bumping into furniture and talking nonsense.
'You don't have to worry about the chief of the LA. Bureau,' the director explained, coming up behind Yammy and missing his step. 'See, they have to get their information about who to murder in Colombia and Bolivia from somewhere, and who are they going to get it from if not the mob in LA. who buy the stuff wholesale? Bust them, and their intelligence sources dry up. That's why the chief is here tonight.' Maybe the director thought he was nodding discreetly as he shook his head like a neighing horse at the short, broad guy on the other side of the table who had just grabbed a handful of the mountain. 'This is freedom.'
Next day, depressed, for he had made no use at all of the golden opportunity to further his career by socializing with the mob at the coke orgy, Yammy decided he just didn't have what it took to make it in L.A. and packed his bags. Back in Sendai with Mama, he called up his one pal in the film industry in Tokyo, who had managed to make a feature film about a psychotic body piercer who murders everything that moves except his pet hamster, which he ends up dying for. The film had flopped, but so what? At least he'd made one feature film in his otherwise meaningless life. Yammy paid him a visit in the Shinbashi area of Tokyo.
'Listen,' his pal said after five bottles of sake, 'there's only one way to make a film these days, and that is to find the kind of investors…' Yammy finished the sentence for him.
Well, farang, I know you've guessed the rest, although it happened in Jap Time, which is to say that dear Yammy slumped into alcoholic depression for nearly a decade before he succumbed to the inevitable. To be fair to Yammy, he came very close to running a successful business operation, but like a lot of beginners in my country, he made the fatal error of choosing to buy from the army instead of the police. Worse, he bought his modest ten kilos of smack from Vikom's archenemy General Zinna, which, to cut a long story short, is why Vikorn had him banged up and had the boys produce a watertight case that will inevitably get Yammy the double injection. (We changed from the bullet last year in recognition of current fashions in the global execution industry; Buddha knows why, nobody ever felt the slug enter the back of the skull. It wasn't a question of humanity, simply new-wave squeamishness. Personally I would much prefer hot lead in the cerebellum to a slow suck into the big sleep by chemical means. What d'you think, farang?)
So, things were not looking so good for Yammy until five minutes ago. Here's my heroic visit to him in his cell in Lard Yao (our biggest, holds nine thousand prisoners, built by the Japs as a concentration camp in World War II):
Imagine a long hot ride to a tropical middle-of-nowhere. Suddenly a not-displeasing display of lush vegetation announces the beginning of the penitentiary's extensive estate. Hold it, though-what is that terrible stench? Oh, that's the raw sewage vat in which they make difficult prisoners stand up to their necks for hours, sometimes days. Not a great place to drown. Hold your nose, and we're being patted down by the rock-faced screws and led to the visitors' room, where we sit on a single wooden seat while they bring in Yammy in cuffs and leg irons: a slim, rather handsome Japanese in his midforties with an attractively receding hairline and the sullen determination of a true artist, in an age when true art is beyond the cultural pale. There's no seat for him so he has to stand. I am delighted to be the bringer of fantastically good news and feel that I must be well in with the Buddha, since I am the instrument of his salvation. Imagine my consternation, therefore, when, after I have outlined in broad strokes Vikorn's irresistible business plan, he says, 'No.'
'But Yamahatosan,' I say, 'perhaps I have not expressed myself with sufficient accuracy. Let me be clear. In a few short weeks from now your case will come to trial. It makes no difference if you plead guilty or not-the evidence against you is overwhelming. And even if it wasn't, Colonel Vikorn knows how to get a conviction. You will be sentenced to death, and while spending the usual few years on death row, you will be gang-raped by farang and thereafter deemed an unlucky pariah by the Thais, who will cut off your supply of fresh cockroaches, thus depriving you of your only source of protein. You will probably be terminally sick long before they strap you down and get you ready for the long needles — '
'Stop!' says Yammy. 'You can't scare me. I've decided to kill myself.' He makes a samurai-like gesture with his left thumb across his lower intestine. 'I've got the knife already.'
'But Yamahatosan,' I say, 'I thought I'd already explained, you don't need to kill yourself. I'm here to get you out.'
'I don't want to get out. What's the difference? You Thais know nothing of honor. I was going to kill myself anyway if I couldn't make a feature film. If you let me out, what will I be?'
'A well-paid pornographer.'
'I don't want to be a fucking pornographer. I'm an artist.'
Flabbergasted, flummoxed, exasperated-and impressed — I fish out my cell phone to call the Colonel.
'So let him be artistic,' says Vikorn. 'He can use ten cameras at the same time if he likes. He can cut to the fucking moon landing in between fellatio. He can have flowers and ink-block prints all over the stupid studio. He can have complete artistic freedom, just so long as he gets the cum shots right and the junk sells in America and Europe.'
I translate all this to Yammy, whose glower slowly lifts. 'I'll think about it.'
'Here, take my cell phone,' I say with saintly self-control. 'If you decide to graciously accept our humble offer of employment, please press this autodial number, which belongs to Colonel Vikorn.'
Back in the cab I borrow the driver's cell to call Vikorn, who bets five thousand baht Yammy will call within the next five minutes. I bet the same amount he will not call before I reach the station, because he's a stubborn, suicidal Japanese whose honor will take at least half an hour to collapse.
Vikorn and I sit amazed in his office, waiting until after nine in the evening. Finally the phone rings, and Vikorn hands it to me because Yammy speaks no Thai.
'I want the right to introduce my own story lines. Most porn has the stupidest, corniest story lines, if any. I want real plots.'
Vikorn waves a weary hand of resignation when I have translated.
6
Damrong came to me last night. I guess I knew she would whatever color pajamas I wore, and no matter how many times I waied the Buddha in our little homemade shrine with fairy lights: Chanya's idea. I was aware of her and the Lump in bed with me at the same time as being out of the body. Furtiveness only added to the intensity of my lust. We cannot wake Chanya, I tried to say, even as Damrong's mouth descended on my quivering member. Liberated from time and space, she was able to project a multiplicity of images: naked; half naked; wearing a black ballgown with silver jewelry; topless in tight-fitting jeans with her long black hair intermittently covering her breasts; bent over me in the attitude of total submission; standing above me in a posture of command. The point, really, was the overwhelming sexual power of her spirit, which somehow was able to trigger hormones from the other side. Men, let me be frank, there is no erotic experience that compares to being fucked by a ghost. When she had finished with me, I took myself off to the yard to hose down my feverish body. Thankfully Chanya was still fast asleep when I slipped back beside her.
Back to the case. I have used Colonel Vikorn's security clearance to penetrate the deeper reaches of the national database. When I plug in Damrong's ID number, I find a curious surname: llilflQ. It takes me a few moments to process this odd couple of syllables. I try out various possibilities before light dawns: the name is Baker. Armed with this clue, I make a few cross-checks and discover that her Thai family name is Tarasorn, and her parents were Cambodian refugees. She married an American named Daniel Baker just over five years ago and, according to the Immigration data, went to live with him in the United States until she returned about two years later. On official documents she was still obliged to sign her name as Mrs. Damrong Baker, which is the name that will appear on her death certificate.
From the database I extract Mr. Daniel Baker's American Social Security and passport numbers. I call Immigration to have them check if Baker happens to have returned to Thailand recently. It's a long shot, but you never know. Then I call Kimberley at the Grand Britannia to give her Baker's Social Security number.
I am afraid the FBI is the first to respond. Within less than half an hour she calls me back, slightly breathless.
'Okay, this could be your big lead. Dan Baker has a conviction for pimping.'
