I know too much about whores not to understand that she is still clinging to the hope that I will provide a way out; second wife may not offer much in the way of status, but the income is usually regular, and the dignity infinitely greater than bar work. Her smile is frank, vulnerable, sincere. I wish she were more cynical; it would make what I have in mind a lot easier. When I stare at her, she pulls at the belt on her robe, which falls open.
I stride up to her and pull the gown off her shoulders until it drops to the ground. “Tell me how it is with him,” I say. “Is it like this?” I slide my hands down her back, grab her buttocks, and press her pelvis against mine with as much harshness as I can manage. “Is it?”
She is shocked, disillusioned: her dream of a more dignified future has collapsed in less than a second. She shakes her head, tearful.
“No?” I hear the roughness in my voice. “Or maybe like this?” I fall to my knees and lick her nipples one after the other with pathetic gratitude. Her hand drops to my shoulder, then follows the line of my neck to my ear, which she cups and fondles. “Like this?”
“Yes,” she says behind the tears, “like that.”
“Every time? No dominance, no rough stuff, no fantasy?”
“Only the first time. Manu changed after the first time.”
“Manu? That’s his name? And you are the only one who can tame him?”
A shrug. “That’s what he says.”
I stand up and turn away from her. “Please get dressed,” I say to the window. I hear her leave the room. Five minutes later she is back in her jeans and T-shirt, waiting for my next move. I point to the bed where I have placed the photocopies of To and his two women. She puts a hand over her mouth and closes her eyes.
“A lot of people use this house,” Om says. “But they are all connected.” She is dressed, sitting upright on one of the chaise longues while I watch her from a rosewood chair of classic Chinese design. There is a tinkling brook between us. “Manu’s lover, that army general, owns it jointly with that Chinese woman, but he never comes. He uses it to maintain his connections with Beijing. Especially his banking and military connections. He and the Chinese woman put it at the disposal of that Chinese creep-that’s his picture you put on the bed.”
“Mr. To?”
“His name’s Wong.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. My father was Chinese. That’s why my skin is light. He was a peasant from Canton who fled the Cultural Revolution. He was quite old by the time he reached Thailand and married my mother. He said the only thing he could give me was his language. Cantonese. Wong was a Hong Kong Chinese, and so were those women he dragged everywhere with him, so they always spoke Cantonese. They didn’t know I could understand everything they said. I never let on.”
“Go on.”
“What happened that night I told you about, it was all true, but it was only the first time. It seems I was a great success with the Chinese bankers that Wong was entertaining here.”
“Wong was at the party?”
“Oh no, he was much too high up for that. He just made the place available and paid for the entertainment.” She stares at the flow of pure water in the little brook between us. “I didn’t even meet him until the next time.”
“The next time?”
“Yes. Like I said, we were a hit. Especially me. Those were just peasant boys at that party who got recruited into banking-they’d never seen anything like it. Especially that little trick with the gold ring. The word spread. Wong’s masters in Beijing were delighted, so Wong did it over and over again. Only this time he insisted on private rehearsals.”
“I see.”
“The Hong Kong Chinese woman was his face at the party, making sure everything went smoothly, but he planned everything.”
“And he-”
“He never screwed me. He groped me a lot, but he was a born voyeur. He sat with his two weird women and watched me do things for him. Often he would have them film me while he masturbated. And every time what he wanted was a little weirder, a little more extreme. He got very aroused just having me as his creature, telling me ‘Do this, do that’-all the time pretending it was a rehearsal, of course. He would turn bright red, and the sweat would pour down his face.”
“And at the same time you were-I mean, Manu was your client?”
“There was overlap. That General Zinna called the bar one night-he’d heard about us from Wong-to say he had a special assignment, money no object. He told the mamasan about his problem, and she came up here with me the first night. Nobody knew how Manu would react. They kept him locked up in the main bedroom while they explained to me that he could be difficult. I got scared and asked if he had AIDS. They said no, nothing like that, no communicable disease-but he’d been in an accident. It would be better for both of us if I worked in the dark. So I did. He was like an animal at first, but I could feel his hurt. He had me every way he wanted, but he stopped being rough after a while. They paid me more money that night than I had earned for six months. I bought my mum a house. The mamasan said they were very pleased with me.
“Then the client-Manu-wanted me again. So the second time I told him to switch the lights on. It was a shock-I thought I was going to ruin everything by vomiting-but I remembered my vow to help all living creatures toward enlightenment, and that saved me. When he realized I could have sex with him knowing what he looked like, he just melted. He can’t live without me. He’s like a child with me.” She looks me in the eye. “You know he can hardly talk, only whimper and blather? When he wants to tell me something, he has to write it down. The accident ruined his larynx almost completely.” Om swallows and looks away.
“How many entertainments did you take part in all together?”
“I’m not sure. About ten.”
“And the clients-were they always midlevel bankers?”
She looks away, bites her lip.
“Om?”
“No. But I told you, these were all people from the north, in the Beijing area. They didn’t speak Cantonese so I didn’t know what they were talking about.”
“Always from the north, Om?”
She is holding out on me. She exhales. “No, not always from the north.”
“So there were occasions when you did understand everything that was being said, when they assumed you could not understand a word?”
Reluctantly: “Yes.”
“And what were they talking about?”
“It happened twice. Once it was a bunch of cops from Shenzen, the other time it was a group of prison officers from somewhere in Guanzhou.”
I wait. It seems she has forgotten the question. “What were they talking about, Om?”
“Body parts,” she says. She looks into my eyes. “That was the connection. Even when the group was from the north, I could understand some words. I didn’t follow the story until the Cantonese-speaking groups came. Then I put the picture together. It seems there is quite an industry-everything that goes on in this house is connected. Even Manu-he is connected through his operation. He knows some of the players. He knew Wong, for example, who you call To.”
I think about that. “But I still don’t get it. What’s the connection between a bunch of men on stag parties to Phuket and the organ-trafficking industry?”
“Exactly that. The parties were all for men who had had successful transplants of one kind or another. They were allowed to invite their guanxi group to celebrate their survival-‘like being reborn,’ was what they kept saying. Ordinary Chinese are just as superstitious as Thais. If they think some piece of good fortune has saved their lives, they feel obliged to share the joy, give thanks.”
“Transplant operations made possible by removing the organs of people who had been executed… by that particular work group?”