Bangkok Haunts

he explains, switching nostrils, “and it’s hot and stinky. That whore has been everywhere, really everywhere, but she never stayed long. I tried to follow what her ex-husband, that American Baker, told us about her, and he was basically right. She was steadily working her way upmarket.”
    “Was she attached to any bar at the time she died?”
    “That’s what I’m coming to. She’d done Soi Cowboy, Nana, and Pat Pong, where she was one of the best earners on the street. Then she moved to the Parthenon Club.” A pause while he searches my face.
    “The Parthenon,” I repeat, swallowing. I guess it was inevitable, but it hardly simplifies the case.
    He looks at me to make sure I’m aware of possible obstructions to further inquiries.
    “And? Who did you talk to there?”
    “I needed a disguise, didn’t I?”
    “Lek, what did you do?”
    “Pretended I was looking for work. How else was I going to get anyone there to talk to me? If I’d told them I was a cop, you would have had the male half of Bangkok’s HiSo on your back.”
    “They take on
katoey
s?”
    A proud pout. “Of course. No bar is complete without us these days.”
    “Who did you talk to?”
    “A low-ranking
mamasan.
I told her Damrong was my cousin, and I was using the connection to look for work. She told me Damrong worked there for the last two months. She said she didn’t know why Damrong hadn’t turned up for work recently—she assumed it was because Damrong had found a highflier to look after her. That’s what all the girls and boys at the Parthenon are looking for, of course.”
    “You didn’t find out which members she’d been with? Anyone special in her life?”
    “I had to keep it all on a gossipy level, you know, emphasizing my cousin’s amazing success in her work. The
mamasan
didn’t exactly spill her guts, but she did let on that Damrong had been the favorite of two club members.”
    “
Farang
or Thai?”
    “One was
farang,
the other Thai.”
    “You got their names?”
    “No. If I’d started asking questions like that, I would have blown my cover.”
    “Right.”
    “By the way, that female
farang
in the cab yesterday—is she a hundred
satang
to the baht?”
    “The FBI? Why?”
    “She got hold of my number from the station switchboard and says she’s interested in gender reassignment and wants to take me out to lunch to discuss it with me. I told her F2M is very complicated and nothing I’m going through has any relevance to her case, but she insisted, and out of
greng jai
to you, I said I would go.”
    I am blinking rapidly. “When’s the date?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “I’d like a full report,” I say, not meeting his gaze.
     
    I’m pondering and frowning, not sure if there is going to be any way to penetrate the Parthenon Club without committing professional suicide and wondering if this is the case that will finally reveal my secret martyr complex, while I take the stairs down to the cells. The word from the turnkey is that the
farang
Baker is more than ripe for interrogation.
    He is sitting in a peculiar position at the end of his bunk with his forehead pressed so hard against the bars, he seems welded to them.
    “He’s been like that for hours,” the turnkey says. “He stopped eating and drinking. I think we’ve broken him already.”
    I nod for him to open the cell door. I tell him to leave it open and to disappear from view, while keeping an ear out in case the
farang
turns violent. When a personality splits like this, you never know which way the particles are going to fly.
    I step inside the cell, which is to say I step inside the psychology of its inmate: a meltdown at the center. Reaching out with open hand, I grab the hair at the back of his head and pull him away from the bars. He is shivering and twitching like a rabbit. I have to caress his head and face to calm him down. The bruise under his left eye is healing well but has turned dark. Now he’s looking at me with helpless eyes. I grab a chair and sit directly opposite him on his bunk.
    “Why are you here, Dan?”
    A blink. The challenge of verbal communication is lifting him from a mood that is sustainable only in solitude. It is, of course, exactly solitude combined with classic Thaicopparanoia that has broken him. He blurts and blabbers at first.
    “Why am I here? Because you put me here. Because you’re a Thai cop who’s found a fall guy and doesn’t give a damn about truth, or justice, or freedom, or democracy.