So much for equality. The first sign of trouble and she hides behind her man. “No,” I say, “I’m already stoned, terrified, catatonic, and hysterical at the same time. I’m staying in bed. Anyway, in bed is exactly how he should find me.”
She goes to the door and opens it. It is a feature of our luxurious apartment that I can see the front door from the bed; see Chanya back away while giving Vikorn the high wai; see his polite wai in return; notice how he hardly seems to notice her, prowls toward me. He is about three inches shorter than me, but he fills the hovel like a giant. Chanya has retreated to a corner, half bent over in some kind of groveling posture.
Now he is staring down at me. He is accompanied by two armed cops in uniform who have been with him long enough to be telepathically sensitive to his every gesture. When he jerks his chin, they retreat and close the front and only door behind them. Chanya draws up our only chair for him to sit on. She backs away as soon as she has placed it next to the mattress.
“How stoned is he?” Vikorn snaps without sitting and without looking at her.
“He’s coming down.”
“Has he asked for sex yet?”
“Yes,” in the tone of a witness for the prosecution, “about ten minutes ago.”
“When did he last smoke?”
“About two and a half hours ago.”
“So he got out of his skull as usual, did a tour of Andromeda, then the blood sank back down to his balls, and he wanted to screw you?”
“Yes.”
He examines me. “You look awful,” my Colonel says. “What’s the matter? Wouldn’t she fuck you? I can’t say I blame her.”
“Everything’s the matter. Especially the eyeballs.” I look at him. “I hate you for making me sell them. And I want to know about those bodies in Phuket-did you do it as part of your election strategy? Yes or no? I don’t care if you kill me, I’m not working for you anymore.”
He rubs his jaw, decides to sit on the chair, then makes an almost imperceptible jerk of the chin toward Chanya behind him. I say, “Darling, why don’t you get yourself a hairdo?” Chanya never has hairdos, but she says, “Oh, yes, oh thank you, darling,” and gives me a high wai in the mode of dutiful wives of yesteryear, then leaves the house in a rush.
Vikorn has stood up and is watching her disappear down the soi; now he turns to stare at me. “Suppose I told you I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“Who did it.”
“Don’t know? What kind of godfather are you? You’re supposed to know even if you didn’t order it yourself.”
“Aren’t you taking everything a little too seriously, Sonchai?”
“What, the eyeballs? What can be more serious than a thousand human eyeballs staring at you resentfully every time you close your own? Oh yes, you can still see with yours, you can open and close your eyelids, aren’t you the lucky one! That’s what they say.”
Vikorn has never had a hallucination in his life, so my state is exotic to him. He frowns in concentration. “Really? They talk to you?”
“All the time.”
“What language do they use?”
“What language? Thai, of course.”
“But none of those eyeballs were Thai. They were mostly Korean.”
“From the North?”
“North, South, what’s the diff? They’re more likely to speak Korean than Thai, aren’t they?”
“How would you know? They don’t talk to you.”
He pauses to look at me for a moment, he seems to hesitate, then asks, “What’s it like to be loony? I’ve always wanted to know.”
“I’m not loony. I’m suffering from aftershock. It can kill-there are farang statistics.”
“People in shock don’t hold conversations with eyeballs.”
The discussion seems to have reached a wall. Vikorn turns away to look out the window, then examines the room for a moment. His eyes come to rest on Chanya’s generic computer, her old printer, tubular steel chair, and collapsible desk. After a few beats I say, “Come on. You can tell me, whodunit? Was it Zinna?”
Vikorn shakes his head. “Unclear. That’s the problem. I need something to go on.” He shakes his head again and repeats, “That’s the problem.” He looks me in the eye. “Zinna’s even more psycho than you. He comes out with threats that make even my blood curdle. Then the next day he’s in a different mood, quiet as a kitten, keen to make peace. That’s queer love for you. I’ve never understood it, the way they get so intense-how can you be so hung up about another man’s hairy asshole? You surf the Net-what’s the explanation?”
It’s not a real question. I don’t reply. He goes to the window that looks out onto the street where his cop car is parked. “Policing,” he says to the glass, then turns to me. “You think you’ve got it tough. You don’t have any idea how it was when I joined the force. The whole cake was divided down to the last crumb. The big boss got seventy percent, and the portions got smaller as you descended the totem pole. I got maybe half a crumb. And I was damned grateful for that.” He prowls back to the chair, holds it by the back. “And no complaining. You learned to keep your mouth shut at all times- you wouldn’t have survived the first week.”
He sighs. “You see, what nobody tells you about capitalism is that it’s warlordism in disguise. That leaves the only job in the jungle worth having as apex feeder-the rest is slavery at various levels of discomfort. Socially, psychologically, we’re still in the rain forest. I feel sorry for you, but I didn’t design the system, I simply learned to win in it.” He sighs again. “I think I’ve tolerated you because you’re the opposite to me. Sometimes I don’t think you’re interested in survival at all-then the next thing you’re in bed sucking your thumb, thinking you’re scared shitless. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“What kind of question is that? I know if I’m scared or not, don’t I?”
“No. I’ve seen you in firefights when you didn’t even break a sweat. Bad men don’t scare you. What scares you is the thought you might not be on the side of the angels. I think you’re staging this whole drama because you fear for your karma.”
“How could anyone work for you and not fear for their karma?”
“Easy. You stop believing in karma.”
“An unstructured, cause-free universe where evil always prevails?”
“Now you’re sounding like a grown-up.”
Time passes. We stare at each other for a moment; then when that becomes embarrassing, we look away. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“Sorry for what?”
“That I let you get away without the full initiation. Maybe it’s because you’re half farang, so you won’t get promotion anyway-what was the point?”
“The point of what?”
“Making you see.” He rubs his jaw. “The rule of law is just another piece of farang hypocrisy-a piece of theater designed to dazzle the masses while the movers and shakers clean up. As a cop, you are expected to participate in this theater. That’s your real job-play the game as if it’s real.”
“What are you talking about?”
“But nobody can stop you from writing your own script. That’s all we have, Sonchai. Our real privilege as cops is that now and then we get to write the screenplay. Any cop who doesn’t grab the chance while he has it…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
“That’s what you’re using me for, to clean up?”
He gives me one of his wise-old-man looks, even makes his eyes twinkle. “You know what my own mentor told me, after I’d seen a few things that scared me? I was a lot younger than you. He said, ‘Think about it. What is the easiest crime in the world to solve?’ ”
The Colonel stops strategically. I say, “Okay, okay, I’m hooked. What is the easiest crime in the world to solve?”
