Koko

his back on Poole and began working his way through the crowds toward the sidewalk.

Was this what Koko did, wander through a street fair buying toys?

Without even glancing toward the far bank, Poole clattered over the flimsy bridge after Underhill. They were moving toward central Bangkok. It had grown darker since Poole had first come upon the fair, and dim lights now burned in the shoebox restaurants. Underhill moved at an easy pace and was soon a block ahead of Poole. His height and the brilliant whiteness of his shirt made him very easy to see in the turmoil and congestion of the sidewalk.

Poole remembered how he had missed Tim Underhill on the day of the Memorial’s dedication. That Underhill had been lost, and here was this Underhill, a ravaged looking man with a braid in his whitening hair, just strolling beneath a noisy concrete traffic overpass.

3

Underhill’s stride lengthened as he neared the corner that led to Bang Luk. Poole saw him round the corner at the shuttered bank like a man hurrying to get home, and jogged through the darkness and the crowd of milling Thais on the sidewalk. Underhill had simply melted through all the people, but Poole had to jump down into the street. Horns blared, lights flicked at him. The street traffic too had increased, and now it was thickening into the perpetual traffic jam of Bangkok’s night.

Poole ignored the honking and began running. A taxi zipped past him, then a bus, packed to the windows with people, who grinned down and called out to him. He reached the corner in a few seconds and trotted over the cobbles into Bang Luk.

Men still loaded vans and trucks with flats of flowers; the shop windows spilled out light. Poole glimpsed a billowing shirt as white as a ghost and slowed to a walk. Underhill was opening the door between Jimmy Siam and Bangkok Exchange Ltd. One of the flower wholesalers at a depleted barrow called out to him, and Underhill laughed and twisted around to shout something back in Thai. He waved at the vendor, went inside, and closed the door behind him.

Poole stationed himself against the first of the garages. Within minutes a light went on behind the shutters above Jimmy Siam. Now Poole knew where he lived; an hour earlier he had not thought he would ever find him.

A vendor emerged from the garage and frowned at Poole. He picked up a large jade plant in a pot and carried it inside, still scowling.

The shutters opened above Jimmy Siam’s. Through the opened French windows Poole could see a flaking white ceiling dripping thin stalactites of paint. A moment later Underhill appeared carrying a large jade plant very much like the one the suspicious vendor had taken inside. He set the plant down on his balcony and went inside without closing the French windows.

The vendor darted out through his garage door and glared at Poole. The man hesitated a moment, then began walking toward Poole, speaking vehemently in Thai.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak your language,” Poole said.

“You go away, scum,” the man said.

“All right,” Poole said. “No need to be so upset.”

The man uttered a long sentence in Thai and spat on the ground.

Underhill’s light snapped off. Poole looked up at the windows, and the stocky little flower vendor rushed a few steps toward him, waving his hands in the air. Poole retreated a few steps. Underhill was dimly visible through the French windows, drawing them closed.

“No bother!” the man shouted. “No make sick! Go away!”

“For God’s sake,” Poole said. “Who do you think I am?”

The vendor shooed him back a few more paces, but scurried back into his garage as soon as Underhill appeared at his street door. Poole shot back into the darkness by the wall. Underhill had changed into a conventional Western white dress shirt and a baggy seersucker jacket that flapped around him as he walked.

Underhill turned onto Charoen Krung Road and began marching through the crowds on the sidewalk. Poole found himself stalled behind groups of men or whole gatherings of families who had assembled on a patch of sidewalk and intended to stay there. Children jumped and yelled; here and there a boy fiddled with the controls of a radio. Underhill’s head floated above the rest, moving easily and steadily toward Surawong Road.

He was going to Patpong 3. It was a long walk, but presumably Underhill wanted to save the few baht of the ruk-tuk fare.

Then Poole lost sight of him. It was as if his tall form had disappeared, like the White Rabbit, into a hole in the ground. He was visible nowhere on the long stretch of sidewalk. When Poole looked at the jammed street, he did not see Underhill there either—only a priest in a saffron robe melting imperturbably through the unstoppable traffic.

Poole jumped up, but saw no tall grey-haired white man making his way through the crowds. When his heels hit the pavement again, Poole started running.

Unless Underhill had been swallowed up by the earth, he must have either gone into a shop or turned down a sidestreet. As Poole ran past all the little businesses he had passed on his way to the wobbly bridge and the fair, he looked into each window. Most of the cafes and shops were closed now.

Poole swore to himself. He had managed to lose Underhill; the earth had swallowed him up; he had known he was being followed and he had slipped into a secret cave, a lair. In the lair he dressed in fur and claws and became Koko—he became what the Martinsons and Clive McKenna had seen in the last minutes of their lives.

Poole saw a dark cave shaped like a fist opening out in the middle of the impoverished little shops.

He was running along through the mass of people on the sidewalk, half-pushing people out of his way, sweating, irrationally convinced that Beevers had been right all along and that Underhill had gone down into his cave. Budlike horns nestled in his thinning hair.

A few steps later Poole saw that the buildings separated a block away, and a narrow street went down toward the river.

Poole hurtled into a narrow passageway lined with stalls and vendors of silk and leather bags and paintings of elephants marching across fields of blue velvet. The inevitable tribe of women and children squatted beside the wall to Poole’s left, chipping away at their eternal trench. Poole saw Tim Underhill almost at once, far ahead of him, just crossing with a lengthening step a wide empty place where the byway turned up to the right instead of continuing on the short distance to the river. A low wall and a white building lay behind the curve in the road, and Underhill strode past these as he began to move uphill.

Poole hurried down past the vendors and without quite seeing it passed an ORIENTAL HOTEL legend stenciled on a wall. When he reached the bottom of the little road, he looked right and saw Underhill passing through the large glass doors of an immense white structure which extended all the way down to Poole and all the way up past the entrance to an only partially visible garage.

Poole hopped onto the sidewalk and ran past the older wing of the hotel toward the entrance. Large plate- glass windows gave him a view of the entire lobby, and he could see Underhill making his way past a florist’s window and bookshop, apparently going toward a cocktail lounge.

He reached the revolving door and was welcomed into the lobby by big smiling Thai men in grey uniforms and realized that he had followed Underhill to a hotel. Three of Koko’s murders had taken place in hotels. Poole slowed down.

Underhill walked past the entrance to the lounge and continued briskly on through a door marked EXIT— Poole saw a flash of darkness distantly illuminated by a lantern on a tall standard. Underhill passed through the door and went out onto the grounds behind the hotel.

Clive McKenna’s body had been found on the grounds of the Goodwood Park Hotel.

Poole followed his horned monster to the exit and very slowly pushed it open. He was surprised to find himself on a pebbled walk that led down past tall lanterns and a poolside garden to a series of descending terraces with candle-lit tables. On the other side of the tables the river shimmered, reflecting the lights of a restaurant on its opposite bank and the sidelights of various small craft. Uniformed waiters and waitresses attended to people eating and drinking at the tables. The scene was so different from the sordid vista Poole had expected that it took him a moment to locate Underhill’s tall figure just now making his way down to the lower terraces.