“You never know.”
“If that comforts you, go ahead and believe it,” Porthip says. “But I’ll tell you: Every cell in your body knows. You know with every breath you take. You know every time the second hand on your watch goes all the way around, and you think, ‘There’s another one gone.’”
Rafferty takes a longer look at the man. The face is taut and shrunken, but the tightly cut Chinese eyes are bright with fury, the eyes of an animal in a trap. “What does it make you want to do?”
“Be twenty,” Porthip says. “Twenty with a hard dick.”
Rafferty says, “I wouldn’t mind that myself.”
What happens to Porthip’s face could be a smile or it could be pain. When it passes, he says, “This isn’t what we were going to talk about.”
“No. Pan.”
Porthip puts both hands flat on the desk. They still tremble. “Are you going to ask me questions, or am I supposed to make a speech?”
“He’s a complicated character,” Rafferty says, feeling sententious. “I want both the good and the bad in the book. Let’s start with-”
“He’s as complicated as a cow patty,” Porthip says, waving off Rafferty’s assertion. “You’ve got the basics, right? I mean, someone gave you the background: Isaan, poor kid, farmer’s son, couldn’t read, probably never saw a roll of toilet paper until he was sixteen or seventeen. Came to Bangkok and made his fortune, a little shady at first, maybe, what with the poking parlors, but that was the only route open, since we evil rich control all the access to capital. But he ran circles around us with his native Isaan wit. That’s the hero version, how he used all that peasant cunning to make half the baht in Thailand and now he sprinkles them around like lustral water, anointing whole areas of the country, and he’s become the Bodhi tree people sit under to find enlightenment.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard all that.”
Porthip shakes his head in what could be disgust. “And you’ve met him.”
“Three times.”
“What did you think?”
“I don’t know. Good and bad, I guess.”
“Good and bad,’” Porthip repeats scornfully. He pours himself a glass of water, the edge of the pitcher rattling against the glass in his unsteady hand. A slice of lemon falls into the glass, and water splashes on the desk. Rafferty wants to help but knows the effort won’t be appreciated. “First thing I’m going to tell you…” Porthip says, and he raises the glass to his lips and drinks. He holds up a finger. Rafferty waits until the man has swallowed, and Porthip picks up the sentence. “…is, don’t believe anything he tells you. Not anything. If he says it’s sunny, buy an umbrella. If he tells you he’s giving you something, put your hand over your wallet. He lies every time he exhales.”
“Poor people have a different impression. He funds hospitals, he-”
“Bullshit. He never gives away a nickel. He’d steal from a corpse if he could find anybody dumb enough to lend him a shovel.”
“So where do these stories come from?”
Porthip allows his eyes to roam over Rafferty’s face, long enough for the scrutiny to be rude. He does not look impressed by what he sees. “He’s not complicated, but he’s smart. Do you understand the difference?”
“I like to think I’m capable of making basic distinctions, yes.”
“The whole thing-the outrageous spending, the gold Rolls-Royce, the rough edges, the awful clothes, the beautiful women, the fuck-you attitude-it’s all for effect. It’s all lies. The philanthropy, which isn’t even his money. He never uses a dime of his own. He’s got half a dozen backers, guys who are tired of being on the edges, and they bankroll all this crap. He wants to build some little health clinic and pay some quack doctors who couldn’t get work at a real hospital if the plague hit, and these guys pony up. If he wants to create a Potemkin village, some feminist paradise where all the women are empowered at their looms while the men sit around and drink all day, those guys not only pay for the looms, they buy the goddamn fabric. He’s got warehouses full of the fucking stuff. Mice chew on it. It never seems to occur to anyone that the world isn’t clamoring for an infinite supply of amateur weaving. It’s good for potholders, junk to sell the tourists, but come on, they’re making miles of the stuff. You could cover the road from here to Chiang Mai with it. And it would be uglier than the asphalt.”
“Why would these people give him money? What’s the payback?”
Porthip puts the glass on the desk, hard enough to crack it, and glares at Rafferty. “You know the answer to that, and if you don’t, get out of here. You’re not worth talking to.”
“Power,” Rafferty says. “Money.”
A wide expanse of yellow teeth, either a smile or a grimace. “Of course. Pan’s aiming high. These guys, the ones who are backing him, want to be in the middle of everything. They want access to the well. Because, of course, it’s not just money. It’s a torrent of money, a tsunami of money. They’re rich now, but nothing compared to how rich they could be if Pan makes it.”
“Makes it to what?”
“Some high national office,” Porthip says. “I’m not saying prime minister, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t the ultimate target. Cabinet level anyway.”
“He hasn’t said anything about that. Not to me, and not publicly.”
“He will,” Porthip says. “He’ll lie about it first, but he will.” Porthip dips his index finger into the glass of water and touches it to his tongue, as though to cool it. “Look at the political landscape. Look at what that idiot Thaksin did, paying all those farmers for their votes. The people who raise pigs want to rule the country.”
Rafferty says, “Maybe they should have a say in things.”
The lower lid of Porthip’s left eye begins to twitch rhythmically. “Maybe they should,” he says, “but if they ever get it, they’d probably deserve a chance to vote for someone who’s really what Pan claims to be.”
“Which is?”
“Someone who gives a shit.”
“So,” Rafferty says, “at one point he’s a pimp with some massage parlors, and now he owns the rights to trademarks, he’s got factories, he’s a possible political force. He’s somebody that people like you have to put up with. How did he make the jump? What’s missing?”
Porthip passes a hand over his brow and closes his eyes. He keeps them closed so long that Rafferty is on the verge of asking whether the man is all right. When the eyes open, they are pointed at the ceiling and the muscles surrounding them are tightly bunched, the left eye still twitching. The man breathes raggedly, catches the breath in his throat, and then lets it out in a rush. He breathes deeply two or three times, and only then does he look back down at Rafferty.
“He owned…somebody’s soul,” Porthip says. The four words require two breaths. He blots perspiration from his upper lip. “He knew something about somebody big. Maybe he did something to put that person hopelessly in debt. Whoever it was, he paid it back by putting up millions and millions. He opened doors. And he kept quiet about it. Makes you think there were only two possible options: give Pan everything he wanted or kill him, and for some reason Pan couldn’t be killed. So the little whorehouse owner disappears, and six months later we’ve got the tycoon on our hands.”
“And even someone like you doesn’t know who it is.”
Porthip swivels his chair ninety degrees so he is looking out the window at the brightness of the new day, and at the sight the muscles of his face soften. Something about the reaction strikes Rafferty as almost infinitely sad. For a moment he thinks Porthip will drop the shield that’s been in place throughout the conversation, but what Porthip says is, “Nobody knows. Nobody’s talked.” He turns back to face Rafferty, the mask of pain tightly in place. “And don’t forget, we’re talking about years ago. Whoever it was, he could be dead by now.”