“Where in China did they take you?”
Freddie frowns again. “I already said I don’t know. There was a lot of talk about Shanghai, so it could have been there.”
“ ‘Could have been there’? What does that mean?”
Freddie opens his hands. “I just don’t know. See, once you’ve paid up the first slice of the money, they go to work on you, get you ready for the operation.”
“Who does?”
“Actually, it was Lilly herself. She also sedated me before the flight. That way they could wheel me off the private plane into the operating theater-so I suppose it was near an airport. It was all done in the just-in-time-delivery style. Could have been any airport. I was totally out a couple of minutes after we got on the plane. I didn’t know anything until I woke up in Phuket with a new liver.”
Lek and I exchange a glance. I enunciate the words slowly: “You-woke-up-in-Phuket?”
Freddie doesn’t understand the heavy emphasis, shakes his head, and shrugs. “That was part of the deal. After the operation they had me recuperate at some fantastic mansion on a hill there.” He scratches an itch on his neck. “Actually, the mansion wasn’t too far from where Sal works, so I wondered if there was a connection.”
“But the operation itself took place in China, maybe Shanghai?”
“That’s what they told me. That’s what I paid for. It must have been China ’cause that’s where they executed the prisoner whose liver I’m using.”
A pause. “Where is Sally-O now?”
He stares as if the question is without meaning. “At work, of course.”
I let my attention wander until it comes to rest on the oil painting. “Who’s that a portrait of?” I ask.
Freddie turns to follow my gaze. “You don’t recognize her? That’s Sal in her ancient Chinese costume. She’s dressed as a court eunuch in the late Ming dynasty.”
“Right. Why?”
Freddie allows himself a shrug. “She’s katoey, love. They’re all a bit that way.”
17
I tell Lek I don’t want him to come with me to Phuket. He’s already had a minor standoff with the clerk, and anyway two cops together look official and intimidating. I’m sitting at my desk in the open-plan office, thinking of a way to placate Lek, who has decided to sulk, and trying to decide whether to just show up at the airport or book the ticket using the Internet, which could easily take longer than simply taking a cab to the airport, when my cell phone rings.
“Hi, brother, how are things?” a male voice says in English with a Chinese accent.
“Inspector Chan?”
“The same. So, how’re things?”
“Up and down. How about you?”
“I’m on vacation-holiday, as the Brits say.”
I pause to stare at my cell phone. “Really? Where?”
“Oh, about a mile down the road from where you are now, assuming you’re at the station.”
“You’re in Thailand?”
“You’ve been taking intelligence-enhancing medication?”
“But I mean, why?”
“To see a couple of people, you being one of them.”
“You’ll have to wait.”
“Why?”
“I’m a busy third-world policeman. I have to cope with an existential reality that would have you messing your diaper, Spoiled Brat Hong Kong Cop.”
“Hey-”
“I’m back in two days.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not telling you.”
The clerk’s weekday pad in Phuket is in a back street on the third floor of an apartment building, but he’s not in. I knock quite a few times and make all the usual checks for signs of life, but the place has a deserted feel. Of course he could be out on the town, but I doubt it. I remember those dark, unsocial eyes, the quick temper before he remembered he was a public servant-and the whole feel about him of a young man who might have had himself mutilated by mistake. It’s a cop’s hunch that sends me to the Phuket Yacht Club. I arrive at twilight with the last of the sun sinking like a plutonium rod in an asphalt sea. The bartender knows who I’m talking about.
“He comes quite often to spend the night on his sponsor’s boat,” the barman tells me.
“He takes care of it?”
“No, there’s a full-time boat boy does that. He just comes and stays the night. If he’s not working the next day, he sits on it staring out to sea. He doesn’t like company.” The barman coughs. “He likes to dress up when he’s alone.”
I have the barman point the boat out to me. It’s hard to see clearly in the dusk, although the cabin lights are on.
“It’s a forty-foot twin-screw motor cruiser made in Taiwan. The farang used to have something really special, a two-masted schooner about seventy feet long. All teak and oak, a vintage sailboat that won some kind of competition in the thirties. Beautiful it was. Broke the old man’s heart when he had to sell it for some reason. Broke the katoey ’s heart too. Actually, he wasn’t a katoey at that stage-just a sad young man who thought he was a woman but wasn’t sure.”
I stare at the dark and silent bay for a moment. I was expecting the boat to be tied up to a berth on a jetty. I didn’t expect it to be on a permanent anchorage. “How can I get out there?”
“You can pay one of the boat boys to take you out on a skiff with an outboard-or you can get someone to row you out.” I suppose the last suggestion is somewhat exotic from the way he looks at me. Surely only a cop who wanted to retain the element of surprise, or an assassin, would go for the manual option.
“Can you find someone to row me out? It’s such a beautiful evening, I don’t want to pollute it with noise.”
He gives me a cynical glance and calls to someone behind the bar. A robust boy about sixteen years old appears. The barman speaks quickly in the local dialect, and the boy answers back in a low murmur. I don’t know how much he’s demanding, but it’s enough to make him shy.
“He’ll do it for five hundred baht,” the barman says, clearly expecting me to bargain.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say. Then I remember I have one more question for the barman. “Years ago, when the farang still owned the sailboat-did he have a lot of visitors? Boats like that are a great way of expanding your social life.”
“Sure. Every weekend a small crowd would come out. Mostly they were middle-aged showbiz people from the U.K.-I understand he used to be some kind of pop singer. It changed over the years, fewer and fewer guests. In the end he had to hire crew just to grind the winches when he took the boat out. He was a good skipper, though, knew how to sail. Not easy with an old two-master like that.”
“Were any of the people Chinese? I mean Chinese and female, who spoke Thai with a strong accent? Very elegant?”
“Her? Why didn’t you say it was her you were interested in? Sure, she came out a couple of times. But it wasn’t to socialize, as far as I know. Not the sort of woman you forget once you’ve seen her.”
“So what was it for?”
“She’s the one who bought the sailboat.”
I let a couple of beats pass to let that sink in. “She only came on her own? Not with another woman who looked like her?”
“I only ever saw her alone.”
“What did she do with the boat? I don’t see any two-masted schooners out there right now.”
“She had it shipped back to Hong Kong. That’s money. Any normal person would have hired crew to sail it over there for next to nothing, but she had it dismasted and packed onto a container ship. I didn’t see her as a sailor, myself.”
It’s a beautiful evening to be on the water. The moon is not yet up, the first stars are twinkling, and the water is so calm the kid’s oar strokes are the only disturbance, save for small fish that jump now and then. The boy knows I declined an outboard motor because I want to retain the element of surprise, so he diminishes his efforts when we’re about a hundred yards from the yacht; he doesn’t want to give me any excuse to renegotiate his exorbitant fee. He lets the rowboat glide for the last twenty yards so we’re almost at a natural halt when we reach the swimming platform. There is no sign of life anywhere on the boat. The boy whispers, “When do you want to come back?”