I blink at the apparent incongruity of this last remark. She lights another cigarette. "Don't you see, in their minds this could be their last fling? They might have decided to go out with a bang, so to speak. We could be helping them to celebrate their last days on earth. They're trading in a couple more years of limping across the linoleum and endless card games with the other arthritic goners for maybe a week of ecstatic humping with the best thing they've seen for fifty years. This is a service of compa.s.sion and enlightenment. I'm sure the Buddha will approve."

"Euthanasia by o.r.g.a.s.m must be better than lethal injection."

"Exactly. Also, if it's your very last party on earth, why spare the expense? If your kids are all selfish jerks you may as well sell the house to spend the money on my girls. So what I'm proposing is a telephone booking service. Just like a restaurant. The customer comes to the bar the first time, sees a girl he likes, after that he calls us from his hotel, warns us that he's about to take the pill and expects to be rampant in exactly one hour. There's a plus for us, of course, since we don't have to hang around waiting for the customer to decide if and when he wants the girl. We get a fixed timetable that we can work around. I've discussed all this with the Colonel. He thinks we can't fail."

"How will you structure the advertising? Medical journals or triple X web pages?"

"Web pages, with plenty of visuals, but we think word of mouth will work for us over time. After all, there's no one else in this field at the moment." I think of geriatrics shuffling into the bar with crooked grins and bulging trousers, the missing link between s.e.x and death. "So, Sonchai, what about it?"

"It could work," I agree with some reluctance.

"Of course it will work. The trouble is there's no way to patent it. As soon as the compet.i.tion sees what we're up to there'll be a thousand similar bars springing up all over the city. We've got to move quickly, I'm not the only financial brain in the business."

I watch while two young women try to walk past us carrying about ten plastic bags each, crammed with cheap clothing. There's no room on the pavement and they walk around a taxi caught in the jam. This is where most of the s.e.x traders buy their clothes and we have said h.e.l.lo to a lot of old friends today. My mother's purchases are under the table. We are in Pratunam because a couple hundred yards away lies a vast market where T-shirts, shorts, skirts, dresses, trousers, blouses indistinguishable from the products of the ateliers of Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani, Zegna et al. can be purchased for as little as three dollars each. Nong has bought her season's wardrobe, which I noticed is a little more austere than usual, befitting a matriarch of industry. I call to the waitress to pay the bill, but my mother restrains me. "This is on me, darling, I want to thank you for signing those plans."

I say okay, the plans did amount to a fair amount of work because she and the Colonel kept changing them. Of course there had to be a TV in every cubicle and in the end they decided to include a full Thai ma.s.sage service, so each five-by-eight room has to be equipped with a small Jacuzzi in the corner with all the plumbing that goes with it. I foresee disaster with ninety-year-old scarecrows slithering around in the soap suds and expiring during the full-body ma.s.sage. At that age surely a man might be knocked out cold in a skirmish with a mammary gland? But I have to a.s.sume the Colonel knows what he's doing even if Nong has been carried away by her brief congress with the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal. I pa.s.s over the slim briefcase in which I've been carrying the plans and watch while she opens it. She takes out the plans and rifles through them with growing consternation.

"You forgot to sign them, darling."

"No I didn't."

"But you promised."

"I know."

"So what's stopping you? Here, use my pen."

"No."

"Sonchai?"

"I'm not having anything to do with this . . . Until you tell me."

It's one of those mother-and-son things. We have too much on each other not to be aware of the significance of this eye lock. I do not waver or blink. Finally she drops her gaze. "Okay, I'll tell you. Just sign the plans."

"Tell me first. I don't trust you."

"Brat." Her hand is shaking as she reaches for yet another Marlboro and lights it.

"Why is it so difficult? If you don't know who he was, if you were banging three a night that month, just say so, it's not as if I don't know what you did for a living."

"Of course if I didn't know I would have told you long ago," she snaps, and inhales rapidly. "It's not as simple as that."

"How can it be complicated? For G.o.d's sake, Mother."

I might be hallucinating, but it does seem to me that some tiny tears have appeared at the corners of my mother's eyes. "Very well, darling. But you have to promise to forgive me. Promise in advance."

I experience profound suspicion but promise anyway.

"Sonchai, did you ever wonder why I made such efforts for you to learn perfect English? Did you even notice that almost every one of those trips we went on were with someone who spoke it perfectly, even Fritz and Truffaut?"

"Of course I noticed. If I didn't notice before I would have noticed with that Harrods man. What else did he have to offer?" An image of a skinny Englishman with a huge nose through which he emitted most of his vowels and an even bigger mother problem, who derived strange pretensions from his apartment's proximity to Harrods in London-an appalling two weeks when Nong had a screaming argument with his mother, who lived in the flat upstairs, and I went through a brief shoplifting phase in the great store-pa.s.ses through both our minds. "I thought you were just doing the best for my future."

"Well, I was, but it was more than that. I was full of guilt about . . . I was trying to make it up to you . . . He loved me, you see." My mother bursts into tears. "I'm sorry, I'm so very very sorry, darling"-dabbing her eyes with a tissue from her handbag-"it was all those fire engines. And the food, it was so bland, they had no idea how to cook, it was totally tasteless."

Thank Buddha I'm a detective and able to make sense of these fragile clues. Suddenly everything falls into place. A past I never had and a future I never will have flash before my eyes. My heart rate has doubled and for the first time in my life I feel like hitting her. Instead I reach for her cigarettes, take one, light it with shaking hand and order more beer. I drink in great gulps straight from the bottle. "An American?"

"Yes."

"A serviceman?"

"Yes. Very brave. He had lots of medals. He was an officer. He had a terrible war, he was in a mess psychologically for quite a while."

Inhaling deeply on the cigarette: "He took you to the States? He wanted to marry you?" A nod. "New York?"

"Manhattan. The apartment was near a fire station. There were sirens every five minutes. I thought the whole city was on fire."

"And the food was awful?"

"Have mercy, darling. I was eighteen years old for G.o.d's sake, I'd never been outside Thailand and I hardly spoke a word of English. I was terrified and I wanted my mother. I wasn't the hard-a.s.s I became. I grew up after I had you." An exhalation. "They couldn't even cook rice properly. His parents hated me. I was brown with slit eyes, and no matter what he said they knew how we had met, what I did for a living."

"But he adored you?" A nod. "He knew you were pregnant?"

"He was crazy about you even before you existed. I had to run away. He came back to Thailand looking for me, but I hid up in the country. I was in a state of panic after New York. I'm sorry. I talked about it with the abbot-I went up to the monastery. You never knew that I'd been up there, did you? He asked me if my American lover needed me only while he overcame his sh.e.l.l shock. That was a good question and I didn't know the answer, so I vowed to the Buddha that if you grew up strong and healthy and I had the luck, I would make sure you learned perfect English."

"You deprived me of a crack at the presidency of the United States because you didn't like the food? That's very Thai."

"You got a crack at nirvana instead. What kind of Buddhist would you have been if I'd stayed in America?"

I choose to ignore this brilliant riposte. "I could have been an astronaut."

"No you couldn't, you can't stand heights."

"What did he do, what was his profession, was he a drafted man?"

"Drafted. He was going to be a lawyer."

"What? American lawyers are all millionaires. I could have been a senator at least."

My mother has dried her eyes. She is a master of abrupt recovery. "Children of American lawyers all die of drug overdoses at an early age. Look what I saved you from. Anyway, if you'll only sign those d.a.m.ned plans we'll make a million and you can go and live there if you like. See how long you can stand to be away from Thailand."

I have smoked the whole cigarette in less than a minute, causing me to feel nausea. My heart rate is calming, though, and I'm beginning to see things with a little more focus. "What was his name?"

"Mike."

"Mike what?"

"What difference does it make? Smith. There, now you know, has it changed anything?"

I do not believe for one moment that his name was Mike Smith, but I let it pa.s.s. I surprise her by giving her a big smile and patting her hand, which seems to relax her. She drinks a gla.s.s of beer in a couple of gulps, lights another Marlboro and sits back in her chair.

"Thank you for taking it so well, darling. For thirty-two years I've lived in fear of this moment. Did I do the right thing or not? Don't you think I've been tortured by that very question? I wanted to tell you, but all the family advised me not to-what you didn't know you couldn't blame me for-that's very Thai, isn't it? Sometimes I think I must have been insane to leave America. Even if he'd divorced me after a couple of years, I probably would have got a work permit, the right to stay. But Thailand was a different place then, we were all so unworldly, so fearful of strange lands. We were prudes, too. Does that surprise you? A girl wouldn't think of selling her body unless she was desperate. My father was sick with his heart problems, my mother was. .h.i.t by a car when she was riding her bike, my grandmother had to be kept-she was blind by that time-and my two brothers were in their early teens. I had a right and a duty to work in the bars. These days girls will go on the game just to save enough to put a deposit on an apartment, they sell themselves for any old excuse, because they love s.e.x and money, though being Thai they never admit it and like to pretend they hate the work. Would you believe I'm shocked at what the trade has come to? But what can one do? This is the real world."

After I sign the plans, she pays the bill and we stand up. I embrace her warmly. She gives me a puzzled look as we say goodbye. She takes a taxi but I decide to wind my way amongst the jammed cars. What difference does it make? He adored me even before I existed. He loved her What difference does it make? He adored me even before I existed. He loved her. I'm walking on air.

Still high, I am trying to be invisible as I make my way to Charmabutra Hospital. The complex is new and shiny and about one minute from the bars of Nana Plaza. There is a McDonald's on the ground floor and a Starbucks in the first-floor lobby, a marble and gla.s.s reception area with parabolic front desk, Internet access from computers everywhere and a telephone wherever you put your elbow. But it is is a hospital. The brochure boasts over six hundred highly qualified physicians and a small army of Singaporean, Thai, American and European managers and talks about the Heart Center, laser correction of nearsightedness, a stroke screening package, abdominal ultrasound, a complete laboratory a.n.a.lysis of blood urine and stool samples, liposuction, body contouring and laser resurfacing of the face, packages which take care of everyone's travel needs from the U.S. and Europe and luxury rooms with brilliant city views. At reception I mention an interview I have arranged with Dr. Surichai. An administration official takes me in an elevator to the seventh floor, where the doctor is waiting for me. We spend about an hour together. As I am leaving the hospital a group of three large men surround me and bundle me into a waiting limo. It is a navy blue Lexus and there is plenty of room in the back for myself and two of my abductors. The third remains behind as we speed off with a corny squeal of tires which I feel is unworthy of my Colonel, who is lounging in the front pa.s.senger seat, wearing civilian clothes and dark gla.s.ses. It is his usual driver behind the wheel. a hospital. The brochure boasts over six hundred highly qualified physicians and a small army of Singaporean, Thai, American and European managers and talks about the Heart Center, laser correction of nearsightedness, a stroke screening package, abdominal ultrasound, a complete laboratory a.n.a.lysis of blood urine and stool samples, liposuction, body contouring and laser resurfacing of the face, packages which take care of everyone's travel needs from the U.S. and Europe and luxury rooms with brilliant city views. At reception I mention an interview I have arranged with Dr. Surichai. An administration official takes me in an elevator to the seventh floor, where the doctor is waiting for me. We spend about an hour together. As I am leaving the hospital a group of three large men surround me and bundle me into a waiting limo. It is a navy blue Lexus and there is plenty of room in the back for myself and two of my abductors. The third remains behind as we speed off with a corny squeal of tires which I feel is unworthy of my Colonel, who is lounging in the front pa.s.senger seat, wearing civilian clothes and dark gla.s.ses. It is his usual driver behind the wheel.

"May I ask why I'm being abducted?"

"You're not. You're being quarantined in preparation for your meeting. The last thing we need is for you to turn up in your Tommy Bahama rip-offs, flashing your police ID for every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry to squint at."

"Turn up where?"

"Give me your ID."

I hand it over. "I would like to know where we're going."

The Colonel puts my ID in the pocket of his Zegna jacket, which is not an illegal copy, and shakes his head at my obtuseness. "Did I or did I not receive a written request at 4:33 p.m. two days ago to the effect that one Detective Jitpleecheep Sonchai be permitted to interview one Khun Warren Sylvester during his five-day stay in our country on a business trip from the United States?" He turns to look at me, raising his gla.s.ses. "Written request with date and time stamp?" request with date and time stamp?"

"I like to do things properly."

"You like to f.u.c.k things up royally is what you like to do. To whom were you going to go with your copy of your written request with date and time stamp if I refused?"

"No one. There's no one to go to. I just wanted to make it clear-"

"That in the whole of the Royal Thai Police Force there is one arhat, arhat, one pure, unblemished soul valiantly and heroically doing his job while the rest of us slop around in the sleaze." My jaw hangs unattractively. "Have you any idea what s.h.i.t you're dragging us into? Why couldn't you pop un.o.btrusively into my office when no one was looking and whisper plaintively in my ear that you needed to see the great Khun if I could pull the right strings and so long as it was okay with me and everyone with his foot on my shoulder all the way up to the top of the pyramid? You do know that the most important and influential women in the kingdom get most of their rocks from this jerk? Especially the Chinese. You do know that?" one pure, unblemished soul valiantly and heroically doing his job while the rest of us slop around in the sleaze." My jaw hangs unattractively. "Have you any idea what s.h.i.t you're dragging us into? Why couldn't you pop un.o.btrusively into my office when no one was looking and whisper plaintively in my ear that you needed to see the great Khun if I could pull the right strings and so long as it was okay with me and everyone with his foot on my shoulder all the way up to the top of the pyramid? You do know that the most important and influential women in the kingdom get most of their rocks from this jerk? Especially the Chinese. You do know that?"

"Yes," I confess.

"You do know that when he is in Krung Thep officially he stays at the Oriental in the Somerset Maugham Suite with all its charming nostalgia and river view, and that when he is not here officially he stays somewhere quite different?"

"I did guess he might have two different preferences, as far as official and unofficial business is concerned."

"Then you did guess that in return for generous donations to the Police Widows and Orphans Fund by the great Khun, quite a lot of effort is expended by your superiors to help the Khun keep his little unofficial pleasures from the notice of the media?"

"It probably crossed my mind."

"And did it further cross your mind that any interview of the Khun by you would have to be witnessed by those qualified to deny anything incriminating he might say, in the unlikely event he says anything of importance to you at all?"

"No, I never thought of that because I never thought you'd let me talk to him."

The Colonel grunts. "Didn't you? Not even after you mentioned to your friends at the American emba.s.sy that you had made an official request to interview Warren which you expected to be turned down."

"d.a.m.n."

"Thus precipitating one of those reverse domino effects, you know the kind that makes all the pieces stand up again just when we all thought they were finally knocked flat and lying in peace?"

"There's been trouble before?"

"The Khun's a dangerous a.s.shole. There's a whole section of our n.o.ble force a.s.signed to making sure he doesn't go too far when he's over here. He's one of those farangs farangs who think our country is a playpen for rich Western psychos who've been unfairly repressed by their First World cultures and need to reexperience humanity's primordial roots out here in the exotic Orient. How would there not have been trouble before?" who think our country is a playpen for rich Western psychos who've been unfairly repressed by their First World cultures and need to reexperience humanity's primordial roots out here in the exotic Orient. How would there not have been trouble before?"

"What sort of trouble?"

"None of your business."

"I'm an investigating officer-"

"You're an investigating d.i.c.khead who will get your death wish granted while the rest of us have to clean up with our hands in the s.h.i.t. You're worse than my brother. Have you any idea what a pain it is to have a f.u.c.king saint for a brother?" He turns away from me to look out a side window. "Anything went wrong was always my fault. It's going to be the same with you, I can see it coming. The media will get hold of it after your spectacularly violent death, they'll build a shrine to you, you'll be the first Thai cop ever to be martyrized for his love of truth, justice and the rule of law and I'll spend the rest of my life telling people what an honor it was to have you on the force and how difficult it is for a poor fallen wretch like me to live up to the high standard you set. Don't you think I get enough of that with having an abbot for a brother?"

"Was it wh.o.r.es?"

"Was what wh.o.r.es?"

"The trouble. He hurt one? It must have been pretty bad for anyone to even notice."

A sigh. "It was bad, okay?"

"Even so, must have been a foreign wh.o.r.e," I muse. "Even if he killed a Thai girl, there wouldn't have been the kind of heat you're talking about."

"No comment, and what the f.u.c.k's it got to do with Bradley? Warren didn't kill Bradley."

"I know. But that doesn't mean Warren's not the culprit, karmically speaking."

As we turn into Asok, a shake of the head: "Just like my f.u.c.king brother."

The traffic coagulates halfway down Asok. I'm pretty sure I know where we're going now, and of course the Colonel knows I know. He glances up to look at me in the rearview mirror. "Just out of interest, what were you doing at that hospital?"

"None of your business."

"Did Warren ever use it?"

"Not that I know of."

He shifts his eyes from the mirror. "Why do I not like that answer?"

38.

Just as I suspected, we are heading for the Rachada Strip. Think Las Vegas with a different vice at its center. Think also neo-Oriental wedding cake architecture of blinding vulgarity. Think about wearing sungla.s.ses after dark. In daylight the neon competes with the sun and most of the signs include the word Ma.s.sAGE Ma.s.sAGE. We slink into the forecourt of the Emerald Hotel where each of the Lexus's four doors is opened simultaneously by lackeys who have been trained to do that for little j.a.panese guys with towering bank accounts, for this is not normally a Western haunt at all. But then, I have begun to wonder if Sylvester Warren is really a Western man.

I watch and wait with my two minders while the Colonel crosses the vast lobby to speak to one of about twelve receptionists, who wai wais to him. Even over the distance one can sense the reverence when Warren's name is mentioned. A jerk of the Colonel's head brings us across the floor to the bank of lifts. We choose the one which reaches the penthouse suite, and when the LED flashes 33, we step out into another lobby. A young woman in a blue and gold silk sarong wai wais to us and leads us into a room the size of a school hall with floor-to-ceiling windows, five-seater sofas, an undergrowth of orchids in cut-gla.s.s vases and a tall slim man standing in profile to us with his hands thrust into a twenties-style padded smoking jacket. We lost the minders at the ground floor so it's just the Colonel and I who wai wai to the Khun, who to my surprise to the Khun, who to my surprise wai wais elegantly back, with the proper moment of mindfulness. Under the rules a man of his exalted status is not supposed to wai wai to minions like us at all, but the gesture has a charm which is not lost on the Colonel. For all his cursing in the car, Colonel Vikorn is all smiles and deference before this unique source of wealth and power. to minions like us at all, but the gesture has a charm which is not lost on the Colonel. For all his cursing in the car, Colonel Vikorn is all smiles and deference before this unique source of wealth and power.

"Welcome to Shangri-la," Warren says with a generous smile which contains many things, self-mockery being one of them. I feel my spirits sink at such impenetrable subtlety. His perfect poise also is intimidating, and seems to go with his perfect tan, the filigree gold chain on his left wrist which I remember from the presidential photographs, the nuance of an expensive cologne-and those implacable gray-blue eyes which seem to acknowledge that all affectation is merely a means to an end, adornment a form of jungle camouflage. We are so enthralled by the Khun's aura it takes both the Colonel and me more than a minute to realize there is someone else in the room. "You know Colonel Suvit of course, superintendent of District 15?"