Well, she has taken forty minutes, just for me, but now here she is, making her entrance at the top of the stairs in a black-and-white silk trouser suit which hangs perfectly on her emaciated body. As a connoisseur of criminal integrity, I cannot help admiring the way she is still able to pull it off, the HiSo sangfroid yes-I’m-bad-but-try-to-catch-me performance, even while her liver must be showing signs of domestic violence.
Doctor Moi is forty-three years and two months old, and although there must be organs owned by her which possess the characteristics of those double that age, nevertheless she learned enough at the Swiss finishing school to pay special attention to the parts exposed to the view of others: she looks pretty good. Her skin is Han white, as translucent as jade, and her features-a fine Chinese face with delicate, intelligent lines atop a Modigliani neck-strike one as the last word in good breeding. She is tall for a Chinese of Teochew race, almost six feet, and knows how to use her height to project elegance. Similarly, her hair: it is thick, black, and long, falling from the crown of her head in a series of sine curves and slow-motion bounces as she moves across the floor attracting all the attention she can use. A long string of large pearls loops around her neck and provides something for her to play with on her approach. And there is a black velvet choker around her neck with a precious stone of some kind in the middle, occupying the soft cavity under her Adam’s apple. The stone is orangey pink and cut with a thousand facets that reflect light. Naturally, I stand, give her the high wai that her social position deserves, then take the hand she has extended for me to kiss.
“How wonderful to see you again, Sonchai. I don’t think we’ve met since I had that silly misunderstanding with your mother.”
“You’re looking terrific,” I say.
“Am I? I suppose I am, but I’m afraid I was born about thirty years too late. You have no idea of the kind of drugs that will come online during the next decade. Any girl with the sense to start using them early in life will never age beyond twenty-two. Isn’t that amazing?”
“You mean they’ll be immortal?”
She smiles. I had forgotten how twisted her lips go when her demon reveals itself. “Better than that. I mean still looking perfect at my age. Older. There will be women who will pass themselves off as twenty-five until they die at eighty. Imagine!” She waves a hand at the orchids, the wrought iron, the balcony from which she just descended. “It’s quite splendid, I suppose, but I’m bored with it. I wish they’d hurry up and finish my renovations so I can go home. I miss my maid. I’ve sent her back to her people for a week, and I have to call her every day for help. Her ancestors come from the same village as mine in Swatow. I’ve had her all my life, and I’m only half me without her.”
“You still keep up with latest developments in pharmacology, then?”
We have ordered the full cream tea, but now that it arrives neither of us knows quite what to do with it. Moi smears the thinnest coat of cream and jam over the extreme end of a scone, nibbles at it, then sets it down. For my part, I have never developed a taste for deep dairy, I gave up on jam and other sweet things about a decade ago, and scones make me feel stuffed without contributing anything nutritious. I am not surprised that the people who invented this sedentary decadence were the biggest narcotics traffickers the world has ever known.
“Of course, I keep up,” Doctor Moi says. “If they would only give me back my license you would see what I could do.”
I knew the subject of her license would come up sooner or later. “They won’t give it back to you? After all these years?”
“No. And it’s nothing to do with either of my convictions, which are so minor nobody remembers them except the police.”
“So why?”
“It’s because cops like you keep telling everyone I murdered two of my husbands. This is Thai society: it’s not the law that destroys you, it’s the gossip.”
“Ah!”
“It’s so unfair. You probably don’t understand, chemicals are the future which is already here. The great thing for any pharmacist with brains is that only a few have realized we are now in a position to take over the world.” She takes a sip of Darjeeling, and the gesture is so well executed that a couple of Thai women sitting near us immediately begin to drink their tea with fingers in the same position, imitating the Doctor’s perfect poise.
“You don’t think oil, the economic crisis, the environment, wars, fresh water, and radical Islam will hold our attention more than chemicals?”
“Chemicals are the only way we can cope with such things. That’s the point. More than fifty percent of Westerners depend on mind-altering drugs of one kind or another. We now know that everything-love, war, money, the environment, attitude, work-everything is just a question of chemicals reacting with each other. At the end of the day bliss is all about dopamine, and anger is all about an imbalance in the blood. People are already controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, have been for more than five decades, but we’re scientists, we just don’t know how to use the power which is now in our hands.” The subject has excited her. Her long skinny fingers are shaking slightly as she raises her cup. I wonder what customized chemical she is using today. “Don’t you see, the future isn’t uncertain at all, it is quite obvious, and if I had my license back I could take over. Within less than a decade the average person won’t be able to look at the evening news without taking some kind of tranquilizer. Once the general population get hold of some of the superdrugs that are coming onstream you’ll get total, one hundred percent addiction to a family of molecules over which only a tiny percentage of the population have any control. Our power will be absolute, like having a monopoly on air.”
I have a feeling she hopes to use me in some way to persuade the authorities to give her license back. I have to stare into her eyes and shrug.
“I need a senior cop to put in a word for me. All they would have to say is that I didn’t kill any of my husbands.”
“No cop is ever going to say that. All anyone can say is that there is no proof.”
“You could get Vikorn to say that in writing?”
I’m thinking, Not for the sake of clearing up a little murder inquiry that does not interest him in the least. I say, “I’ll ask him if you like.” In an attempt to distract, I add, “That’s an amazing stone,” and look directly at the large, brilliant, orangey-pink gem at her neck.
She touches it for a second with one of her long fingers, not sure if she wants to let me get away with changing the subject. “Hmm, it’s a pad.” To my blank look, she adds, “A padparadscha. A rare kind of sapphire.”
“Is it as expensive as it looks?”
“It would buy the room,” she says without emphasis, waving a languid hand to include the entire wing of the hotel. “But let’s not get into that. I wear it to amuse myself. There’s no one here worth impressing.”
I clock the gem, thinking, Buy the room! It’s true, she is far too proud to lie about such a thing, and maybe the hotel, with its army of security guards, is the one public place in town where she can safely wear it.
She lets her eyes rest on me for a moment, then looks away. “So, why did you want to see me? Your little colleague Khun Sukum seems to think I had something to do with a dead farang. I can’t think why.”
“Khun Doctor, how good a customer of yours was Frank Charles?”
She smiles faintly at the question, as if giving it seven out of ten for ingenuity. “Customer? What do you mean? I think your mother saw me walking down Soi Cowboy with him shortly before his death. What does that prove?”