“That’s what I’m coming to. She’d done Soi Cowboy, Nana, and Pat Pong, where she was one of the best earners on the street. Then she moved to the Parthenon Club.” A pause while he searches my face.
“The Parthenon,” I repeat, swallowing. I guess it was inevitable, but it hardly simplifies the case.
He looks at me to make sure I’m aware of possible obstructions to further inquiries.
“And? Who did you talk to there?”
“I needed a disguise, didn’t I?”
“Lek, what did you do?”
“Pretended I was looking for work. How else was I going to get anyone there to talk to me? If I’d told them I was a cop, you would have had the male half of Bangkok ’s HiSo on your back.”
“They take on katoeys?”
A proud pout. “Of course. No bar is complete without us these days.”
“Who did you talk to?”
“A low-ranking mamasan. I told her Damrong was my cousin, and I was using the connection to look for work. She told me Damrong worked there for the last two months. She said she didn’t know why Damrong hadn’t turned up for work recently-she assumed it was because Damrong had found a highflier to look after her. That’s what all the girls and boys at the Parthenon are looking for, of course.”
“You didn’t find out which members she’d been with? Anyone special in her life?”
“I had to keep it all on a gossipy level, you know, emphasizing my cousin’s amazing success in her work. The mamasan didn’t exactly spill her guts, but she did let on that Damrong had been the favorite of two club members.”
“Farang or Thai?”
“One was farang, the other Thai. ”
“You got their names?”
“No. If I’d started asking questions like that, I would have blown my cover.”
“Right.”
“By the way, that female farang in the cab yesterday-is she a hundred satang to the baht?”
“The FBI? Why?”
“She got hold of my number from the station switchboard and says she’s interested in gender reassignment and wants to take me out to lunch to discuss it with me. I told her F2M is very complicated and nothing I’m going through has any relevance to her case, but she insisted, and out of greng jai to you, I said I would go.”
I am blinking rapidly. “When’s the date?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’d like a full report,” I say, not meeting his gaze.
I’m pondering and frowning, not sure if there is going to be any way to penetrate the Parthenon Club without committing professional suicide and wondering if this is the case that will finally reveal my secret martyr complex, while I take the stairs down to the cells. The word from the turnkey is that the farang Baker is more than ripe for interrogation.
He is sitting in a peculiar position at the end of his bunk with his forehead pressed so hard against the bars, he seems welded to them.
“He’s been like that for hours,” the turnkey says. “He stopped eating and drinking. I think we’ve broken him already.”
I nod for him to open the cell door. I tell him to leave it open and to disappear from view, while keeping an ear out in case the farang turns violent. When a personality splits like this, you never know which way the particles are going to fly.
I step inside the cell, which is to say I step inside the psychology of its inmate: a meltdown at the center. Reaching out with open hand, I grab the hair at the back of his head and pull him away from the bars. He is shivering and twitching like a rabbit. I have to caress his head and face to calm him down. The bruise under his left eye is healing well but has turned dark. Now he’s looking at me with helpless eyes. I grab a chair and sit directly opposite him on his bunk.
“Why are you here, Dan?”
A blink. The challenge of verbal communication is lifting him from a mood that is sustainable only in solitude. It is, of course, exactly solitude combined with classic Thaicopparanoia that has broken him. He blurts and blabbers at first.
“Why am I here? Because you put me here. Because you’re a Thai cop who’s found a fall guy and doesn’t give a damn about truth, or justice, or freedom, or democracy. You’re all about sending me to death row so you can get on with the next case. So I ran away, and now you have an even better excuse.”
“You know a lot about the Thai system of justice?”
Bitterly: “I’ve been here four years, man. I’ve seen a lot. You don’t have a justice system.”
“If it’s so dreadful, why are you in Thailand?”
Suddenly: an avalanche of words that must have accumulated in his feverish brain during the couple of days he’s been down here. His tongue races to keep up with the thoughts:
“I’m here because there is no such thing as rehabilitation in the free world: one criminal conviction and you’re out, no jobs above subsistence level for you. I’m here because marriage doesn’t work. I’m here because I’m bald and almost middle aged-sounds silly, but I haven’t come across a single Thai girl who gives a damn if I’m thirty or forty, bald or not, divorced or not. You’re a nonjudgmental people, and it’s taken me four years to find out why. You’ve got a massive underground hell called the prison system that devours anyone who falls off the tightrope. It’s amazing, it’s the most outrageous institution in the world. It isn’t really a prison service -it’s a Stone Age money factory owned and run by cops and prosecutors. No one is safe. It could happen to anyone, Thai or farang, male or female, old or young: you’re walking down a quiet street one night, a cop emerges from nowhere, plants an Ecstasy or yaa baa pill on you, and takes you off to jail. You have a choice: pay his fee for freeing you, or watch the system gobble up the whole of the rest of your life. In your society there is only one judgment to be made: has he fallen into the pit or not?”
“This pit-does it have a way out?”
“I don’t have the money to pay you to let me go. I just don’t have it.” Looking me in the eye: “I didn’t kill her.”
I nod gnomically. “Suppose I tell you you’ve lucked out with the one cop in Bangkok who doesn’t take money? Suppose I tell you I really am interested in finding out what happened to Damrong?”
I guess I should not have used her name in that tone. It causes him to flash me a look. An idea is slowly rising to the top of his mind. “How would I know that?”
“You were married to her, you two had been business associates- to some extent you still were. Maybe she confided in you more than anyone else. Maybe you didn’t kill her but have a shrewd idea about why she had to die.”
I think the choice of phrase why she had to die was quite serendipitous. It seems to have triggered some internal narrative that takes him off into another space. Finally he says, “Did she have to die? You haven’t told me how it happened.”
“I want you to tell me.”
“I don’t know. You haven’t even told me when she died.” Looking me in the eye again: “When did she die, exactly?”
“Good question,” I admit. “But not strictly relevant. Thanks to technology, many things can be done by remote control today that needed a hands-on approach in more primitive times.”
Now he is assessing me in a different way. Now he is more scared than ever. I was fishing, though, and have no idea why my words should have had such a profound effect. The expression on his face is of a drowning man. I shift my chair a little closer. “Tell me,” I say softly, “tell me. Maybe I can help.”
A shrug. “Help? I’m between a rock and a hard place. You let me out today, I’d be lucky to even make it to the airport.”
I nod sagely, then abandon the chair to stand up and pace a little while I speak. “I see. So you weren’t supposed to keep those clips on your laptop. Am I right?”