Bangkok Haunts

my mind. As a kind of old-fashioned courtesy, he has continued with his painting, as if he has not noticed my distress. I take time out to stand up and examine some of the orchids. “But I think you know a lot about the organization,” I mumble.
    He shakes his head. “You just can’t stop, can you?”
    “I think you take the girls to their assignations with the X members.”
    He concentrates on the tail, somehow producing a convincing crimson tone without compromising the fluffiness of the feathers. “You know that much? Nok told you?” Casting me a glance: “That’s why she had to die.”
    “The video, the Damrong video. It was filmed in Tanakan’s suite at the Parthenon Club.”
    “Was it? D’you think he tells me more than I need to know? I wasn’t involved.”
    “But you know how the deal came about?”
    “What deal?”
    “It was a contract, probably voluntary. She offered to die that way in return for a lot of money.”
    He pauses in his painting and looks into some middle distance. “Really? How much? You don’t know? A lot, probably, as you say. Personally, I would jump at the chance. If I could get my family out of his clutches forever, I would die a thousand deaths. You don’t know what it’s like when your blood is mortgaged for life.”
    I’m still feeling wrong-footed, still mumbling in a pathetic, pleading tone. “The thing is, deals like that don’t just happen. Delicate approaches have to be made. It takes exactly the right suggestion at exactly the right time. I don’t know where the original plan came from, her or them. I do know the Englishman Tom Smith was involved.” He grunts. “You can at least tell me about him.”
    He considers this for a moment. “Just another deluded prick. In a society like ours, it’s best to be either a prince or a peasant. Anything in between is too stressful.” He pauses to give me a shrewd glance. “You know, I have no idea what you boys ever saw in Damrong. To me she was a perfectly ordinary-looking Khmer girl, nothing special. You can hire ten for a thousand baht in Phnom Penh. She didn’t give me a hard-on at all. Heartless whores are ten-a-penny anywhere in the world.”
    What can I say? I swallow. “The Englishman—he was a middleman?”
    “Just another lawyer who didn’t know his place. Can you believe he still persisted even after I warned him?”
    “Warned him what?”
    “That the boss wanted his girl. I thought I was being helpful, trying to save a life. He didn’t see it that way.”
    “He knew Tanakan was after Damrong?”
    “He had this
farang
notion about equality, honor, democracy, the righteousness of love, all that nonsense. Damrong told Tanakan about him. I had to do some squeezing.”
    “You mean Damrong was trying to get Smith killed by telling Tanakan he was a rival? Why?”
    “I don’t think she wanted him killed. From what you’ve just told me, I think she had her own agenda. I played the good consigliere. First a polite hint. Second a polite warning. Third time you show them the torture instruments. It was strange. It was as if she were deliberately making both men hate her. She taunted Tanakan with Smith and Smith with Tanakan. Even a novice working girl knows better than that.” He looks at me and shrugs.
    “By the time you’d finished with him, Smith had seen the light? He had to do something to get back into Tanakan’s good books? Tanakan would have finished him professionally, even if he let him stay alive?”
    “Like I say, it was part of her agenda to make them both love her and hate her. I thought she was just another whore with her head in a mess. Now I wonder. Maybe she knew what she was doing.” He puts the newly painted bird back in its cage. “That’s all I can tell you. I’ve risked my life by talking to you because I want at least some tiny part of my soul to survive this incarnation, or I’ll be reborn as an insect. I don’t want money, but don’t contact me again.”

32
    At Smith’s law offices I do not receive quite the same level of attention from our tall handsome lawyer as on my first visit. I have come not as a player in an international porn deal, after all, but as a humble detective and am therefore undeserving of respect. Somebody must have snitched: Vikorn? In this symphony of treachery a mere double-cross would have the simplicity of “Jingle Bells.” I’m not sure even Vikorn knows what side he is on.
    As soon as Smith has me in his office, he slouches on