added gusto, the katoeys are even more extravagantly made up, and halfway down the street one of the larger bars has set up a Muay Thai boxing ring where two battered fighters are slugging it out-or pretending to: no need to throw or take any serious kicks for a bunch of foreigners who don’t understand what they’re looking at.
In the Chung King I have to squeeze between girls and clients to reach the bar. I don’t hold out any hope that Om will be here, but I ask anyway. This time the mamasan smiles: “She’s just arrived. Over there.” She points. Om is in a very short skirt with a skimpy silk blouse tied under her breasts that looks like it would fall open with a single tug; I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing a bra. She is talking to a tall farang, her body language restrained although the smile is as seductive as usual. “He’s not a regular,” the mamasan says. “D’you want me to call her over?”
I do not say You bet, but she gets the picture. I’m surprised she takes the trouble to squeeze between bodies to reach Om and whisper a few words in her ear. Om turns immediately and smiles at me across the room. All this may not sound strange, DFR, but it is; my upbringing makes me abnormally sensitive to breaches of brothel etiquette. When Om arrives she puts a hand on my shoulder. I cannot resist placing one on her hip. Inexplicably we behave like old lovers, delighted to have come across each other again after a long break. I’m feeling bewitched when I say “I, I, ah-” and blush.
She smiles. “D’you want to pay my bar fine?”
It hadn’t crossed my mind, but of course it’s the obvious thing to do. If I pay her bar fine I own her for the rest of the evening. I can do what I like with her. I can even interrogate her. I say, “Yes.”
She disappears for a moment to bring me a bill on a silver plate. I throw a thousand baht onto the plate without looking at her and wait. Ten minutes later she’s in jeans and T-shirt when she brings me my change. Now I can hardly believe I’m walking down the main street with her, holding her hand. I can’t believe how good it feels. How right.
“I have to talk to you,” I say, after we’ve watched the Muay Thai for a while.
“D’you want to take me back to Bangkok?”
“The beach will do.”
She makes a little pout of disappointment. When we reach the beach, we sit in the same chairs as before, looking out to sea. She waits. I ask for a cigarette. My hand is shaking a bit when I take it and let her light it. I remain silent for a long moment to give the impression of being in control. “Just tell me where you were earlier this evening.”
She feigns surprise. “This evening? I’ve been-”
“Don’t,” I say, “don’t spoil it.”
“Spoil what?”
“Your beautiful face with a lie,” I say with more tenderness than I intended and, surprised, experience one hell of a hard-on.
She takes a long toke on her cigarette. “Where do you think I’ve been?”
“Up on Vulture Peak. With a client.”
She turns away to blow smoke into the black night. “Yes.”
I take five minutes to reply. “Who was the client?”
“Who do you think?”
“Manu.”
She shrugs.
“You knew it was me up there when you ran away, didn’t you?”
A nervous toke on the cigarette. “I guessed. Who else would it have been?”
“You know I can arrest you?”
“For what?”
“Just about anything, from breaking into a house, violating a crime scene, to suspicion of murder-a triple murder. An atrocity of the worst imaginable kind.”
She shocks me by bursting into laughter, then recovers.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have protection?”
“Yes.”
“The army?”
She is quiet for a long time. Finally she says, “Detective, get out of Phuket. This isn’t Bangkok. Nobody here will take you seriously. It was I who told the mamasan that if you came tonight, she was to let me know immediately. I like you. Maybe I feel about you the same way you feel about me. That’s why I’m trying to save your life. There’s a rumor going round that someone was murdered-a clerk from the land registry.”
“So?”
“There are people who want to know who did it, and they’re not cops who can be bribed.”
I let that pass and go back to her earlier sentence. “How do you know how I feel about you? You hardly know me.”
“I think I know men. Get out of here. Don’t stay the night. Go back to your wife. If you can’t get a flight, take a cab to Surat Thani and stay the night there. You have no idea how big this is. I haven’t told anyone that you were up at that house tonight. But-”
“But he will?”
She lets the moment hang, then changes tack. “So what is this all about? I thought it was a murder investigation? So, the case is solved. You know who did it, because I told you.”
I look away down the beach. “I suppose it’s because you’re a professional you guessed I’m married?” She doesn’t answer.
I’m trying to puzzle it out, sending all the conflicting information into the great reservoir of consciousness the Buddhist theorists talk about.
It works. After a few minutes I think I have it. “You go to temple a lot?”
“Yes.”
“You’re devout?”
“I’m a whore.”
“But you take the Dharma seriously?” She doesn’t answer. “You would do anything, including screw me for free, so as not to have my death burdening your karma? But it is unusual for anyone to think like that-unless there are other deaths weighing on your conscience. Of course, if you were dragged into the organ-trafficking business, somehow, against your will perhaps…”
She’s quiet for a long while. She seems depressed. “Please leave Phuket tonight.” She stands and walks away.
I sit there for a few minutes, thinking, then give a good long sigh. I haul myself up from the chair and make my way to the main street. When I see a cab, I hail him and, standing in the road feeling a little theatrical, tell him in a loud voice to get me to the airport immediately. When we’re out of the main street, though, I change my mind. “Take me up to Golden Goose temple,” I tell him.
“I can’t take you all the way up. You have to climb the last half mile.”
“I know.”
It seems like a long shot, but really it isn’t. Of course, Buddhism is a science of the mind, so in theory it doesn’t matter where you worship. It doesn’t matter if you worship at all, so long as you follow the path. But I know sixty million Buddhists who don’t think that way. Not a believer, from lowly farmwives to aristocrats, who doesn’t have their favorite power center, that special temple that has always brought them luck, that particular monk who seems more enlightened than the rest.
The Golden Goose mountain is one of those places that have probably been sacred to humans for as long as there have been humans. I bet before Buddhism it was the center of an animist cult, and before that they probably sacrificed people up there. It’s just such a perfect takeoff spot for the other side. And it happens to be held in respect by many of the ladies who work the night and need somewhere to go now and then to cleanse themselves.
The cab drops me at the end of the road, and I find the steps that lead up. It must be about one in the morning by now: the moon has completed more than half its transit. I’m tired, though, and the steps are steep. When I reach the doors of the temple, they are locked, but an old man is on guard, which is to say awake on a mat under an awning. I tell him I’m a former monk in need and give him a few hundred baht. He opens the gate and
