“The kind you plan yourself,” Vikorn says. He puts a hand on my shoulder and chuckles as he pats me. “That’s policing. He said he got it from the British. What did they do when they wanted to impose law and order in India? They invented Thugees. Amazing. You invent a massive crime wave, then you get the kudos for suppressing it, and you end up with a docile populace and a few thousand dead down-and-outs. That’s real policing.”
He straightens himself. “All my professional life I’ve earnestly striven to do what the British did a hundred years ago: sell an opiate to make enough money to keep the peace. It may not be pretty, but as the Brits demonstrated, it works worldwide.” He stares at me. “You’ve already made the point for me. With my black Amex card and my money, you’ve found out more about worldwide organ trafficking in a couple of days than the FBI has managed in ten years. Let me be plain: the dough you spent in Dubai comes out of the smack habits of inadequate, narcissistic farang. That’s the way this world works. If you can find a better one, let me know-I’ll be right on the spaceship with you.”
“What do you want to do, exactly?”
“I’m not telling you yet.” He prowls to the window again to stare at the soi. “I want you to follow up on your contact with the Twins. They’re based in Hong Kong, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Visit if you have to. Find out everything you can.” He nods at the street. “Your wife has come back.”
The door opens. Chanya walks in. I know exactly what has happened in her inner life. She felt disgusted with herself for running from Vikorn and has screwed her courage to the sticking point instead of having her hair done; now she is all ready to confront him in the flesh. Her eyes are twin blazes of defiance in an honor-retrieval exercise, but she is taken aback by the father-and-son atmosphere.
“Darling, would you mind booking me on a flight to Hong Kong next week?” I say.
“First-class,” Vikorn says. He turns to give her a polite wai and takes his leave. At the door he seems to remember something, looks at her, smiles: “Great hairdo.”
Chanya stands at the window with her hands on her hips and watches as he collects his goons and ducks into his car.
“I have to go back to Phuket,” I say, when his car has drawn away.
“I thought you said Hong Kong.”
“Next week. If I’m going to have any questions to ask in Hong Kong, I really need to start in Phuket. All I’ve done so far is stare at the crime scene for ten minutes and talk to Supatra.”
13
Patong, about two miles from Vulture Peak, is the down-market play area in Phuket. On the right night it’s a lot more festive than the Bangkok hotspots, which tend to have a no-frills air in comparison. Here on Bang La, Patong’s main street, you get the full farang fantasy of unrestrained orientalism. Adolescent elephants come up from behind and lay their trunks on your shoulder, begging for sugarcane, which you can buy from the mahout. In one of the pavilions you can watch some kind of snake-charming gag with a full-size cobra, which has had the venom removed, naturally. If anything, the katoeys on Soi Crocodile are even more flamboyant than in Nana, and there are girls everywhere. They don’t have to exaggerate anything, they are young, beautiful, and friendly in bikinis and will do anything you want so long as it doesn’t hurt and you use a condom.
I arrived a couple of hours ago at about eight P.M. and spent time at a few bars watching the street and deciding what to do. I came on a hunch. My reasoning is simple: Vulture Peak was built for pleasure, but it’s high on a hill, a good couple of miles away from any live entertainment. Soi Eric here at Patong is the nearest center for fun, including takeaway. What I can’t figure out is exactly who to ask, or how to frame the question. Naturally, I checked in with the local police force and received mostly a stonewall. I have a feeling the entire station has taken a vow of silence with regard to Vulture Peak. The best I can obtain is the promise of an interview with two constables before they go out on patrol tomorrow morning. Now after two hours on the street I’ve made no progress and I’m starting to feel restless, so I take a stroll.
Things have livened up. They were pretty lively before, so I guess you could say the place is reaching that strangely predictable level of hysteria typical of a certain kind of mass-market farang tourism at around eleven-thirty in the evening. Couples with teenage kids they don’t know what to do with hang out in the less outrageous bars while small gangs of drunken young pink men, who can hardly believe the good time you can hire for a thousand baht, are nevertheless daunted by the feast of flesh and instead channel their nervous lust into a familiar drinking routine with their mates who support the same soccer team. Maybe tomorrow they’ll take the plunge and get laid. More serious older men look for the perfect female form on which to spend the sperm they saved up during the boring flight over, while longer stayers hang out talking to the girl they know they will eventually take back to the hotel, because that’s what they’ve done every night since they arrived and they don’t really like change.
The mahout and the elephant still tramp up and down, and there are three snake shows at the open-air pavilion instead of the former one. The katoey quarter is farther up the street, where lack of authenticity is compensated for by elaborate stage costumes with long ostrich feathers that soar over hairdos of every color except black. It’s noisy, cheap, but not unfriendly. The trouble is: so many bars and so little time.
I buy a beer at a tiny place served by one pleasant-looking young woman who I suppose will have to close the shop if ever she finds a customer who wants her body. I take out a five-hundred-baht note and ask where slumming millionaires are most likely to look for someone to love, and without hesitation she jerks her chin at one of the bars behind the first cobra show.
“Any particular reason?”
“It’s the first big bar you come to if you’re arriving from the hill, and they pay more, so the girls are more beautiful and speak better English. Also, they have a takeaway service.” She giggles. “I mean they have a van with a driver. If somebody knows which girl they want, they can call or e-mail.”
The name is Chung King House, so I guess they get a lot of Chinese customers, or maybe the owners sought the advice of a seer who read the future. It’s twice the size of most of the other bars and lacks the personal touch. I order a beer and ask about the takeaway service. The bartender tells me that anything can be arranged, but I need to speak to Khun Nong. He picks up a cell phone, presses an autodial number, and hands me the phone.
A soft voice from far away says, “Good evening, sir. How can I help you?”
“By meeting me at the bar in five minutes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m a cop. I have some questions for you. If you cooperate, I won’t be any trouble.”
The phone goes dead, but a door behind the bar opens and a woman in her forties appears. She flips up a section of the bar top and comes to sit next to me on a stool, just as if she’s expecting to be picked up. Her face is blank when she says, “Do you have Colonel Naradom’s permission to ask questions? My bosses make a lot of contributions to the Phuket police retirement fund.”
“I don’t need permission to investigate a triple killing with bells and whistles.”
She seems relieved. “Oh, yes, I heard about that, but it hasn’t been on the news.”
“We’re keeping it under wraps until we’ve had a chance to investigate.”
She nods, thinks about it, then gives me the phoniest smile I’ve ever seen. “How can I help?”
“You send girls to hotels and private homes in a microvan. You’re the only bar that does that. The house on the hill is a couple of miles away. It’s built for pleasure.” I stare at her.
She touches her hair. “I’ve only been in the job a few months. I’ve never had a call from any of the houses on Vulture Peak. Most of the business is to hotels hereabouts. It’s all about farang men who think they’re respectable and don’t have the guts to be seen leaving the bar with one of the girls. So they pay the bar fine, give the name of their hotel and the room number, and I arrange the rest. Usually in such cases the hotel is upmarket, so we have to negotiate. Most of my job is keeping up friendly connections with the concierges. Generally the van takes the girl to the tradesmen’s entrance, and someone leads her to the lifts.” She shrugs. “Discretion pays.”
“But there must be occasions when a farang or some other foreigner who owns a flat or house requires your services. How about parties with dancing girls?”
“It’s rare, but it happens.”
