“Is that unusual?”
He nodded. “Yes, very. The big question after ‘Will the patient be able to experience orgasm?’ is ‘Will the vagina feel real?’ The answer is yes in both cases, by the way. We use erectile tissue from the penis to provide the sensation of pleasure and orgasm. Since we use skin from the penis to form the vagina, it feels just like a real vagina, so long as a lubricant is used.”
“Sorry, I forgot to ask. When Fatima came to you she had already been taking hormones-estrogen I think you said-for some time. Was this something Bradley started her on?”
That frown again. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
“Didn’t you ask her?”
His mouth tightened. “I didn’t need to. She was taking estradiol, which is a plant-based estrogen widely used in the U.S. and Europe. It’s quite sophisticated. Most local estrogens are still made from the urine of pregnant cows. There’s no difference in effect, but some evidence to show that the synthetics like estradiol are safer.”
“In other words, left to her own devices, Fatima would have taken the local variant? It does look as if she was coached from an early stage, doesn’t it, Doctor?” A grunt. “That didn’t bother you?”
It seemed that I had finally succeeded in piercing the doctor’s urbanity. He abandoned the intermittent English phrases and broke out in pure Thai. “Bother me? That she was the creature of her lover? You’re talking like a farang, perhaps because you’re half farang. Which of us isn’t the creature of someone else? He was giving her a better life, the life she wanted, that was the only issue for her, and she was prepared to pay any price. Those were my patient’s subliminal instructions to me, the rest is just farang nonsense, bullshit they cook up over there to justify an army of consultants, all of whom cost the earth. Thank god Thailand hasn’t come to that yet.” A swallow, then in a more temperate tone: “Do I really have to remind you what kind of life we offer to penniless illegitimate half-castes, Negroid half-castes, in this land of compassion?”
“Thank you, Doctor. Sorry for one last question, it really is the last: Did you have any idea how Bradley was able to afford you?”
I watched carefully for signs of insecurity and found none. Dr. Surichai simply shrugged. “He was an American. Americans have ways of getting hold of money, even if they’re poor. Perhaps he had a rich relation or something? It wasn’t my business to ask. He paid my bills regularly, on the dot.”
“About how much? Roughly, I don’t need the exact figure.”
Dr. Surichai rubbed his jaw. “Well, I had to charge for all the extra time spent with Bradley, all those two-in-the-morning conversations when he’d woken up with some new idea, or some aesthetic issue that was nagging him. About one hundred thousand U.S.”
“Compared with how much for a more average client with no lover to complicate things?”
“Maybe five percent of that.”
“Five percent? You and Bradley really went to town on Fatima, didn’t you?”
“Like I say, he was obsessed and could afford it.”
Jones is quiet for a long while after I finish. We’re almost at the outskirts of Krung Thep when she says: “That’s what you saw the other day at Warren’s shop? You took one glimpse close up and saw she was a transsexual? I’m a woman and I couldn’t tell. Even now, if I didn’t know and I spent a day with her, I don’t think I would realize. But you saw it and understood the case right away, didn’t you?”
I raise my hands, then let them drop. “The whole case, no. The outline perhaps.”
“You’re gonna tell me it’s your meditation makes you so sharp?”
“Not meditation. I’m from the street, like her.”
“Is that what it takes for a woman to turn you on, she has to be from the gutter? Don’t answer that. So, we have a designer victim?”
“Yes,” I say.
“And a business partnership intended to produce product after product, just like with the jade?”
“Life is cheap in this kingdom, and the life of a male whore particularly cheap.”
“Take a throwaway body, turn it into the object of your fantasies, do what you like with it, then when your sponsor the big boss says it’s time, let him use it in his own unique way, trash it and get ready for the next one? Play God and the devil both at the same time?”
“Yes,” I say, “exactly. What could be more intoxicating for men who, in their different ways, have had the best of everything? Except it didn’t work.”
“You give up your gender, your genitals, turn yourself into a eunuch for the man you adore, then find out what he has in mind for you.”
“By which time you have also found out he is a coward and terrified of snakes.”
“Yep, I would go for the cobras.”
“Me too.”
“But why and how the python? According to the autopsy, the python didn’t even hurt him, it just happened to be on the point of swallowing his head when you guys turned up.”
“Python and Khmer?”
“Python, Khmer and a video?”
Not for the first time Jones has surprised me with her acuity. I wait for her to continue the thought, but do not want to press the point myself. I think that after all she’s not as sharp as all that, when just as she’s about to drop me off at my project, she says: “Makes you wonder why Warren’s here at this time, doesn’t it? I mean, you’d expect him to stay away at least until you’ve finished your investigation.”
On an impulse I really ought to have suppressed, I took her hand and kissed it when I said good night. Her hand snapped over mine like a steel trap and for a moment she refused to let me go. I had to tug to escape, by which time a mean look had appeared on her face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Sonchai, I’m just trying to get a hold on local customs, but would I be right in thinking that there weren’t too many professions open to you when you joined the workforce?”
“Whore or cop,” I snarl as I leave her.
42
A small bribe to the registration clerk at Charmabutra Hospital avoids those weeks of delays which attend upon inquiries through official channels. Now I have a photocopy of Fatima’s registration card: Ussiri Thanya, male, born in a remote village on the Burmese border in 1969, the year the Americans landed on the moon and Kissinger secretly met with North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris, desperate for a way out of the war. Ussiri’s official address in Bangkok was a remote suburb way off to the east: Room 967, Floor 12, Block E, King Rama I Building… Even on paper it sounded like a hovel. It’s the kind of journey best undertaken on a Sunday, when there’s not too much traffic.