Now is the problem. Things are going outside the lines and have been ever since the reporter had to be killed, and he’s moments from a conversation that actually frightens him. He can’t remember the last time he was frightened.
He is working on his third possible opening, trying to find a way to position the discussion without its leading to something disastrous being said, when he becomes aware of a regular fluctuation of light, visible even through his closed eyelids. With a sigh of resignation, he opens his eyes and looks at the halogen lamp on his desk, which is blinking on and off. He pushes his chair back a foot or two and reaches down to the lowest drawer, which he pulls open. The files stacked inside are bulky and hard to handle, and he needs both hands to remove them and put them on the desk. The desk lamp continues to flicker as he leans back down to the drawer. On the bottom edge, his fingers find the small metal tab and pull it forward. A little snicking sound signals the rise, no more than half an inch, of the drawer’s false bottom. Ton lifts the bottom panel to a vertical position and pulls out the flat telephone that’s stored beneath it.
Only one person has this number.
Ton breathes twice, swallows, picks up the receiver, and says, “Yes, sir.”
“My boy,” says the man on the other end. “How are you?”
“I’m somewhat preoccupied. I’m sorry to have bothered you, but there’s a problem.”
“No bother, no bother. Before we get to the problems, I want to apologize.”
This line had not arisen in any of his visualizations of the conversation. “For what, General?”
“I didn’t like your idea, the farang snooping around in Pan’s past. Too fancy, I thought. Well, I was wrong. It was obvious almost immediately that Pan wouldn’t get to election day without all that bothersome material coming to light. Got me thinking in other directions.”
“It did?”
“Yes, and I have exactly what we need. But first, tell me about this bullshit announcement he’s threatening to make.”
“It’s Porthip. With Porthip dying-”
“Your farang went to the hospital tonight,” the general says, as though Ton weren’t speaking. “With a cop and another man. The other man could have been a cop, too.”
The back of Ton’s shirt is suddenly damp. “He did?”
“He did. And Porthip told him.”
“He told him? You mean, about Snakeskin?”
“About Snakeskin, about you. You personally. You want to hear the tape?”
“No. That…um, that won’t be necessary.”
“You didn’t know your farang was there, did you?”
This is the topic he knows he can’t control. All he can do is step up to it. “No. He shook his tail. I can’t use my best people, because they know who I am, and of course I’m connected to you. So I have to use contract guys, and they’re not-”
“I understand,” the general says.
Ton tugs his shirt away from his skin and manages not to sigh in relief. “Thank you. But if Porthip’s talking-”
“Don’t worry. We’ve had the limiter removed from his morphine drip, and the nurse has traded his pain pills for junk. An antifungal medicine, I think. Without the pills he’ll medicate himself out of existence by morning. Kinder that way, really.”
“If there’s an autopsy-”
“Not your business,” the general says, and his tone has stiffened. “You already have more, apparently, on your plate than you can handle. But even if there is an autopsy, even if some zealot decides to check the cause of death for a man who was, after all, a terminal-cancer patient, they’ll be expecting to find morphine in his system, won’t they? Worst comes to worst, it’s a compassionate death, maybe a slap on the hand for the supervising doctor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The announcement.”
“I told Pan early this morning that we’d discuss things further in a couple of weeks. He said I wasn’t in charge.”
“Excuse me?”
“With Porthip dying, he said, there wasn’t anybody who could hold the factory over his head anymore. At least nobody who had actually been part of it. So he said we were no longer running his campaign. He’ll still work with us, he says-he’ll need help when he’s elected-but he thinks he’ll win in a landslide now that the fire can’t come back to haunt him. In fact, he said he was going to use it.”
“How the hell does he propose to do that?”
“Without Porthip, he says, he’s the hero of the fire. What he’s going to do is to get the press together-and you know how they’ll show up, especially after the malaria party-and he’s going to announce his plan to turn the factory into a monument to the people who died there. He’ll talk about how he saw the smoke from the road, about how he tried to save them, show his scars. He’s going to say that’s why he bought the place, so he could consecrate it. He’ll clean it out some and make it safe for the public to visit, and he’s going to carve into the walls the names of the people who died there and turn the big workroom in the front into a gallery, with melted machines and photos of the place after the fire. He’s finding pictures of the people who worked there-while they were still alive, I mean-and he’s going to put those with the other pictures. And then he’ll announce a grant of five million baht to fund a commission to look into the working conditions of people who do bottom-wage piecework, especially people who come to Bangkok from the northeast. And after all that, he’ll close things out by announcing that he’s running for the National Assembly, where he can really do something about these issues.”
“That’s it,” the general says. “That’s why he insisted on getting hold of the factory. And it’s brilliant. He’ll have every vote in the northeast. Too bad we can’t work with him.”
“He’s going to make the announcement at the…” Ton trails off, looking at a spot in the air in front of him. His face is suddenly warm.
“At the factory?” the general says.
“Yes, sir.” Ton picks up his cell phone but drops it again. He rapidly flexes the fingers of his free hand, looking down at the phone.
“It would be extremely effective,” the general says. “You wouldn’t be able to count all the votes it would bring. It would probably put me back on the sleeping pills. But thanks to you, thanks to your farang, I’ve found an alternative. Have you been following this kid-oh, well, at my age everybody’s a kid-this young man who started out with the sidewalk popcorn machines?”
“I know something about him.”
“Branching out. A couple of guesthouses, some gift shops in the lobbies of hotels and small airports. Got the rights to an American restaurant franchise called Greens. Heard of it?”
“No, sir.”
“Just the usual burgers and junk, but they have some sort of handbook full of policies to make the business greener, you know? More environmentally responsible.”
“Like what?”
“Who cares? Maybe they use the methane from cattle farts to power the stoves. How do I know? Thing is, green is good. Thing is, the kid’s Isaan. Thing is, the kid will listen to reason.”
“But, I mean, with Pan on the ticket-if he’s running against Pan-no matter how good he is, Pan will wallop him, won’t he?”
The general says nothing. In the silence that follows, Ton picks up his cell phone and scrolls down toward Captain Teeth’s number. Then he stops scrolling and says, “Oh.” He puts the cell phone back on the desk. “I see.”
“And think how the votes would pour in,” the general says, “if he were stepping into the shoes of a martyr.”
Ton says, “Yes.”
“Then we’re finished?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good work,” the general says. “Without your farang I never would have looked around.” The general clears his throat. “You can get your hands on him, right? Not that he could prove anything, but just for neatness’ sake.”