John Burdett - Vulture Peak

“General Zinna,” I said, and he immediately got the message. He nodded humbly. Now he was a doormat who would take any punishment from the master he loved. “I only heard the story about his accident tenth hand. He’s into body parts, all of a sudden?”

“It was such a terrible shame,” Lek said with a sigh. “That young fellow was tall, strong, and handsome like a dream.” Lek shook his head. “The most beautiful soldier in the army, they used to say. And an ace marksman.”

“Zinna was driving?”

“Of course. He used to love to drive his Ferrari down lonely country lanes with his latest beautiful boy by his side. He doesn’t do that anymore. They say he sold the Ferrari.”

“A cement truck?”

Lek nodded. “It was all General Zinna’s fault, he admits it himself. He didn’t lie or punish the truck driver-he just paid off the cops. They say he really was broken up about it. He tried to buy the boy a new face, even went up to China to arrange for the surgery, because there was that case in the news in Beijing where they transplanted a whole face from a brain-dead person to some guy who got attacked by a Rottweiler-but you can see from the pictures the surgery didn’t really work. He still looks like a monster.”

“He bought his lover a new face?”

“Tried to. The Chinese sold him one fresh from a prisoner they had executed, but it didn’t take so well. The poor boy had to go through months and months of surgery and drugs, surgery and drugs, and he still ended up with a hideous mask. In the end he told Zinna he was going to dedicate the rest of his life to the Buddha. He found a forest monastery in Cambodia that would have him-the Thai Sangha wouldn’t take him. They say he’s achieved happiness. Maybe he’s an arhat already. With that kind of suffering, I suppose you progress pretty quickly. You know the saddest thing of all? He wasn’t even gay, just doing the right thing to get promotion in Zinna’s brigade.”

“Your soldier-lover told you the whole story?”

Lek smirked. “He’s not my lover, darling. You know I’m no good at sex. He tried to rape me that time when we were on the Tibetan case, and then he had a change of heart. He won’t stop asking for forgiveness, he says it’s at least partly my fault for being so pretty. What a charmer!” He giggled. “You see, I don’t think he knew he was gay until that day.” Lek laughed. “Boys are funny.”

“So what’s the connection with organ trafficking?”

“Zinna is all bent out of shape from the accident and what he did to the love of his life, but Zinna is Zinna and always looking for a way to get richer than Vikorn-and it’s like in the midst of the greatest misery, he’s suddenly found El Dorado. He’s blown away by the Chinese-he thinks it’s unbelievably clever the way they sell organs from executed prisoners-and of course the more executions the better for business, so there’s a lot of people on death row who shouldn’t be there. It’s like natural resources with legs that deliver themselves to the factory. He admires that. His first idea was to set up as a broker. You know, matching the supply side from China with the demand side from the West and Southeast Asia. It’s exactly his kind of capitalism: brutal and profitable.”

“Why did you say it was his first idea?”

“Because a lot of people were already in the racket. There wasn’t that much opportunity left. You can’t compete with the Chinese when it comes to business-they never sleep. So he takes his idea a bit further.”

“How?”

“How d’you think? He’s got connections with Burma that go back decades-that’s where he’s got his meth factories. A lot of Burmese would line up to sell a kidney, a piece of liver, an eye, to get their hands on a few thousand dollars. Especially mothers trying to save their babies from disease and hunger. And there are all those executions the generals carry out. Zinna sells Burmese and Chinese body parts, and business is booming. They say it’s better than methamphetamine, and the best news is there’s no law enforcement, not even from the West. Smuggle a little marijuana, and they jump on you. Smuggle a liver that’s been ripped out of a political prisoner, and they wave you on.”

While we were talking, the katoeys came and went through the curtain. It was dark outside. That meant it was after seven o’clock and almost at the end of the rush hour. Now a farang in a business suit slipped in. He was the first genuine customer, so the katoeys made a fuss over him. He had been there before, though, and someone started calling out for Shirlee. Shirlee was a young katoey, perhaps twenty-two or — three, very slim and feminine looking. He was wearing a single-piece fawn-and-gold swimsuit and looked more vulnerable than any girl. He sidled up to the farang, who must have been some kind of lawyer or businessman in his late twenties. The young man in the suit grabbed and hugged the even younger man in the swimming costume. “I’ve been looking forward to this since nine this morning,” the farang said in a voice ripe with lust. He wiped out the dreary reality of the day with a great sigh.

“Are you going to pay my bar fine?” Shirlee asked in a cute-submissive voice.

“Tonight and every night, love.”

Lek, too, had noticed the romantic moment and smiled at me in a provocative way. I shook my head, laughing, and paid for the drinks. While I was waiting for change, a short, bald, and very nervous farang came in. Lek said, “Oh, my,” because it was obvious from his body language the new customer had never been in a katoey bar before. This was a closet breakout.

The katoeys were salivating. Two of them, one in a silver body glove and another in a leopard-skin tunic with short skirt, went up to him. They stroked his shoulders as if he’d been out in the cold too long; he immediately bought drinks. Lek’s eyes said, Insecure, lonesome foreigner fleeing callous whores and worse wives for the twilight world of transsexuals. In your language, DFR, you say, Out of the frying pan into the fire. We say, Escape the tiger into the mouth of the crocodile. By the time my change arrived, the little bald guy was on his third whiskey-and-Coke and was starting to believe the endless flattery he was getting from the two katoeys.

“Your tits are coming along,” I told Lek as I was leaving. “Better not let them show too much, I’m getting heat from Vikorn about you.”

“I know, I know,” Lek said.

My mind flipped back to the case. I paused for a second. “Zinna must have a go-between. He’s too brutal to work directly with Western surgeons and clients.”

“Sure. I even heard the name once, but I can’t remember it.”

“The Vultures. A two-girl team?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Vikorn told me.”

Outside the plaza was starting to hop. Just as I predicted, the rain couldn’t keep the johns away for long. The girls who were grooming one another before were grooming white men now, and those who’d bought new hairdos from the coiffeur at the corner were showing them off behind the bars. A dozen TV monitors were showing a dozen different shows, most of them soccer, and all the sound systems were blaring. Still the rain from Vietnam was flooding the streets; still the girls paused to wai the Buddha shrine and leave lotus buds.

I found a cab fast enough, but we got snarled at the mouth of Soi 4 where it exits onto Sukhumvit. In terms of human sexual activity, this is the busiest corner in the world. Traffic from Nana Plaza, consisting of older farang men accompanying girls they’ve just hired, meets traffic from the other brothels and street pickups, making toward the short-time hotels. Simultaneously newly-mets are arriving from the bars farther up Sukhumvit in the Pleonchit area, looking for somewhere air-conditioned where they can get horizontal for an hour or so.