Bangkok Haunts

silk sheet from the bed.
    By the time I reach the door, depression has set in which quite eclipses fear. I am profoundly sorry to have been the cause of her death. When I emerge into the central area where the nymphs are still hanging out in the pool, they observe the expression on my face.
    “What happened? Did you come too soon?”
    Without answering I take the elevator down to the ground floor. The footman, I’m thinking—he must have told Tanakan what she was up to.
    In the back of a cab I call the FBI. “At least we know where the crime took place,” I tell her. “Damrong’s death was filmed there—I recognized the reclining jade Buddha.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Nothing.”
    “A woman’s murdered in front of your eyes, and you’re not going to do anything? Why don’t you arrest Tanakan?”
    “Vikorn wouldn’t let me,” I explain. “He’s blackmailing him already.”
    “He’s that corrupt?”
    “You don’t understand. It’s a question of honor—that’s why Tanakan is playing along. So long as he does, Vikorn is bound to protect him. Even though it’s expensive, it’s actually to Tanakan’s advantage to accept the squeeze.”
    “You’re right, I don’t understand.”
    “Just think Wall Street,” I say, and close the phone.
    Standing on the sidewalk outside my hovel, I think about making a second call. It’s two forty-five A.M. , but the person I’m thinking of calling is notorious for her insomnia. She answers on the second ring, not a note of sleepiness in her voice. Because it’s so late and the street so silent, I whisper, “Sorry if I woke you.”
    “Sonchai? It’s okay, you didn’t wake me. But why are you up so late?”
    “Sometime today a corpse will be delivered to you. It will be of a young woman whose nickname is Nok. Her throat will be cut just below the Adam’s apple.”
    A long pause. Something in her tone tells me this is not the first time she has received this kind of call. “What do you want me to do? Please don’t ask me to cover up.”
    I’m overwhelmed by a flashback: Nok, naked, floating facedown, a pale pink stream from her neck like a gossamer scarf undulating in the water. “The opposite, Dr. Supatra,” I say. “I want to know who is in charge of the cover-up.”
    I’m exhausted and wired both. The processing unit between my ears is buzzing like a hornet’s nest, but my limbs are so weary I can hardly move them. I know I’m not going to be able to sleep whatever happens; why put off until tomorrow the humiliation that could be mine tonight? The only precaution I take is to enter my hovel silently, careful not to disturb Chanya and the Lump, take my service revolver out from under the mattress where I left it, and go out again into the street. When a cab stops, I tell the driver to take me back to the Parthenon. I get out about a hundred yards before the club, though, pay off the driver, and wait. It is four twenty-three by the clock on my cell phone. The last of the girls are leaving, wearing jeans and T-shirts, saying goodnight to one another in tired tones. The men who work mostly behind the scenes are going home too. From a dark corner I wait until everyone has gone; almost everyone. A tall, closed van of the kind used for wholesale food deliveries draws up. In the blaze of the Parthenon’s entrance lights I recognize the doorman, who has changed out of his uniform and is now in shorts and singlet. The arrival of the body bag from out of the building and its delivery into the back of the van takes less than twenty seconds. Now the van is gone, and only the doorman is left, staring after it. He fishes a cell phone from his pocket, listens to it for a moment, then stares down the
soi
in my direction.
    Suddenly the hunter is hunted. I wait like a scared rabbit while he unhurriedly walks down the
soi
until he has found me. I know that the distortion in the right pocket of his shorts is caused by the cell phone; a gun would be bigger. Nor does he look especially lethal in his physique: a couple of inches shorter than me, about forty-five with a potbelly.
    Now he is peering curiously at me. “Are you going to assassinate me tonight?” he asks. He reaches out with both hands to pull me by the lapels of my jacket. It’s not an aggressive move, and I wonder what he has in mind until I realize he is dragging me toward a streetlamp. He positions us so that I can get a good look at his face. It is twisted in spiritual agony. He