He is staring at me in amazement. Perhaps I should stop here, but once you’ve started on the path to crucifixion, you may as well suck it all up. “Of course, the final experience was the very opposite of that. What you got was a lethal dose of heartburn after all, when you realized she’d been playing you along like the top-notch pro she was, right? How sorry are you that she’s dead?”
His features have quite altered. Malice has returned to his eyes. “So it was you. I figured it might be, but it seemed too much of a coincidence. You’re that cop who fell for her like a sack of potatoes?”
“I want to find the people who did this, Dan,” I say, avoiding his gaze. “Even if you were an accomplice, you were pretty minor. There’s money and organization here, Dan, way beyond anything you’re capable of. I would bear that in mind when the time comes to prosecute. I could probably make sure you didn’t do more than five years, and I’d try to make sure it was somewhere, shall we say, survivable? With luck you would even be able to avoid rape, HIV, and tuberculosis.”
With sudden contempt: “You don’t know what you’re asking. The interview’s over.”
He turns away, so I have to go up to him to twist his head around. “He hasn’t come to see you while you’ve been down here, has he?” To his look of blank incomprehension, I add, “Of course, you didn’t expect him to. Strange, though, don’t you think? You’re on excellent terms with a Brit called Tom who dresses too much like a lawyer not to be one-unless of course he’s an estate agent-who likes to visit you as much as I do. In fact, he visits you after I visit you. That must be either because he is having you watched, or because you call him like an obedient slave whenever the law comes knocking on your door. He stars in your private movie collection too. Indeed, he seems to have more than an amateur’s interest in the ancient art of pornography and enjoys a privileged seat at rehearsals.” I let Baker throw me another of his wild looks, but he does not follow up with a verbal response. “But when you’re in trouble with the law, he doesn’t lift a finger to help you.” I offer a contemplative stare. “At least not a visible finger.”
He has folded his arms in a tight, prolonged shrug. He is shivering again. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Ah! When you have known the scorpion, you are not afraid of the toad, right?” To his aggressive frown: “That’s what the Tibetans said when the British replaced the Chinese as their chief tormentor. Now they’ve got the scorpion back. It’s called progress. I think you find yourself in similar straits: better a toad like me than a scorpion like Tom the Brit, Tom the Lawyer, Tom the Yuppie-Tom the Enforcer, perhaps?”
He thinks I want him to look at me, but I twist him in the opposite direction, toward the open cell door. “I’m condemning you to freedom, Dan. If you want to stay here, you’ll have to come up with some serious answers.”
He gives me a wild look and shakes his head. “Jailor,” I call in Thai, “throw this bum out of here.”
“They’ll kill me,” Baker says, suddenly frantic.
“I know. That’s how we’ll catch them, isn’t it?”
“I’ll run away again.”
“Doubt it. Your mug is on every Immigration computer in every Immigration booth all over Southeast Asia -and let’s face it, your last bid for freedom was a little uncomfortable to say the least. Try to escape again, by all means. Maybe next time I’ll let the Enforcer get to you before I do.”
16
I’m about to pay a visit to the Parthenon Club for Men.
I’m in a four-button, double-breasted blazer by Zegna, a spread-collar linen shirt by Givenchy, tropical wool flannel slacks, and best of all, patent leather slip-ons by Baker-Benjes, which uncoplike wardrobe is entirely thanks to my junior share of profits from my mother’s bar. My cologne is a charming little number by Russell Simmons. I am a humble self-effacing Buddhist, so you can believe me when I say that I look-and smell-sexy as hell. The Thai genes give me a haunted look; the farang genes provide an illusion of efficiency: a high-tech dick or a third world ghost buster? These concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Although the soi is narrow and ends in a brick wall, the Parthenon itself is a gigantic, neo-Roman affair: four blinding white stories of columns, kitsch and camp, with, I am afraid, a great many red lights. A crescent gravel drive leads to the Doric uprights and the crimson, brass-studded double doors. Over the threshold we find an Oriental identity crisis.
For a moment I’m in the Paris of Truffaut, an old French roue who hired my mother for a few months when I was still a kid. He loved Maxim’s in the rue Royale, and for a moment I’m distracted by the Parthenon’s lady lamps. These lamps are five times the size of those in Maxim’s, though, and factory products: the gigantic bronze women are identical in every case. Never mind – my brain is finally processing the decor in a more global way. Louis XV bowlegged chaises longues, gilded coffee tables, tassels in purple, velvet, and old gold; a domed ceiling where plump cupids hunt; Venus de Milo and other amputees on pedestals; and tiered balconies leading upward to the heaven of private rooms for rent by the hour. And there is a stage, empty at the moment save for an unnerving stream of electric blue lighting that might herald the arrival of a UFO: fusion, I suppose.
A mamasan arrives, heavily rouged and wearing a kind of eighteenth-century ballgown; the body inside is not much older than twenty-seven, however. I am sitting on one of the sofas facing the stage, and she kneels down next to me, careful to keep her head below mine. She explains that since it is officially a club, I need to become an official member, a chore that is completed in five minutes and consists mostly of taking a print of my credit card, during which time she has repeated over and over that the member list is secret and kept in an encrypted form on one single non-LAN computer.
I have come early; it is a few minutes past eight in the evening. I am the only man in sight, and now that I am a fully paid-up member of this exclusive club, rewards appear. They come stealthily from many directions; before I know it, I’m surrounded. Four are sitting with me on my sofa, about six others are sitting on chairs, watching and listening with respect, interest, and a certain glassy-eyed look that would morph into adoration if I gave the slightest sign of encouragement. All of them are wearing different kinds of ballgowns with the usual emphasis on powdered cleavage, rouge, and purple eyeshadow. I’m thinking of Damrong while I scan the faces. They are all young and beautiful, of course, but none exhibit that kind of radiance, not even the katoey: it took me a while to spot her/him, all trussed up like Marie Antoinette. Only a very particular kind of self-consciousness gives him away-I would never have been able to tell from his/her face. I am conscious, however, that this Oriental club will doubtless follow a feudal hierarchy, and sounds of female voices come drifting down from the higher balconies. As discreetly as I can, I beckon to the mamasan and point upstairs. A couple of soft words from her make my new friends disappear. As she accompanies me up the velvet staircase with gilded handrail, she mentions, sotto voce, that the girls on the second floor are particularly highly valued, by which she means they charge double up here. Once again we go through the beauty parade. Here the flesh is somewhat whiter, indicating a larger component of Chinese genes, and there is a good deal more shrewd life behind the fluttering eyelids, but I do not see the kind of awareness I am looking for. No katoeys either.