Bangkok Haunts

diabetes. We get her drugs cheap on the government system, but she needs a special diet. My father has health problems too—something is wrong with his brain from farming in the heat all his life. My son here wanted to finish high school, but we didn’t have the money. My younger daughter here is a virgin, but she meets only local boys who have no money and usually drink whiskey and do drugs. Nok wanted to help her find a good husband, but she needs to finish high school as well or only LoSo men will look at her. Nok said she was pretty enough to find a
farang
husband in a year or so, when she might come here to Krung Thep. Nok said
farang
have so much money, one man would keep us all. Now what will we be, just beggars?”
    I see my own family here. Thank Buddha my mother had the smarts and the ruthlessness to get out for long enough to make a pile—and start a brothel of her own: nobody escapes the cycle of karma, not even a Buddha.
    Now the brother speaks. “Our cousin thinks it was cops who brought her and took her away again. We think maybe some rich man used her and killed her, then paid off the cops.” He stares at me accusingly.
    “I know that she was killed,” I say. “I don’t think she was sexually assaulted.”
    Now the father speaks. I recognize him as a type who might be termed the backbone of our country. He speaks slowly, carefully, and very politely, in a voice that has never told a lie. “We are a devout family. We give so much to the
wat
for
tambun.
Nok also made merit whenever she could, even here in Krung Thep. I have worked the fields all my life. When I was young, I ordained for a whole year. When I die, I will go to nirvana. I do not want to think about my daughter being killed by a bad man. It makes me feel crazy.” As he speaks, he holds his head between thick calloused hands and twists it one way then another. The gesture somehow completes my feeling of helplessness. I want to say that I will hunt down Nok’s killer and bring him to justice, like you hear in the movies, but I doubt even this unworldly family would believe that. Gentle they may be, but they have already absorbed and discarded Nok’s murder; what they want is some security for the future, some substitute for their only breadwinner. There is no tragedy that compares to an interminable tomorrow without rice. The mother seems to have followed my thoughts.
    “It cost us more than a thousand baht for all of us to come here today,” she says, fixing my gaze. I fish out my wallet, hand over two thousand, cast my eye around the room (not a sign of blood or struggle), nod,
wai,
and take my leave. Outside I trudge around for a while, feeling bad. The apartment building is only one of dozens that have sprung up on land speculation, and they are all the same: long five-story structures composed of identical cells. Blink once, and it could be a concentration camp. Blink twice, and it could be anywhere in the third world. Blink three times, and it might be all our futures in this age of functional barbarism. I have to get out of here.
     
    When I’m back at my desk, Vikorn calls. “Where have you been?”
    “I’m investigating a murder.”
    “Sonchai, I’m not asking this time, I’m ordering. Don’t go there. Let Kurakit deal with it. As it is, you’re lucky to be alive. I know you don’t give a shit about anything except your piety, but if you won’t keep your nose out of it for me, at least do it for Chanya and your unborn child. Tanakan will squash you like a bug and never give you a second thought. Do you want Kurakit investigating
your
murder? Where will that get you?”
    I think of Nok’s father and want to say,
Nirvana.
But I don’t have the innocence or the guts. Instead I grunt, “Okay.”
    In the circumstances, the company of a frustrated drug trafficker–cum—movie director feels like light entertainment. Yammy has just messaged me:
    I’m at the Kimsee, drinking. Come join me.
    The Kimsee is a Japanese restaurant on Sukhumvit, opposite the Emporium and under a Skytrain bridge. It looks as if it were carefully removed from somewhere quaint in Tokyo and reconstructed here in Bangkok under strict Japanese quality control. I’ve been there a couple of times, and apart from the Thai waitresses everything about the place strikes me as authentic Nippon, including the heavy-drinking salary-men who all have their own reserved bottles of best sake with their names printed on them, waiting on a high