“Ice cream?”
“No. Moomah noodles.”
“You’re kidding. There’s no known form of nutrition in them, you could eat them until you’re as round as a football and still die of malnutrition.”
“It’s what my mum ate when she was pregnant with me.”
I extract maximum points by emphasizing how tired I am, then drag on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. One shop I know for sure will be open is Foodland up in the Nana area, so I take a cab. I see from the cab’s dashboard that it is one twenty-nine a.m. All along Sukhumvit food stalls have appeared to cater to hungry hookers and their Johns. It’s quite a jolly street atmosphere, with people eating or sitting in the doorways of shops and nattering, telling stories of the night. A few drunken farang weave shakily between the stalls, but generally everyone is behaving themselves. When I reach Nana, it’s quite crowded with girls who work the go-go bars and have just finished for the night. The supermarket itself serves food at a small bar near the checkout counter, and this is packed too. The aisles of the shop itself are relatively empty, though: only a couple of farang men deciding what wine to buy to finish the evening off, some working girls buying provisions to take home with them, and some Thai men shopping for rice whiskey. It takes me a while to find the moomah noodles; even the packet is probably better for you to eat than the contents, but who is going to argue with a pregnant wife? I grab five packs, just in case she gets the urge again, chuck them into my plastic basket, and make for the nearest checkout counter when a familiar profile catches my gaze. Of course it could not be her, and anyway she has her back to me so it could be almost anyone; but something in the way she moves… you know that Beatles song, farang? “Something in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover”? I have goose bumps on both forearms and shivers down my spine. I don’t really want to risk the elaborate maneuver of peering at her while she examines a bag of chilis, so I decide it’s late, I’m tired, and I’ll feel better in the morning. Proud of myself for kicking the superstition habit, I walk past her to the checkout counter, stack up my five packs of moomahs, fish out my wallet-then become aware of the young woman, who has come to stand behind me. Why can’t I look at her? Why am I insanely focusing on the pack of chilis she is waiting to buy? Why is my hand holding the five-hundred-baht note shaking like a leaf? The checkout girl has noticed and decided I’m one of those dangerous men of the night. I want her to hurry up with the change, and in my haste to grab it, I knock over one of the noodle packs. Now it is lying on the floor between us, the other shopper and me. Both she and the checkout girl are waiting for me to pick it up-what kind of gentleman am I that I expect a woman to pick up something I’ve dropped? We’re still old-fashioned like that. I manage to avoid her eyes as I bend down, but she permits no such strategy on the way up. Now I am staring into Damrong’s face, no doubt about it, down to the last nuance. There is even a familiar, triumphant smile playing over her lips. “Good evening, Detective,” she says softly, lowering her lids, feigning shyness.
I’m gibbering. Unable to wait for the plastic bag, I grab the five packs and hug them to me as I make for the door. Naturally, once I’m out in the street, I cannot resist waiting across the road for her to come out of the shop. Twenty minutes pass with no sign of her. Nothing for it, according to the rules of the haunt, but to return to the shop. She is nowhere to be seen. When I ask the checkout girl what happened to the woman who bought a pack of chilis, she gives me that look.
“Thanks,” Chanya says with a breezy smile when I reach home. “I’ll make some right now. Want to join me?”
“No,” I say equally breezily, “I’m not hungry.”
When we lie down to sleep, I close my eyes and observe my mind slip into denial. Of course, it didn’t happen, right? Right. Such things are impossible, they are the imaginative creations of bored and ignorant peasants, right? Right. You’re only half Thai, for Buddha’s sake, you don’t need to be sucked into this primitive sorcery, right? Right. By the time I fall asleep, the incident has been dismantled and stored somewhere dark and deep.
10
I am at my desk watching Lek weave between the other desks on his way to me. He is carrying a plastic bag of iced orange tea, of a hue I associate with Chernobyl, and sips from time to time from a straw sticking out of the top, which is tied with an elastic band. I note with approval that he avoids the desk of Detective Constable Gasorn, who has developed a crush on him. Well, perhaps not a crush exactly, for Gasorn’s private e-mails to my assistant, while affectionate, hint at something more radical than a passionate affair. There are statistics and theories in great measure concerning the tendency, troubling to some, of young Thai men to change sex. In a nutshell, the ancient system, by which a Thai man has to worry about Everything while his Thai wife gets to live on a more hospitable planet at his expense, may be breaking down. DC Gasorn is one of those who incline to the view that it would be better to have the lot chopped off and find a sponsor: let some sucker of sterner stuff fight it out with market forces. He’s not sure, though, and I’ve instructed Lek not to talk to him or reply to his e-mails. Lek survives only because I protect him and Vikorn protects me. If it looks as if we’re starting a subversive fashion, Vikorn will hang us both out to dry.
Off duty, Lek has started rolling his buttocks a la Marilyn Monroe, but he controls his gait in the station. Nevertheless, he is unable to avoid a quick glance at DC Gasorn on the opposite side of the room. The more he takes of the estrogen, the less defense he possesses against idle flattery. On the other hand, he’s coping much better in so many ways these days. He has passed through the ordeal of accepting that even in Thailand he is a freak in the eyes of the world; now he’s much harder inside and stares down villains effortlessly: gender reassignment has been good for his career, in a sense. Not that he’ll ever get promoted beyond humble constable.
When he reaches my desk, he takes the straw out of his mouth long enough to wai me with the straw somehow-miraculously-held between his hands. I tell him I want to know where Damrong was working at the time she died, and hand him a photograph. It must be the most recent, because the FBI showed me how to make a still from the video, using her laptop. The face in the pic has about three minutes left to live. Lek will flash it around the bars, starting with Soi Cowboy, then up to Nana, then across to Pat Pong; if he hasn’t gotten anywhere by then, we’ll have to dig deeper, perhaps try the escort agencies. I guess about twenty percent of women who are eligible to sell their bodies in Bangkok do exactly that; it makes for a big haystack in which to go looking for a needle. Damrong was special, though; people will remember her. Me, for example. I remember her very well. I think there must be quite a few other men who might be able to help with inquiries. I’m thinking about saving time by doing some of the footwork myself, when Colonel Vikorn calls me into his office.
On my way up the stairs I’m preparing a summary of the Damrong case, on the assumption that the Colonel has finally developed an interest in it. When I’m sitting opposite him, with the big anticorruption poster behind his chair and a little to the right, and the photograph of His Majesty the King in full regalia immediately above his head, I start into my report. Vikorn imposes a mask of patience while I speak, but it doesn’t last long. When I tell him about Baker’s high-tech equipment in his squalid little rented room, and the laptop I stole, he sees an opportunity to cut short my report.