Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“Another what?”

“Orange hat murder. I got a message from Taiwan. A skinny Chinese inspector. I hope he didn’t doctor his profile photograph ‘cause if he did his real self must be hideous. He vaguely recalled a knifing at an aviary. They didn’t ever catch the killer. The peculiar thing was that she, the victim, was wearing an orange People First Party election rally hat, but she was a staunch Kuomintang, and their party color is blue. Originally they thought it was a political killing but nobody could see what was to be gained by it. She was an aviary worker. She cleaned up parrot shit. So, the case vanished into the dead files.”

Aviary. Exotic birds. Orange hat. Color.

“OK. Include that in the sweep,” I said. “I’ll take anything with orange hats and colorful locations. I’ve got a very bad feeling this is all connected somehow.”

“I could be the hottest one-legged Russian on Police Beat if we solve this one.”

“You can’t tell anyone anything. This is all still in the realm of the ridiculous. But let me know as soon as you get anything. There’s a nun in a greasy cell in Bangkok surrounded by tomboys with tattoos and we’ve got to get her out.”

“Will do. Over and out.”

We were walking back toward the shop, me and Granddad Jah. Kow, the squid boat captain, was across the street dispensing fishballs from his side car.

“Have you heard?” he called.

“I never hear anything,” I said, even though it was no longer true.

“Abbot killed up at Wat Feuang Fa. Some nun gutted him.”

How did he do it? He fished in the empty sea at night and drove around on his motorcycle in the day. How did he one-up the world on news? So much for the media blackout. If Captain Kow knew, it wouldn’t be long before every newspaper in the country heard. I was in a tough spot. I had the bulk of my story written but it didn’t have an ending yet. I’d left blanks for a lot of police quotations I could harvest at the last minute, and I’d done my best to avoid accusing my nun. I knew the other rags wouldn’t be so delicate. No, I wouldn’t send anything yet. I hoped the blackout pressure on the newspapers was heavy enough to keep the story off the front page for at least twenty-four hours. But, by then, I had to have it all sorted out. This was my story.

The afternoon stretched out like a long, nylon net with one single tangled sprat in its snare. Boats bobbed. Palms shimmied. Clouds stuck. How long could it take to interview a suspect in a murder inquiry? All right — weeks, yes. It could take forever. But this was just a rental car driver. He couldn’t have that much to say. Mair and I watched the family check out of room two and decided not to charge them. It was the least we could do for bursting their bubble. I was convinced we’d done them a favor. We thanked them for fixing the cistern and for offering us freedom. The father slipped me his name card just in case…I told him there was absolutely no way and put his card in my pocket.

And we waited, me and Granddad Jah. A loudspeaker van crawled by asking for old metal and bottles and tin cans and broken motors. The driver could have easily leaned out of the window and asked nicely, but he had the volume cranked up so high our windows vibrated and I almost missed the ‘Mamma Mia’ jingle. I clicked on the phone.

“Yes?”

“Me.” It was Chompu. “Lang Suan just e-mailed us the digital recording of the interview. I’ve sent a copy to your inbox.”

Something Chiang Mai in me was shocked that Lang Suan might have the concept of digital.

“What? Why? We aren’t online here,” I reminded him.

“Then get somewhere that is.”

We plodded along on the motorcycle, me on the back, Granddad Jah driving. I thought the excitement and urgency might prod him over sixty kph, but no. The law was the law. With such short notice we had just the one option to check my e-mail. It was three forty-five on Sunday and I knew the Internet cafe would be overrun with star troopers. I’d underestimated just how many there were. The line of motorcycles in front of the shop left us no choice but to park forty meters away. We pushed our way inside through a flock of young people with nowhere else to go. The owner, a young man with long hair and moon-landscape acne looked up briefly from his laptop when we entered, then looked back down again as if the door had merely been blown open by the wind. All five computers were in use, each occupied by two or three teenagers in the process of penetrating castles or massacring herds of villains.

“How long would we have to wait?” I asked the owner.

The man shrugged. It was his big profit margin period, early evenings and weekends. At twenty baht an hour he could clear, ooh, a hundred-and-twenty baht easy on an evening like this. In seventy-three years he’d have paid off the cost of the computers. It was a business that baffled me.

“All right,” I shouted. “Who’d be prepared to give up a machine for…fifty baht?”

They all turned back to their games. I tried one hundred and two hundred baht and got the same reaction.

“All right,” I said. “How much would it take?”

One group huddled and came up with a figure of five-hundred baht. They weren’t open to haggling. It was extortion but I was desperate. I handed over the money, asked for an extra set of headphones and Granddad and I hunkered down to listen to the interview. It took fifteen minutes to download the file and, by then, Granddad was grinding his teeth. Just as well they weren’t real.

In.

The recording began with several minutes of personal questions: name, address, occupation, et cetera. Then Major General Suvit, who was interviewing, got down to the nitty-gritty.

MAJOR G:

Koon Wirapon, why did you come to Lang Suan last week?

DRIVER:

Had a job, sir. A client wanted a Benz for eight days.

MAJOR G:

Who was the client?

DRIVER:

It’s here, (crinkle of paper) Ming Xi Wu, from Hong Kong.

MAJOR G:

Description.

DRIVER:

Around fifty, short, in pretty good shape for her age, tight short perm, could have been a wig, typical Chinese face with those big old-fashioned sunglasses. Dressed in safari clothes and boots.

MAJOR G:

Where did she want to go?

DRIVER:

No plan really. Just look around. When she first contacted the company, the e-mail said she wanted to see temples and local birds. She was a birdwatcher. She had cameras and binoculars and stuff.

Granddad Jah and I exchanged a look. I knew his mind had gone directly to the ornithologist in our first cabana. Coincidence?

MAJOR G:

So, you just drove her around?

DRIVER:

Pretty much, sir. She’d ask to stop here and there and she’d hop out and take pictures or look