“So, it was him. You’ve cracked the case in less than a day. No wonder you’re our best detective.”
“But he wasn’t even in Thailand when she was killed, and I haven’t checked the laptop yet.”
Vikorn gives a benevolent smile and wags a finger. “Don’t spoil a great case with too much perfectionism. Of course Baker did it. He knew her, he’d been married to her, he’d pimped for her, he’d sold her porn for her. Why don’t you charge him, offer him a deal in exchange for a confession? I could probably get the death sentence reduced to eight years if he gives us the names of the accomplices. If he resists, you can copy that snuff movie onto his laptop. It’s a wrap.”
“The laptop will show the date when the movie was copied.”
“So don’t let the defense team examine the laptop.”
“Suppose he didn’t do it?”
“Then you’ve imprisoned an honest man. How likely is that?”
I don’t want to argue. He knows I’m not satisfied and that I’ll work my buns off before I charge Baker, and in his eyes this makes me profoundly pathetic. Any self-respecting Thai cop would be in a girlie bar congratulating himself on having solved the case in a matter of hours. My Colonel doesn’t much care if Baker did it or not-he’s the kind of farang who gets into trouble anyway, adds no value to Thai society, and would probably benefit from a third-world course in social responsibility at the university of Lard Yao.
Now that he’s got my business out of the way, he rubs his hands.
“Sonchai, I think we’re making progress with our project. I had someone check out what that Jap Yammy is up to in his new studio. Did I tell you I rented a property in Chinatown next to the river?”
“No. That was quick.”
“You got me all excited with that report in The New York Times. I had no idea there might be more dough in porn than in yaa baa.”
“Great.”
He leans forward confidentially, the way he does when he needs a favor. “Sonchai, I’m appointing you as my eyes and ears. I’m sorry to have to add to your duties, but you’re the only cop in District Eight who might have an idea how a good porn movie gets made. I want you to pay regular visits to Yammy, make friends with him. Will you do that for me?”
No one says no to Vikorn, so I nod. Out in the corridor I figure I should probably consider myself lucky-at least I’m allowed to carry °n with the Damrong case undisturbed. Down in the canteen, over a?UP, it occurs to me that it might be fun to take the FBI on a field trip to the river. Before that, though, I want to check out Baker’s laptop. I tell Manny I’m going to the river on a special assignment for Vikorn and I’m not to be disturbed. I call the FBI at the Grand Britannia, who has just received the gadget she calls the can opener, then call my partner, Chanya, on her cell phone. She is just returning from the temple so she should be back by the time I get home.
As it happens, both women have arrived at our little house before me. This is the first time they’ve been alone together for any length of time, and I’m curious to see how they’ve been relating. So far each has been in awe of the other. Chanya can hardly believe that a woman can cope with the world in such a masculine way and achieve such authority and power; the FBI still gapes at the effortless elegance with which Chanya walks, talks, and smiles; she really cannot understand why my true love isn’t in Hollywood making billions. Nor is she sure her serenity is entirely terrestrial. Nothing bothers her, the FBI complained after the first couple of meetings. She has the sangfroid of a leopard. And then, of course, Chanya is heavily pregnant, which mystic state the FBI seems to find disturbing.
Sangfroid translates literally as luak yen: same phrase, same concept. I thought about that. The two most important women in my life have luak yen to an unusual degree: my mother, Nong, and Chanya. The thought leads naturally to the Third Woman. Damrong possessed an effortless sangfroid: cruel, enticing, immense, a real leopard. But there was nothing petty about her. Both my mother and I expected her to act superior to the other girls when she first came to work for us, because she so obviously outclassed them; not so. She humbled herself, bought them presents on their birthdays, showed many kindnesses, gave free advice to those who wanted to ply their trade overseas, loved them. The general consensus was that she possessed jai dee, or good heart, in great measure. My stomach is fluttering because I don’t know how I’m going to react to scenes of her naked and performing for other men. “Hi,” I say, “I’m home.”
At some level I was expecting them to be talking about me. It’s a little humbling to find them huddled together in the kitchen listening to the radio. The program is called Thinking in Modem Ways, and for Chanya listening to it has become a religious ritual. She is translating for the FBI: “You see, instead of just starting cooking and then looking for all the ingredients, you gather all the ingredients together first and put them in proper order on the bench. Now they’re talking about washing clothes. Instead of just putting all the clothes in a pile, you use three laundry baskets: one for whites, one for colors, one for delicates. See?”
Chanya turns to Kimberley with a triumphant beam. The FBI has trouble hiding her confusion. She knows Chanya is no fool, so why is it necessary to have instructions on such primitive time-and-motion issues? “Great,” she says. “Efficiency makes life easier.” She’s relieved that I’ve appeared and looks at me expectantly. How to explain that a nation which has been surviving on intuition and custom for a thousand years doesn’t pick up Aristotelian logic just like that? The revelation that “A cannot be not-A” does not come naturally to undivided minds.
It’s easier to change the subject. I go to a suitcase in the space under the stairs where I have locked Baker’s laptop. Both women stop to stare when I take it out. I bought a charger for it in Pantip Plaza so now I plug it into a socket in the living room. So they had been talking about me after all. The FBI has explained that the laptop will likely contain clips of Damrong performing with other men. The looks on their faces are a fine expression of puerile curiosity: How’s he going to take it? How much suffering are we going to see? We don’t have any chairs, so they huddle around me on the floor at the coffee table on which I have placed the computer. The FBI fishes a gadget out of her pocket that is about six inches long with a plug that fits into the USB port of the computer. The FBI switches on the gadget at the same time as pressing the boot button on the laptop. An LCD display on the gadget, which has space for about thirty digits, starts racing through numbers, letters, and punctuation marks at lightning speed. Eventually it stops at: {{jack***rongdam’t‘t’t29-=forty. I never would have thought of that. Now the Windows icons come alive, and we are welcomed with the cheery music.
In the MS Explorer screen I experiment with a few files before I realize that Baker uses the prefix X for his porn stuff. “Original,” the FBI says.
A double-click, and there we are: a close-up of Damrong with an erect penis in her mouth. Probably Baker’s, for the clip, which lasts only forty seconds, seems experimental in nature. It is quite a jolt to be taken so rapidly into the unbearable frisson of a beautiful woman practicing an obscenity with such joie de vivre. She grins at the camera whenever she takes it out of her mouth. “I’m okay,” I tell the two women, who are even more interested in my reaction than in the porn.
“She’s not even pretty,” Chanya says. This is not merely a reflex of jealousy; I think Chanya sees a very different image on the monitor: a common Cambodian face, browner than Chanya’s, with the somewhat pouting lips of the Khmer. To me Damrong’s is a gaunt, haughty beauty, whereas Chanya’s is full-bodied and jolly. But the FBI too is shaking her head. “Only men think that’s irresistible,” she grunts.