After I sign the plans, she pays the bill and we stand up. I embrace her warmly. She gives me a puzzled look as we say goodbye. She takes a taxi but I decide to wind my way amongst the jammed cars. What difference does it make? He adored me even before I existed. He loved her. I’m walking on air.
Still high, I am trying to be invisible as I make my way to Charmabutra Hospital. The complex is new and shiny and about one minute from the bars of Nana Plaza. There is a McDonald’s on the ground floor and a Starbucks in the first-floor lobby, a marble and glass reception area with parabolic front desk, Internet access from computers everywhere and a telephone wherever you put your elbow. But it is a hospital. The brochure boasts over six hundred highly qualified physicians and a small army of Singaporean, Thai, American and European managers and talks about the Heart Center, laser correction of nearsightedness, a stroke screening package, abdominal ultrasound, a complete laboratory analysis of blood urine and stool samples, liposuction, body contouring and laser resurfacing of the face, packages which take care of everyone’s travel needs from the U.S. and Europe and luxury rooms with brilliant city views. At reception I mention an interview I have arranged with Dr. Surichai. An administration official takes me in an elevator to the seventh floor, where the doctor is waiting for me. We spend about an hour together. As I am leaving the hospital a group of three large men surround me and bundle me into a waiting limo. It is a navy blue Lexus and there is plenty of room in the back for myself and two of my abductors. The third remains behind as we speed off with a corny squeal of tires which I feel is unworthy of my Colonel, who is lounging in the front passenger seat, wearing civilian clothes and dark glasses. It is his usual driver behind the wheel.
“May I ask why I’m being abducted?”
“You’re not. You’re being quarantined in preparation for your meeting. The last thing we need is for you to turn up in your Tommy Bahama rip-offs, flashing your police ID for every Tom, Dick and Harry to squint at.”
“Turn up where?”
“Give me your ID.”
I hand it over. “I would like to know where we’re going.”
The Colonel puts my ID in the pocket of his Zegna jacket, which is not an illegal copy, and shakes his head at my obtuseness. “Did I or did I not receive a written request at 4:33 p.m. two days ago to the effect that one Detective Jitpleecheep Sonchai be permitted to interview one Khun Warren Sylvester during his five-day stay in our country on a business trip from the United States?” He turns to look at me, raising his glasses. “Written request with date and time stamp?”
“I like to do things properly.”
“You like to fuck things up royally is what you like to do. To whom were you going to go with your copy of your written request with date and time stamp if I refused?”
“No one. There’s no one to go to. I just wanted to make it clear-”
“That in the whole of the Royal Thai Police Force there is one arhat, one pure, unblemished soul valiantly and heroically doing his job while the rest of us slop around in the sleaze.” My jaw hangs unattractively. “Have you any idea what shit you’re dragging us into? Why couldn’t you pop unobtrusively into my office when no one was looking and whisper plaintively in my ear that you needed to see the great Khun if I could pull the right strings and so long as it was okay with me and everyone with his foot on my shoulder all the way up to the top of the pyramid? You do know that the most important and influential women in the kingdom get most of their rocks from this jerk? Especially the Chinese. You do know that?”
“Yes,” I confess.
“You do know that when he is in Krung Thep officially he stays at the Oriental in the Somerset Maugham Suite with all its charming nostalgia and river view, and that when he is not here officially he stays somewhere quite different?”
“I did guess he might have two different preferences, as far as official and unofficial business is concerned.”
“Then you did guess that in return for generous donations to the Police Widows and Orphans Fund by the great Khun, quite a lot of effort is expended by your superiors to help the Khun keep his little unofficial pleasures from the notice of the media?”
“It probably crossed my mind.”
“And did it further cross your mind that any interview of the Khun by you would have to be witnessed by those qualified to deny anything incriminating he might say, in the unlikely event he says anything of importance to you at all?”
“No, I never thought of that because I never thought you’d let me talk to him.”
The Colonel grunts. “Didn’t you? Not even after you mentioned to your friends at the American embassy that you had made an official request to interview Warren which you expected to be turned down.”
“Damn.”
“Thus precipitating one of those reverse domino effects, you know the kind that makes all the pieces stand up again just when we all thought they were finally knocked flat and lying in peace?”
“There’s been trouble before?”
“The Khun’s a dangerous asshole. There’s a whole section of our noble force assigned to making sure he doesn’t go too far when he’s over here. He’s one of those farangs who think our country is a playpen for rich Western psychos who’ve been unfairly repressed by their First World cultures and need to reexperience humanity’s primordial roots out here in the exotic Orient. How would there not have been trouble before?”
“What sort of trouble?”
“None of your business.”
“I’m an investigating officer-”
“You’re an investigating dickhead who will get your death wish granted while the rest of us have to clean up with our hands in the shit. You’re worse than my brother. Have you any idea what a pain it is to have a fucking saint for a brother?” He turns away from me to look out a side window. “Anything went wrong was always my fault. It’s going to be the same with you, I can see it coming. The media will get hold of it after your spectacularly violent death, they’ll build a shrine to you, you’ll be the first Thai cop ever to be martyrized for his love of truth, justice and the rule of law and I’ll spend the rest of my life telling people what an honor it was to have you on the force and how difficult it is for a poor fallen wretch like me to live up to the high standard you set. Don’t you think I get enough of that with having an abbot for a brother?”
“Was it whores?”
“Was what whores?”
“The trouble. He hurt one? It must have been pretty bad for anyone to even notice.”
A sigh. “It was bad, okay?”
“Even so, must have been a foreign whore,” I muse. “Even if he killed a Thai girl, there wouldn’t have been the kind of heat you’re talking about.”