Bangkok Haunts

became a corpse now acquire an important—nay vital—function. It is the duty of close family to surround you with as many people as possible for the duration of the wake, which can go on for forty-nine days, at the end of which you will have found a new bivouac in someone’s—or something’s—womb. Now, there is one activity and one activity alone that will keep your average Thai coming to your home day after day for seven weeks, especially if they didn’t much like you in the first place. The other advantage to buying a few roulette wheels and offering a private gambling service is for the bereaved spouse to use the profits to pay for the monks, the food, and the roulette wheels and to put together a fistful of baht to see close family through the difficult postwake period.
    All of which explains why Lek and I find ourselves outside Nang Chawiiwan’s third-floor apartment in a modestly appointed building on Soi 26. Lek snooped around and confirmed there is a fire escape from the apartment by means of the back door. By banging loudly on the front door, therefore, and yelling, “Police,” we are able to cause an immediate evacuation. Sounds of Sunday-best shoes slapping on the wrought-iron fire escape on the opposite side of the apartment, excited whispers, some giggling. The exit goes on for about ten minutes, which probably indicates that more than a hundred guests are now legging it down the
soi.
We bang again on the door, and this time it opens on an exhausted, tearful, but spirited woman dressed in traditional Thai costume; Nang Chawiiwan is all of five feet tall.
    I don’t want to cause offense at her time of mourning, so I let her play for time while the last of her guests make their getaway, then she leads us into the flat. She has not troubled to hide the roulette wheels; there are five of them. Cleverly, she has left small piles of cash next to one of the wheels. She glances from the cash to me to Lek to the cash.
    “This is a very serious offense that carries a prison sentence,” Lek tells her sternly, while taking a peek at the deceased, who is lying with his arms folded over his chest in a brightly varnished pine coffin: the gaunt, humble face of a workingman. Indeed, he is so gaunt, I’m wondering if Nang Chawiiwan starved him to death. An ignoble thought, perhaps, but that is one skeletal cadaver.
    “Sorry,” Nang Chawiiwan says.
    Unable to maintain stern for very long, Lek stares with infinite compassion at the corpse. “Poor thing’s lonely already,” he says, “I can feel it.”
    A sniff from Nang Chawiiwan. “That’s why I did it, I had to make it worth everyone’s while to keep him company. How else was I to fulfill my obligations as a wife?”
    Lek finds this question too troubling and turns to me for instructions. I am afraid I am somewhat transfixed by the corpse, like a cadet with his first cadaver. Death is hitting me strangely this week.
    “Take the money,” Nang Chawiiwan says, losing patience and jerking her chin at the cash next to the wheel.
    “We don’t take money,” Lek says, again checking my eyes.
    “That’s right,” I confirm. I smile. “Better put it away—it’s a little incriminating lying there like that.”
    Nang Chawiiwan makes big eyes. “You don’t take money?” A grin breaks over her features. “I knew my Toong was a good man, but I never knew he had that kind of karma. Imagine, busted at his funeral by two cops who don’t take money!” She shoves the cash down her bra for now. “He was practically an
arhat,
a saint, and this proves it.”
    “You’ll have to give us your ID card,” I say, “and if anyone asks, this was a serious bust that went wrong because we didn’t know there was a fire escape.”
    “Right.”
    “And you’re never going to do this again, are you? I mean, you’re not going to call around to all your guests to tell them the coast is clear as soon as we’re gone, right?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Promise?”
    “Promise.”
    “Just this time then.”
    Locking eyes with me for a moment: “Are you sure you won’t take some money? I would feel safer.”
    “No,” Lek says, all firm again and pointing a long finger at her. “You’ll have to trust us.”
    Old Toong’s excellent karma has her all excited. She’s remembering all over again what a fine man she married and how well he took care of her, even after death. It’s not often a ghost gets so lucky at his own funeral casino. Indeed, Nang Chawiiwan