I’m pretty confident that’s how it went, DFR-you agree? It’s a wrap that explains everything, including the clumsy way Beijing and the Americans are going about the Colonel’s election campaign, and including sending me on some photo-op in Dubai with those crazy Twins, but especially dumping those three bodies in that house on Vulture Peak. Can’t you see the way the meeting went? Linda: Ah, we do go along with the idea that the Colonel should be running a high-profile case at the time of the election. Jack: Yeah, we all go along with that, right, Ben? Ben: Right. Linda: But we discussed it at length, and we don’t know of any evidence that Thailand is a center for organ trafficking. Jack: Yeah, that does introduce a, ah, what you might call an unwelcome variable. Notto: Just a minute. (Notto finds his cell phone and speaks into it. Perhaps he has to be patched on to a few other phones before he gets the right one. He speaks quickly in Putonghua. The Americans are all ears. Now Notto closes his phone and smiles.) Linda: Okay, I guess Thailand is about to be a center for organ trafficking. Jack: I didn’t quite catch what he said. Ben: Me either. Linda: I didn’t get all of it word for word, but the guy he spoke to runs the corrections services’ pre-sales unit. Ben: Pre-sales? Linda: Yeah, pre-sales of organs of prisoners on death row. Everybody wants fresh. I guess a few bodies with the organs ripped out and delivered to a Thai location would be no problem for him at all. Jack (shaking his head): The magic of guanxi. Ben: Right. Linda (to Notto): You sure they won’t be identified as executed Chinese felons? Notto: Yes.
Now I’m back in the hovel dressing and combing my hair, which the victory dance disheveled somewhat, at the same time as I’m putting a few finishing touches to what, if I may say so, is an impeccable piece of detection, when my attention is suddenly diverted against my will. It’s called possessiveness. I can’t help it-with conjugal alienation, I’ve become sensitive to little things, such as the fact that her telephone just rang and she turned away from the door and began speaking too softly for me to hear.
“Who was that, darling?” I say, putting on my Zegna jacket and trying to look as if I’m just making conversation.
“Ah, that was Colonel Vikorn, darling.”
I turn, aghast and confused. Why didn’t he talk to me? Controlling myself: “Really, what did he want?”
“He wanted to know what you were wearing, so I told him.”
“He wanted to know-”
My phone rings. It’s Vikorn. “Why are you wearing that getup?”
“To go to the bank.”
A pause. “Don’t go to the bank. Isn’t there a General Zinna line for you to follow up?”
“Yes, but-”
“Good. Go see Zinna. And change out of that crap. He’ll think you’ve turned gay and try to screw you.” He closes the phone.
Now I’m sitting bewildered on a chair. Chanya stands behind me and strokes my hair, then starts to massage my head.
“You were spying on me,” I say.
She giggles. “Honey, if you’ve worked out what I think you’ve worked out, then d’you think Vikorn and the Americans would want you making contact with the person I think you are trying to make contact with?”
“I’m a murder squad detective,” I say. “I got carried away. For a moment I was a real cop.”
“I understand that,” Chanya says, still massaging. “But-and do correct me if I’m wrong-isn’t there a genuine Zinna line? I mean, how is it that he has so many connections in Phuket? Isn’t that worth following up?”
I hear myself saying, “Yes. I guess I’ll have to make another trip down there.”
She freezes for a moment, then transforms. At lightning speed she has processed the thought that I might cheat on her in Phuket, closed all emotional hatches, and refocused with 200 percent attention on her ambition. “Of course you will,” she says, staring at the street. The massage is over.
Now my phone rings again. It’s Vikorn. “Have you been to the morgue yet?”
“Of course I went to the morgue.”
“I mean after the first time? Dr. Supatra called yesterday, I forgot to tell you. She says she has made progress with identification of the three victims.”
22
In Dr. Supatra’s underground lair, death imbues everyday tools with an outlandish dignity: giant pruning shears; those big handsaws normally used for cutting up logs; and rotary electric saws of various sizes. The one that gives me the creeps more than any other is the longhandled wire cutter, the kind you see in war movies when the sappers crawl on their bellies to cut through barbed wire: Supatra uses it to bust her way through rib cages. In the case of the three anonymous ones, though, there wasn’t a lot left to investigate.
The doctor is in her office next to the autopsy room. She smiles when she sees me through the glass wall and stands to come to the door to greet me. “Detective, that software I told you about finally arrived. I’m halfway through. It’s quite exciting.”
She leads me to her desk and gestures for me to pull up a chair. She is finding it difficult to suppress a girlish glee in her new toy. When she jogs her mouse, a human head appears on her monitor in stark ghost white against a green background: eyeless, faceless, thin neck.
“It’s the second girl, the thin one.”
“I thought you said it was two men and a woman?”
Dr. Supatra shifts her gaze to something on the wall. “We all make mistakes. We thought she was a young male who had been castrated. It turns out she had very poorly developed genitals-not uncommon.” She glances at my face, then turns back to the computer. “Sometimes even the Olympic organizers can’t tell a man from a woman. It’s not always totally clear. She had no breast development at all.” She pauses to look at me. “Of course, in reality sexual identity is merely another illusion we seize on in our pathetic need to be someone. You know that.”