Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

He slipped his feet into leather sandals in the doorway, and they walked across the compound. Dtui felt somewhat unnerved to be so close to this young man who must have had women falling at his feet. He wore his good looks like a comfortable old jacket.

“What do you all do here?” she asked.

“Oh. Absolutely top secret. Can’t possibly tell you.”

“All right.”

“But these two buildings are Lao secret police.”

She laughed.

“They spend most of their time planning ways to infiltrate the insurgency groups and bug foreign embassies. That little warehouse is ‘weapons training.’ Soviets and Lao with a dozen words in common learning how to arm and disarm bombs. Most of us give the place a wide berth.”

“I get the idea you aren’t secret police.”

“Hell, no. I was doing engineering in Moscow. The bastards dragged me out with a year to go on my degree so I could come here and help them make sense of their Soviet allies. They say if I give them three years, they’ll have their own people back from Russia and I can go finish my Master’s.”

They walked to the far end of the compound, and a small troupe of stocky Lao women in sequined tops and tights walked between the buildings.

“My God, why are they walking around in their underwear?”

“That’s their uniform. This is the performing arts end of the yard. Those girls are training to be acrobats. Lao girls are self-conscious about wearing tights and leotards, so the Russians make them dress like this all day till they get used to it. The Soviets have been here for six months, training them in circus skills. There are all types: jugglers, trampolinists, trapeze artists.”

“What’s wrong with Lao performing arts?”

Before he could answer, a deep roar diverted their attention. As they rounded the gymnasium, they came face to face with a black puma at the end of a long leash. It was only three bounds and a leap from the man at the other end of the rope. He was in his fifties and wore impressive thigh-high boots. Dtui doubted he could see those boots himself, as his stomach bloated out in front of him like an enormous ball of cheese. His darkly handsome eyes peered from a nest of curly red hair that wove into a wild crimson beard.

In his left hand he held a short whip, a seemingly ineffective weapon against such a potentially dangerous creature. But the beautiful black animal prowled obediently to an overturned oil drum and climbed onto it. There she sat and reared upward, clawing her fists through the warm air.

A small class of young men, most of them weighing not half of the creature they were watching, sat cross-legged in the shade of an egg yolk tree.

“That’s your Mr. Ivanic,” Phot told her. “This is what he does for a living.”

Ivanic cracked the whip lightly. The animal stepped slowly to the ground and stood looking at the students like a diner perusing a menu. Ivanic walked toward the back of the gym where cages were lined up beneath a canopy of coconut leaves. He tugged gently at the puma’s leash, and she started to follow him.

This was a duty she’d performed daily for several weeks without much thought. But on this day something got into her. Whether it was crankiness from the breezeless heat, or boredom at the unchanging diet, it’s hard to say. It was as if it just occurred to her that a rope didn’t work in both directions. There was nothing restraining her from the big man’s back.

She quickened her pace so the rope sagged, then broke into a loping run. The students gasped but were too shocked to call out. The puma was already at the base of her leap, coiling into a spring, split seconds from her prey. Dtui screamed.

Then suddenly without turning or changing his pace, Ivanic cracked the whip underarm and behind him. The very tip of the leather snapped against the animal’s snout. She shook her head angrily and stumbled over her bent front legs, turning a complete somersault and landing a foot from where the Russian now stood.

She was more humiliated than injured. The students clapped in appreciation, but Ivanic called something out to them. One of the other interpreters standing behind them translated his words.

“Mr. Ivanic reminds you how important it is to let your animal know that you’re always awake, always alert, and that you have eyes in your arse.”

The students laughed and clapped again and Ivanic led the humbled animal to its cage. It entered with no further fuss. Dtui and Phot walked over to it. There were four mesh cages the size of rattan ball courts. The puma’s neighbors were a small Lao wildcat and a very old lion whose ribs protruded like some ancient xylophone. The fourth cage was shrouded completely in long, worn stage curtains. There were other animals, untethered elephants, deer, and buffalo that wandered around the courtyard in pairs, as if in search of an ark.

Phot spoke to Ivanic, who seemed delighted to see him. They joked about something; then, with a big smile, the Russian reached out one dinner plate of a hand to Dtui and gave her the once-over with his eyes. She shook his hand but avoided the stare.

“Mr. Ivanic is always happy to see a big woman in a uniform,” Phot translated.

Although her mother had warned her that all Western men were lecherous dogs, the greeting caught her off guard. For once in her life, she didn’t have a cutting response. “I’m glad Mr. Ivanic has time to see me.”

With the Russian’s hand uncomfortably against the small of her back, they all walked into the little gym. There they sat around a small card table at one end. At the other, young women were sending their limbs in directions Dtui could never have imagined sending hers. One young lass stood on one leg and held the other against her cheek, the toes pointing to the ceiling. Ivanic noticed Dtui’s grimace.

“Mr. Ivanic asked whether you can do that.”

“Yes, easy. As long as the leg wasn’t attached to me any more.”

The Russian laughed with his whole body and went to give her a hug. She avoided it by bending down to her bag. She dug out the concrete cast and laid it on the table.

“Could Mr. Ivanic tell me what animal produced these marks?”

Ivanic took up the concrete mold and spread his huge hand over it. He looked up at Dtui, not smiling now.

“Mr. Ivanic wonders where you got this print.”

“It was from my boss’s garden.”

“So there isn’t a connection between this and the killings of the women?”

“You know about that?”

“Remember where you are, Nurse Chundee.”

“Right. Secret Police, I forgot. No, this one wasn’t connected to the killings.”

“Mr. Ivanic believes this is the print of a Malay black bear. He estimates it to be quite large for its breed.”

“Did he ever see the bear at the Lan Xang?”

The response was quite heated.

“Mr. Ivanic is very angry at the treatment that bear received. He’s delighted the animal escaped.”

“Is this print likely to have been made by that bear?”

“It’s very likely.”

“Does he believe that bear could have killed two people?”

The response was long and seemingly complicated. Phot had to ask for clarification of a number of points. Dtui’s eyes wandered again to the poor deformed girls and the knots they were tying themselves into.

“Mr. Ivanic is most concerned that there is a ‘shoot to kill’ order out on the bear. He has tried without success to convince the director here to rescind the order.”

“Why?”

“According to him, there’s no way an Asiatic bear could do the damage we’ve heard about.”

“But they are carnivorous.”

“Yes, but they’re the most passive of the carnivores. They may eat small slow animals or kill something wounded and eat that, but it’s very unlikely they’d attack a large animal. It’s unthinkable that they might attack and kill man.”