“It would take more than a bunch of amateurs to handle the python once the drug took effect. Perhaps two experienced handlers could subdue it in normal circumstances. But under the influence of yaa baa, I think you would need half a dozen experienced snake handlers. Even then… You see, there is nothing that is not muscle, and it can twist in any direction. In a toxic frenzy, it would be virtually uncontrollable.”
“Then we have a virtually insoluble forensic problem,” Jones concludes with a shrug.
I look from her to Trakit to the snake. “Except that the killer solved it.”
On the way back to the city, Jones is experiencing a moment of euphoria caused by relief of tension: “I know what you’re thinking and I agree with you.”
“You do?”
“The python was obviously a drug addict in a previous lifetime, right? I would guess opium or heroin, a man with some connection to the West-maybe he shot up once on Forty-second Street, and was double-crossed by Bradley in that lifetime? But what’s the connection with the Mercedes? Maybe he was a used car salesman?”
“The python?”
“Yep, had that Nixon look around what was left of his mouth, don’t you think? That sloping outward from the top down?”
Apparently Jones has scored a point. I endure her triumphant leer without protest for the rest of the journey. When we hit the first of the Krung Thep traffic jams I say: “Did you get the rest of the transcripts?”
“Of the tapes of the conversations between Elijah and William Bradley? Yes, I got them, but I haven’t read them all. There’s a ton of stuff, and as far as I can see, extremely dull and unhelpful.”
“What about the tapes themselves, can you get those?”
“The tapes? We’re talking a lot of volume here. After the Bradley brothers broke the ice they talked regularly, for five years. That’s quite a few hundred hours. I can get them if you like.”
“I only want the ones near the beginning, where William is at his lowest.”
“Okay. Any particular reason?”
“I need to hear his voice.” To her cynical stare I add: “People rarely know how to lie with their voices, especially to intimate family members. People lie only with words. I want to know what he sounded like when he was pleading with his big brother for a life after retirement. The same big brother who tried to teach him how to get a life twenty years before and, to William’s new way of thinking, turned out to be right after all.”
“Touchy-feely,” Jones says. “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime I hate to overuse my left lobe, but wouldn’t an examination of the Mercedes hatchback be in order?”
I look out the window, that she might not see me wince.
36
Cops who will not take money must earn their keep in other ways. Pichai’s exceptional marksmanship gained him a place on every shoot-out in District 8. Thanks to my English, farangs are usually shunted in my direction. We are not on any tourist circuit, so my workload in this respect is not heavy: a steady trickle of Westerners who took a wrong turn and became suddenly frightened to find themselves all alone in the Third World, a few international criminals with a specialization in narcotics, and kids like Adam Ferral.
Sergeant Ruamsantiah sent for me this morning and when I arrived in the interrogation room Ferral was already seated in one of the plastic chairs, a hatpin through his eyebrow, a silver stud through one nostril, all the usual tattoos, a succession of rings through his ears like a ring binder, and the kind of light in his eyes which often distinguishes visitors from other planets. Ruamsantiah, a decent family man with only one wife to whom he is scrupulously faithful, who really does invest his share of the bribes in his children’s education, has no objection to tattoos but is known to dislike nose studs, eyebrow hatpins and obnoxious young farangs who do not know how to wai or show respect in any other way. He was smiling at Ferral as I entered the room.
The sergeant was sitting behind a wooden desk, bare except for a cellophane bag of grass about three inches square, a bright red pack of outsize Rizlas, a butane lighter and a packet of our foulest cigarettes called Krung Thip, which were surely ten times more damaging to the health than the marijuana. I had been summoned to these interrogations many times; usually the farang kid’s fear is tangible and fills the room with a frozen paranoia. Adam Ferral, though, was unfazed, which was why Ruamsantiah was using that dangerous smile. Ruamsantiah had leaned his nightstick against a leg of the table. He jerked his chin at the kid without relaxing the smile.
“I can’t work him out. Maybe you can explain it. He came into the police station on the pretext of being lost, then fished in his pockets for something and out popped the grass. It was as if he wanted to get caught. Is he a plant or a moron? Is the CIA checking us out?”
Not a serious question. Ferral was too young and the dope too trivial. I would have put Ferral at nineteen, twenty at the most.
“You have his passport?”
Ruamsantiah took a blue passport with an eagle on the front out of his pocket and handed it to me. Ferral was nineteen and a few months, a native of Santa Barbara and in his visa application gave his profession as writer.
“You publish your stuff on the Web?” I snapped at him. The question took him by surprise and fresh pink blood bloomed first in his cheeks, spreading quickly to his neck and scalp. A young nineteen surely.
“Sometimes.”
“Travelers’ Tales dot com?” The pink deepened to crimson. “Great site, isn’t it? Some terrific stories about Bangkok? How is yours shaping up?” Now the kid was shocked and looking at me as if I possessed Oriental clairvoyance.
“What did you say to him?” Ruamsantiah wanted to know.
“There’s a site on the Web for extreme tourism. It’s like extreme sports only sillier. Kids like this get themselves in jams in faraway countries, nail-biting situations which could land them in a Thai jail for five years, or get them stoned to death in Saudi Arabia, or strangled by a boa constrictor in Brazil, but there’s always a First World safety net of course, which makes it all quite safe really. Then they write about their heroic escapes from the jaws of disaster in a foreign land. It’s a way of getting published. Getting caught with ganja in Krung Thep is a favorite. According to the Net the standard bribe is five thousand baht for this quantity of dope.”
Ruamsantiah angered, Thai-style. His lips thinned, his cheeks pinched and his pupils shrunk, but as far as Adam Ferral was concerned he was still a corrupt cop with a dumb smile on his face.
“Ask him if he happens to have five thousand baht on him. I haven’t checked his money.”
I translated and Ferral brightened. Immediately he pulled a small money bag out from under his black T-shirt, extracted a wad of gray notes which turned out to be exactly five thousand baht in crisp bills, which he happily laid on the table, fighting a gleeful sneer.
Ruamsantiah’s left hand twitched. It was the one nearest the nightstick. The sergeant is more senior than me and his anger has a killer quality which I would not want to tangle with. On the other hand, I did not want to be there while he beat the living shit out of the kid, so I began to ask if he had finished with my services.
“No. Stick around, I need you to translate. Tell him to roll a joint.” As I began to translate, Ruamsantiah laid a hand on my sleeve. “I want one of those huge things they make sometimes-with half a dozen papers.”
I translated. “Do you know how to do that?”
Ferral grinned and went to work. The sergeant and I watched with fascination while he moistened the strips of glue with the pink tip of his tongue and expertly patched together a long rectangle of Rizlas, licked the seam of a few Krung Thips, broke them open and poured the tobacco onto the papers. He ripped open the bag of dope with his teeth and dumped a couple of pinches on the table. The ganja was raw and matted so Ferral had to rip it up with his fingernails. Ruamsantiah picked up his nightstick and placed it very gently on the table, causing a sudden draining of blood from Ferral’s face.