“His mobile?”
Ruamsantiah took a rather outdated Siemens from a drawer under the table and handed it to me. With considerable pride I was able to locate both his telephone address book on the sim card and the list of numbers recently dialed and calls received. (You don’t work with whores without learning mobiles, farang.) There was a predominance of one particular number, which looked like another mobile. When I checked with the address book, I saw that it corresponded to the number under the single letter D. The Pink Coconut was watching me with increasing fury, which expressed itself in recurring bursts of sweat with which his face and shaved pate were covered, just as if he’d come in from a tropical storm. (There was a periodic seeping and an unpleasant odor characteristic of consumers of dairy products-you don’t get that sort of stink with lemongrass.)
“D is for Denise, right?” I snapped.
I did not, myself, consider this as evidence of forensic brilliance on my part, but Charles Buckle was clearly impressed. “Yeah.” Then he clammed his mouth shut in an odd kind of way, fearing he’d said too much.
“Let’s see if she’s awake, shall we?”
I used the autodial feature to call the number under D. Twelve rings before a British accent that had been dragged from the bottomless pit of sleep answered. “Chrissake Chaz, what the fuck d’you want now?”
“Good morning,” I said. “This is the Royal Thai Police Force, and Chaz is going to jail for the rest of his life, assuming, that is, that he avoids the death penalty. We would like to ask you a few questions concerning-”
Neither the sergeant nor I was ready for it. Arrested persons in Thailand are hardly ever violent for cultural reasons: the cops would shoot them. Indeed, a second after Chaz charged at me, apparently discounting the wooden table between us, Ruamsantiah was on his feet reaching for his service revolver, which he had stuck in his belt at the base of his spine, but Chaz, mad as a hatter, had launched himself across the table, apparently in a desperate but chivalrous attempt to protect the subject of his right forearm from implication in international drug trafficking. The table had other ideas and moved with him, creating the impression (as I and my chair went down under it) of a kind of four-legged land raft on which the lone sailor was making an adventure tour of the interrogation room, while Ruamsantiah prepared to take a shot at him and I rolled out of the way, spilling the Siemens as I went, which exploded into its various components. The suitcases followed me to the floor, and a few of the blocks burst their packing and crumbled, increasing the net value of my khaki open-neck shirt and black pants by maybe $50,000 as I rolled in their contents. I think Ruamsantiah would not have resisted the temptation to shorten the case with a bullet through that pink coconut had not the coconut itself made violent contact with the opposite wall, leaving its owner groaning in a heap along with what was left of the table. A flimsy third-world piece of furniture, it pretty much disintegrated when it hit the wall, unlike that robust first-world cranium, which suffered no more than a dramatic increase in its pinkness. Still, Ruamsantiah agonized over every cop’s dilemma in such circumstances: shoot the bastard or merely beat the shit out of him?
Reluctantly, but perhaps bearing in mind the mountain of paperwork that invariably accompanies the death in custody of a farang, Ruamsantiah opened the door of the interrogation room and called for reinforcements. Before long the room was filled with vigorous and enthusiastic young men in black lace-up boots who were quick to see a cure for boredom. Coconut began to squeal as I left the room with the remains of the world-class narcotic smuggler’s mobile in my hands.
I had to go to the latrines to dust off my shirt and pants, where I used the occasion to reflect on the fragility of human values: this gray poison, for which people risk life and liberty, was now worthless dust on the floor of an old police toilet. There is no constant in life but change. I also wondered what would happen if I encountered one of our sniffer dogs from the narcotics unit before I had the chance to go home and shower. To the dog, of course, the heroin would remain the most valuable commodity in the universe, since without it he’d be just another unemployed mutt wondering where his next meal was coming from: there are no more enthusiastic supporters of the war on drugs than our sniffer dogs.
Downstairs the forensic boys were too involved with their MP3 project (WAV to MP3 is no problem, but transferring Windows Media Player format into MP3 is quite a challenge, they explained) to check the sim card immediately. They pointed out that in view of the screams from the interrogation room, it did seem as if a confession was imminent, so what was the hurry? They’d get back to me.
Down in the canteen I tucked into a chile-intensive breakfast with a 7-Up before returning to the second floor, by which time the screams from the interrogation room had ceased.
At the top of the stairs one of the young cops in heavy black boots came out to tell me the Coconut wanted to confess. At least, they thought that’s what he wanted. When I entered the room, I was quite pleased to see no blood, bruises, or broken teeth. Whatever they did, though, was amazingly effective. The Neolithic fury had quite dissipated, and the fat face was flabby with surrender and exhaustion, revealing the soul of perhaps a five-year-old yearning for Mother as he lay supine on the floor with a cushion thoughtfully placed behind his head which they propped up against a wall. With most of the buttons on his shirt popped, I saw what a gift he had been to various body artists over the years, some more talented than others, though all with the standard addiction to indigo.
When I asked him if he wanted to confess, he licked his lips and nodded. Now we hauled him to his feet and dragged him to a chair, revealing the telephone book he was lying on. The telephone book is the interrogator’s best friend in these parts. Inserted between boot and perp, it prevents all signs of physical abuse without detracting too much from the point of the exercise.
Ruamsantiah shook his head in wonder. “He’s tough, I’ll give him that. They’ve been going at it all the time you were having breakfast, and they only just broke him. I’ve never seen anything like it-incredible pain threshold. The ugly bastard must be made of concrete.”
Now he mentioned it, I noticed that all the young men were sweating and some were still breathing heavily.
Somebody brought a Dictaphone so Chaz’s confession in English and my simultaneous translation into Thai were both recorded. Chaz was commendably brief (Him: I done it. Me: Done what? Him: The dope), so much so that Ruamsantiah told me to tell him that if he didn’t think up some convincing details, he was in for another round, this time without the telephone book. Chaz seemed to want to comply but was inhibited by some mystic force that had the power to banish fear.
Ruamsantiah: “What happened with the idiot’s mobile?”
I explained that it might be a while before our musically inclined geeks were able to retrieve Denise’s telephone number from the sim card.
“I’ll get it myself,” said the sergeant, who made for the door. By now about twelve young men were all licking their lips. I was not sure how long I could hold them off; nor was I sure if I should hold them off. Maybe if they gave Chaz Buckle a really good going-over while he was still weak from the first beating, he’d see the light and get his sentence reduced by giving us details of Denise’s smuggling ring. If I used my influence to save him from a further beating, on the other hand, he would almost certainly get the death penalty. A man whose main crime was a room temperature IQ would rot on death row while the mastermind Denise went free. Properly understood, karma is more complex than a weather system, but fortunately I was saved from the need to intervene in this man’s destiny by the sudden and triumphant return of Ruamsantiah, who had, he explained, grabbed back the mobile and simply clipped all the bits together again. It seemed to be working, indeed was that very minute receiving a text message: Chaz, where the fuck R U and? is going on?????