Once on the street I fish out my cell phone and the card the mamasan gave me at the Parthenon Club last night. She agrees to meet me at Starbucks at the Nana end of Sukhumvit. I have to go back to the police station before the meeting, but there’s not a lot of time, so I take a motorbike taxi. There are about fifty riders gathered at the mouth of the soi, slouching around, playing checkers with bottle tops, talking about money and women in their well-worn seua win, sleeveless orange jackets with their numbers on back in huge spiraling Thai digits. I want to choose number nine, which is everyone’s lucky number, but I have to take the next in rank, number four, considered the number of death by the Cantonese and everyone they ever influenced, including us. Well, I guess this guy has lived with the number for long enough and still seems to be breathing. By the end of the journey I’m revising that view, though. Every motorbike trip makes you fear for your kneecaps when they overtake into oncoming trucks and zoom down the corrida de la muerte with no margin for error, but this guy knows no fear at all. It shows that whereas the number four isn’t necessarily lethal in all circumstances, nevertheless it is not a number to be taken for granted. I’m quite shaken when I get off outside the station, pay him-then turn right into the Internet monk.
“Kawtot,” I say automatically at sight of the saffron, but as I step into the station, I’m thinking that it was his fault. He must have seen me getting off the bike and simply stood behind me so that I would bump into him. Strange, because monks are meticulous about how they present themselves to the world. The moment passes, I attend to a few chores and note that Lek and I are on “red spot” all afternoon, which means we have to respond to whatever comes in over the radio and our caseload is more or less suspended for the day.
I call Lek over to my desk for a quick brainstorm. In his honorable opinion we should concentrate on the bracelets. “That’s twice, and both from a young monk. And it just so happens that we have a young monk in the area who has started to bump into you. Could this be a clue, d’you think? Sorry if it’s difficult.”
“You don’t have to get sarcastic. Of course I’ve thought about the monk and the bracelets, but what am I supposed to do? You can’t just drag in a monk for questioning in this country without having the Sangha down on your neck, and this one hasn’t done anything wrong so far as we know.”
“How come he’s handing out elephant-hair bracelets to everyone who ever got involved with Damrong?”
“You’re exaggerating, and we don’t know it was him. I want to let the monk play his full hand first, I don’t want you to start nagging him.”
I watch as a new idea penetrates and blossoms in Lek’s mind. He is more intuitive than me -indeed, intuition dominates the whole of his mental organ, so that once he is convinced of something, it is very hard to dissuade him. Now he is staring at me in fear and awe. “You’re going to let him win, aren’t you?”
I should, of course, say Win what?, but I guess that would be to deny a subtle truth. I have no idea what the young monk is up to-I’m just sure it’s more honest than any work Vikorn may have for me. I refuse to engage Lek’s eyes and look away.
Now I’m on the back of another bike on my way to Starbucks. My cell starts ringing, and I have to answer it because it might be Nok calling to cancel the meeting. The traffic noise makes it hard to hear, and the signal is intermittent.
“Is it true you’re giving him the money for the surgery?” the FBI wants to know. I have to use both hands for a moment to grab the strut behind the seat because the driver is taking a bend at about forty-five degrees; the trick is to keep the cell between one’s central digits without pressing any buttons, while clinging to the strut with thumb and pinky. “Hello, hello?”
“Sonchai? You still there?”
A little breathless after a near-death experience, I say, “Lending. Did you two have lunch already?”
“He switched to a coffee break because he says you all are on call this afternoon. How could you do a thing like that?”
This is one of the worst drivers I’ve ever had, and he’s a number nine, would you believe? Sometimes you have to wonder if there’s been a paradigm shift equivalent to climate change, causing nine and four to switch in terms of luck distribution. I had to hug his back with my head down when he overtook a taxi just now. “What? Lend him the money? Because he practically went down on his knees and begged me. When I said yes, he made me the most important person in his life. Now we have gatdanyu.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’ll explain when you’ve got a week to spare.”
“I want to know. If you didn’t lend him the money, there’s no way he could go through with it, right? There’s no one else in the world going to put up that kind of dough for him.”
I sigh. “Kimberley, if I didn’t lend him the dough for a first-class operation, he’d go downmarket. Can you imagine what that means in Bangkok?”
“Sonchai, I just don’t understand you. That’s one of the most beautiful male specimens I’ve ever seen.” I have a disgusting feeling that the tough hide of the FBI is being corrupted by the worm of do-goodery. “You’re such a compassionate man. How can you do this? He’ll never be happy.”
“Hang on.” With all the optimism in the world, it is difficult to believe I am going to survive the oncoming cement truck. Well, I did. “Without a dick? I don’t know about that-you seem to manage. The male member doesn’t bestow any privileges anymore. A lot of us owners wonder if it’s not more nuisance than it’s worth.”
“Stop trying to be funny. This is serious. We’re talking about a young person’s future here.”
Irritated because I have to get off the bike before my destination in order to carry on talking, I say, “Wait a moment. I’m going to tell you something.” I have the driver stop at a cooked-food stall so I can grab a 7UP and sit down to drink it. “It’s like this.” Handing a reality sandwich to the FBI is not going to be easy, but there seems to be no alternative. “When Lek was five years old, he had an accident. He was jumping onto the hind legs of a buffalo to spring onto the animal’s back the way they do in the country, when the animal jerked his legs and sent him flying. He was lucky not to land on the horns and be gored to death, but when he hit the earth, he split his head open on a rock. They had no medical facilities, nothing at all. They assumed he was going to die. He looked dead already. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“So they called the shaman, who built a charcoal fire near the kid’s head and blew smoke over the boy to assist the shaman’s seeing. The parents were called. The shaman told them their son was as good as dead. There was one hope and one hope only: they had to offer their child to a spirit who would fill his body and bring him back to life. But after that the child would belong to the spirit, not to the parents.”
“Huh?”
“There was only one downside. The spirit was female. Strictly speaking, Lek is not entirely human -he’s a female spirit who inhabits a male body.”
I take a sip of the 7UP and wait for her response, which doesn’t come. I don’t think she has hung up, though, because after a while the line starts bleeping until I close my phone. When, a few minutes later, it gives the double-bleep that indicates a message has been received, I open it again with great curiosity. The message is not from the FBI, however.
Did you know that since the NATO invasion of Afghanistan poppy production in that country has increased more than 500%? Cost of raw sap has halved. My contacts can take the stuff as far as Laos. It would be up to us from there. What do you say? Yammy.