“Right.”
Peering over his chopsticks: “You don’t care? The whole contract is at risk.”
“I realize that, Yammy, but you’re an artist-you’re temperamental. If the working environment is not right for you, you cannot work. Vikorn will have to understand that.”
“He won’t snuff me?”
“He might. But we already know you have no fear of death. After all, you were on death row for a while, and we practically had to beg you to leave jail.”
He manages a smirk and drops the pretense. “Look, I’ll finish this one and do the other ten, but after that-”
“Yammy, forget it. If you want to be difficult, Vikorn will dump you anyway. Maybe he’ll kill you, or maybe he’ll send you back to jail. Maybe you really do have that kind of integrity, but so what? The movies are going to get made, Yammy, if not by you then by someone else. I’m only afraid Vikorn will want me to take over the production.”
He hadn’t thought of that. He lays down his chopsticks to stare at me. “You? You don’t know scat about making a movie.”
“I agree. Just think how awful they’ll be if I make them. How is an amateur like me going to get a penis to slide into a vagina? It must take decades of practice.”
He maintains radio silence for about ten minutes-at least, that’s what it feels like. Finally, forcing me to stare back into those bottomless pits of morosity: “You have to babysit me, don’t you? That’s your job. So, we’re going to get drunk.” He tosses back some sake and nods at me to do the same. I’m still nursing guilt and mourning Nok and cannot think of a better thing to do. I’m not sure how many times we knock back the rice wine, but the sake bottle with Yammy’s name on it in elegant Japanese calligraphy is empty by the time we leave. Outside it is early evening. On the street, with the Skytrain rattling overhead and the static traffic chugging out airborne poison down below, the cooked-food stalls of the day, with their hundred varieties of sweet snacks, have been replaced by more serious stalls serving noodles and other dishes suitable for hungry commuters on their way home. Generally speaking, though, the landscape is more fluid than I remember. Yammy is in worse shape and can hardly stand. He claws at my left arm, which he is using to support himself. “You think it’s so easy to slide a penis into a vagina, when neither bit belongs to you? It’s not as easy as you think. You know who are the biggest prima donnas in the porn industry? The studs, my friend, the studs. One harsh word, and they droop.”
“But you have Jock?”
He grunts. “If not for him, I really would resign.”
That night Chanya surprises me. We are in bed together with my hand on the Lump, and I have just finished telling her how Nok died. I was expecting another fear reaction, followed by a demand that I listen to Vikorn and forget Nok. Chanya, though, is quiet for a long time. Finally she says, “Do what you have to do, Sonchai.”
“But what about you and the child?”
“We’ll have to take our chances. Too many people in Thailand are in denial. Keeping quiet in the Thai way doesn’t work anymore. Maybe one day a rich man will decide to rape and kill me, then pay off the police. Change has to start somewhere.”
“That’s not the way you talked last time Tanakan’s name came up.”
“I know. Now another woman is dead. Perhaps our Buddhism has made ordinary Thais too humble.”
“And the others too arrogant,” I mumble.
21
All serious crime starts with a plausible excuse: terrible childhood, fell down the stairs at a tender age, emerged from urban squalor, et cetera. The one I plan to commit needs nothing more than the murder of Nok, Pi-Oon, and Khun Kosana qua motivation; let’s not dwell on any residual outrage I may feel at the manner of Damrong’s demise. Nok, at least, did not conspire with her killer. I want Tanakan’s head, and to hell with Vikorn. I shall have to be a fox, though, if I am to survive. I have grudgingly to admit that it must have been precisely my connection with Vikorn that saved my life: if Tanakan bumped me off, the nature of his deal with the Colonel would alter in Vikorn’s favor; the Colonel would, of course, have shown no mercy.
I don’t have much of a plan as yet, which puts me in one hell of a mood. All I can think of is to grab the footman at the Parthenon on some pretext and do whatever is necessary to get him to talk, but if I do that, Tanakan will find out and snuff me. Anyway, that man does not fear death or jail; Tanakan holds his women, who are everything to him. He won’t talk unless he wants to. Sometimes I envy my Western counterparts the simplicity of their lives; presumably they have no care in the world beyond bringing perps to justice? A little schoolboyish, though, and lacking in moral challenge. I doubt you can burn much karma that way.
Still furious, I decide to take a walk around the block. I’m in no mood for social niceties when the Internet monk manages to get in my way as I’m crossing the road. I glare and pass on.
It is about eleven-thirty, the time when all good hawkers get cooking in readiness for the midday rush. They have set up their stalls opposite the police station especially for cops and staff, which earns them a special dispensation from arrest. You can tell what they are selling depending on the utensils: a simmering brass basin probably means a beef-based soup; a big enamel basin will have pigs’ legs simmering in it; a dark brown burnt-clay mortar with wooden pestle will produce wickedly hot somtan salad; a wok over charcoal means a fry-up, and so on.
I’ve cooled down a bit by the time I’m returning to the station, and I’m wondering if this might be the time to bring the monk in for questioning when he reappears out of the Internet cafe just as I am passing and bumps into me all over again. I turn on him with a sarcastic comment on my lips but freeze because he is standing with his hands in the air, palms facing me. The expression on his face is quizzical, almost amused. Mad monks are as common in Buddhism as in other monastic traditions. I think he must be really crazy, though, when he maneuvers to stay in front of me until I can find a way around him. I’m still thinking about him when I reach my desk and Lek joins me.
“D’you know what that Internet monk just did? He deliberately bumped into me and went like this.” I hold up both hands, palms toward Lek.
“He did the same thing to me yesterday.” I’ve noticed that Lek is less keen on the monk than he once was. “Maybe he is nuts. Did he show you his scar?”
“What scar?”
“I thought that was why he was holding his hands up. He has this scar on his wrist, like he once tried to commit suicide or something and maybe now he’s obsessing in some way.”
“But the bracelets?” I say.
“Maybe he’s giving bracelets to everyone he meets. Maybe there is no connection.”
“He didn’t give me one.”
Actually, I did see the scar but paid it no attention. We both shrug. Nobody wants to be the one to get a monk put away in a mental asylum. It’s a shame, though, for one so young to be in such decline. I dismiss him from my thoughts as I refocus on how to pot Tanakan, whether Vikorn likes it or not. I don’t think about the monk at all for the rest of the morning, and it’s only when Lek and I are sitting at a cooked-food stall for kong kob kiao, something to chew, that I think of him again. I am holding half a dozen fish balls on a stick, which I put down on the table.
“The scar,” I’s‘ay.
“What scar?”
“On the monk’s wrist.”
“What about it?”
“I want you to check the Internet cafe to see if he’s still there. I’m going back to the station. If he’s in there, ask him if he wouldn’t mind coming up to see me at his convenience. Be polite.”