“Who?”
“The two young thugs who set that bomb.”
I let a couple of beats pass. “Really?”
“They were seen. Two separate witnesses saw them running from the explosion and recognized them. They’re low-grade crooks, lowlifes who do small crime to get by, not real pros.”
“They have form?”
“Tons of it. One has a sideline in bomb-making. Not big terrorist stuff, you know, just local intimidation work. He specializes in settling scores. I don’t need to tell you how the mafia likes to use explosives. They scare more and can be hard to trace. He was also involved in that car-parts scam, you know, Red Kim’s gang were bringing in spare parts and assembling high-end foreign cars from them to dodge the tax.”
“So what, you found prints?”
“Not prints. The bomb experts were able to find traces of liquid petroleum gas. I organized a raid and there were traces on their clothes.”
I glanced at the Sergeant, who was developing deep religious feelings for the two carved monks I’d brought him and listening to the conversation at the same time.
“That’s pretty good news. Wow! You really work fast. You did all that in less than forty-eight hours.” I heard the purring of an ambitious young man on the other phone. “So where is the bad news in all that?”
“They retained Lord Sakagorn.”
“Sakagorn?”
The Sergeant perked up for a moment, then returned to his reverie.
“Yes.”
I let a couple of beats pass. “I see. So did you get a confession, any kind of statement?”
“No. Sakagorn found holes in the way I obtained the warrant. It’s true, I cut a few corners-how was I to know they’d instruct him? He thinks up legal points even the judges have never heard of. He sent one of his assistants to the station to argue, orally and in writing, that there is no power in any of the police statutes and decrees that enables us to hold those suspects. All our evidence was obtained illegally, according to Sakagorn. What do I know? Everybody skipped those courses at the academy. The instructors didn’t know the law either.”
I scratched my jaw, remembering my own year as a cadet. Law was not big on the syllabus. “I see.”
“Detective,” the young detective said in a low tone, “should I be scared?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Please advise me.”
“Let’s look at it both ways. Say you decide to take on Lord Sakagorn and prosecute. You will be bombarded with offers of wealth and rapid advancement if you play ball, and threats of dire consequences if you don’t. In the unlikely event that you win against him in court and get a conviction, he won’t rest until he has used his influence to destroy your career. He’ll find a way to discredit you and win on appeal. If, on the other hand, you play ball with Sakagorn, then kiss your freedom and integrity goodbye, he will own you for life.”
On the other end of the phone I heard the sharp gasp of a young man who had just entered the last initiation, the one where you finally admit there is no way out. My mood altered when he started to cry.
“I knew it would be like this. They warned me, but I believed in my karma and the teachings of the Buddha. They said that I was like a white sheet that would be dipped in black dye every day. From white I would go to dirty white, to gray-in the end, I would be pure black. But I didn’t want to believe them. How have you managed, Khun Sonchai, all these years? You are famous for not taking money.”
“Even preserving one’s soul requires a certain amount of wriggling, Khun Tassatorn. Innocence can’t save you all on its own, it needs help from experience.”
“Yes. I can see that. Do you want the bombing case? Are you saying this to enhance your career?”
“I don’t want it at all. My career cannot be enhanced. I have a reputation, like you say, for not taking money, career advancement is blocked for me. You still have a chance, you’re young and ambitious, it’s just bad luck you got landed with this. You are more than welcome to keep the case, if you like.”
“I’m not crying for my career, Khun Sonchai, I’m crying for Thailand.”
“I know, Khun Tassatorn. What would you like me to do?”
“Take the case, Khun Sonchai. My chief will find a way of transferring it to District 8 if Colonel Vikorn wants it. Colonel Vikorn gets what Colonel Vikorn wants, everyone knows that. Now we’ve talked I know you are so much stronger than I. Perhaps only you could take on a case like this and survive. But please answer one question: why are you so interested in this particular matter? To tell you the truth, I never would have worked so hard if you had not inspired me with your overwhelming passion, rushing off to the hospital like that to visit those old men. I’ve never seen anything like it. When I asked people if Khun Sonchai Jitpleecheep was like this on all his cases, they told me no, normally you were not the kind of cop who always gets his man. Normally you were very reasonable and laid-back, they told me.”
I was not sure how to answer. Why did I rush off to see those three unconscious men? It was the photos on the cell phone of course. Someone takes a hundred pictures of you, the hungry heart assumes it must be love. Curious how the spirit moves.
“I’m not especially interested in the case, Detective. I’m just putting one foot in front of the other, plodding along. I’ve always found that to be the safest.”
“Is that what you advise?”
The trouble with innocence: it tries to recruit someone who has lost it to help retain it. “I don’t advise anything at all, Khun Tassatorn. War is always a balance between wanting to win and needing to survive.”
A long pause. “War. Yes, that’s the one thing they don’t tell you in the academy. From the first day on the beat, you’re at war. And you start thinking like someone in the middle of a battle that never ends.” His voice turned bitter. “You start to think like a cornered rat.”
I let the moment pass.
“It’s not only police work that’s like that,” I said. “My wife is an unemployed academic and she feels pretty much the same way.”
He grunted. I gave him time to recover. Now he changed tack.
“Yes, please take the case. You are braver and tougher than I’ll ever be.”
“There’s no need to talk like that, Khun Tassatorn. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning. I was in the same position as you once.”
“No,” he said with some finality. “In the morning I will not feel better. In the morning I will resign and ordain as a monk. It was the vocation I should have chosen in the first place. I was not made for this world. I’m not built of steel like you. What do you say to that?”
“If you really do it, I shall envy you.”
“Then I will do it,” he said, and closed the phone. I put my own back in my pocket.
“You didn’t talk about those photos of you on the cell phones,” Sergeant Lotus Bud said out of the corner of his mouth.
Throughout my conversation with Tassatorn, the Sergeant’s head had sagged farther and farther to one side until it was resting on his shoulder and he had appeared to be asleep. I shook my head. My street smarts simply did not compare with his.
“He didn’t mention it.”
“Scared,” LB said. “Those pix I found are the real reason he’s giving you the case.”
“Those pictures of me on that iPhone? So how do you explain them?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Lotus Bud said. “But that young blond guy knew all about those old guys, who had been dealing dope for a year. In that time you learn a lot about the business.” He raised a droopy eyebrow to look at me. “You learn what a lot of us have heard over the grapevine.”
“Like what?”
“Like stories about a certain respected detective with a weakness for weed who helps to run his mother’s bar on Soi Cowboy. You would have been the answer to their prayers if they could have first taken you on as a client, then maybe persuaded you to help with sales contacts. That way they would have had cast-iron protection-that’s the way they would have seen it. It’s the way Asia works, and they knew that. Don’t tell me that didn’t cross your mind?”