After half an hour my poor nerves cannot take any more of this intensity and I am ready to leave the shop. Fatima’s body wais to me at the threshold, my own body wais back. Thus do two dolls bow to each other while the puppet masters exchange knowing smiles from eternity. Jones follows me to the escalator. “What was that all about? You seemed to establish a rapport, anyway. Did you discover anything useful? What about Warren?”
“We didn’t talk about Warren.”
“Oh, but you got her number and address? Her ID? Her real name in Thai? You can get hold of her?”
“No.”
“So how are you going to find her again if she doesn’t really work there? Don’t you want to interview her? Isn’t she the last person to be seen with Bradley alive? Isn’t she a suspect? Wasn’t she the one in the car when you followed Bradley from the airport?” Exasperated. “Don’t you want to know who did it?”
“I know who did it.”
“Who?”
“Bradley did it. To himself. With help from Warren.”
I am walking quickly toward Jones’ hired car, in which the driver is waiting with the engine running for the air-conditioning. Jones is sweating in the heat with the effort to catch up. “Wait a minute, are you for real? Are you saying that Bradley committed suicide using-oh, I get it. We’re back to the Buddha, right? It’s a point about karma you’re making here? You’ve just beamed yourself up to that point five miles above the earth where good Thai cops go when they die or get confused-or fall in love. Have you any idea how unsophisticated you looked just now? Like a teenage boy. I’ve never seen anything so unprofessional.”
“If you didn’t love crooks you would never have become a cop,” I snap.
Her jaw hangs open. She is truly baffled and, for once, stumped for something to say.
We are in the back seat of the Mercedes after the FBI has slammed the door shut on her side. I am trying to find the key to our past lives, Fatima’s and mine, the trigger, so to speak, that set us off on our centuries-old game of hide-and-seek.
“Shit.” Jones fixes her eyes at some point out of her side window while we wait in traffic. “If I’d known I’d have gotten her number myself. This is like being a cop in ancient Egypt.”
Hiding a smirk: “You remember?”
She continues to grumble in my left ear while I try to disentangle great reams of karmic information that are flashing through my head. I have never experienced this before, not with such intensity. “You have to have forgiveness,” I mutter. “It’s the only way back.”
“Damn it, I’m going to get her number myself. If I had the right I’d bring her in for questioning. She’s the link for Christ’s sake. You must see that? The link between Bradley, Warren, the jade and the meth. Under the right pressure she could solve the case in five minutes and I could get the hell out of this place. Maybe nail Warren at the same time.”
She has the driver turn around. I wait in the car while she rushes up the escalator to Warren’s shop, close my eyes and meditate. When she returns a few minutes later her clothes are soaked in sweat and a great fury is working her jaw muscles. “The bitch closed the shop and did a runner. We’ve lost her again.”
“Really?”
She practices deep breathing for five minutes. In a controlled voice: “Don’t you have anything new to report? What about your long talk with Elijah last night? Didn’t anything useful come up?”
“Actually, yes, something crucial. William Bradley never mentioned Fatima to his brother. Elijah didn’t know about her until he called William’s mobile after the murder.”
“That’s crucial?” She rubs her jaw with that disbelieving look that Americans do so well when abroad. “Tell me where you want me to drop you off, because what I need right now is a big fix of crass Western culture. I’m gonna go back to the Hilton, order American food to be brought to my big, bland, air-conditioned room and watch CNN until I remember who I am. This is a magic-ravaged land, you know that? Coming here has made me appreciate whoever it was invented logic, because before logic I think the whole world was like this.”
“That’s true,” I agree. “Magic is preindustrial.”
I stand by the curbside and watch Jones’ car drive off to join the jam on Rama IV. I feel a little sorry for the FBI and her belief that there is anything logical about human existence. I suppose it must be the delusion of the West, a cultural defilement caused by all those machines they keep inventing. It’s like choosing the ringing tune on one’s mobile: a logical labyrinth with no meaningful outcome. Logic as distraction. Frankly, I can’t wait for that global power shift the abbot talked about. My mind returns to Fatima. That Khmer, though, he is a puzzle.
The truth about human life is that for most of the time there is nothing to do and therefore the wise man-or woman-cultivates the art of doing nothing. I return to my hovel to meditate. I have to confess to a certain amount of self-love arising from having solved the case (at least in outline), which I need to eradicate in order to progress further on the Path. There are still many loose ends, after all. The snakes and Warren continue to be enveloped in mystery. Likewise it is not apparent to me how I will find the opportunity to kill Warren. And what am I supposed to do about Fatima? I feel very near to understanding the snakes when the telephone bleeps. I have to control my irritation when I observe from the screen that it is the FBI.
“Ah, look, I want to apologize. I was way out of line. I did exactly what they tell us you should never do. I lost it and got arrogant. Guilty. I guess culture shock is more powerful than anyone realizes. I really felt like I was drowning. I’ve never felt like that before, like being in a place with no references. Where what you thought were references are illusions. Am I making sense here?”
“I think you’re making progress. That is a spiritual experience you are describing.” I do not add: Welcome to the world.
“You don’t have to patronize me just because I patronized you. I thought we could have lunch, talk about the case.”
I do not want to talk about the case. I feel a digression is called for. I say: “I have to go to Samutprakan crocodile farm tomorrow. If you like we can go in your car.”
At Bang Kwan that afternoon they told me Fritz had been badly beaten the day before and was in the hospital. They refused to let me see him until I threatened them with a prosecution for obstructing justice. In a ward largely dedicated to the malnourished and terminally ill-AIDS is still a big killer here-he is propped up on a pillow with bandages around his head; his left leg and right arm are in splints. I think that this time he will not recover, that his body was too weak to take such punishment, but as I approach I’m surprised to see him smiling and apparently in good spirits.
“What happened?”
“My pardon came through.”
“That’s great but I meant about the beating.”
“What do I care about that? Didn’t you hear me? My pardon is through. The King’s signed it already, it’s only a matter of days now.”
“I’m really pleased for you. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
He gestured as best he could to his leg and arm. “Can’t tell you. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I understand.”
He gestured to me to come closer. “Not because of the beating. The pardon. They said it could still be canceled. I hope you understand.”
I nod vigorously. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize his pardon, not for all the evidence in the world. I leave a pack of cannibalized Marlboro Reds on the table next to his bed.
35
I am lying on my futon waiting for Jones to arrive and listening to the radio on my Walkman. Pisit reports that all the newspapers are reporting that the Supreme Patriarch has approved and blessed two thousand new surnames created by senior monks. The names will be offered under a surname reservation service. Pisit’s guest is a spokesman for Buddhism who clearly expects joy and delight at the news. Pisit is in a skeptical mood and asks if it is appropriate to be living in a medieval theocracy in the twenty-first century when men dressed in robes from the third century B.C., who spend their time chanting in a language which has been dead for over two thousand years, are responsible for people’s names? The spokesman, a monk himself, asks-aghast-how anyone could possibly want a surname that has not been blessed? Pisit quickly gets rid of him and replaces him with a sociologist who explains that we are a superstitious people for whom anything as intimate as a name needs to possess magical powers. Pisit brightens and asks about Western names. “Usually they reflect the Western obsession with money, in that they are a statement about the work an ancestor did: Smith, Woodman, Baker, et cetera.”