An awkward moment, before we resume eating and drinking. I say casually: “I found out Bradley’s address through the Internet. I went to his house.”
The Colonel raises his eyes. “You did? Find anything?”
“If I ask you a question to do with the case, will you be straight with me? Or am I a pawn in some game you’re playing with the CIA in Laos, or the FBI in Washington, or the American embassy?”
“Sonchai, I swear to you, may Buddha kill me if I lie.”
“A stunning woman in her early thirties or late twenties, half Negro, half Thai, very tall, maybe as tall as six feet, beautiful long legs, full firm bust, great face, hair dyed all the colors of the rainbow, a discreet little piercing in her navel for a jade ball set in a gold stick. Who is she?”
The Colonel sips his whisky. “I’m supposed to know?”
“This is your bar, right in the middle of the red-light district. Girls move around between here and Nana, they try everywhere to see if they can get a better deal-you know the skin trade like the back of your hand.”
“You’re saying she’s a prostitute?”
“What is the likelihood she’s not?”
“She’s a suspect?”
“She’s a possible accomplice. No woman acting alone could organize something like that. I still have no idea how it was done. How does anyone drug a full-size python and twenty cobras and get them to bite the right guy at the right moment? It must have taken an incredible organization involving a lot of people. The snake aspect is simply incomprehensible to me at the moment. Who is she?”
19
“What am I, an idiot?” The Colonel is drunk and has launched into his favorite topic-the difference between East and West-without answering my question.
“Don’t I know I’m vulnerable to an inquiry anytime? Don’t I know that some army bastard or muckraking journalist, or some asshole who wants my job, can start digging anytime and find stuff-my boat, my little house up north, my handful of bungalows on Samui-and start pointing the finger? Wouldn’t I be happier with less assets and more peace of mind? Why d’you think I keep that stuff where everyone can see it, when I could just sell up and put the money in a bank in Switzerland? Why?”
“Because this is Asia.”
“Exactly! If I’m to do my job properly I have to have face. And my enemies have to see the war chest. You just don’t survive at the top of the greasy pole if you’re a humble little cop piously shuffling files around. Someone’s bound to defame you, and then what d’you do if you don’t have the money to pay lawyers? If you don’t have money to buy senators and M.P.s, how the hell are you going to defend yourself? How are you going to fight back at all?”
“Very difficult.”
“I envied you and your late partner from the start, because you guys made a decision never to rise in the force-how could you if you never take money? I admired it. You made no contribution to the common pot, but I put up with that. I defended you against those who said you’re not pulling your weight. I said: Look, every district needs at least one cop who doesn’t take money, we’re lucky, we’ve got two. We can wheel them out as shining examples, pure Buddhists, half monks, half cops. Besides, I said, Sonchai speaks perfect English, what a prize for a district like ours to show off to the foreign press. How many times have you spoken to the foreign media?”
“Hundreds.” Dozens anyway. Every time there’s a big enough scandal in District 8 to fascinate people overseas-the extravagant execution of those fifteen traffickers was a good example-the Colonel drags me out in front of the cameras to send my mug zinging around the international networks.
“And you do it brilliantly. What’s that favorite phrase of yours? I love it.”
“Whilst Thailand is a humane Buddhist society committed to human rights and the dignity of its citizens, the wealthier countries of the world must appreciate we do not always have the resources to meet those high standards of law enforcement which, frankly, are a luxury afforded only by those countries which industrialized first.”
The Colonel claps his hands in delight. “Brilliant. Did I ever tell you the Director of Police himself said what a good front man you are?”
“Yes, you told me. But it won’t get me a promotion. You told me that too.”
My Colonel sighs. “Sonchai, the difference between us, the only real difference, is that you are a man of the future, I am a man of the present. The present is still, unfortunately-” He cuts himself off to watch a girl who brings more Mekong, more snails, more sticky rice, a whole chicken fried in honey and chili sauce and shredded, two bottles of Kloster clouded with condensation. She wais respectfully, and slightly flirtatiously, to the Colonel. She is the most beautiful of the bar’s girls and the one who most frequently serves her boss, who waves a hand toward her and laughs before he continues. “The present is as it is. It’s not only your enemies you have to have face for, it’s your friends, too, perhaps even more than your enemies. What kind of district do we serve? Is it populated with upwardly mobile yuppies, Internet fiends, law-abiding sandwich-class lawyers, doctors and dentists?”
I miss my cue because I’m cramming chicken into my mouth with large quantities of sticky rice. The chicken is to supply nutrients, the sticky rice to absorb the alcohol and chili. I have never felt so surely on the point of being dangerously ill.
“No, it’s not. It’s a sewer and the rules which apply to sewer workers are not the same as those which apply to stockbrokers. My people would never forgive me for being as small as life. Of course, I do not fool a man of your intelligence, I don’t try to, I’m not a superman, but my people need a superman and that requires-” A yacht, a hundred bungalows, et cetera-I recite the list to myself as he falls into a rant. “There are gangsters who give millions to the poor, honest people who talk compassion and give nothing. Tell me, wise one, who do the poor prefer?”
“The gangsters,” I manage to croak. I’m so drunk now, the feeling in my stomach so lethal, that I’m afraid I’m going to have to make a dash for the toilet before the punch line. It comes just as I’m standing up. “Sonchai, I swear to you I know no woman of the description you gave to me. If I did, if she was as good as you say, I would have invited her for a week on my boat-you know me.” The old man grins and waves a hand to excuse me. As I rush toward the sign marked GENTLEMEN I look back once and catch an image of an attractive military figure brimming with health and contentment as he pats the backside of his favorite, who jumped to fill his glass as soon as I left the table.
I am a long time in the toilet, and when I return to the bar the old man has gone. It is like the Colonel to offer this subtle compassion, just when one least expects it; he has cut short the lunch which he was clearly enjoying and given orders for me to be taken upstairs to the room the girls use to service their short-time clients. I don’t want to sleep here, don’t want to look on this girl showing me the way up the stairs and see my mother twenty-five years ago, but I know I couldn’t make it out in the street. Fearing I might soil the bed in my sleep, I lie down on the floor in the upstairs room and fall asleep there, just like a whore. After such a banquet what would I dream of if not Paris?
At a big café near the Opéra, with a glass extension that took up three-quarters of the sidewalk and waiters even ruder and more arrogant than elsewhere in the city, my mother said: “If only he were a hundred years younger.”