He stops to hold my shoulders and turns me to face him full frontal, smiles again with tolerance and patience, like a lover who does not doubt his wooing will win out in the end. “Don’t you want to thank me for setting it all up for you? You do know it was me all along, don’t you?”
“Ah, yes, I think I worked that out. The iPhone was yours, there was only one entry in Contacts, I called it. Yes, you set it all up brilliantly.”
He smiles and looks as if he is about to pinch my cheek, so pleased is he with me. “I can wait, oh yes I can wait, but you have to let me share my little treats with you. One by one, not all at once, naturally. The last thing I want is to freak you out.”
I am focused on his voice now; light, silky, freshly washed, not a trace of blue-collar masculinity; not a soldier’s voice at all. It sings a song of vacancy. Is that a howl I hear behind it all? Is this really my brother? I feel his antiseptic need like a steel band around my head, tightening. This must be the demonic motivation Dr. Bride spoke of: the vacuum from which all life flees.
Only now I become aware of the car that has been following us. It is exceptionally quiet because it is a sky-blue Rolls-Royce. Now it slides up to stop with the rear near-side door perfectly aligned with us. The door opens. “Please, my dearest brother,” he says and jerks his chin.
I enter a HiSo world of aromatic leather, discreet perfume, air-conditioning at a pleasant twenty-three centigrade, and the famous barrister Lord Sakagorn dressed in a dinner jacket with plum bow tie, his long hair held back in a new silver clip, sitting in the front passenger seat, his liveried driver at the wheel.
“Are you excited?” the Asset asks me. “You’re going to see your kid brother strut his stuff-not all of it, just a little exhibition to help with sales, isn’t that right, Lord Sakagorn?”
Sakagorn is almost dumb with embarrassment. “Yes,” he manages and sags. “Yes, that’s right.”
Next to me in the backseat the Asset stretches out. He flashes me a smile. “Forgive me, my brother, I need to go into a different space now. I have to prepare. I might not have time for you until it’s over.” He closes his eyes and psychically disappears, leaving only that extraordinary body.
–
Silence as the limousine rolls through Chinatown. Normally there are gold shops with glittering lights and Sikh guards in turbans with pump-action shotguns on just about every corner, and hundreds of small clothes stalls that take up the sidewalks and narrow the road; now, though, it is too late even for gold traders. We pass a couple of Chinese Christian churches that were founded before Constantine converted, a huge gaudy Taoist shrine, the Temple of the Gold Buddha, then a glimpse of the river. Fangton, the other bank, is the downmarket side where murders are more common and less expensive: I take comfort from the fact that this is Sakagorn’s Rolls-Royce and all the people we pass give it a second glance. A kidnap is unlikely. Now we take the bridge to cross the river.
“It’s a fight?” I ask Sakagorn. It is the obvious conclusion, after all. The Asset is quite still and appears not to have heard the question.
“Yes.”
“A kind of exhibition match?”
“You could say that.”
“Who-” I stop myself because I almost said we. “Who’s he fighting?”
“Rungkom.”
I gasp. “Oh no.”
Sakagorn doesn’t say anything, merely stares ahead into the night.
–
Rungkom retired as unbeaten Muay Thai national and international champion about five years ago. People wondered why he didn’t keep fighting for another few seasons, considering the amount of money he was making; there was a hint of moral weakness, whether women, drugs, or alcohol is unclear, although most gossips cited all three as probable causes. Everybody knew that Rungkom, a great bashful hulk from Isaan when he first started on his career, just loved to party with Krung Thep’s fashionable elite. The usual dark stories abounded, implying a dependency on cocaine and indebtedness to loan sharks. What I remembered of him in the ring was an incredible high kick with speed and feints that seemed to come out of nowhere. It was so fast and so hard, no one could figure out a response. Most of his fights ended in the first or second round. His face, rocky with scars, appears vividly in my mind as we drive to the fight. I recall that his path has taken a certain predictable turn since his retirement and drug dependency. He is by far and away our most popular and expensive private boxer: the kind rich men hire to fight bare-knuckle in secret locations where the betting starts at a million baht.
Sakagorn’s driver slows the car when we reach a ragged area where not much has been done to separate the land from the river, which flooded a few days ago, leaving a lot of mud and uninhabitable dirt between building projects that were ruined by the water. The driver knows where to stop thanks to two large halogen lamps that have been set up on the wasteland where a single white Lexus people mover is waiting with the lights on.
The barrister Sakagorn shakes his head. “Such a shame, such a sacrifice-but what can you do?” Suddenly he loses control. “Fuck you, Jitpleecheep, fuck you to hell.” I stare at him. “It didn’t have to be Rungkom, any bunch of hoodlums would have done. He could take out ten no problem. This is to impress you.” The Asset remains in deep meditation, oblivious.
We stop about a hundred feet from the Lexus and Sakagorn gets out of the Rolls. At the same time the sliding door of the Lexus opens and Goldman emerges. The halogen lamps catch the catastrophe that seven decades have wrought on the agent’s fat face. Unlike Sakagorn, though, he seems in fine fettle: a man in a rare mood eager to rock and roll. He waits for the aristocrat to approach him. I watch Sakagorn cross the waste ground. Lord Sakagorn seems to diminish in stature with each step. The two men do not wai or shake hands. Goldman sneers down at him while they speak.
Now I become aware of another vehicle, a huge Toyota Carryboy at the opposite end of the clearing, which I had not noticed because it sits in darkness. The internal lights flash on as doors open on either side. The mighty Rungkom and his trainer emerge, with two bodyguards. The athletic figure of the former Muay Thai star stands out, a superior being in his own right. When the doors shut and the light goes out, the fighter and his entourage of about six or seven are almost invisible. They stand near the truck and wait. Rungkom folds his arms and stands with his legs apart, steady as a rock in the shadows.
It becomes clear we are waiting for someone else. Lights of another vehicle arriving at the edge of the wasteland light up bits of ground, then pick out bits of the night sky as it bounces over debris. The new vehicle is a people mover, a Toyota that looks hired. Music and laughter burst from it when someone opens the sliding door at the back. The music is a mixture of Thai and Cantopop, the laughter both raucous and effeminate at the same time. Now Professor Chu emerges; both Goldman and Sakagorn rush to welcome him. While they are doing so, three exquisite katoeys also emerge, giggling and rasping simultaneously. They recognize Rungkom across the clearing lit up from the lights of their vehicle and wai him like a hero. Then they spot his opponent, the silent Asset who has emerged from Sakagorn’s Rolls to lean against it negligently. Who will die tonight? The katoeys give way to frivolity, as if the tense mood is something to be tasted like wine, then spat out again. But they follow the discipline of the bordello: their job is to take care of Chu; that is what he is paying for and those are seasoned professionals behind the baby-doll faces. They gather around him, searching his body language for clues as to how he wants to play this very exciting game.