"In the Old West? Sure."

I nod. "Bradley's obsession with s.e.x was surely a consequence of having traded in it." I frown. "That doesn't explain the snakes, though."

"Okay, you want to play this game, it's not so difficult. Maybe he ran a brothel that was built on a rattlesnake nest? Maybe he punished anyone who didn't pay by putting rattlers in their beds?" She shakes her head. "Can't believe I'm doing this."

"You don't understand. It's not a question of plausible hypotheses. You have to follow a vibration back through time. Bradley had a very specific vibration, very strong. My problem is his karmic origins are not Asian."

"How about Central America? Aztec, Inca, Mayan? They all had snake fetishes. They were unbelievably cruel, too."

A vision immediately flashes before my mind: the snakes, the pit, the plumed priest, the rings on his fingers, the victim's terror, the ziggurat. I beam at Jones, who turns away with her usual Can't believe this guy Can't believe this guy expression of terminal exasperation. After a few minutes she turns back again, having mastered her frustration-not without effort, to judge from her expression. "Okay, give me an example unrelated to the case." expression of terminal exasperation. After a few minutes she turns back again, having mastered her frustration-not without effort, to judge from her expression. "Okay, give me an example unrelated to the case."

"An example?"

"Yes, from your own life, a genuine past-life memory that can be corroborated for a b.u.t.ton-down nuts-and-bolts type like me." She sniffs the air. "Your obsession with perfume, for example, I bet you can trace that back a few hundred years. It's sure got me beat, you can hardly afford to dress yourself but you wear this expensive cologne-or is it a Bangkok fake?"

"Of course it's not a fake, fake perfume stinks after being on the skin for a couple of minutes. It's just a perfectly ordinary Polo from Ralph Lauren."

"Perfectly ordinary Polo from Ralph Lauren," she mimics. "At about fifty bucks a bottle." She stares at me, waiting for a story to ridicule. she mimics. "At about fifty bucks a bottle." She stares at me, waiting for a story to ridicule.

Her att.i.tude has made me curl up protectively around the memory: the old Pont au Change which connected the ile de la Cite with the Right Bank, four-story buildings loaded the bridge, slap in the middle sat a perfumer's: a dark and musty workroom populated from floor to roof with chemist's jars of tincture of musk, castor, neroli, jonquil, cinnamon, tuberose, ambergris, civet, sandalwood, bergamot, vetiver, patchouli, opopanax. Nong was there in the mountainous skirts of a mid-ranking courtesan, Truffaut in his startlingly white horsehair wig. Okay, it might be fantasy and autosuggestion, but how did I know there were buildings on the Pont au Change in the eighteenth century? There are none at all now and it took me days on the Web to corroborate. I'm a Thai cop, I didn't know there ever were such things as bridges with shops on them.

I decide to tell Jones after all. She stares at me in silence, then shakes her head. "If only you weren't so d.a.m.n cute. How come you know all those names of ingredients? I've never heard of half of them."

Farangs are full of surprises. It's the erudition that impresses her, not the quality of the evidence. are full of surprises. It's the erudition that impresses her, not the quality of the evidence.

The FBI did not need to ask why we were going to the crocodile farm. It was not often anyone used snakes as a murder weapon, and none of our usual forensic consultants was competent to a.n.a.lyze the blood of reptiles. Jones knew that the python and all the cobras that had not been sent to Quantico had been dispatched to the croc farm for examination by Dr. Bhasra Trakit. The croc farm is out of town, just off the main road to Pattaya. I have allowed four hours for the journey and it is a few minutes before 8 a.m. when we set off. The sun is just visible through the haze, like a rotten orange soggy at the edges. To avoid conversation I pretend to sleep in the car, while secretly meditating.

The driveway to the small administrative building does not disclose any crocodiles or other reptiles, and I think the FBI is hopeful about not having to see any at all. Dr. Trakit wears the white coat of a medical pract.i.tioner and could have been a physician except for the pet she is playing with on her desk. "I want you to meet Bill Gates," she says with a smile in perfect English. Bill Gates looks small and cute enough, almost like a toy. He is about 20 percent mouth, with a crooked grin when the doctor gently squeezes his neck and strokes him. His underbelly is creamy white with a light gray-green coloring on the upper part of his body. Dr. Trakit smiles at Jones like a proud mother, and offers her Bill Gates. "Be careful with him."

"How old is he?"

"Only three months. They're so delicate, especially in captivity. Shall we?"

Trakit had looked tiny even behind her desk. Now that she stood, we see she is hardly more than five feet, and very slim. She puts Bill Gates in the pocket of her coat and leads the way down a corridor, out into the heat of the day.

Now we see them, immobile ma.s.ses of sloping scales half submerged in swampy pools. Jones tenses. Back in the States, of course, every precaution would have been taken, but here in the Third World . . . Just my luck to be the only FBI special agent ever to be eaten alive by a crocodile while on a trip to a forensic lab. Just my luck to be the only FBI special agent ever to be eaten alive by a crocodile while on a trip to a forensic lab. "Please walk softly," the vet says. "They're very sensitive. If we make too much noise, they panic, and when they panic they pile up on top of each other, especially the younger ones, and the crocs underneath suffocate. They suffer from depression too." "Please walk softly," the vet says. "They're very sensitive. If we make too much noise, they panic, and when they panic they pile up on top of each other, especially the younger ones, and the crocs underneath suffocate. They suffer from depression too."

Jones is almost walking on tiptoe. "Depression?" "Depression?" (As in manic?) (As in manic?) "Yes. And it's much harder to tell when a croc's depressed than a human or a dog. Crocs are motionless most of the time, whether they're depressed or not. You can only tell when they stop eating. Here we are, this is the hospital."

We enter a long low outhouse with the odor of tropical dampness and something else hard to define which includes nuances of rotting vegetation and putrefying flesh. "Excuse me one moment," the doctor says. We stand and watch while the doctor goes to a fridge and takes out what looks like a slightly chilled chicken. We follow to a white door which the vet enters with a finger to her lips. On a long table in the center of the room a crocodile is strapped around its center and tail. The reptile is about eight feet long, its short legs held by chains which wrap around protective pads. The animal's jaws are held open by stout rope and it seems to be asleep. Jones waits in the doorway. "Just one moment," the doctor says. She goes to a chopping board at the other end of the room and chops up the chicken with a meat cleaver. She places some pieces of the chicken in the croc's mouth with her tiny hand, moving them around on its tongue, until the tongue begins sluggishly to move. It must be due to a defilement of mine that I'm enjoying Jones so much: she is frozen in terminal horror.

"I want Samantha to get her appet.i.te back. Look, her taste buds are waking up. She got depressed after we drained her pool by mistake. If the pools drain too quickly, they panic. It's a reflex from the wild. Most crocs who die prematurely do so because their water holes have dried up, so they're hardwired to panic at the first sign of drought. There, did you think we were going to let you die of exposure? Poor, poor thing. Now let's see if she's found something to live for." Trakit undoes the rope, which pa.s.ses through a pulley suspended from the ceiling, releasing Samantha's upper jaw. Jones takes two steps back until she is standing in the corridor. Very very slowly, Samantha begins to munch on the chicken. "There," Trakit says. "Everything comes down to food in the end."

She leads us from the room down the corridor to a stainless steel cupboard with trays of different sizes. "Here they are," the doctor says, pulling out one of the trays. Cobra corpses. Some of them have been neatly dissected, others are whole except for the bullet holes. "They all died of gunshot wounds, of course." She glares at me. "And as I told you over the telephone, they had all been poisoned with methamphetamine-yaa baa." She gives the FBI a look of the utmost sincerity. "Very few reptiles are naturally aggressive, except when hungry or protecting their young. The whole of the animal and reptile kingdom has learned to fear us, they will never attack humans unless panicked, or in this case drugged."

"What kind of yaa baa yaa baa?" I ask, trying not to sound too knowledgeable. "Was it laced?"

"With fertilizer." Trakit shudders. "I can't think of anything more cruel."

"No," I agree.

"Of course, that only means that whoever did it bought the cheapest yaa baa yaa baa on the black market. The problem is-how was it administered? How do you give a cobra a on the black market. The problem is-how was it administered? How do you give a cobra a yaa baa yaa baa fix? There are techniques for injecting snakes, of course. We usually inject through the a.n.u.s." fix? There are techniques for injecting snakes, of course. We usually inject through the a.n.u.s."

"A lot of work for the killer," Jones says. She is standing a pace or so back from the cupboard, but the color has returned to her cheeks. These snakes are unequivocally dead, after all.

"Exactly. And anyway, it could not have been done that way. This is a problem for a detective, I'm afraid, one with which I simply cannot help. It is this: every snake contained a different quant.i.ty of the drug, a quant.i.ty which exactly corresponded to its body weight."

"Powdered and put in food?"

"I thought of that, of course. But then you really do have a problem-the drug would have started to work very quickly on the smaller snakes-the perpetrator would have had a severe logistical problem of handling dozens of drug-crazed snakes. And even then, it doesn't really explain how each snake contained exactly the right proportion of the drug for its body weight. If you sprinkle yaa baa yaa baa powder over food, you don't normally get an exact proportion for each piece of food consumed-not unless you are operating in laboratory conditions." Trakit shrugged. "Anyway, that's all I can tell you. A mystery, the most vicious I've ever come across." She slides the drawer back, then opens another bigger one further down. This drawer is huge, very deep and runs on wheels with a rumble. The python is curled up in several elongated spirals, one third of its head missing. "He was a beauty, about ten years old, a reticulated python five meters twenty-one centimeters long." A glance at Jones. "That's just over seventeen feet. See the splotchy way he's camouflaged? He's native to most of Southeast Asia. Funnily enough, he lives in cities as often as the jungle. He loves riverbanks. They're an endangered species, mostly because of the illegal skin trade with China, and also for food-the Chinese love them in soup. Feel the power that must have been in those muscles." I heft the python's iron tail and gesture to Jones, who leans forward from the hips and gives it a single tentative poke with an index finger. "Baffling, truly baffling. You have exactly the same phenomenon: precisely the appropriate amount of powder over food, you don't normally get an exact proportion for each piece of food consumed-not unless you are operating in laboratory conditions." Trakit shrugged. "Anyway, that's all I can tell you. A mystery, the most vicious I've ever come across." She slides the drawer back, then opens another bigger one further down. This drawer is huge, very deep and runs on wheels with a rumble. The python is curled up in several elongated spirals, one third of its head missing. "He was a beauty, about ten years old, a reticulated python five meters twenty-one centimeters long." A glance at Jones. "That's just over seventeen feet. See the splotchy way he's camouflaged? He's native to most of Southeast Asia. Funnily enough, he lives in cities as often as the jungle. He loves riverbanks. They're an endangered species, mostly because of the illegal skin trade with China, and also for food-the Chinese love them in soup. Feel the power that must have been in those muscles." I heft the python's iron tail and gesture to Jones, who leans forward from the hips and gives it a single tentative poke with an index finger. "Baffling, truly baffling. You have exactly the same phenomenon: precisely the appropriate amount of yaa baa yaa baa found in his blood corresponding to body weight. Appropriate, that is to say, for the purpose of getting him aggressively stoned. I've never seen a reptile on amphetamine, and I hope I never shall. But it must have been quite a sight." found in his blood corresponding to body weight. Appropriate, that is to say, for the purpose of getting him aggressively stoned. I've never seen a reptile on amphetamine, and I hope I never shall. But it must have been quite a sight."

"Intense shivering," I confirm, while the doctor looks at me with an air of concentration. "His whole body seemed to go into convulsions-it was hard to say what was natural and what was the effect of the drug."

"A condition of drug-induced terror causing extreme aggression, I would guess. Compulsive writhing?"

"I would say so."

Trakit nods. "Poor poor thing. There's no literature on that kind of drug poisoning in reptiles, but one can imagine. The drug would have induced an intense thirst, and its nerves were all on fire. Similar to being thrown into a vat of acid. What I can't understand is how anyone could have accomplished such perfect timing. Drugging all the snakes at the same time is a feat in itself, but getting a seventeen-foot python stoned at the same time as twenty or so cobras is beyond anything I could work out for myself, even if I wanted to." She gives me an empty smile. "But then, I'm not a detective."

"That's a very big snake." I look at Jones, then back to the snake. It takes up the whole of a drawer that could easily fit a human being. "If someone did inject the meth through the a.n.u.s in the usual way, how long before the drug reaches the brain?"

"With reptiles you cannot answer that question as if they were mammals. Everything depends on the temperature. A cold snake may be in hibernation mode, with almost no heartbeat, and therefore very slow circulation. The drug might take half an hour to reach the brain stem. With a warmer snake, no more than two minutes."

"Even with half an hour to spare, it's hard to see the logistics, given what we know of Bradley's schedule that day. I just can't see a bunch of guys injecting the snake and waiting for Bradley to conveniently stop the car so they can chuck it in and put those clips over the doors. Not when there are a couple dozen cobras to inject and throw in at the same time. Even if they were pointing guns at him, it's hard to see how it all panned out."

"It would take more than a bunch of amateurs to handle the python once the drug took effect. Perhaps two experienced handlers could subdue it in normal circ.u.mstances. But under the influence of yaa baa, yaa baa, I think you would need half a dozen experienced snake handlers. Even then . . . You see, there is nothing that is not muscle, and it can twist in any direction. In a toxic frenzy, it would be virtually uncontrollable." I think you would need half a dozen experienced snake handlers. Even then . . . You see, there is nothing that is not muscle, and it can twist in any direction. In a toxic frenzy, it would be virtually uncontrollable."

"Then we have a virtually insoluble forensic problem," Jones concludes with a shrug.

I look from her to Trakit to the snake. "Except that the killer solved it."

On the way back to the city, Jones is experiencing a moment of euphoria caused by relief of tension: "I know what you're thinking and I agree with you."

"You do?"

"The python was obviously a drug addict in a previous lifetime, right? I would guess opium or heroin, a man with some connection to the West-maybe he shot up once on Forty-second Street, and was double-crossed by Bradley in that lifetime? But what's the connection with the Mercedes? Maybe he was a used car salesman?"

"The python?"

"Yep, had that Nixon look around what was left of his mouth, don't you think? That sloping outward from the top down?"

Apparently Jones has scored a point. I endure her triumphant leer without protest for the rest of the journey. When we hit the first of the Krung Thep traffic jams I say: "Did you get the rest of the transcripts?"

"Of the tapes of the conversations between Elijah and William Bradley? Yes, I got them, but I haven't read them all. There's a ton of stuff, and as far as I can see, extremely dull and unhelpful."

"What about the tapes themselves, can you get those?"

"The tapes? We're talking a lot of volume here. After the Bradley brothers broke the ice they talked regularly, for five years. That's quite a few hundred hours. I can get them if you like."

"I only want the ones near the beginning, where William is at his lowest."

"Okay. Any particular reason?"

"I need to hear his voice." To her cynical stare I add: "People rarely know how to lie with their voices, especially to intimate family members. People lie only with words. I want to know what he sounded like when he was pleading with his big brother for a life after retirement. The same big brother who tried to teach him how to get a life twenty years before and, to William's new way of thinking, turned out to be right after all."

"Touchy-feely," Jones says. "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime I hate to overuse my left lobe, but wouldn't an examination of the Mercedes hatchback be in order?"

I look out the window, that she might not see me wince.

36.

Cops who will not take money must earn their keep in other ways. Pichai's exceptional marksmanship gained him a place on every shoot-out in District 8. Thanks to my English, farangs farangs are usually shunted in my direction. We are not on any tourist circuit, so my workload in this respect is not heavy: a steady trickle of Westerners who took a wrong turn and became suddenly frightened to find themselves all alone in the Third World, a few international criminals with a specialization in narcotics, and kids like Adam Ferral. are usually shunted in my direction. We are not on any tourist circuit, so my workload in this respect is not heavy: a steady trickle of Westerners who took a wrong turn and became suddenly frightened to find themselves all alone in the Third World, a few international criminals with a specialization in narcotics, and kids like Adam Ferral.

Sergeant Ruamsantiah sent for me this morning and when I arrived in the interrogation room Ferral was already seated in one of the plastic chairs, a hatpin through his eyebrow, a silver stud through one nostril, all the usual tattoos, a succession of rings through his ears like a ring binder, and the kind of light in his eyes which often distinguishes visitors from other planets. Ruamsantiah, a decent family man with only one wife to whom he is scrupulously faithful, who really does invest his share of the bribes in his children's education, has no objection to tattoos but is known to dislike nose studs, eyebrow hatpins and obnoxious young farangs farangs who do not know how to who do not know how to wai wai or show respect in any other way. He was smiling at Ferral as I entered the room. or show respect in any other way. He was smiling at Ferral as I entered the room.

The sergeant was sitting behind a wooden desk, bare except for a cellophane bag of gra.s.s about three inches square, a bright red pack of outsize Rizlas, a butane lighter and a packet of our foulest cigarettes called Krung Thip, which were surely ten times more damaging to the health than the marijuana. I had been summoned to these interrogations many times; usually the farang farang kid's fear is tangible and fills the room with a frozen paranoia. Adam Ferral, though, was unfazed, which was why Ruamsantiah was using that dangerous smile. Ruamsantiah had leaned his nightstick against a leg of the table. He jerked his chin at the kid without relaxing the smile. kid's fear is tangible and fills the room with a frozen paranoia. Adam Ferral, though, was unfazed, which was why Ruamsantiah was using that dangerous smile. Ruamsantiah had leaned his nightstick against a leg of the table. He jerked his chin at the kid without relaxing the smile.

"I can't work him out. Maybe you can explain it. He came into the police station on the pretext of being lost, then fished in his pockets for something and out popped the gra.s.s. It was as if he wanted to get caught. Is he a plant or a moron? Is the CIA checking us out?"

Not a serious question. Ferral was too young and the dope too trivial. I would have put Ferral at nineteen, twenty at the most.

"You have his pa.s.sport?"

Ruamsantiah took a blue pa.s.sport with an eagle on the front out of his pocket and handed it to me. Ferral was nineteen and a few months, a native of Santa Barbara and in his visa application gave his profession as writer.

"You publish your stuff on the Web?" I snapped at him. The question took him by surprise and fresh pink blood bloomed first in his cheeks, spreading quickly to his neck and scalp. A young nineteen surely.

"Sometimes."

"Travelers' Tales dot com?" The pink deepened to crimson. "Great site, isn't it? Some terrific stories about Bangkok? How is yours shaping up?" Now the kid was shocked and looking at me as if I possessed Oriental clairvoyance.

"What did you say to him?" Ruamsantiah wanted to know.

"There's a site on the Web for extreme tourism. It's like extreme sports only sillier. Kids like this get themselves in jams in faraway countries, nail-biting situations which could land them in a Thai jail for five years, or get them stoned to death in Saudi Arabia, or strangled by a boa constrictor in Brazil, but there's always a First World safety net of course, which makes it all quite safe really. Then they write about their heroic escapes from the jaws of disaster in a foreign land. It's a way of getting published. Getting caught with ganja in Krung Thep is a favorite. According to the Net the standard bribe is five thousand baht for this quant.i.ty of dope."

Ruamsantiah angered, Thai-style. His lips thinned, his cheeks pinched and his pupils shrunk, but as far as Adam Ferral was concerned he was still a corrupt cop with a dumb smile on his face.

"Ask him if he happens to have five thousand baht on him. I haven't checked his money."

I translated and Ferral brightened. Immediately he pulled a small money bag out from under his black T-shirt, extracted a wad of gray notes which turned out to be exactly five thousand baht in crisp bills, which he happily laid on the table, fighting a gleeful sneer.

Ruamsantiah's left hand twitched. It was the one nearest the nightstick. The sergeant is more senior than me and his anger has a killer quality which I would not want to tangle with. On the other hand, I did not want to be there while he beat the living s.h.i.t out of the kid, so I began to ask if he had finished with my services.

"No. Stick around, I need you to translate. Tell him to roll a joint." As I began to translate, Ruamsantiah laid a hand on my sleeve. "I want one of those huge things they make sometimes-with half a dozen papers."

I translated. "Do you know how to do that?"

Ferral grinned and went to work. The sergeant and I watched with fascination while he moistened the strips of glue with the pink tip of his tongue and expertly patched together a long rectangle of Rizlas, licked the seam of a few Krung Thips, broke them open and poured the tobacco onto the papers. He ripped open the bag of dope with his teeth and dumped a couple of pinches on the table. The ganja was raw and matted so Ferral had to rip it up with his fingernails. Ruamsantiah picked up his nightstick and placed it very gently on the table, causing a sudden draining of blood from Ferral's face.

"Tell him I want the whole bag of dope in the joint."

Ferral's eyes darted from Ruamsantiah to me to the stick, which remained thick and black on the table. Ferral stared at it. I felt a sinking in my own stomach, though nothing that could compare with Ferral's fear, which caused a cold sweat to break out on his face. He was thinking exactly what I was thinking. To be beaten up is one thing. To be beaten up stoned is a whole other experience. Pain and terror magnified by a factor of hundreds.

"Better do as he says," I told him.

Ferral went back to work without the comfort of irony. His hands started to shake.

"You've already squashed him," I murmured in Thai.

"Not enough. He'll be laughing at us as soon as he gets back to his buddies in Kaoshan Road."

"You've got him so scared he can hardly roll the joint." In addition to the shaking, a periodic juddering caused Ferral's hands to spill gra.s.s over the table.

"Okay, tell him I promise not to hurt him if he does as he's told."

This news calmed the kid somewhat. He even returned to his earlier presumption that we were going to party together, the three of us, and this of course would make great copy on the Net. On the other hand, his eyes could not stop sneaking glances at the stick.

When he'd finished rolling the joint it resembled a crooked white chimney. He glanced at Ruamsantiah for permission to light up and the sergeant nodded. Ferral took only one toke before offering it to Ruamsantiah, who declined. I also declined, which left Ferral holding the gigantic joint with a deeply puzzled expression on his face.

"I want him to smoke all of it," Ruamsantiah said, rolling his stick to and fro under his palm, generating a kind of m.u.f.fled thunder. Ferral stared at me, then the joint, but the power emanating from the black stick was too much and he took another couple of tokes.

"He's to inhale properly and hold it in his lungs."

Ferral doubled up in a genuine marijuana racking cough, then carried on.

Ruamsantiah relented only when it became clear that Ferral would puke if he took one more toke. He had consumed three-quarters of the joint by this time and acquired fascination with tiny details: a fleck of dust floating in a shaft of light, the third whorl from the top on his left index finger.

Ruamsantiah picked up the lighter and waved the flame in front of the kid's eyes. Note by note the sergeant set fire to the five thousand baht. At an exchange rate of forty-three to the U.S. dollar it amounted to about a hundred and twenty dollars. Adam Ferral was not rich. This money could keep him in Thailand for more than a week, but the wonder in his eyes told of a still deeper anguish. The West dominates through wealth; for a poor Thai cop to burn it with a look of contemptuous indifference on his face was a magical act which challenged accepted reality, especially if you happened to be young and very very stoned. Worms of fire ate through the bills, sending off weightless particles of gold; Ferral saw miniature bodhisattvas riding carpets of flame. Ruamsantiah had all his attention now, his respect and his awe. The sergeant could have stopped there and Ferral would have been smart enough to absorb the lesson, but the suggestion that he was using the Royal Thai Police Force as a platform for some frivolous literary exercise had sent Ruamsantiah into a cold rage. "I'm putting him down the hole."

"Do you need to do that?"

Ruamsantiah turned his rage on me. "Not compa.s.sionate enough for you? Okay, give him the choice, eight hours in the hole or a fair trial and Bang Kwan for five years. Ask him."

The question hardly needed to be put, but Ruamsantiah's fury had even me in awe. "The Hole?" the kid asked, giving it a capital and leaving his mouth open in an O as the sinister word wrought havoc in its progress through his psyche.

Ruamsantiah stood up and walked around the desk to grab Ferral by the back of the neck to march him out of the room. The last I saw of him was a wild and desperate backward glance at me, an inadequate link to civilization surely, but the only one in the vicinity. I sat in the interrogation room for a moment regretting my wisea.s.s guesswork. I wished I hadn't mentioned the web site. Ruamsantiah has broken hard men in that hole of his, and Ferral is neither of those things. Stoned too, on enough dope for ten joints. May Buddha help him.

A glance at my watch reminded me that the FBI had been waiting for forty minutes and was probably working herself up into a rage of her own. I decided not to tell her about Ferral in the hole. It was going to be a difficult enough trip without that embellishment.

The smile on Jones' face where she sat in the back of her car was slightly unnatural, being the product of will, but I gave her full marks for effort.

"Sorry I'm late."