"What d'you want me to do?"

I smile. "If I were you, I would let them bribe you."

The man nods. The suggestion does not surprise him at all. "What would be a good price?"

I think about it. I am strongly in favor of redistribution of global wealth from West to East. "If I were you I might hold out for a thousand dollars." He makes an instant calculation: forty-five thousand baht, not a fortune but a considerable windfall. He places his palms together near his forehead and wai wais. "Thank you, Detective."

"You're welcome. And if you ever see the woman again, you'll let me know."

Out on the street I suddenly feel faint. The meth has leached every nutrient from my blood, and I'm failing rapidly. My brain thuds with the rhythms from a nearby music store and I believe I'm going to vomit. The world is inclining by about thirty degrees by the time I find the narrow soi soi where Bradley's apartment is supposed to be. where Bradley's apartment is supposed to be.

14.

To my surprise, Bradley's address is not an apartment but an old teak house on stilts. I kick my shoes off, climb the wooden staircase to the main door and examine a bellpull. It is old, bra.s.s-an antique curiosity, perhaps seventy or more years old. Underneath, a name also in bra.s.s: William Bradley.

I wait five minutes before pulling the bell again. I seem to hear the slap of bare feet on teak boards, but it's hard to be sure because of distant traffic noise and the interminable thump-thump-thump thump-thump-thump from speakers on Koashan Road. I try once more. On the third pull I realize I'm being watched from an open window by a woman in her sixties with the fearful eyes of the incurably shy. I give her my best smile. from speakers on Koashan Road. I try once more. On the third pull I realize I'm being watched from an open window by a woman in her sixties with the fearful eyes of the incurably shy. I give her my best smile.

"Khun Bradley around?" She stares. "I'm a police officer." I fish for my ID and flash it at her, aware that she is probably illiterate. She continues to stare so I try: "Mother, I have your wages for last week."

A smile breaks out on her face: naive, country, joyful. A bright pink tongue and gums set off the pure ebony of a few remaining stumps. It seems the house even boasts an authentic grandmother with an authentic betel habit. She disappears and with surprising speed the front door opens. She is less than five feet tall with black hair drawn back in a ponytail which reaches the base of her spine; not a trace of gray. She wears a sarong and a cream-colored shirt, a gold chain with an oval in gold displaying a former king of Thailand. She presses her palms together and makes a deep wai wai. Now that she has decided to trust me she lets another smile reveal the untouched soul behind her eyes.

As I enter the house she leans over the stair rail and emits a stream of rich vermilion fluid which hits a specific target on the ground.

"Remind me, mother, how much do we pay you each week?"

"Four hundred and fifty baht."

I pull a roll of notes out of my pocket. "Sorry to be so late."

"Not late, today is payday."

"When did you last see them?"

"Two days ago. But she came back sometime and took her things. It must have been yesterday, when I was with my daughter in Nakhon Sawan."

"Yesterday was your day off?"

"Yes."

"You sleep here?"

"Yes."

I squat down in order not to tower above her. She immediately squats also, so as not to keep her eyes above mine. I take out the picture of Bradley. "This is Khun Bradley, no?" She nods her head vigorously. "I'm sorry I don't have a picture of Madame Bradley. Do you?" She shakes her head. "Could you describe her?" The question only raises a moment's doubt in her eyes; she has decided I'm a good man and a few strange questions will not shake her faith now.

"Tall, oh! Very tall. I never saw such a tall woman."

"As tall as him?"

"As him? n.o.body is as tall as him. He is a giant."

"Who gave you your orders?"

"She."

"Did she speak Thai like you and me?" The question confuses her. "She farang farang or not?" or not?"

"No, not farang farang. She's Thai, speaks, talks, same as us. At first I thought she was African"-the woman makes a shape around her head indicating big hair, and raises her hand to show height-"but she's Thai."

"What did you call her?"

"Madame Bradley."

Silly question. "Mother, I want to look around, okay?" She shrugs. How could she stop me? I cast an eye over a large downstairs room which takes up the whole of the first floor, with two teak pillars equidistant from the walls. The floor of long narrow boards is highly polished, even more so than is usual in these houses, and reflects light with a dull, antique glow. Brightly colored throw cushions and futons are scattered over the floor. The cushion covers are silk, in electric shades of green, orange and purple, contrasting well with the old wood of the walls and floor. Panels in the walls are picked out in gold leaf and midnight blue and there is a sunken teak table about ten feet long with a hidden well for legs and feet. The table is laid with a homespun blue cloth, rattan napkin holders with yellow homespun napkins, celadon plates and bowls, citronella candles in coconut sh.e.l.ls.

I'm not an expert on the American military, but it occurs to me that this is not the kind of home an average marine would be inclined to show his comrades. The choice of a teak house to live in is eccentric even by Thai standards. They tend to be inhabited by oddball foreigners or Thais of the arty type who have spent a lot of time overseas in places like Paris or New York. When I look more closely, I notice great varnished grain storage baskets of the kind which have become so fashionable, and the futons are all in gold print silk which is only produced by the Khomapastr Corporation, which exports to royalty and billionaires worldwide. Wall brackets hold what seem to be priceless antiques: kendi water jars, reliquary urns with lotus-bud handles, ceramic medicine jars. Everything is Thai, everything is alien. The whole room is begging to be photographed by farangs farangs.

To reach the next floor it's necessary to leave the house and return to the external staircase. The entrance to the second floor is locked and I have to go downstairs again to find the old woman. "Mother, I've forgotten my key, can I use yours?" She fishes under her shirt and I catch a glimpse of a modern money wallet of the kind favored by backpackers. She draws out a large bra.s.s key and hands it to me. Upstairs again I open the lock with the big key, and gratefully enter the cool of the old house.

15.

The slatted shutters on the windows (there is no gla.s.s) allow air to circulate, and the teak walls are good insulators. It's dark apart from the brilliant outline of the doorway, and I find a light switch, then close the door. The lighting seems to come from nowhere, directed upward from behind a teak panel which runs the length of a corridor I'm standing in.

On the walls hang six twelve-by-eighteen-inch studies of the same woman's face; they are the same print in different colors, in exactly the style of famous Warhol portraits of Marilyn Monroe. The woman is definitely half Thai, half Negro, which puts her into a specific category in my feudal society. If she is in her thirties she would have been born in the late sixties or early seventies, when the city was permanently flooded with American servicemen on leave from the war in Vietnam. It is notorious that America sent a disproportionate number of African Americans to the war, and many of their female offspring now work the Bangkok bars. My racist people tend to marginalize them, and their lot can be a tough one. I open a door which gives on to the master bedroom, where homage turns into obsession.

The woman is everywhere, in oils, watercolors, black-and-white photographic studies, color photos, sometimes full length, sometimes in portrait. There is a huge nude study in oils, opposite the bed, tastefully done, with her pelvis turned slightly to one side; no pubic hair visible, perfect brown b.r.e.a.s.t.s with black areolas and nipples, a long fine neck, multicolored hair artfully chaotic and not really African: I think that with the color and frizz washed out it must be straight and black. Somehow the eye travels most naturally not to her face but to a jade ball set in a short gold stick which diagonally pierces her navel in two places.

I sit on the bed mesmerized by the extraordinary beauty of this woman, her long shapely legs, high b.u.t.tocks, elegant arms, finely tapered hands turned in the style of a Thai dancer, those alluring oval eyes, almost hollow cheeks, full lips smiling ironically, perhaps a reference to her nakedness, a fine straight nose which must have come from some Caucasian cross in her blood. I put my hands behind my neck and recline full length on the bed, to think about Bradley.

Suppose a man for whom no other man had ever been a challenge, an accomplished athlete and soldier, himself of pure African blood, heteros.e.xual and surely a connoisseur of the female form as it appears all over the world, a man on the brink of middle age and retirement but more vigorous than a man half his age, stationed in Bangkok and perhaps addicted to the city, as often happens, a frequent visitor to the bars of Nana Plaza, searching as he has searched over decades for that perfect female form?

Surely this man was no ordinary soldier? This man was born with an instinct for visual beauty as another of his tribe might be born with a genius for jazz. I wonder how it might have happened, that such a man should ever have dreamed of becoming a soldier? Perhaps his exquisite taste developed later in life, when his career path had already been set, maybe in his late twenties? How irksome to find himself permanently surrounded by the ugly functionality of the military world; might one a.s.sume a continual dissatisfaction pressing on consciousness, a vow repeated minute to minute, with increasing urgency as the years pa.s.sed, that after retirement I will after retirement I will . . . A meticulously planned retirement, as befits a career soldier, with the foundations in place long in advance of the due date: the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, in a beautiful house, a serious hobby in precious stones with a web page featuring a jade phallus of great elegance. Should we impute an element of narcissism? How could such a man not love himself to some degree, however stern his professional discipline? Even when he was laid out on a gurney in the morgue with the flabbiness of death and his flesh disfigured by snake bites, did I not witness a stupendous example of manhood? . . . A meticulously planned retirement, as befits a career soldier, with the foundations in place long in advance of the due date: the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, in a beautiful house, a serious hobby in precious stones with a web page featuring a jade phallus of great elegance. Should we impute an element of narcissism? How could such a man not love himself to some degree, however stern his professional discipline? Even when he was laid out on a gurney in the morgue with the flabbiness of death and his flesh disfigured by snake bites, did I not witness a stupendous example of manhood?

Imagine the moment when Bradley first set eyes on this woman. Instant armlock? A stranglehold this warrior could not escape? The kind of woman lesser men might find too dangerous to touch, who had perhaps been waiting herself for someone larger than life? But where had she been hiding? If she had danced in the bars of Nana or Pat Pong, I surely would have heard of her. Such a woman would be famous throughout the city the moment she began gyrating around one of those stainless steel poles.

I stand up to approach the painting, and admit to an aristocratic note in her pose; she doesn't look like a woman who would ever dance naked in public. But if she was the b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of a black American serviceman, how else would she have earned a living? If her mother was a bar girl her education would have been basic, her technical qualifications zero, her contacts outside of the bar scene very few.

I try to relate her to the rest of the house, which is not difficult. The two seem to go together, as if selected by a fine eye from different brochures. This isn't a home, not to me, it is an environment, a barricade against the ugliness of the city, a deliberate and very Western attempt to build a separate, personal reality.

A very big part of which is erotic. Who could help envisioning their pa.s.sionate embrace, like two black tigers mating? I imagine elaborate lovemaking of a kind I have never experienced, a whole evening set aside as if for a private banquet, the prolongation of l.u.s.t, the postponement of climax, the man's slow relentless savoring of his prize, the woman's ecstasy underneath her black G.o.d. Sure enough, in the bathroom on a shelf I find a pharmacist's collection of scents, perfumes and aromatic oils, some local but many imported, bearing the name and address of a shop in San Francisco.

My exhausted body cannot tolerate such stimulation. What of the other side to the marine? I find the computer in a small room which clearly served as an office, a desktop tower with a big nineteen-inch monitor. The office is stark, free of mementos of the woman: bare teak walls and floor, a shelf with a modest collection of books including some very large ones which look like photographic collections, and a single art object in a place of honor alone on a high shelf: a jade horse and rider. I a.s.sume an imitation. Who keeps real jade in a wooden house, even a wooden house like this?

I press the power b.u.t.ton on the computer tower and the monitor creaks and flickers its way into Windows Millennium Edition. I click on "programs" and find a long list, perhaps as many as thirty or forty different applications. In addition to the word processors in both English and Thai, there are astrology and astronomy, gemology, a tutorial on mathematics, use of English, a Thai translation program, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Webster's New World Dictionary, How to Write a Winning Business Plan Encyclopaedia Britannica, Webster's New World Dictionary, How to Write a Winning Business Plan-it's like a self-improvement regime for someone who intended to leap from ignorance to erudition with no gap in between.

It is 12:46 p.m. and my problem has progressed from no data to too much. Proper examination of the computer and Bradley's web surfing will take days. I call up Word for Windows, type "Welcome, Khun Rosen and Khun Nape," switch the screen off but leave the computer running.

I return to Kaoshan Road, to have a copy made of the key to the upstairs rooms, buy a cardboard camera with flash and return to take pictures of the portraits of the woman, the jade horseman and the computer. I lock the door, return the original key to the old lady, who squats on the teak floor downstairs, near a window convenient for spitting. She is chewing her betel. She seems to have forgotten about me, for she gives a start when I approach, then replaces the key in her money bag without looking at me. Outside in the street I find a motorcycle taxi.

16.

At Dao Phrya Bridge the Mercedes was gone, no doubt taken away by police. I paused for a moment to examine something which must have been under the car. The corpses of two cobras, which had been beaten to death, not shot.

Even as I got off the bike to pay the fare, I had heard a noise from the squatter huts which was only half human. Striding across the wasteland, I became aware of a man's full-throated roar originating from deep in his chest, like the bellowing of an enraged bull. "f.u.c.k you, f.u.c.k the FBI, f.u.c.k the FBI's mother, I AM THIRSTY."

The headman came to meet me with a worried look as I reached the edge of the settlement. "You're late. You said noon, it's one-thirty."

"I had a busy morning. What's going on?" They had tied Old Tou upright to a plank with rope which encircled his arms, trunk and legs in a continuous binding of bright orange. Only the old man's neck and head were free. They had leaned him against one of the st.u.r.dier huts. The cords on his neck stood out when he roared.

"You said you wanted him sober. This was the only way."

"Can't you give him water?"

"We've given him gallons. He's not thirsty for water."

"Untie him."

"Are you kidding? I'm not untying him till we've got him drunk again. If he goes on the rampage he'll destroy the whole settlement. D'you want to interrogate him or not?"

The old man glared at me with bloodshot eyes. "Are you the police b.a.s.t.a.r.d they keep telling me about? I'm going to tear your nose off with my teeth."

"I just want to ask you a few questions."

"f.u.c.k your questions. I want whisky. Rice whisky."

I nodded to the headman, who brought a plastic bottle filled to the brim with transparent fluid. "Give him a little, not too much."

The headman poured a couple of inches into a plastic cup. The old man held his head up like a bird while the headman poured the alcohol down his throat. "More."

"Just answer some questions, and you can go on killing yourself as fast as you like."

The old man licked his lips. "When they let me go I'm going to kill you you. What f.u.c.king questions?"

"Yesterday, you saw the Mercedes arrive with the black farang farang?"

He spat. "Of course I saw, I was sitting against the wall of the bridge having a drink. I saw everything."

"What did you see?"

"I saw Khmer Rouge."

Guffaws from the audience. I sighed. "You were in the Cambodian civil war?"

"Idiot, I wasn't in any f.u.c.king war. A couple of weeks ago someone brought a DVD here about some stupid American journalist in Cambodia who got his friend into trouble-a boring f.u.c.king film but I liked the bit where he slits the side of a buffalo with a razor and drinks the blood. I never would have thought of that, those Cambodians are rough trade."

"So what about Khmer Rouge?"

"In the film the Khmer Rouge all wear red checkered scarves around their stupid heads, that's what they were wearing yesterday."

"He's right about the film," the headman said. "We all watched it. I remember the scarves too."

"Who was wearing the scarves?"

"The motorcycle yobs. There were about six of them, nasty pieces of work as far as I could see."

"They arrived after the Mercedes, or before?"

"About the same time. They surrounded it."

"You see any of them open the door?"

Old Tou laughed. "No, they did the same as you and your partner. They got off the bikes, went to the car and kind of ogled and grunted, then they started jabbering. I don't think they were as tough as they made out. Then they all got together for some kind of powwow, and ran back to their bikes and left."

"Were they speaking Thai or Khmer?"

"Too far away to tell. Anyway, how the f.u.c.k would I know if they were speaking f.u.c.king Khmer or Chiu Chow Chinese?"

"Was any of them female?"

"Give me another drink, a.s.shole." I motioned to the headman, who poured some more whisky down Old Tou's throat. "Female? No, these were swaggering boys, you know the type, probably on yaa baa yaa baa or ganja, no true manhood, they couldn't stomach the scene in the car. After they'd gone I went over to see what all the fuss was about. That black or ganja, no true manhood, they couldn't stomach the scene in the car. After they'd gone I went over to see what all the fuss was about. That black farang farang was being eaten alive by that python. There were cobras, too." was being eaten alive by that python. There were cobras, too."

"What did you do?"

Old Tou licked his lips. "Well, I couldn't be sure, you know." The way he said it made some of the audience crack up. Several squatted in order to laugh harder.

"Couldn't be sure? How's that?" More laughter.

"I get visions." Hilarity now from the audience. Two men and a woman lay down in order to enjoy a really good laugh. Some people leaned against a hut, overcome by giggles.

The headman grinned broadly. "He hallucinates a lot of the time. He sees snakes, mostly."