John Burdett - Bangkok Haunts

Lek nods gravely in agreement. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this side of the katoey soul, so I look out the side window, where carbon monoxide is laced with air. We're stuck in the usual jam at the Asok-Sukhumvit crossroads, and a kid about ten years old with a dirty face and exaggerated misery picks his way around the stationary vehicles.

He makes a halfhearted attempt to clean the windows with a broken windscreen wiper, then holds out his hand. When I roll down the window to give him ten baht, hot poison wafts in and the driver complains. "There's no karmic benefit in giving to kids like that," he explains. "Better to get the right amulet. How can you walk around without protection?"

Lek gives me a told-you-so nod. He never removes his shamanic plant roots wrapped in yellow yantra cloth, which hang in a small bunch from a cord around his neck. He often chides me for trying to take reality naked, like a dumb farang.

The right turn out of Asok into Sukhumvit can be tricky without pop pong. Our shaman screeches around almost on two wheels, just in front of a crowded bus, forcing a motorcyclist to swerve and the bus to brake. Then we're speeding along past the Grand Britannia, way ahead of the pack. "Amazing," Lek says, lavishing awe on the ceiling.

I'm pleasantly surprised when the guard at Baker's apartment building tells me the American farang still lives here and is at home this very moment. I give the guard (light and dark blue uniform, handcuffs, and nightstick; he was playing Thai checkers with his colleague sitting at a makeshift table using bottle tops when I interrupted) two hundred baht, and by the time I'm standing outside Baker's door, I already know most of the American's private life. Works regular hours mostly from home. Brings a girl back every Friday and Saturday night, sometimes the same one. Speaks Thai quite well. Likes to work out at a local gym. Never has any money to spare but usually pays the rent on time. Not a big drinker but smokes ganja from time to time. Has a sideline in something photographic, but it doesn't seem to make him much money. Never seems to return to America, prefers to spend his vacations in Cambodia. He was quite an argumentative type of farang when he arrived about three years ago, but he's learned local ways. He's quiet now, respectful; he walks the walk.

I have to decide what kind of knock to use. Too hard, and I fear I will awaken that farang mind-set called Thaicopsyndrome: he could start shivering in his boots and replaying every horror story he's ever heard about our legal system, which is not what I want. Too soft, though, and I could get insolence. I opt for the middle path, which brings him to the door in a pair of knee-length walking shorts, nothing else.

Thirty-seven, male-pattern baldness, gray in his chest hair, an iron-pumper's physique, no tats; he experiences the usual sinking feeling when I flash my police ID. Teachers of English tend to be a subset of the backpacker nation; for us they fit into the poor-and-deportable category of foreigners and tend to think the worst when a cop comes calling.

"I'm here to ask a few questions about your ex-wife, Mr. Baker."

A scowl disguises something more sinister. I think he is not surprised enough. I check Lek with a flick of my eyes. Lek is using feminine intuition, or at least practicing the shrewd, assessing look that is supposed to go with it. He purses his lips at me and shakes his head.

The apartment is built from the same tired building plan that is used all over the world these days: in the hierarchy of concrete caves his owns a window and a toilet, which puts him two points above basic. There are other signs that he is not totally resigned to nonexistence: a laptop opened and sitting on a chair; a corny but provocative poster of a Thai girl sitting topless by a river and a poster of Angkor Wat; some books. I guess Not a Lot to Show would be his category in the global pyramid, a popular level, I have to admit. They have long been a curiosity with me, these farang men who come here to be nobody, as if even that role is too stressful in their Utopia of origin. Now Lek and I are both staring at Baker, who checks his wristwatch, which looks to me like a fake Rolex. (The second hand jerks instead of rotating smoothly around the dial; for some that's all you need to know during your stopover in Bangkok.)

"I don't want to offend a cop, but I have to tell you I have an English lesson in ten minutes."

"Where is your lesson, Mr. Baker?"

"Right here." He looks me in the eye. "A private lesson. You can get me on nonpayment of tax if you want, but it's the only way I can survive. The school I work mornings doesn't pay a living wage."

I nod. "I don't want to deprive you of income. Let's see how far we get before your student arrives," I say.

"Right."

"Your ex-wife, Mrs. Damrong Baker."

He seems uncertain how to proceed. A long moment passes, and then he comes out with it, in a kind of anger burst: "That bitch-what did she do now?"

I raise my eyes and crumple my brow. "What did she do before?"

A mistake on my part; my response was too smart by far. He quickly erases all expression from his face and shrugs. "I was married to her for a year. We lived together. You might as well ask what she didn't do to destroy me-the list would be shorter."

I exchange a glance with Lek and nod at him. I know he is anxious to practice his interrogation skills-and his English.

"Mr. Baker, how did you first meet your Thai wife?"

Baker takes Lek in for the first time. There are not that many transsexual cops in Bangkok; as far as I know, Lek is the only one. On duty he takes measures to disguise his growing bosom and keeps the camp act to a minimum. When he talks, though, his body language says it all. There is shyness and female cunning in the way he does not look Baker in the eye. Baker experiments with an attitude of contempt, then thinks better of it after a glance at me. I jerk my chin: Yes, you do have to answer that question.

He grunts, and a native garrulity takes over. "I was early thirties, getting over a relationship, came here for a ten-day vacation, met Damrong, caught her disease." I flash him a look. He waves a hand. "Just a manner of speaking. The disease in question used to be called passion. The only officially sanctioned form of happiness known to the West: being in love. What a con. I was gaga. Of course I sent her all the money I could so she wouldn't rent her body to another man. Of course I believed every promise she made about that. Of course she lied her head off. Of course she fucked every dude who was willing to pay her price while I was trying to set up a computing business in Fort Lauderdale for us to live happily ever after. Of course I went through all the damned paperwork U.S. Immigration threw at me, of course I married her, of course she came to live with me in the States, of course it didn't last a full year. Of course she's the only woman who has ever reached me that deeply. Of course it's because she had a better grasp of reality. Of course, of course, of course." Waving a hand: "I'm Mr. Average Farang. I got caught the same way they all do, doesn't matter if you're French, Italian, German, British-whatever, it's the same dumb story, over and over again. I don't need to tell you that, right?"

It seems to have been a genuine tantrum, with the usual moment of disorientation straight afterward: Did I really just say all that? He grinds his jaw with the determination of the righteous. "Yeah, that's how it was with me and her. Mistress-slave syndrome. Want to know how I got along with my mother?"

"No, thank you," Lek says with a look of revulsion and a glance at me to take it from there. Estrogen doesn't increase attention spans.

"You sound very bitter, Mr. Baker," I say with a compassionate smile which he disregards by turning his head away.