“You may as well know that Warren studied under someone called Abe Gump. He was an antique dealer in San Francisco who got interested in Oriental art when all his Italian marble, French clocks and just about everything else was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. He was blind but one hell of a connoisseur. He was a legend in the thirties for being able to value a piece of jade just by feeling it. He was Barbara Hutton’s tutor when she wanted to learn about jade.
“So when the great families of the prewar period came out of the war and the various communist revolutions relatively poor, perhaps even destitute, they thought about selling their jade to people like Abe Gump and then later to Sylvester Warren. There’s an old Chinese proverb: Better to invest than to work, better to hoard than invest. You’ve probably heard it? Well, Sylvester Warren learned that lesson. He’s one hell of a hoarder. But even hoarders have to know when to sell. You might say a signal flashed around the world to all jade hoarders in September 1994 when Barbara Hutton’s jadeite wedding necklace was sold at auction in Christie’s Hong Kong for U.S.$4.3 million. Madame Chiang Kai-shek made a bid but lost. She wanted the necklace for her hundredth birthday. She bid by telephone from her apartment in Gracie Square on the Upper East Side. All of a sudden jade was the biggest news again in the gem industry, but with one catch. The necklace was imperial jade, the highest quality that exists, from the Kachin Hills in Burma, and could be traced back to the Forbidden City. Without that cachet, the stones might not have fetched a tenth of that amount. It’s like Elvis Presley’s guitar. Without the illustrious pedigree it’s just a very good secondhand guitar.”
“You think Warren was using Bradley to fake these pieces?”
“We just don’t know. It’s a hypothesis, like Nape said. Unlike what Nape said, I work with people in Washington who are very interested in Warren. I’ve studied him and his business more or less nonstop for three years. I even know all about Far Eastern art. Test me.”
“What are the six postures of the Buddha usually represented in religious sculpture?”
“Vitarka mudra-seated with thumb and forefinger of right hand touching; seated in the lotus with one hand on top of the other in his lap; seated with one hand on his lap, the other on his knee; seated with right hand touching the earth; standing with palms up facing outward; standing with one palm up, the other pointing to the earth, known as restraining the waters.”
“That’s good. Very good. Want to test me on Western culture?”
“What are the names of the Seven Dwarfs?”
I feel I know the answer to this question, but cannot retrieve it without the aid of meditation.
We have ground to a halt in a jam where Wireless Road meets Rama IV. Immediately in front, a small red light swings to and fro at about ten feet above the ground. “Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”
“They have to use taillights at night. It’s the law.”
“I’m feasting my eyes. That must be the only law in Bangkok that’s seriously enforced.”
We drive around the elephant to turn left into Rama IV, and the stadium is only a few hundred yards further down. Jones’ driver lets us out and drives off. The courtyard in front of the stadium is crammed with cooked-food stalls and people eating and drinking, while behind them a crowd roars. Jones flashes her ringside tickets, and we walk through a tunnel which leads directly to the ring, which we walk around. Seats are not numbered, there are a couple of spaces in one corner. The stadium is packed while two fighters are slugging it out. We’ve arrived halfway through the fight and both men are exhausted. Now I recognize Mhongchai, who is up against his old enemy Klairput. No wonder there is such excitement. In Muay Thai fighters kick when Western boxers jab. Both men are bruised on both sides of their rib cages, and Mhongchai’s eyebrow has opened up. It is his main weakness, otherwise he is the stronger fighter. Klairput is too slow with a head kick, which allows Mhongchai to twist his foot between his gloves. The normal tactic is to send him flying to the floor or across the ring, but Mhongchai, the genius, adapts the move by spinning him round and coming in from behind with an elbow smash to the head. Now Klairput is laid out on the mat and the referee is counting. Klairput doesn’t bother to get up, he’s lost on points anyway so why take more punishment? A great roar from the crowd as the referee declares Mhongchai the winner. In the stalls, people rush to claim their money from the bookies, who stand with wads of banknotes clipped between their fingers, using their knuckles as an abacus. I’ve always admired the speed of ringside bookies. I used to be one about seventy years ago.
Jones orders a Coke while we wait for the next fight. She sucks a straw while she looks around the stadium and places her spare hand on my thigh. She leaves it there for a provocative thirty seconds before leaning toward me and whispering out of the side of her mouth: “Behind you, at ten to twelve. Wait a minute, then make it smooth and casual.” I do as I’m told and scan the seats behind long enough to catch Sergeant William Bradley and his paramour. I sit back in my seat and close my eyes to re-create the image of a huge Negro eating from an American-size tub of popcorn, and the dazzling woman beside him. She has taken the colors and frizz out of her hair and is wearing a green silk blouse, purple shorts. On reflection it is not William Bradley resurrected. This man is not quite so tall and is in poorer shape, gray in his hair. There is a substantial gut under the Hawaiian shirt, his face is puffy and he is slouching. I doubt that William Bradley was a sloucher. The resemblance, though, is uncanny. I look accusingly at Jones.
“It’s his older brother. We’ve been watching him for a couple of days. He took an American Airlines flight to Paris, then Air France to Bangkok, so he’s trying to be invisible. I found out from his hotel he was coming here tonight-the hotel sold him the tickets. I never hoped for a double whammy with the woman, though. She probably needs an escort as huge as that, men can’t keep their eyes off her. Shit.”
What I thought was pique turns out to be professional guilt. Jones looked over her shoulder once too often. Her eyes locked with the black man’s for a second, and the giant was on his feet, leading the woman through the stalls and up the aisle to the exit with unexpected agility. There is no way to get to the stalls from the ringside seats, so we rush back through the tunnel and watch while the Negro holds a cab door open for the woman to get in, then ducks in himself, smoothly and quickly. The cab is already driving down Rama IV by the time we reach the curbside. Jones curses. “I never figured he would sit in the stalls. A guy like that always sits ringside.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“No, he doesn’t know who I am. But he’s a professional. He’s done a lot of time, he doesn’t take chances. That wasn’t a runner he did, he was just taking precautions.”
Yet another persona is inhabiting Jones’ body. She is taut, focused, disciplined. The T-shirt and hot pants belong to the woman she was ten minutes ago and are now redundant as she dials her driver from her mobile to tell him to pick us up. She folds the mobile and says: “Okay, here’s what we do. We go to Bradley’s house now and hang out there. There’s no way Elijah flies fifteen thousand miles without checking out his brother’s house, and I’m sure he hasn’t done that yet. He’ll go at night, try to be incognito. He probably came to the kickboxing to pass the time until he figures it’s the moment to go to the house.”