“She’s not bad. Not a professional of course, and jazz outside the States is always a bit of a disappointment, but she’s not bad.”
I realize that Jones is deaf to a specific quality in Fatima’s voice. Let’s call it heart: build the fire, light the light, I’ll be home late tonight, blackbird, bye bye.
Let’s not call it heart. The sound she is making is the sound hearts make after they’re in pieces and the fragments dissolve into the overwhelming sadness of the universe. The power to hear it may be the only privilege of the thoroughly dispossessed. “No,” I say, and sip the margarita, “not as good as an American, but not bad.”
“Now look to your left at about ten o’clock. Don’t move your head, just your eyes.”
“I already saw them.” Warren and-a triumph for Jones to judge by the expression on her face-Vikorn. She doesn’t know that the short dapper Thai man sitting with them is Dr. Surichai until I tell her. Together the threee of them make a half-moon around a large round table. They are all absorbed by Fatima and have no inclination to look behind them, but the diva in the long purple silk gown and heavy pearl necklace glances in our direction. Our eyes meet for a moment and she misses a beat. Not a professional at all. She recovers quickly and the band covers her mistake, but not before that total blackness has intervened behind her eyes. A few seconds later and she’s got a better idea. She cocks her head slightly to one side and engages my eyes mercilessly while she sings: No one there to help or understand me, oh what hard-luck stories they all hand me…
“I want to go,” I tell Jones, sounding just like a girl who is out too late and-I’m afraid-covering a single sob by leaning over and coughing. We wait until Fatima has finished her song, when the clapping masks the noise of our departure.
“Pretty well as soon as Kennedy decided to send military advisers to Laos, the CIA realized they had a problem,” Jones explains in the back of the cab. “It was the CIA who ran the war there, by the way, from beginning to end. The problem was the opium. When the French ran Indochina it didn’t bother them at all, they ran it as a state monopoly, complete with bonded warehouses in Vientiane and Saigon. When America got involved the obvious knee-jerk reaction was: no more opium. Just like us to try to reinvent the wheel, right? That noble idea lasted maybe ten minutes and here’s why. The Laotian armed forces had this unique characteristic: they didn’t fight. Not anyone, anywhere, anytime, and most of all they didn’t fight the North Vietnamese regular army, which scared the shit out of them. The only people who would fight were the Hmong, the indigenous mountain tribe up in the north, whom the Laotians were happy to see annihilated by Ho Chi Minh. Americans like guts, we love to fight and we love fighters, and the Hmong were that. They became the CIA’s favorite exotic pets, but the drawback was they depended entirely on the opium crop to survive. Of course, the French would have explained all this to us if we’d asked them, but-well, we were Americans, weren’t we? The only answer, though, was to help the Hmong sell their opium. Being fantastic hypocrites-like all masked avengers-we didn’t want to get our hands dirty. The Agency tried to keep its involvement to a minimum. Basically they would use anyone they could disown afterwards. They preferred non-Americans. Your Colonel was hardly more than a kid at the time, but he caught on real quick. Coming from Udon Thani, he also spoke Laotian fluently, so after he’d done a stint as short-order chef he got the job of organizing the Hmong’s crop up in the mountains and getting it to the airstrips. With the Hmong you have to realize we’re talking Stone Age-people whose idea of commerce was trading pigs for wives. Vikorn was fine up there in the hills, but even he wasn’t that sophisticated when it came to dealing with the Chinese. It was the Chinese traders-specifically the Chiu Chow clan, who originate in Swatow-who brokered the product when it reached the cities. Of course. The Chiu Chow are the finest businesspeople in the world, then, now, and for maybe a thousand years past. They run this country-hell, they practically run the Pacific Rim. The Agency didn’t want to be in the business at all, but they had to accept that since they were in it, it was in their interests to make sure the Hmong didn’t get too burned. They needed a dealer who was a match for the Chiu Chow.”
“Warren.”
“Sylvester Warren was born to a theatrical couple in Boston. They were the usual alcoholic narcissists who started to fade early in life. The only way they could deal with the responsibilities of parenting was to employ a Chinese maid on a minimum wage. A Chiu Chow girl from Swatow who hardly spoke English. As the parents faded out altogether, she took over the house. She ran everything, including Sylvester’s education, which took on a very Chinese flavor. To survive at all the kid had to learn Chiu Chow, and this fascinated the other Chinese from Swatow who were living in Boston and particularly New York. They saw a low-risk investment. Warren has been involved with them all his life. They funded his gemology degree, set him up in his first businesses and loaned him as much money as he wanted. The price he paid was to belong to them body and soul. When the CIA found out about him he was already in the jade trade, importing into the States with a shop in Manhattan. They didn’t worry too much about conflict of interest. On paper he looked like the perfect broker for the Hmong’s opium when it reached Saigon and Vientiane. As a matter of fact, he didn’t do too badly by the Hmong. He got halfway decent prices for their opium. At the same time he did exactly what Vikorn did. He built up connections in the Agency, and just in case the Agency should become useful in later life or-just as likely-decide to double-cross him, he collected a body of evidence showing how the heroin epidemic on the streets of New York during the sixties and seventies was largely thanks to the CIA’s helping the Hmong sell their crop. I guess he and Vikorn didn’t meet more than once a month, but they talked over the field radio a lot. Vikorn wouldn’t learn English, so Warren, who is one of those people who can learn any language in a month, made a point of learning Thai. Vikorn has been in awe of him all his adult life. Warren did what Vikorn did, but he did it bigger and better and for a lot more money-just like a Yank is supposed to. For every million Vikorn made out of the opium, Warren made ten, but more important than that, Warren’s connections in the CIA and the Bureau go all the way to the top. You didn’t really think it was money alone that got him all that influence, did you?”
We’re turning into Wireless Road now, on the way to the Hilton. I wonder what is going to happen next when I say: “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because I wasn’t going to pop your naÏveté until you popped mine. I kinda liked that medieval loyalty you have for your Colonel-says a lot for your heart, but not much for your head. No money no honey, isn’t that what your ma always told you?”
“Fuck you.” As she’s getting out of the cab, I say: “Surichai? What was he doing there tonight?”
An elaborate raising of the hands and shoulders. “Did I say I knew everything?” Then: “Want me to pay for the cab, or can you manage?” Poking her head back into the car, almost going nose to nose with me: “Warren’s winning, by the way. He’ll have me out of here in a week or less. I’ll be out of your hair.”
I am in the back of the cab, racing through the night; the shock of Vikorn socializing with Warren and Surchai, of Fatima singing in a jazz club, is slowly eclipsed by a shock of my own making. I’ve never told the story of my mother’s first sale of her body before, never really taken it out from that secret, painful place where it resides in my heart. It wasn’t Nong who told me, but Pichai. The friend who sat in the toilet was Wanna, Pichai’s mother, who must have told her son, who whispered the story to me one dark night up in the monastery, when the future seemed nonexistent.