John Burdett - Bangkok Haunts

"Comes with the territory, doesn't it? Know any farang men in my position who aren't bitter?"

I shrug. "Cultural conflict has its casualties."

He turns to stare incredulously. "Cultural conflict? You mean between a Western man with his pathetic need for a safe womb to crawl into and a Thai whore looking for a gold mine to exploit? I guess you could call it cultural conflict if you were giving a seminar to anthropology students." He scratches his head and shakes it. "Total fuck-up is what I call it. Of me, by her. Period."

I check Lek to see if he is as intrigued as me. I think he is. When a psyche is fragmented, it often experiments with different postures. What posture should we provoke now?

"Mr. Baker, let me be frank. I have checked the national database here in Thailand and sought assistance from the FBI." I smile.

Knowing that I know causes a new Baker to emerge from the old. He snaps his head around to stare at me, then smirks. "The Bureau? They told you about her little scam?"

"Only the criminal record part. I'd love to hear the details."

The smirk becomes a permanent fixture, proclaiming, I think, a defiant pride. "So I did six months' jail time after remission, for pimping. She got deported. That's how it panned out, but it wasn't what I had planned when we married." He pauses to stare at the topless girl in the poster for a couple of beats. "I was still in the walk-into-the-sunset, midpubescent phase when she came to live with me in the States. We hadn't been married a month, though, when she disappears for most of one Saturday night. I'm calling emergency services, I'm going out of my mind thinking she's been raped or murdered or both, or been run over, all the crap that drives a man crazy when he's in love. Then she walks in about four in the morning with a great big grin on her beautiful, cynical face and lays out more than a thousand dollars on the kitchen table. Sheeze!"

This last is a kind of yelp, caused by severe backbite of heartburn. He has to gulp a couple of times. "She didn't care so much about the money as the power, the very liberating act of walking out at about seven p.m. in a big strange land and coming back more than a thousand dollars richer a few hours later. That turned her on a lot more than I could."

He has to pause to steady himself, then appears to regain sovereignty over his mind. "She tossed me half the money and told me how it was gonna be. I'd never seen that side of her before. It was frightening and very unnerving. I cried like a baby for two whole days, but it didn't affect her at all. She had seen men bawling like that plenty of times. No way was she going to change, and she wasn't afraid of violence. I didn't even threaten to hit her-she was way too tough for that. Kick her out? And spend the next months in mental torture wondering about what she was up to in the States?"

He scratches his chest hair, lets a couple of beats pass. "After I'd quit bawling my eyes out, she started talking reality. She told me about her childhood. I mean, she told it like it is in a way you never hear Thai people talking unless you're one of them. I started to see the world with her eyes. It was a total personal revolution for me, what it must do to your head, growing up like that. In the West all our problems are social and psychological these days. But suppose you were programmed in a totally different way, suppose your very existence was constantly under threat, and there was no way out-no way out. That was her message. She didn't give a shit that she could make a lot of dough in the States- that didn't alter the fact that all her people, everyone she had ever known and been fond of, they were still there, trapped, hungry, impotent." Waving a hand: "At least that's how she put it at that stage. She admitted she was in America to work, not to play at love. She said she had a family to look after. Turned out she was talking about her kid brother. I don't think she gave a shit about anyone else."

A long pause filled with heavy sighs. He does seem to be going through something. "At first I only went along with it to keep her from leaving me."

"You became her pimp?"

"Not really, but the law saw it that way. In the technical sense I suppose I was, but that lady didn't need a pimp. What she needed was my house and me as a secretarial service." A pause while he fidgets with something on the table. "Then later to hold the video camera while I was standing in the wardrobe and she was performing with the John." Looking me full in the eye: "Within six weeks she had a full diary for every day, starting at lunchtime and going through to about two A.M. Word of an exciting new game spreads real quick in a small town in America. She had the local movers and shakers lining up-the male ones, that is-practically begging for the privilege of hiring her body. Big shots who owned chauffeur-driven limos arrived at our house in hired cars and taxis. Within a few months we were in a position to blackmail most of the leading local lights, including judges and prosecutors. That's why I only did six months' jail time and she only got deported. It was a deal. If they'd have gotten heavy, we would have started flashing video clips. As it was, we made three hundred thousand dollars before they closed us down."

He's walking around his small room, fidgeting with this and that, pretending the poster of Angkor Wat needs adjusting. My eyes rest on it: the vast, sinister jungle temple with its five phallic towers at the center. I think we have arrived at yet another psychologically interesting moment, when there's a knock on the front door. Baker cannot disguise his relief and says with an apologetic smile, "That's my lesson." Hurriedly he grabs a T-shirt from a drawer and pulls it on.

I nod for him to open the door, and Lek and I both examine the new arrival: a slim Thai in his early twenties, respectfully dressed in white shirt, black pants, and polished black lace-up shoes, an innocence in his eyes that you rarely see in farang of that age. What unreal ambition has brought him here today, probably on his day off from some dreary office job? What stories has he believed about the global economy and language skills? When he sees me, he makes a respectful wai and says, in excruciatingly correct English, "Excuse me, am I interrupting a conference?"

"We're just going," I say in Thai. In English to Baker: "Perhaps we might return at a more convenient moment?"

Baker gives a helpless shrug to say, A Thai cop can make me do whatever he likes.

"Say seven P.M.?"

"Tomorrow evening would be better. I've got another private lesson at six, and then another at nine, plus I'm working at the school all day."

Lek and I stand up. "Tomorrow then." I cough apologetically. "Mr. Baker, I'm afraid I must ask for your passport in the meantime. I will return it to you tomorrow."

The Thai student makes big eyes. He hadn't realized I was a cop, and to see his respected ajaan hand over his passport suddenly changes the dynamics. He's ready to flee from Baker, so I say to him in Thai, "Just an immigration matter," and smile. He smiles back with relief. Downstairs I slip the guard another hundred baht on condition he keeps an eye out for Baker's comings and goings.

In the cab back to the station, I check Baker's passport, then pass it to Lek. We exchange a shrug. Baker was out of the country at the time of Damrong's killing. It would seem he flew to Siam Reap in Cambodia, the nearest airport to Angkor Wat, several days before the event and did not come back until after the approximate time of her death. Damrong owned an American and a Thai passport; both documents indicate that she had not left Thailand for more than a year before her death. Forget Baker.

Without any leads other than Baker, I decide to spend quality time with the ladies in my life. I take my mother, Nong; Chanya; and the FBI for a buffet supper at the Grand Britannia on Sukhumvit, just near the Asok Skytrain station. A gay waiter charms Chanya with his concern for her condition and makes her laugh when he admits he envies her. The FBI also is solicitous and insists on fetching her whatever food she wants, while Nong casts a shrewd eye over the clientele.