Shaking his head in wonder at my understatement: “Yeah, you could say that.”
“So why keep them there?”
“Knee-jerk opportunism. It’s been a problem all my life. Great tactics, no strategy worth a dime. It was dumb. I’ve been beating myself up ever since. Discipline is what I don’t have. If I did, I’d be rich and free.”
“You thought having the clips might give you leverage one day when you needed it?”
“Right.”
“Do you know who the Thai Chinese player is?”
“Not exactly. Someone big. Ajao paw.”
“Yes, a godfather. You could say that. You weren’t supposed to keep him on your hard disk, so I suppose the drill was for you to set up the cameras, record onto a DVD, and give it to her so she could choose when and how to turn on the screws. Why did you disobey orders?”
Looking away: “Who trusts anyone in this town?” A pause, then: “I didn’t think about it all that clearly. Like you say, I was looking for leverage.”
“You took a great risk for an illusory security. Fear? Yes, I can see how that might work. Perhaps you were too used to her tantrums, her shifts of plan, her sadistic way of playing on your heartstrings. Yes, I can see how the revelation that you have kept a life-threatening record of her performance with a jao paw might swing things your way at a crucial moment in time. And there was the Englishman too. I guess she must have been blackmailing him?”
He shrugs. “Some yuppie jerk who kept his brains in his dick. No great challenge. Especially not for her.”
I place a finger against my nose, not for the posture but because I’m torn between two paths. I know the Englishman has twice been to look for him at his apartment over the past few days until one of the guards divulged that Baker was in jail. Instinct chooses reticence. I cough and change the subject. “The jao paw, though -he was different?”
He almost sniggers. “I’ve never seen her even slightly nervous before. She was with him, though. You saw the clip. She pulled out all the stops for him. I’ve filmed her working a hundred times-I never saw her perform like that before.” Giving me a suddenly less fearful look: “Send me down. I’m not buying into your game. You can’t scare me the way he can, whoever he is.” His jaw is set, his mind made up.
What I have to say next will cost me a lot, but I find I don’t have a lot of choice.
“She wasn’t a woman, she was a disease,” I say, still pacing, “a disease that infected the blood of half the men she ever serviced.” He raises his head to stare at me. “In her hands your body was a penny-whistle that she could play anything on. But it wasn’t what she did to your body alone, it was what she did to your heart-right? She knew how to set it on fire. She was an addiction worse than crack, worse than yaa baa-worse than heroin. Isn’t that the way you put it at our first meeting?” He seems to be daring me to carry on. I pace the cell, allowing my anguish to show. “How did she do it? Is the sex instinct in men really so all-powerful? Or are we talking about something else, I ask myself, something even more fundamental? Had she discovered something most women are only vaguely aware of? Had she found a way of suggesting, ever so subtly, that she could cure even the base anguish of being alive? That between her thighs you would find the peace you crave? That she actually understood you? The holy grail, in other words, that no man ever really finds?” I pause to stare at him. “Was it really the sex, Dan, that hooked you, or was it the surprising, uncanny way she had of soothing you, as if she understood your problem?”
He is staring at me in amazement. Perhaps I should stop here, but once you’ve started on the path to crucifixion, you may as well suck it all up. “Of course, the final experience was the very opposite of that. What you got was a lethal dose of heartburn after all, when you realized she’d been playing you along like the top-notch pro she was, right? How sorry are you that she’s dead?”
His features have quite altered. Malice has returned to his eyes. “So it was you. I figured it might be, but it seemed too much of a coincidence. You’re that cop who fell for her like a sack of potatoes?”
“I want to find the people who did this, Dan,” I say, avoiding his gaze. “Even if you were an accomplice, you were pretty minor. There’s money and organization here, Dan, way beyond anything you’re capable of. I would bear that in mind when the time comes to prosecute. I could probably make sure you didn’t do more than five years, and I’d try to make sure it was somewhere, shall we say, survivable? With luck you would even be able to avoid rape, HIV, and tuberculosis.”
With sudden contempt: “You don’t know what you’re asking. The interview’s over.”
He turns away, so I have to go up to him to twist his head around. “He hasn’t come to see you while you’ve been down here, has he?” To his look of blank incomprehension, I add, “Of course, you didn’t expect him to. Strange, though, don’t you think? You’re on excellent terms with a Brit called Tom who dresses too much like a lawyer not to be one-unless of course he’s an estate agent-who likes to visit you as much as I do. In fact, he visits you after I visit you. That must be either because he is having you watched, or because you call him like an obedient slave whenever the law comes knocking on your door. He stars in your private movie collection too. Indeed, he seems to have more than an amateur’s interest in the ancient art of pornography and enjoys a privileged seat at rehearsals.” I let Baker throw me another of his wild looks, but he does not follow up with a verbal response. “But when you’re in trouble with the law, he doesn’t lift a finger to help you.” I offer a contemplative stare. “At least not a visible finger.”
He has folded his arms in a tight, prolonged shrug. He is shivering again. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Ah! When you have known the scorpion, you are not afraid of the toad, right?” To his aggressive frown: “That’s what the Tibetans said when the British replaced the Chinese as their chief tormentor. Now they’ve got the scorpion back. It’s called progress. I think you find yourself in similar straits: better a toad like me than a scorpion like Tom the Brit, Tom the Lawyer, Tom the Yuppie-Tom the Enforcer, perhaps?”
He thinks I want him to look at me, but I twist him in the opposite direction, toward the open cell door. “I’m condemning you to freedom, Dan. If you want to stay here, you’ll have to come up with some serious answers.”
He gives me a wild look and shakes his head. “Jailor,” I call in Thai, “throw this bum out of here.”
“They’ll kill me,” Baker says, suddenly frantic.
“I know. That’s how we’ll catch them, isn’t it?”
“I’ll run away again.”
“Doubt it. Your mug is on every Immigration computer in every Immigration booth all over Southeast Asia -and let’s face it, your last bid for freedom was a little uncomfortable to say the least. Try to escape again, by all means. Maybe next time I’ll let the Enforcer get to you before I do.”
16
I’m about to pay a visit to the Parthenon Club for Men.
I’m in a four-button, double-breasted blazer by Zegna, a spread-collar linen shirt by Givenchy, tropical wool flannel slacks, and best of all, patent leather slip-ons by Baker-Benjes, which uncoplike wardrobe is entirely thanks to my junior share of profits from my mother’s bar. My cologne is a charming little number by Russell Simmons. I am a humble self-effacing Buddhist, so you can believe me when I say that I look-and smell-sexy as hell. The Thai genes give me a haunted look; the farang genes provide an illusion of efficiency: a high-tech dick or a third world ghost buster? These concepts are not mutually exclusive.