John Burdett - Bangkok 8

Fatima has crossed the room to join us, apparently drawn by the necklace. He cocks an eyebrow at her, then reaches out to remove her pearls. I see great professionalism here, the suave hands which have adorned the bodies of queens and princesses with his creations. He handles the pearls as if he is handling her body-with infinite tenderness-places them on the velvet of the window display, then-with an unexpected gesture-gives me the jade necklace. It is heavy like a collection of miniature cannonballs as I place it around Fatima's neck. An electric chaos of glances, eye-locks and turned cheeks as I step back to admire it: sex, money, paranoia and a thousand double bluffs crackle under the lights.

"Actually jade isn't really your color, my dear," Warren says, taking out his cigarette case, selecting one, tapping it gently, fitting it to his cigarette holder, lighting and inhaling and taking one pace back, as he must have with a thousand women. He has become impenetrable again and Fatima seems to experience a moment of fear. "Oh, it looks spectacular around your neck, because anything would, but nothing becomes you so well as pearl. What d'you think, Detective?"

I have to agree. The jade looks fine to me, but cannot deliver the shock of the pearls on her chocolate skin. When I replace them, I realize how I missed them, even for that brief moment. The effect is almost unique in that you never quite get used to it. Take your eyes away for a moment, then let them return to the object of contemplation, and it is as if you were experiencing the effect for the first time. Fatima smiles brilliantly, fondles the jade necklace for a moment, looks into Warren's eyes.

The hand which removes the jade holder from his lips trembles slightly. "Okay," he says gruffly. "It's yours. Keep it. The detective will be my witness."

I allow my mouth to drop open, but Fatima seems not in the least surprised. She nods as if at a commonplace sort of homage, carries the necklace to the end of the store. I'm watching in disbelief as she pours it into a black Chanel handbag. Warren is watching me. "Surprised? Actually, she can have anything she wants. What would you like from the window, my dear? Something priceless? My whole Aladdin's cave is yours. I'll be the genie."

Fatima is holding the Chanel handbag close to her stomach. A dark look comes over her face and she merely shrugs. Warren stares at her across the room for a moment, grunts, then reaches into the window to pick up the white tiger. He holds it up for me to look at and I have the uncanny feeling that he heard Kimberley when she admired it and explained it to me. To anyone who knows anything, it's as intimidating as hell.

"I want to take you downstairs to the warehouse," he says, handing me the tiger. I almost drop it in my astonishment that he should entrust such an icon to my hands and I believe I flashed him a look of fear. He smiles, I think in appreciation of my reverence. Immediately, I begin to wonder… "Oh, it's real all right," he says, reading my thoughts.

Holding the tiger in both arms like a mother, I follow him to the back of the shop, and under the eyes of the two Khmer and Fatima we walk out the back door, which I now see leads nowhere except to a single elevator which appears to have the hardened steel adornments of a bank vault. Only the hum of the Mitsubishi electric motor breaks the silence. Now Warren and I are alone in the lift, ignoring each other's eyes as people do in such close quarters, unless they are conspirators or lovers. Warren and I are neither, of course, which makes me wonder why I sense a frustrated longing on his part, a yearning, a silent pleading, even. We seem to descend to the bowels of the earth. The journey takes longer than I expected; his warehouse must lie under the lowest of the car park levels.

"This is it-the real shopwindow, you might say. Professional buyers don't bother too much with what I have upstairs. I wouldn't put it there if I didn't know I could sell it to some fool sooner or later for an inflated price. Down here, though, is where a real connoisseur might find a bargain or two. Beauty is a great mountain, Detective, and fashion only illuminates one face at a time. Sooner or later another side starts to get the attention and, bingo, the hoarder makes his killing. Hoarders are the toughest people to sell to, but also the most fun." An intense penetration of my brain by those gray eyes. "The greatest pleasure in life is to be understood, is it not? But who in the world does an artist like you or me find to understand us?"

I am about to protest, but decide instead to give the great vaulted cellar my full attention. It is far larger than anything I would have imagined from the shop, and charmingly chaotic. I calculate it must be perhaps half the size of the car parking area, with aisles running longitudinally from front to back.

"The mind cannot take in such treasures," I say in Thai, the proper language of reverence.

"Let me help," he says with a smile. I cannot understand why he should be flattered at what pathetic homage a Third World detective can render such a collection, but why would he wish to deceive me? I start when I hear the lift doors shut and the motor hum. He rests a hand on my forearm for a moment to reassure me, but this has the opposite effect. Here in his den I am able to see his strange spirit so much more clearly, experience its agony.

"You understand me, don't you, Detective?"

"I think so."

"And what is your answer to my anguish?"

"Possession in great measure requires great sacrifice, if the possession is not to destroy the possessor," the Buddha makes me reply. Warren grunts and the moment passes as he launches into a kind of sales pitch, beginning with five great stone Buddha heads standing on pallets, clearly stolen from Angkor and bearing tags, which presented themselves to us like prehistoric giants as we turned into one of the aisles.

"Special Agent Jones is bright enough," Warren says, pausing to light a cigarette, "but she's an American cop-she doesn't have your range or depth. I started buying as much stuff from Angkor as I could soon after the civil war started. As an American I felt responsible. The Pentagon bombed the shit out of the country and destabilized it, then the CIA backed the Khmer Rouge because they were the enemies of the Vietcong and we Americans are very sore losers. So, we destroy a country. Well, not quite, these ancient kingdoms don't really die, they reincarnate. But I wanted to save Khmer art, especially from Angkor, and the only way to do that was to keep buying it until things settled down. I'm sending it all back now, at my own expense." A sigh. "To be frank, nothing has changed since The Quiet American-when we finally destroy the whole world it will be with the very best of intentions. Meanwhile, as an American who has been deprogrammed by Asia, I'm trying to make amends. You believe me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"See, that's the difference. Jones wouldn't understand, wouldn't want to believe I can be a good guy. American cops have zero tolerance for moral ambiguity, otherwise they couldn't be American cops, could they? Not that I give a goddamn."

Step by step he takes me down the long corridor chockablock with gold Buddhas, spirit houses, ceramics, wood carvings from Ayutthaya, thirty feet of shelving from floor to ceiling dedicated to alms bowls, another section bearing hundreds of ceramic figurines-it is all amazing, priceless, wonderful. And I am still carrying the white tiger.

When we reach the end of the aisle, Warren takes it from me and sets it on a shelf. "It is the best thing I have. The phrase 'worth its weight in gold' is a cliche which really needs revision. I wouldn't sell it for ten times its weight in gold. Now explain to me, Detective, how I knew it was perfectly safe in your hands?"