He concentrates on the tail, somehow producing a convincing crimson tone without compromising the fluffiness of the feathers. “You know that much? Nok told you?” Casting me a glance: “That’s why she had to die.”
“The video, the Damrong video. It was filmed in Tanakan’s suite at the Parthenon Club.”
“Was it? D’you think he tells me more than I need to know? I wasn’t involved.”
“But you know how the deal came about?”
“What deal?”
“It was a contract, probably voluntary. She offered to die that way in return for a lot of money.”
He pauses in his painting and looks into some middle distance. “Really? How much? You don’t know? A lot, probably, as you say. Personally, I would jump at the chance. If I could get my family out of his clutches forever, I would die a thousand deaths. You don’t know what it’s like when your blood is mortgaged for life.”
I’m still feeling wrong-footed, still mumbling in a pathetic, pleading tone. “The thing is, deals like that don’t just happen. Delicate approaches have to be made. It takes exactly the right suggestion at exactly the right time. I don’t know where the original plan came from, her or them. I do know the Englishman Tom Smith was involved.” He grunts. “You can at least tell me about him.”
He considers this for a moment. “Just another deluded prick. In a society like ours, it’s best to be either a prince or a peasant. Anything in between is too stressful.” He pauses to give me a shrewd glance. “You know, I have no idea what you boys ever saw in Damrong. To me she was a perfectly ordinary-looking Khmer girl, nothing special. You can hire ten for a thousand baht in Phnom Penh. She didn’t give me a hard-on at all. Heartless whores are ten-a-penny anywhere in the world.”
What can I say? I swallow. “The Englishman-he was a middleman?”
“Just another lawyer who didn’t know his place. Can you believe he still persisted even after I warned him?”
“Warned him what?”
“That the boss wanted his girl. I thought I was being helpful, trying to save a life. He didn’t see it that way.”
“He knew Tanakan was after Damrong?”
“He had this farang notion about equality, honor, democracy, the righteousness of love, all that nonsense. Damrong told Tanakan about him. I had to do some squeezing.”
“You mean Damrong was trying to get Smith killed by telling Tanakan he was a rival? Why?”
“I don’t think she wanted him killed. From what you’ve just told me, I think she had her own agenda. I played the good consigliere. First a polite hint. Second a polite warning. Third time you show them the torture instruments. It was strange. It was as if she were deliberately making both men hate her. She taunted Tanakan with Smith and Smith with Tanakan. Even a novice working girl knows better than that.” He looks at me and shrugs.
“By the time you’d finished with him, Smith had seen the light? He had to do something to get back into Tanakan’s good books? Tanakan would have finished him professionally, even if he let him stay alive?”
“Like I say, it was part of her agenda to make them both love her and hate her. I thought she was just another whore with her head in a mess. Now I wonder. Maybe she knew what she was doing.” He puts the newly painted bird back in its cage. “That’s all I can tell you. I’ve risked my life by talking to you because I want at least some tiny part of my soul to survive this incarnation, or I’ll be reborn as an insect. I don’t want money, but don’t contact me again.”
32
At Smith’s law offices I do not receive quite the same level of attention from our tall handsome lawyer as on my first visit. I have come not as a player in an international porn deal, after all, but as a humble detective and am therefore undeserving of respect. Somebody must have snitched: Vikorn? In this symphony of treachery a mere double-cross would have the simplicity of “Jingle Bells.” I’m not sure even Vikorn knows what side he is on.
As soon as Smith has me in his office, he slouches on his executive chair (black leather and chrome, it seems able to swivel and roll at its master’s will; Smith has no idea how closely it resembles the one he used in Chicago in the abundant days of Prohibition in a previous life) and stares at me. He doesn’t actually say Well in a derisive voice; he doesn’t need to.
“I’m a little puzzled by your attitude, Mr. Smith.”
“Yeah? What attitude?” A little of his Cockney origins emerging here.
“A woman dies, murdered. A woman you were pathologically fond of, shall we say. A woman whose very flesh – ”
“Cut out the third-world melodrama, Detective. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking murder, Mr. Smith.”
“Oh, that. Who’s dead?”
“Damrong Tarasorn Baker, among others.” He gives no sign of recognition. “Your lover. Your whore. Your plaything. Your tormentor.”
I guess it just doesn’t work; once a farang, especially a lawyer, gets into “A cannot be not-A,” all connection with the heart is lost. It is as if a tap has been turned off at the throat chakra, leaving only a talking head. “A woman you were literally crazy about has been slaughtered like a lamb,” I suggest in a tentative voice. No reply, but at least I’ve made him feel just a tad awkward. “A woman whose ex-husband you have taken to visiting lately.” He’s good-he can do Stone Face and keep it up under pressure; if I’m not mistaken, though, there was just a flick of his left pinkie, followed by a stroking of his nose with his right index. An experienced hunter can read this kind of spoor.
I pace up and down his office, a technique analogous to the mammalian practice of claiming territory by pissing on it. It does seem to irritate him; mildly though. I take a breath. “A woman dies, as I was saying, killed by a fellow human, a woman whose flesh had proven capable of driving you crazy. As it happens, her demise is caught on film.” I cut myself short so that I have quality time to focus on the twitches that have appeared around his mouth. “Yes, on film, Mr. Smith. To be more precise, on a DVD disk. So, what sort of words shall we use to set the international community aflame with indignation? Copyright infringement, perhaps? Yes, let’s say I’m investigating a particularly egregious form of copyright infringement. No point dwelling on the collateral damage, which you’ve kept to three so far: one Nok, a worker at the Parthenon; one Pi-Oon, a harmless transsexual who knew too much; and one Khun Kosana, a buddy-slave of your master Khun Tanakan who had the misfortune to get hold of the DVD and share it with his lover. Your trail is quite bloody, Khun Smith.”
He leers. “Copyright infringement? That used to be my specialty. What kind of intellectual property are we talking about?”
I cough. “Ah, you are an expert. How easily you have called my bluff. Of course, foolish of me-how could it be a copyright issue when no one would dream of registering this work? Yes, you are right, I shall have to find some other concept. How about conspiracy to produce pornographic material, conspiracy to murder, conspiracy-”
“I think I can shorten this,” Smith says, softly now but still with the leer corrupting his handsome mug. “If you’re talking about a video product of extremely poor taste that may or may not have been made for an elite international market, which may or may not for all I know feature a common prostitute with whom I admit I once had a liaison – if that’s what you’re talking about, then I have to tell you, Detective, I have never seen the product in question.”
I halt, because he has quite floored me with his openness. Sure, he knows all about it, and he doesn’t care if I know he knows. This man has protection from someone big. Curious. I find I have to jump to point two before I intended.