Bangkok Haunts

about breast implants? If you do, you could start a nice new pressure group in your own country, keep yourself occupied for decades.”
    She fumes over the telephone. “You think I’m just another lost
farang
woman looking for a soapbox to bitch on, don’t you?”
    “I think you’re in love with Lek,” I say.
    Two beats pass. Cautiously: “Is he gay?”
    “For Buddha’s sake, no. He’s never had sex in his life and likely never will. With his kind of
katoey,
the lust is all in the conversation. They can be quite prudish when it comes to the crunch. I told you, he’s a female spirit in a man’s body. All he wants to do is express his inner truth. Sorry if it’s difficult.” Exasperated, I hang up.
    She calls again in the time it takes to press an autodial button. “Did you say express his inner truth? Well, that’s what I want to do too. That’s why I’m here. You wanted to know, that’s why. I never thought of it like that till you used that phrase.”
    “If it involves seducing him, you’d better not use precision bombing—it tends to antagonize. Try a little sympathy. Try taking him seriously. He’s the one with the guts to have the surgery—give him a little credit.”
    A pause. “Has he really never had sex? How old is he?”
    “Twenty-two, and I’m busy.” I hang up, then turn off the phone and go to lunch.
     
    When I check with the telephone company, I am given the number of Nok’s family home. Now I hesitate. After all, she died because of me—how easy will it be to face her people? I decide to check the apartment first.
    The address is way out of town, quite near the new airport, which is not yet open. When I arrive in a cab, after more than an hour stuck in traffic on Sukhumvit 101, I realize that she lived in a standard one-room accommodation in a project intended as a dormitory for airport drudges. The apartment building is designed much like a prison, with ten-by-fourteen-foot cells giving onto an internal corridor. She lived on the fifth floor, which is the top, and there is no lift. The doors of the cells are secured by means of crude padlocks, but when I arrive at Nok’s, I see that her door is open. I knock anyway and enter. Five people are in the room, including a couple in their midfifties who must be her parents, a young man in his early twenties, a young woman who may be still in her teens, and a boy about seven years old. There is nothing else in the tiny room apart from a futon and some women’s clothes on hangers that are hooked over a length of molding. My eyes fixate on the boy for a moment; I hope he is not Nok’s son. In her conversations she never mentioned she had a child. “I am Detective Jitpleecheep,” I say.
    There is no hope at all in the five sets of eyes that stare at me. As a rule, cops don’t offer it. There is fear in the mother’s and daughter’s expressions, anger in that of the son. Neither the father nor the grandson seems to understand what is going on. I say, “May I ask why you’re here?”
    “Our cousin called us—he lives downstairs. He told us some men brought our daughter here on a stretcher last night, and he could see that she was dead. Then some other men came to take her away. We don’t know where she is.” It is the mother who spoke. Now the brother: “She was our only hope. She kept us alive. What will we do now?”
    Suddenly they all seem to be silently accusing me. I have to admit there is some justice in that. As a rule, fifty percent of problems suffered by the lower income levels are caused by cops.
    “She was a good girl,” her mother says. “She didn’t sell drugs, and she didn’t sell her body. She worked in a restaurant.” I look at the young boy without asking the obvious question. “Nok was married to his father, legally, but he found another wife and stopped sending child support.”
    “I see,” I say. Of course, there is no way Nok could have kept five or more human beings alive on wages from a restaurant job, but protocol requires these necessary illusions. Maybe only the mother is smart enough to realize what Nok really did for money. Certainly no one in the family would ever have discussed the matter out loud. Without breaking the omertà, though, it is difficult to discuss the case.
    “She sent home ten thousand baht a month,” her mother explains, “and I have to feed all of us plus my parents on that. We spend all our time growing rice to eat. We have no cash at all. My mother has