time.”
“The next time?”
“Yes. Like I said, we were a hit. Especially me. Those were just peasant boys at that party who got recruited into banking-they’d never seen anything like it. Especially that little trick with the gold ring. The word spread. Wong’s masters in Beijing were delighted, so Wong did it over and over again. Only this time he insisted on private rehearsals.”
“I see.”
“The Hong Kong Chinese woman was his face at the party, making sure everything went smoothly, but he planned everything.”
“And he-”
“He never screwed me. He groped me a lot, but he was a born voyeur. He sat with his two weird women and watched me do things for him. Often he would have them film me while he masturbated. And every time what he wanted was a little weirder, a little more extreme. He got very aroused just having me as his creature, telling me ‘Do this, do that’-all the time pretending it was a rehearsal, of course. He would turn bright red, and the sweat would pour down his face.”
“And at the same time you were-I mean, Manu was your client?”
“There was overlap. That General Zinna called the bar one night-he’d heard about us from Wong-to say he had a special assignment, money no object. He told the mamasan about his problem, and she came up here with me the first night. Nobody knew how Manu would react. They kept him locked up in the main bedroom while they explained to me that he could be difficult. I got scared and asked if he had AIDS. They said no, nothing like that, no communicable disease-but he’d been in an accident. It would be better for both of us if I worked in the dark. So I did. He was like an animal at first, but I could feel his hurt. He had me every way he wanted, but he stopped being rough after a while. They paid me more money that night than I had earned for six months. I bought my mum a house. The mamasan said they were very pleased with me.
“Then the client-Manu-wanted me again. So the second time I told him to switch the lights on. It was a shock-I thought I was going to ruin everything by vomiting-but I remembered my vow to help all living creatures toward enlightenment, and that saved me. When he realized I could have sex with him knowing what he looked like, he just melted. He can’t live without me. He’s like a child with me.” She looks me in the eye. “You know he can hardly talk, only whimper and blather? When he wants to tell me something, he has to write it down. The accident ruined his larynx almost completely.” Om swallows and looks away.
“How many entertainments did you take part in all together?”
“I’m not sure. About ten.”
“And the clients-were they always midlevel bankers?”
She looks away, bites her lip.
“Om?”
“No. But I told you, these were all people from the north, in the Beijing area. They didn’t speak Cantonese so I didn’t know what they were talking about.”
“Always from the north, Om?”
She is holding out on me. She exhales. “No, not always from the north.”
“So there were occasions when you did understand everything that was being said, when they assumed you could not understand a word?”
Reluctantly: “Yes.”
“And what were they talking about?”
“It happened twice. Once it was a bunch of cops from Shenzen, the other time it was a group of prison officers from somewhere in Guanzhou.”
I wait. It seems she has forgotten the question. “What were they talking about, Om?”
“Body parts,” she says. She looks into my eyes. “That was the connection. Even when the group was from the north, I could understand some words. I didn’t follow the story until the Cantonese-speaking groups came. Then I put the picture together. It seems there is quite an industry-everything that goes on in this house is connected. Even Manu-he is connected through his operation. He knows some of the players. He knew Wong, for example, who you call To.”
I think about that. “But I still don’t get it. What’s the connection between a bunch of men on stag parties to Phuket and the organ-trafficking industry?”
“Exactly that. The parties were all for men who had had successful transplants of one kind or another. They were allowed to invite their guanxi group to celebrate their survival-‘like being reborn,’ was what they kept saying. Ordinary Chinese are just as superstitious as Thais. If they think some piece of good fortune has saved their lives, they feel obliged to share the joy, give thanks.”
“Transplant operations made possible by removing the organs of people who had been executed… by that particular work group?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. When it was the cops, yes. I think they had a thing going, you know, if a fellow cop needed a fresh new liver, or kidney, or something, they would go and find one for him. Same with the prison officers. These were tightly knit male groupings, you know, with that thing men do: all for one and one for all.” She scowls, then shrugs. “Survival.”
I let about five minutes pass while she stares at the stream and twists a tissue into a knot and slowly shreds it over the floor. “So, Om, are you going to tell me who killed Mr. Wong and his two assistants?”
She stares down at the little pile of white tissue fragments on the parquet, then looks up at me. “You see, Manu thinks of this house as his own. He likes to feel he can sneak up here anytime he likes, like a wild animal with a secret nest. And he has all the keys. Of course he stays away when there’s a party or something, but it’s part of his relationship with Zinna that he can have anything of Zinna’s-because of Zinna’s guilt.
“One night I was here ‘rehearsing’ in front of Wong and the other two. They were facing me, and I was standing in front of the balcony, so I was the only one who saw Manu. He used his key to slip in, but he must have known there were people here because of the car outside. So he made no noise. I was naked, and Wong was telling me what he wanted. It was quite extreme, and I felt humiliated because of Manu. Manu disappeared for a moment, and I thought he’d gone. But it seems he just went somewhere in the house where there was a gun. It was a pistol.
“Suddenly he wasn’t Manu the cripple anymore. I could see the kind of young man he must have been before the accident. He walked tall. I was sure he’d do something cruel to them, because he was in such a rage. But he didn’t. He controlled himself. He was a soldier, so he knew how to aim a gun. He shot all three of them in the back of the head, one after the other in less than a second. It was an execution.” Silence, then: “Who cares if people like that die? They were going to be reborn as pigs or insects anyway.”
She is staring into space. I say, “The three cadavers were expertly harvested for all major organs, even faces. Who did that?” She stares at me until her eyes grow big, but she doesn’t answer. “Who called a certain telephone number to bring in the experts? The ones who know how to extract valuable organs and sell them on the international market?”
She continues to stare, as if my question has no meaning.
23
I’ve hit the ground running. Vikorn called me about a minute after I landed in Bangkok and ordered me to take a cab straight to the police station. Now I’m knocking on his door. Now I’m taking a seat at his desk. The three Americans are here in their usual positions: Linda and Ben on the Italian sofa, the older man, Jack, on a high chair with arms. I tell the story of my trip to Phuket and Om’s evidence. The Americans listen intently to every word; Vikorn nods now and then. When I’ve finished there is a long silence, then Jack says, “Linda?”
“I’m fortified in my original opinion,” Linda says. “I say we keep the Colonel’s name out of this. Let the detective carry on with the investigation if he wants to. I guess there are quite a few loose ends to tie up. Especially if we assume the perp, this Manu character, doesn’t have the skill to remove organs from the recently deceased. But let him do it sotto voce. No publicity until after the election.”
