“Exactly. The case is yours.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want promotion. Let Sukum get the credit; I’ve already told him I’ll help if he wants.”
I watch the old man’s expression freeze into contempt. “You’ve been meditating again, haven’t you? I can always tell when your monk manqué side starts to show. Was it those bloody hills up there that got you all sanctimonious? I knew I should have sent someone with you.” I do not say, You know exactly why I feel like this. He went back to his desk shaking his head, pretending to be baffled. “Other jao por have to worry about getting ripped off by their staff, normal stuff like that. You I have to worry about losing to the Buddha. What did I do to deserve it? Get out. And, by the way, the Hollywood case is yours.”
I stand up to go. At the door I say in a humble, half-dead voice, “Let Sukum keep the case, I’ll solve it for him-I just don’t want the stress of all the paperwork.”
He purses his lips ambiguously, and I’m forced to leave it at that.
Now, back at my desk in the open-plan office I’m logged on to Yahoo! to check my horoscope. Apparently, I should avoid antique collectors for the next two days, along with other claustrophobic situations. When I check my Chinese horoscope on one of the other clairvoyant sites, I find that Wood Rabbits like me can expect a clear run of good luck. The online I-Ching (I always use the Wilhelm translation) is less positive:
Hexagram 36. Darkening of the Light, “Line Six”
He penetrates the left side of the belly.One gets at the very heart of the darkening of the light,And leaves gate and courtyard.
That sounds more like it. I’m just through the commentary when I spy Sukum, purple and apoplectic with rage, charging toward me, drawing disapproving glances from our Buddhist colleagues. The open-plan office makes it possible to prepare for attack from a distant desk. I find myself wanting to huddle, somehow, while I watch him negotiate desk after desk, monitor after monitor, where mostly uniformed cops try to figure out how best to prioritize the relentless storm of crime reports. He is too Thai to really make a scene in public, so when he finally arrives at my desk he hisses rather than yells.
“You brown-nosing hypocritical asshole, you just forced the Old Man to give you the Hollywood case because you cut a big drug deal wherever you went last month and now he’s eating out of your hand. You make me want to vomit. You’re not fit to be a cop. You should be in jail.”
“Would you like to repeat that to Colonel Vikorn, Khun Sukum?” I ask softly.
Now he’s all crestfallen, and I feel pity for him. He so very, very much wants this next promotion, so very, very much wants to show his wife and best friends he can beat me at the art of detection, that he has violated my mourning without even thinking about it. I feel sorry that he is so deeply in the grip of the third chakra, the one responsible for greed, aggression, and dominance. (I’m afraid I often think of it as the farang chakra, which is horribly unfair to you, I know; after all, look how it is destroying poor Sukum’s peace of mind, and they don’t come more Thai than him.) I sigh, pick up the phone, watch Sukum’s eyes as I speak to Manny, Vikorn’s secretary, of whom we are all terrified.
“Khun Manny, forgive the question, but did you just call Detective Sukum to tell him he has been taken off the Hollywood case in favor of me?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell Colonel Vikorn I am not accepting the Hollywood case. He can sack me if he likes, but Detective Sukum has already put in more than three weeks’ work and is doing a very fine job.”
“What did you say?”
“Just tell the Old Man what I just told you.”
“Did you just call him the Old Man in my hearing?”
“Yes. Now get on with it,” I say, and replace the receiver.
Not only Sukum, but the whole office is staring at me, expecting the roof to fall. Now the phone is ringing on Sukum’s desk. He looks at me in bewilderment, then races back to his post. We all watch while his face goes through a fascinating collection of emotions, from enraged to obsequious in less than two seconds. To give him his due, when he’s put the phone down he walks back over to me, gives a high wai, and says, “Thank you. I will be grateful for any assistance you can offer. I know you are very busy and a better detective than I. I humbly apologize for troubling you in your time of grief. I hereby admit I now have gatdanyu with you.”
I wave a hand. “Please,” I tell him, “it’s not gatdanyu-you can’t owe a blood debt to a half-caste. I’m just not in the mood for promotion this year.”
He gives me a baffled glance and shakes his head. As he’s about to leave, I give him the name of Thomas Harris and recommend The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal-in Thai translation, of course. He’s never heard of the learned author or his works. He never reads novels. I tell him he can get the idea just as well from the DVDs, which they sell in counterfeit versions at a hundred and fifty baht (you have to bargain them down from two hundred, farang) on Sukhumvit at the stalls opposite Starbucks in the Nana area.
My generosity is too much for him; it’s too Buddhist, too un-cop. “A minute ago I hated your guts and was fighting the temptation to have you bumped off,” he whispers in a disorientated voice. “Now you might be the biggest benefactor of my life. It must be your farang blood that makes you so incomprehensible.”
“Must be,” I agree genially. Instead of going back to his desk immediately, as he would like to, he hangs around, looking even more apologetic. “What is it, Khun Sukum? If you are stuck, I’ll try to help.”
He fidgets a bit and does a sort of dance. “I did a little preliminary research.”
“Yes.”
“The victim’s name was Frank Charles. He owned a luxury condominium on Soi Eight.”
“Yes?”
“But if you remember, he was found in that flophouse on Soi Four/ Four.”
I push back on my chair until it balances on the rear legs, and I’m using my feet on the desk to maintain balance. “Khun Sukum, did I not already explain, when farang get money they often stop thinking about waste. I mean, other factors come into operation.”
“Like what?”
“Like perhaps he was embarrassed that the security at his condo would know he brought a different woman back every night, or maybe more than one. Or perhaps he thought if he behaved like that someone would tell his circle in Hollywood.”
“They don’t have prostitutes over there?”
“Of course, but farang suffer greatly from a disease called hypocrisy. That may be why he was here in the first place. What does his passport show? How often did he visit Thailand?”
“Four times a year for the past ten years.”
I open my arms in a sort of invitation to Detective Sukum to share my dubious expertise on the subject. “It may be a safe working hypothesis that he was one of those famous farang who are also sex addicts, who make regular visits to Bangkok while pretending to be working on their laptops at home. There are quite a few literary figures like that, and even more from the California entertainment industry, and lots of judgmental British journalists as well, not to mention Hong Kong lawyers. That being so, he might have bought his condo for its proximity to Soi Seven.”
“What happens in Soi Seven?”
“The Rose Garden.”
“It’s a brothel?”
How to explain the Rose Garden? “Not exactly. It’s full of freelancers. It suits young mothers who need spending money whether they’re married or not, girls with boyfriends they need to service during the evening, women with part-time jobs who can slip out of the office to turn a trick or two before going home to supper.” It occurs to me that a homily is called for: “The unpalatable truth is that promiscuity makes men happy, and quite a few women, too, especially when they get paid.”