tureen of fat snails, cooked in their own juice with a brown sauce. The Colonel wipes up some of the sauce with a ball of sticky rice, then starts sucking loudly on the end of the snail until the body pops out into his mouth. I follow suit, trying not to gag.
My master finishes his beer, calls for another and opens the bottle of Mekong whisky the girls have left on the table. He pours two beakers and adds ice from a bucket. “So, Sonchai, why don’t you tell me your views on the case so far?” This is not an innocent question.
“I’ve only had a day.” I suck on a snail for punctuation. “Nothing significant yet. By the way, why did you order us to follow the black farang?”
He tuts disapprovingly and shakes his head. “Why must you always come straight to the point? Is it your farang blood? No wonder you’re so unpopular.”
“I’m unpopular because I don’t take money.”
“That too. Neither you nor your late partner made one contribution to the common pot in ten years. You were like monks on a permanent alms trek.”
“Why did you put up with us?”
“My brother asked me to.”
“I think you want to make merit. We might be the only good thing you ever did.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Because of my brother I shielded you from a prosecution for homicide. What’s so good about that?”
What can I say? I look into the tom-yum and its bright crimson fragments of chili. “You won’t tell me why we were following Bradley?”
“Do you think perhaps the FBI asked me to have him followed?”
I shake my head. “The FBI didn’t know anything until yesterday. They didn’t even know where he was living.”
“You’re talking about the FBI at the embassy. I’m talking about the FBI in Washington.”
“You talk to them?”
“Of course not. They talk to someone who talks to me.”
“Really?”
“Because the CIA talk to the FBI. At least, from time to time. And guess who the CIA talk to?” I shrug. “The same people we talk to, on the ground in Laos, Burma, Cambodia. The CIA pays in cash, we pay in immunity from prosecution for Customs and Excise violations. In the end, we get the same information.” He prods the sticky rice. “Something to do with jade.” He adds this tentatively, to try me out.
“Don’t believe it. Why would jade traders use snakes to kill the competition? Anyway, how could a black farang get into the jade trade in a serious way? It’s dominated by Chiu Chow Chinese. They trade in a secret sign language. And why would the FBI care?”
He frowns. “Okay, so it wasn’t jade.”
“Yaa baa?”
“Why yaa baa? Why not heroin?”
I force-swallow a ball of rice to soak up the fire. “Because the DEA is all over the opium trade. Heroin is for desperadoes. Yaa baa is safer and the market is growing all the time.”
He opens his hands. “So, you’ve solved the case. It was yaa baa for sure.”
“You’ve told me nothing.”
“It’s my job to tell you things? You’re the detective, I’m just the guy in the office.”
“Colonel, sir, my partner died yesterday. I want to know why we were following the black farang.” A moment of truth as our eyes lock. No one doubts the Colonel has strong ties to the yaa baa trade.
He toys with the idea of staring me out, which he knows well how to do, but decides on a posture of meekness and looks away. “I’m sorry, Sonchai, I’m really really sorry. The truth is I don’t know why you were following Bradley. I just passed the order on down the line. Was it the FBI? Was it our Crime Suppression Division? Was it someone else? Who knows?”
“You’re the chief of District 8. No one gives you orders without explanation.”
“I was told his visa had expired.” I want to laugh, but the Colonel has assumed a somber expression bordering on the pompous. “It’s a grave offense for a member of a foreign armed force to overstay. It’s not like a civilian.”
“You’re serious?”
He nods. “That was the official reason. I’ll show you the file if you like.” He leans forward. “I’m not like you, Sonchai, I don’t ask indiscreet questions. That is why I’m a colonel and you will never be more than a detective.”
“So whoever gave you the order was important enough for you to need to be discreet?” He shakes his head. Clearly I’m a hopeless case. Then suddenly he switches it on, the amazing charm and candor, that two-thousand-volt charisma which I can never resist. His humility and compassion are totally convincing. “I promise you, Sonchai, I had no idea Bradley was going to die yesterday. And I won’t stand in your way, no matter where the investigation leads.” To my question-mark gaze he adds: “I promised my brother I would take care of the two of you. Losing one is bad enough. My brother is an arhat. One keeps one’s promise to such a man, especially when he is a blood relation. You have my word. Anyway, whatever Bradley was up to, it had nothing to do with me.”