From the corner of my eye, I see him put some money down on the counter under his empty Coke can and disappear out the door.
Light dawns somewhere in the bald giant’s brain. He remembers that Lalita knows how to jive.
“ ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ ” he yells.
The girls all remember from last time. “Yeah, Sonchai, give him Elvis.”
We start with “Blue Suede Shoes,” go on to “Jailhouse Rock,” “Nothing but a Hound Dog,” and most of the others. A few of the old men pick their partners and start to jive. We’re all clapping them on with plenty of oohs and aahs and whoops. Now the bald giant declares in a shout that all the old folk took a couple of Viagra each about half an hour ago. Screams of hilarity from the girls, who like to check and discuss the mysterious and creeping tumescence with their owners and with one another. The old folk’s vacation has hit the sweet spot: This is really living beams on those craggy old faces.
When I return to the spot where the Muslim was sitting, I see he has left exactly the cost of the Coke, plus a card with a telephone number and address, plus that photograph of Chanya’s victim neatly folded.
“Jai dum” is Marly’s comment as she passes by the empty stool where the stranger sat and scowls at it. Black heart.
By now the playlist has progressed to the slow tunes. Elvis is singing “Love Me Tender,” and the ex-hippies are holding their partners close, clinging more than hugging.
“Old men,” Marly whispers to me in Thai. “Dead soon.”
9
At the beginning of this kalpa, three men traveled together, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. They were good friends, and when they discussed spiritual matters, they seemed to agree on all points. Only when they turned their gaze on the outer world did their perceptions differ. One day they passed over a mountain ridge to behold a fertile and populated valley below.
“How strange,” said the Christian. “In Village One down there the villagers are all fast asleep, whereas in Village Two they are lost in a hideous orgy of sin.”
“You are quite wrong,” said the Muslim, “in Village One everyone is in a perpetual state of ecstasy, whereas in Village Two everyone is asleep.”
“Idiots,” said the Buddhist. “There is only one village and only one set of villagers. They are dreaming themselves in and out of existence.”
10
The address on the Muslim’s card is of an apartment building a few minutes’ walk away, but there is nothing I can do while the old men are waiting for the miracle of medical science to rescue them from impotence, a period the girls see as a window of opportunity to persuade their increasingly ardent suitors to buy them more lady drinks. (The bar and the girls cut the profits of the drinks fifty-fifty-some girls prefer to make their money that way.) One by one the old codgers take their paramours to the rooms upstairs (we charge five hundred baht for two hours) or back to their hotels.
I’m now too preoccupied with the stranger’s card and the photograph of Mitch Turner to think of anything else. It is ten minutes to midnight by the clock on the fax machine, but I decide to try the number on the card anyway. Someone lifts the receiver on the first ring. The salutation, in a dialect from the deep South, is spoken softly, almost in a whisper. Not the voice of the young stranger: there is power and age in the tone I hear now, and the habit of authority.
“This is-”
He switches to standard Thai: “Yes, we know who it is. We were hoping you would do us the honor of coming to see us.”
A pause. “I’m scared.”
“I understand,” the old man says, somehow managing to convey compassion over the telephone line. “What guarantee can we offer that would reassure you?” Although obviously older than me, he uses a polite form of address normally reserved for youth when addressing age. In other words, he knows I’m a cop. Interesting and, in the circumstances, disturbingly subtle. Why do I get the feeling he’s smarter than me? “Would you like to bring a colleague? Of course, you can make a telephone call to inform Colonel Vikorn where you are going. We don’t really mind, although we would prefer not.”
I feel like a man in a blindfold: is the next step an abyss or merely level ground? I take a long time to reply. “No, it’s okay. I’ll come now. Shall I come to the address on the card?”
“Yes, if that’s all right. And thank you.”
I call my mother to tell her to come mind the bar. She is in the middle of watching a soap (a family of wizards who live in a mysterious region above the earth and intervene in earthly affairs from time to time, especially in the love life of the lead couple, who are perpetually pursued by a light-stepping human skeleton-we like realism in our entertainment). My argument is compelling, however, and she arrives in about fifteen minutes in her Chanel business suit and her discreet perfume by Van Cleef and Arpels, dripping in gold. Some of the girls are returning one by one from their romantic trysts and, surprised to see the matriarch herself behind the bar, give her deep, respectful wais.
The apartment is close to Soi Cowboy, and it takes me only ten minutes to walk there. It is in Soi 23, a street famous for its restaurants, which cater to every conceivable taste (fussy French, flaky Chinese, Vietnamese, British, German, American, Japanese-we call it the “street of the hungry johns”). As I stroll up the soi, I have frequently to step off the pavement to avoid bumping into romantic couples, most of whom consist of middle-aged white men and Thai women in their twenties. (Cultural note: look closely, and you will see the girls are flinching away from embraces, despite what they are about to do, or have recently been doing, in private: a matter of face, farang.)
A modest building guarded by a few guys in security uniforms with handcuffs and night sticks hanging from their belts. Two of them are sitting at a makeshift table playing Thai checkers with bottle tops. I flash my ID and take the lift.
A door like any other opens onto something quite different. I count eight prayer rugs (richly colored in greens and golds, geometrical patterns only) laid out in parallel at an odd angle to the room as the young man from the bar lets me in. Something in his manner suggests an ancient Arab tradition of hospitality (he has suspended the heavy judgments for the time being, even morphed into gracious host), and he manages a wai, which I return. I’m distracted, though, by the other person in the room, a man in his sixties with a long robe and a skullcap, who rises from a chair to wai me mindfully. I wai back. Wais are more than just a matter of placing your hands together and raising them to your face, however; they are a social semaphore with a whole alphabet of meaning. Let me be frank, those who embark on the spiritual path have ways of recognizing each other’s rank, and this imam impresses me immediately. (Thin and straight, there is depth and fire in those coal-black eyes.) I raise my pressed palms as high as my forehead and pause there for a moment, a form of homage that pleases and impresses the young man. (Under the rules a Buddhist cop need not show such reverence to a southern Muslim, however senior.)
“Welcome, stranger. Our house is your house.” The old man offers the traditional welcome in that power whisper I recognize from my phone call. He nods to the young man.
“My name is Mustafa Jaema,” the young man says, “and this is my father, the cleric Nusee Jaema.”