Bangkok Haunts

secure the hut while we’re waiting for the forensic team, but there isn’t going to be anything we don’t know already: Pi-Oon, his great prizefighter face still in a howl of agony, his artist’s hands twisted and torn, fingernails ripped out, a hole between his eyes and a bigger exit wound at the back of his skull, is propped against the lower part of his self-portrait in the middle of the triptych. Khun Kosana seems to have been executed standing up, because there is a vertical trail of blood on the painting, pointing down to where he is collapsed on the floor. He too bears the entry and exit wounds of a single professional shot.
    “Nobody knows anything, of course?” I say to Lek.
    “The shots were heard about three this morning. Yesterday evening about seven a tall, well-dressed
farang
paid a visit. He asked someone for directions, so it must have been his first time here. He spoke Thai with a thick English accent.” Lek is avoiding my eyes. When I try to bond with him, he says, “I’m going to the
wat,
” and leaves me in the hut to wait for the forensic team. When they arrive with their plastic gloves and video equipment, I go to find Lek at the
wat
at the entrance to the shantytown. He is sitting in semilotus facing a gold Buddha on a dais, straight-backed, his eyes closed. I light a bunch of incense to stick in the sand tray, sit with him for half an hour, then leave. In the street outside the
wat
I fish out my cell phone to call Vikorn. When I describe the scene of torture and murder, he grunts; when I tell him one of the victims is the famous playboy Khun Kosana, he says without missing a beat, “It didn’t happen.”
    “But—”
    “It didn’t happen.”
    “What about his family and friends?”
    “He was tragically hit by an untraceable truck.”
    I take a deep breath. “Colonel, this is a murder. We’re cops.”
    “This is Thailand, and I got a phone call five minutes ago.”
    “Just a phone call is all it takes? The one who made the call—how much is he going to pay?”
    “Mind your own business.”
    “You have no sense of responsibility at all?”
    “Cut it out, mooncalf. If you hadn’t investigated, nobody would have wasted them. If I’m taking money, it’s in return for covering for your fuck-ups. Maybe you’re the one who needs a course in responsible behavior. Who told you to get so intense about a little old snuff movie in the first place? Nobody cares about that whore except you.”
    He is using Teflon Voice, preempting all argument. I’ll have to use Baker, I’m thinking as I close the phone. He’s the only lead left. But does he know anything?

9
    Three hours later I take a cab to Soi 23, where Lek is waiting for me on the corner. On the grounds of Baker’s apartment building the guard tells us the American
farang
has received three visitors that afternoon, two of them young Thai men who were probably English students, and one a tall, well-dressed Englishman in his early forties. The Englishman stayed for only ten minutes and came away looking concerned.
    This time when Baker opens the door to his flat, he is dressed in an open-neck shirt and long white pants. He is barefoot, however. We settle down in his plastic chairs, and I decide to resume where we left off.
    “So your wife, Damrong, is deported, you do some jail time, and the next thing that happens is you arrive here in Thailand teaching English as a foreign language. Want to fill me in?”
    He shakes his head and frowns. His posture is one of heroic struggle with demonic forces of pride, which he defeats with a theatrical groan. “I’m here because of her, of course.”
    Stifling an embarrassing sob: “I’m that kind of guy—I’m turned on by life in the raw. I’m not really a jerk, I just live like one. When it comes down to the wire, there’s only one kind of woman who can deliver the total experience, and I’m ready to admit that to myself, ready to be humble. I came halfway around the world and stayed four years just for the crumbs she was willing to toss me from time to time, and I’m not even ashamed.”
    Looking at me with a strange, twisted smile: “I envy heroin addicts. It must be so easy to kick that habit, in comparison to the habit of the most alive woman you’ve ever met.”
    “Most alive,” Lek repeats, then clamps a hand over his mouth at a stern look from me. Baker’s eyes flick now from Lek to me and back again. I let silence tell the story. I’m thinking that if he