Bangkok Haunts

shares—offering them to her, begging her to accept them, at the same time painfully aware that he doesn’t have anything the dead might need. He is using terms of address normally reserved for royalty and Buddhas. No Caucasian resistance here, he has accepted the new reality without reservation. “I will build a temple to you,” he is saying. “Your name and image will be worshiped. I am a billionaire—for me such things are easy to accomplish.”
    She laughs gaily and says something in Khmer. It is not difficult to understand, because the guards start to take Smith and Tanakan toward the bamboo balls.
    I try to think of the most far-fetched, illogical solution, the one thing Aristotle would never have considered in a million years. Revolted though I am, I know I have to go back inside the hut.
    It takes only a minute to undress the cadaver. I change quickly into the saffron robes; then, trying not to gag or to fixate on the hideous Y-shaped gash in her torso, I pick her up (she is much lighter without her internal organs) and make for the door, grabbing Gamon’s Kalashnikov and at the same time picking up the butane lighter that he used to light his candles.
    Unaccustomed to the robes, or to carrying a corpse for that matter, I stumble on the stairs, but no one pays any attention. A primal orgy of sadism is in progress, and everyone is enthralled to watch the Khmer bind Smith’s and Tanakan’s feet, then force the two men into fetal position and bind them further like hogs. Tanakan is smaller and therefore easier to force through the hatch into one of the balls. His face is closed tightly like a fist when I reach the compound. Still nobody notices me as I set down the cadaver, take out the lighter, and apply the flame to the cadaver’s left pinkie.
    Damrong now lets out a diabolical oath and turns around, at the same time shaking her left hand exactly as if she has accidentally burned it. She is incredulous to see me, the holy fool, in Phra Titanaka’s robes. But I am pointing the gun at the head of the corpse.
    Any vestigial notion that there might be a rational explanation, or that “A cannot be not-A,” is quite erased by the way she flies through the air toward me (she adopts the diagonal like a banking helicopter, about ten feet from the ground, black hair flying wild, no broomstick), her face distorted with rage. In the circumstances I feel I have no choice but to pull the trigger on the cadaver. In the far distance I believe I can detect the sound of rotor blades.
     
    It is not the approaching helicopter (somehow I knew the FBI would find a black one) that freaks the Khmer, though—it’s the sorcery. Even as the chopper circles above the compound, the thugs are fleeing into the jungle, taking the
mahout
and the elephants with them. Somewhat disheveled, I fear, and not managing the robes very well at all, I walk toward the figure in the black ballgown lying facedown a few yards from me. The wig has fallen off. When I turn him over, he is still breathing, but there is a terrible head wound in the region of his left temple, where I shot the cadaver. He opens his eyes, though, and seems to recognize me. I cradle his shaved head in my hands.
    “She’s gone, I can feel it, she’s gone for good,” he says with a smile. Then: “Whatever you do, don’t save my life.”
    “Of course not,” I reply. “Of course not, Phra Titanaka.”
    “I was a real monk, Sonchai. If I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have felt so much pain, would I?”
    “You were born a monk, my friend.”
    He smiles at that. “I scaled the heights, Detective, I really did. People don’t realize how available nirvana is. I experienced total love, the cosmic power of compassion, Buddha mind, but I could never sustain it. Too many previous wasted lifetimes, all of them spent with her. She was too strong for me. I wanted so much to save her. I thought if I became a monk, a serious one, and transformed myself, then she would have to follow. But she had other ideas. She always did things her way.”
    I think he wants to say more, but he fades away at that moment.
    I drag myself over to the bamboo balls. Tanakan is snugly inside his, but the terrified Khmer dropped Smith outside the other one. From within his lattice womb Tanakan has recovered his nerve and starts to demand that I get him out. I stare at him for a moment, frown, then go over to Smith. “I need a cell phone,” I tell him, but he is not responsive. I have to climb