“How much d’you want?”
“I’m not talking about money. I want information. Everything you know about her life here.”
Shocked: “You don’t want money?” He sighs and purses his lips.
After they let me out of the penitentiary, I came over here looking for her. I found her working in a bar in Soi Cowboy, run by a cop and his mother. She was quite pleased to see me but explained that our relationship was going to be a little different over here. It was business only. I started to do porn shots of her, mostly soft stuff for some American magazines and the Net. Sometimes it was hard porn -it’s a specialist niche these days, anonymous clients put in special requests for a particular girl on the webpage. If the request wasn’t too complicated – you know, a blow job or something-I would supply the cock, using a delayed action timer on the camera. That’s what we met for. Sometimes I would have the business connection, and sometimes it would come from her. She liked to use me as stud and cameraman because we worked well together. We didn’t make a lot that way, but it sure helped supplement my income.“ He waves a hand at the apartment to indicate the extreme simplicity of his life.
“Webpage?”
A shake of the head. “You won’t find it. We would change it from week to week. Punters these days know how to follow the trail, download, and move on. Then the webpage ceases to exist. Some have a twenty-four-hour life cycle.” A shrug.
“This was only a sideline for both of you?”
“Sure. She got eighty percent of the dough, but it still wasn’t exactly big bucks. We were both working.” Looking out the window: “She wasn’t the type to stay anywhere for long. I gave up asking her where she was working. She generally liked to move upward though. She said something about a very upmarket men’s club, somewhere off Sukhumvit in a side soi, but like I say, she never stayed anywhere long. She despised that downmarket bar run by the cop and his mother. She had fun seducing the cop and watching him grovel for the right to lick her cunt-she was hilarious when she was on the rice whiskey. She would give these brilliant imitations of a jerk in love-apparently this cop fell for her real hard.” Turning his face to me with a frank, humble smile: “Just like me in the beginning.”
Now my head is spinning, blood has rushed to my face, and Lek is wondering why. Perhaps Dan Baker already knows about my affair with Damrong and is needling me, but I doubt it. That would be counterproductive from his point of view. I think he told it straight.
“That’ll do for now,” I tell him in a tight voice. “I’m keeping your passport for the time being.” I’m looking out the window, not able to face him all of a sudden. “I’ll issue an official receipt when I get back to the station and have a cop bring it around to you tomorrow.”
I give the room a final glance, then remember I’ve not yet visited the bathroom. He doesn’t seem too keen that I should do so; I’m following the line of his discomfort all the way into the cubicle. Jammed into a small space next to the toilet is a tall, cheap-looking set of drawers in a free-standing frame. I open them one by one, aware that he has come to stand in the doorway. Each drawer is full of photographic equipment of what looks like the highest quality. The main object is a sleek, professional-quality Sony movie camera. When I turn to him, a tic flutters under his left eye, and sweat has broken out on his forehead.
“You keep this stuff in the bathroom?”
“Where else? You can see how much space I have.”
“Don’t leave Bangkok until I say you can, Mr. Baker,” I tell him at the door. Now I feel a little impatient with Lek, who suddenly points at Baker’s left wrist and asks, “Who gave you that bracelet, Mr. Baker? It’s elephant hair, isn’t it?” A fine burnished virility aid, Baker looks at it curiously, as if he hasn’t thought about it in a while.
“A monk gave it to me a few days ago when I was walking down Sukhumvit. He said it would bring me luck. He wouldn’t take any money for it, so I figured he meant what he said.” He is as bewildered by Lek’s wayward mind as I am. At the door I ask the question I’ve been saving for last: “Who was the tall well-dressed Englishman who came to see you this afternoon, Mr. Baker?”
I was hoping for some telltale panic reaction to the question, but instead he smiles ironically and says, “A lawyer. He’s helping me with an immigration problem.”
When we reach the ground floor, I walk casually over to where the guards are playing checkers. They look as if they’ve not moved for a while-a week at least-but surprise me with a grin and a nod. Without a word the one I bribed takes us around to the back of the building and points up to something on the fifth floor. “That’s Baker’s window,” he explains. Hanging from the window by a rope: a shiny black laptop. “He hung it there at about the time you knocked on his door,” the guard explains.
Lek and I look up at the suspended laptop and scratch our heads. “Do you want to hire a ladder?” the guard asks. “Better hurry-he’s sure to take it in again now he thinks you’re gone.”
I negotiate a price to hire both a ladder and a guard with scissors and leave Lek to supervise the operation while I return to Baker’s apartment. He is shocked to see me again and cannot disguise the foxy look on his face. I pretend a renewed fascination with the photographic equipment in his bathroom, which keeps his nerves on edge for a good ten minutes, then politely take my leave.
Downstairs Lek is hugging the laptop, beaming. “That was so exciting. I was sure Baker was going to catch the guard at the top of the ladder and kick the ladder away.” Lek gives an elegant demonstration of kicking the ladder, apparently while wearing high heels. I give the guard my cell phone number and tell him to keep an eye on the window and call me when there’s some reaction from Baker. We’re in the back of the cab, halfway to the station, when my phone rings. “He went totally crazy. First he opened the window to pull the rope and saw that the rope had been cut. He stuck his body halfway out the window and seemed to go haywire. Next thing he’s down on the ground, below his window, scrabbling around in the dark, as if the thing fell down. Then he saw me looking at him and guessed what happened, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone go like that. He crouched down against a wall with his head between his hands. I don’t know if he was crying or not, but he was very upset.”
“Where is he now?”
“Back in his apartment.”
Half an hour later he calls again. “That Englishman came, the same as before. He’s with him now.”
“Describe him again.”
“Tall, very fit-looking farang, dressed in smart business suit, striped, stiff white collar, and flashy silk tie. Good-looking like a film star.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“Sure. I asked him in Thai where he was going. He said to Baker’s apartment.”
“How was his Thai?”
“Good, with a thick English accent.”
I drop Lek off at his apartment building and take the cab home. As soon as I get in, I open the laptop. Judging by the lights below the keyboard, there is enough battery power to boot up, but a PIN number is necessary to access it. I don’t know how to bypass the PIN, and I can’t risk leaving it with the nerds at the station -Buddha knows what salable images they might find there. I guess I need the FBI.
“I’ll need a can opener,” she says. “That’s what the nerds call them. I’ll have them courier one over to me. I should have it by tomorrow.”
Chanya has seen my impatience with the computer, and I assume she is staring at me in order to provoke an explanation. When we lock eyes, though, she presses her lips together to make an apologetic face, at the same time as she raises her eyebrows in a question. I grunt. The last thing I feel like doing is hunting around for a supermarket that is open at this time of night.