“No. I have to start from scratch.”
In the cab on the way to the airport, I fish out my cell phone and the card with the heart on it.
She answers on the third ring. “Hello, Detective.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I kept your number on my phone. I even put you in my address book under Det. Must be love, no?”
“Does your charm always work so well?”
“I don’t use it on anyone else.”
“Because you don’t need to?”
“You sound excited. Are you going to tell me why you called?”
“I just happen to be on my way to Phuket. Want to meet me at the airport?”
“Anything you say.”
She is waiting for me: jeans, T-shirt, flip-flops. Her hair is shiny and full-bodied, a black forest of unlimited fecundity. I am overwhelmed by tenderness. She sends me the same message with a touch of humor in her infinitely yielding eyes. If I were twenty, I would whisk her away somewhere-a lonely beach hut where we could live happily ever after until the world caught up. I take her hand, in flagrant violation of all the rules of interrogation, and lead her out of the terminal.
“I thought we were flying?” she says, leaning toward me.
“We are,” I say.
The office for the helicopter company is about a hundred yards from the terminal down a service road. I already booked by phone, and the reception says the chopper is waiting. It’s a small one with only four passenger seats. Now two pilots arrive and greet us with wais, and we’re taking off in that oblique turning motion that reminds me of Vietnam movies. I think Om has been in the chopper before. She knows where we are going.
The entire journey takes about ten minutes. Now we’re at the helipad on Vulture Peak, a giant H painted atop a mound in a circle of asphalt about two hundred yards from the house, concealed by shrubs. Om has turned to stone-this isn’t the romantic assignation she had in mind-but she follows me to the house, slavelike. I use the key I obtained from the forensic team to open the magnificent door. When she has closed it behind us, I turn to look her in the eye.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks.
“You’re used to luxury,” I say. “I couldn’t afford anything so grand myself.”
She is bewildered but shows no sign of fear. I take her hand and lead her into the vast salon, with its tinkling streams and giant teak pillars. We cross one of the streams to the balcony. It’s dusk; the sun’s glancing rays have turned the sea to blue velvet. It might have been a Tantric moment-two spiritual beings joining our bodies for the salvation of the world-but it would have needed different bodies in a different age. When I put my arm around her, she sags against me, resigned to whatever male fantasy I have in mind.
“Which room do you normally use?” I ask.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“For your customer. The one who brings you here. Which room is it?”
She stares into my eyes. “You’re jealous? That’s what this is all about? If you care that much, why don’t you do something about it? Make me your second wife? Look after me? If that’s what you want. I don’t care about money, just so long as I have enough for my mother’s medicine and some food. I’m not greedy. If it’s just sex you want, tell me how you want it. I’ll do what you want, so long as it doesn’t hurt.”
“How much do I have to pay?”
She turns away, humiliated. “Whatever you want to pay. Nothing, if it makes you feel better. Will it prove that I like you if I don’t take any money? Okay, I don’t want money.”
“What do you wear, usually, when you come here? Does he make you change into anything?”
“He doesn’t make me change into anything. It’s not like that.”
I’m grasping her wrists. “Not like that? Then what is it like?”
“What is it like?” From the wild look in her eyes, I guess that she has guessed: now she knows I know, but it’s impossible to talk about: an emotional furnace. I’m sweating. She turns her wrists to let me know I’m hurting her. I let go.
My voice is quite hoarse when I say, “Do you want to take a shower first? There are towels and bathrobes in every room. You don’t have to use the master bedroom if you don’t want to.”
She shrugs and turns away, puzzled. I watch her cross the salon and enter one of the bedrooms. I choose the master bedroom itself, which the forensic team have cleaned up in the neat Thai way. I wonder if I too should undress. May as well go the whole hog and shower under the great chrome splash shower, use up the last of the gel, grab a towel that the cleaning staff must have renewed, and change into a buff dressing gown with monk’s hood. When I leave the bathroom, I hear her showering in the other room. I take out three photocopies from my backpack and lay them on the bed. The noise of the shower stops. She spends about five minutes drying herself, then walks through the door, also in a buff dressing gown, looks for me, sees me standing by the bed, and smiles. She has eyes only for me and does not see the three photocopies.
I know too much about whores not to understand that she is still clinging to the hope that I will provide a way out; second wife may not offer much in the way of status, but the income is usually regular, and the dignity infinitely greater than bar work. Her smile is frank, vulnerable, sincere. I wish she were more cynical; it would make what I have in mind a lot easier. When I stare at her, she pulls at the belt on her robe, which falls open.
I stride up to her and pull the gown off her shoulders until it drops to the ground. “Tell me how it is with him,” I say. “Is it like this?” I slide my hands down her back, grab her buttocks, and press her pelvis against mine with as much harshness as I can manage. “Is it?”
She is shocked, disillusioned: her dream of a more dignified future has collapsed in less than a second. She shakes her head, tearful.
“No?” I hear the roughness in my voice. “Or maybe like this?” I fall to my knees and lick her nipples one after the other with pathetic gratitude. Her hand drops to my shoulder, then follows the line of my neck to my ear, which she cups and fondles. “Like this?”
“Yes,” she says behind the tears, “like that.”
“Every time? No dominance, no rough stuff, no fantasy?”
“Only the first time. Manu changed after the first time.”
“Manu? That’s his name? And you are the only one who can tame him?”
A shrug. “That’s what he says.”
I stand up and turn away from her. “Please get dressed,” I say to the window. I hear her leave the room. Five minutes later she is back in her jeans and T-shirt, waiting for my next move. I point to the bed where I have placed the photocopies of To and his two women. She puts a hand over her mouth and closes her eyes.
“A lot of people use this house,” Om says. “But they are all connected.” She is dressed, sitting upright on one of the chaise longues while I watch her from a rosewood chair of classic Chinese design. There is a tinkling brook between us. “Manu’s lover, that army general, owns it jointly with that Chinese woman, but he never comes. He uses it to maintain his connections with Beijing. Especially his banking and military connections. He and the Chinese woman put it at the disposal of that Chinese creep-that’s his picture you put on the bed.”
“Mr. To?”
“His name’s Wong.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. My father was Chinese. That’s why my skin is light. He was a peasant from Canton who fled the Cultural Revolution. He was quite old by the time he reached Thailand and married my mother. He said the only thing he could give me was his language. Cantonese. Wong was a Hong Kong Chinese, and so were those women he dragged everywhere with him, so they always spoke Cantonese. They didn’t know I could understand everything they said. I never let on.”
“Go on.”
“What happened that night I told you about, it was all true, but it was only the first time. It seems I was a great success with the Chinese bankers that Wong was entertaining here.”
“Wong was at the party?”
“Oh no, he was much too high up for that. He just made the place available and paid for the entertainment.” She stares at the flow of pure water in the little brook between us. “I didn’t even meet him until the next
