Bangkok Haunts

aunt who eschews campspeak and all the usual trappings of his kind. His voice is high and naturally feminine, though. He is assessing me shrewdly even while we
wai
each other. Then he takes my hand to maneuver me to a table, where we sit down. I watch him clear his mind while he stares at me and I sense his penetration of my heart. He shudders, makes big eyes, stares at Lek for a moment, then back at me. Lek’s face collapses when he says, “I’m sorry, this is too big for me, I can’t go there. This haunting is too powerful.” He makes a gesture to push me away. Lek and I share a moment of confusion; then Lek says, “You have embarrassed me.”
    There is hardly a greater cultural sin. Pi-Da’s face collapses under Lek’s relentless glare. When Lek turns away in disgust, Pi-Da says reproachfully, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
    “You’re supposed to be clairvoyant. You’re supposed to look fearlessly into the Other Side,” Lek says more in sorrow than in anger. The whole of the
katoey
’s resentment at not being taken seriously is suddenly at issue here: if Pi-Da can’t handle heavy-duty hauntings, what kind of
moordu
is s/he anyway? Just another aging queen?
    Pi-Da’s expression has changed. No longer the flabby aunt, he is now rather a man whose adulthood has been called into question. “We’ll have to go upstairs,” he says in a grim tone. Staring at me: “There will be no charge.”
    “Upstairs” is a collection of rooms used for the storage of alcohol and boxes of snacks. Pi-Da clears a space, and the three of us sit on the floor. Pi-Da holds my hand again and closes his eyes. After about a minute he opens them again, but they seem to be unseeing. I watch with horror and fascination as he stands, places his hands on a wall, and bends forward with his backside sticking out. “Sonchai, why don’t you have me from behind like this? Whip me if you like.” It is Damrong’s voice to the last nuance. “You’re such a great lover, Detective, you remind me of a charging elephant.” A hysterical cackle.
    Pi-Da shakes his head violently as if to break free. When he turns to us, his flesh is gray and he seems exhausted. “I can’t do more than that—her energy is too crude and too powerful. She’ll kill me if I let her take over. You have no idea what you’ve got involved with. This is Khmer sorcery, not a party game.” Without another word he leaves us to go back to the bar. Lek is staring at me with huge eyes.
    “Yes,” I say, “it’s true. I had an affair with her.” I cannot face Lek any longer. I leave him to rush down the stairs two at a time into the anonymity of the busy Bangkok night.

26
    There are lots of bankrupt states and plenty of kleptocracies; there are a few failed states; and there is Cambodia. After the Nixon holocaust: Pol Pot, generously supported by the CIA. Almost two million die in a civil war, except it’s not like other civil wars. Everyone here remembers the knock on the door in the middle of the night and relatives taken away in an oxcart, usually by a teen with a machine gun, never to be seen again except as corpses, often mutilated. Then there is Tuol Sleng, where the torturing took place, and the skull mountains in Choeung Ek. Among the Cambodians themselves, a universal numbness hides psychic scars that go to the marrow. Many appear to be sleepwalking, random thuggery is an everyday hazard, “girls, guns, gambling, and ganja” are the economy, corruption is the work ethic, child abuse a national sport. You can use the local currency if you’re feeling quaint, but everyone prefers American dollars. Naturally the capital, Phnom Penh, attracts NGOs like flies; pale pampered European faces look out from the tinted windows of four-by-fours. A lot of the city is crumbling. At the police station Kimberley flashes her credentials. Neither of us has any investigative rights here, but then nobody here obeys the rules. It’s not difficult to get them to cooperate for a hundred dollars.
    The apartment where Stanislaus Kowlovski died is on a side street about two hundred yards from the Mekong. We duck out of a blinding sun, following a cop whose uniform may be the only legal thing he owns. A short, stooping brown guy with some fingers missing from both hands, he believes we’ll be excited by the blood and goo on the wall. He is. The stains are buried under a swarm of flies, though. He sniggers,
“Big American, what a body, dead now. Crazy. What