Vulture Peak, page 9
“The type they call whales in Las Vegas. They bet fifty thousand dollars and a gold bracelet on a fly walking up a window.” I saw a deep reprogramming taking place somewhere in the depths. When he turned again, his eyes said, So that was it. He returned to his seat, sat, and nodded to himself again. I watched in fascination as that special thing geniuses have—that extra half inch of willpower the rest of us lack—started to stir at the back of his retinas.
I said, “Sir, may I ask a personal question?”
“No.”
“I’m afraid I need to, sir, if my investigation is to proceed.” He raised his eyes. “About these twins, sir. They are very mischievous—somewhere between bad and evil, it seems to me at this point—but girlish at the same time. Rich and out of control, sir. Without any moral compass at all. I don’t think they’re really into sex, but they know how to project it. Manipulative to a degree that’s hard to believe.” He was daring me to continue. I continued. “I wouldn’t put it past them to make a bet—a pretty big one, I would guess—on whether or not one or the other—or even both—could seduce a man—say an alpha male of the Asian type—say a—”
“Get out, Detective,” he whispered. “Get the hell out of my office, right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Well, now I’ve brought you up to date, DFR, and told you all I know. Nothing neat and tidy, I’m afraid, only a collection of fragments that may or may not be related. A few days after I reported to Vikorn, which is to say about a week after I got back from Monte Carlo, I received the call to Vulture Peak, where lay the three anonymous cadavers with every salable organ missing. Am I the only observer who does not see the Colonel’s hand in this? Call me naïve, but it’s just not Vikorn’s style—and anyway, he already has the election in the bag. On the other hand, anyone who doubts that organ theft happens on the sacred soil of Thailand will soon be considering voting for the Colonel, once the story breaks. Very interesting, think about it.
12
Meat scares me and makes my flesh crawl, even when it doesn’t resemble anything human. Am I getting soft or are the cases getting harder? Why do I see three faceless corpses whenever I close my eyes? Why does my mind keep fixating on the deep gashes and the floppy blubber where livers and kidneys used to be? And no eyes, sweet Buddha, no eyes. The worst was this morning just before waking: an army of the blind and faceless moving in a dogged mass toward rebirth and revenge.
I’m curled up on my bed sucking my thumb and trembling. If anyone asks, I’m going to say I caught a touch of fever in Dubai. This case has got to me like no other, and I’m not even convinced it’s a case. To make matters infinitely worse, my partner, my darling Chanya, doesn’t seem to have noticed there’s something wrong. She watched me drag myself across the room after only a couple of hours on duty, blinked at me without losing that glazed look she has for everything and everyone except her computer monitor, seemed to have a bright idea while I limped broken and shattered to the bed, and started stabbing ferociously at her keyboard just as I collapsed.
I called Lek on my cell phone to tell him to get me a supply of dope from Sergeant Ruamsantiah. I’m going to smoke until I forget who I am, and I’m not coming back to earth until they’ve improved it. Really, this time I’ve had it with everything. I can feel it, that thing that happens to your mind when they add that extra few ounces to your paranoia and you sink under the weight. Every time I close my eyes I see someone with a curved knife aiming for my vital organs with an expression of insane greed. I see monsters from the deep, breaking the surface after billions of years in the lightless zones: blind, hideous, eel-gray, voracious for human flesh. I’m trembling.
“I’m just going out to buy some more printer ink. D’you want anything?” Chanya calls.
“No,” I groan.
She comes over to the bed. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Listen, I just wrote this brilliant paragraph. I’ve nearly finished my thesis, and I had to get the ending right. I know you won’t understand much, but you can get the idea:
Thus the comodification of bodies, whether superficially in the sense of a prostitute painting herself in a way designed to send the required signal to prospective customers, or in the more extreme sense of a person selling, or having taken from them, a vital organ such as a kidney, is obviously and unavoidably a consequence of the present economic system which relies on what has been called “the promiscuity of objects.” This system carries with it the unspoken implication that once something has been defined as an “object,” it is automatically assumed to be “promiscuous” in the sense that it may be bought and sold like any other object, even if the object in question is somebody’s kidney or liver—or whole body. This kind of thinking is exactly what underpinned the slave trade for hundreds of years: as soon as a captive West African was defined as “property,” then he could be treated as a “promiscuous object,” that is to say an object whose human rights have been magically transmuted into a money value in the accounts of the property owner. What is unclear, however, is why modern Western culture has continued to target prostitution by adult volunteers as “immoral” (i.e., in Professor Smith’s definition “the enemy”). Consider the manner in which both Hollywood and the advertising industry have been comodifying bodies for the purpose of profit (i.e., treating both male and female models as “promiscuous objects” to be traded). At first glance it seems strange that the line should be drawn at what one might call the “cottage industry” of street-level prostitution, especially in Bangkok, where the practitioners are relatively free of exploitation by pimps and can therefore fairly be described as choosing to commodify their bodies on their own account for the purpose of survival. It may be that the answer can be found in a parallel paradox: the obsessive repression of “soft” drugs like marijuana, despite the wealth of data which proves that the “hard” drug alcohol is far more dangerous to health and responsible for almost an infinitely greater number of diseases and deaths. It is not difficult to see what the private trading of marijuana and street-level prostitution have in common: these are industries any private person can develop on their own account without being squeezed out by big business or falling liable to tax. Thus it is in the suppression of prostitution and soft drugs that we see the hypocrisy at the heart of the culture. It is in the interests of government and big business to appear to uphold a “moral code,” the true purpose of which is to ensure that impoverished individuals cannot escape their poverty except by becoming fiscally and commercially useful: read slaves. In other words, it is a “code” driven by exactly the same dynamic as the slave trade. But, as Professor Steiner points out (op. cit.), the peculiar reverence we have for moral codes depends exactly on their being founded on something beyond functionalism. A money-driven morality is no morality at all.
“That’s just amazingly brilliant. You’re a genius,” I say. I do not add: I just hope I’m still sane when you get your Ph.D. In my insecurity I want to ask about the rumors, but in my insecurity I don’t have the courage. She’s basically a very honest girl, and I don’t think I could handle any form of toxic truth right now.
While she’s out, Lek comes with a sizable package, takes one look at me, asks where I keep my skins, rolls me a big one, shakes his head, and leaves. Now Chanya is back, and I’m quite high. At least I’ve got control of the demons. Thanks to the power of cannabis, I’m able to shrink them with my brand-new green demon-shrinking gun, which sort of grew out of my right hand after the third joint. Chanya smells the dope, gives a mildly disapproving glance, shrugs, goes back to her computer. Time passes (it could be a minute or a couple of aeons, this is export-quality stuff).
She comes back over to me. “You sure you’re okay?”
This time the floodgates open. “No, I’m not fucking okay,” I bawl. Now I’m blurting, mostly about the eyeballs I sold that won’t give me any peace, but also about those three anonymous corpses in Phuket.
She raises her eyes to the ceiling. To complicate matters still further, I am horny. I can just about reach her left breast, thanks to the way she’s leaning over, which suddenly seems to offer solace in a cruel world, so with the directness of a monkey I grab it. I wouldn’t call it a lecherous gesture, myself, more like a dash for safety by a threatened psyche.
She sighs. “Oh, Sonchai, it’s always the same.”
“What is?”
“When you smoke too much. You go space traveling for a couple of hours, disdaining the earth and everything on it. Then when you finally get back, you’re like a horny sixteen-year-old.”
I release her breast like a drowning man releasing a straw. “I’m in a state,” I admit. “I’m kind of scared, but it’s not that exactly.” She frowns, because she sees I’ve gone into that mood of meticulous self-analysis that often accompanies a comedown. “It’s more like fear overlaying something fundamental. I mean it is fear, but it’s mixed in with something more general, like what’s happening to the species?”
“What species?”
“Humanity.”
She curses. “It’s Vikorn who’s done this to you. That old bastard. I hate him. I hate having to look at his hypocritical bloody mug on every third lamppost. I hate the way he’s going to win the election and bleed Bangkok white.” She pulls her cell phone out of her jeans pocket and stabs at one of her autodial numbers. “Get me Vikorn,” she snarls at the reception.
Well, I may be a basket case and on the verge of terminal catatonia, but Chanya going for Vikorn in a toe-to-toe standoff is too good to miss. I perk up a bit. Unfortunately, our cell phones don’t work so well in the hovel, so she has to go out into the yard. I see her walking up and down, her left hand flaying while she yells at the phone. I have no idea what she’s saying, but I’m sure of the psychology: she and Vikorn own me jointly, and there are clear demarcation lines. He has trespassed on her turf, and the she-wolf is in a rage. She comes back into the house fuming and shaking.
“What did you say?”
“I let him have it,” she says in the tone of one who might have gone a tad too far.
“What did he say?”
“He just asked where you were.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were stoned out of your brain on the bed killing demons with a big green demon-killing gun.”
I scratch my head. “How did you know about the gun?”
“Have you any idea how stoned you were half an hour ago? You kept telling me about it, over and over.” She pats my head, then cuddles me a bit the way she did in the old days. After a while, she says, “D’you want to hear about Dorothy?”
“Yes,” I gulp.
“Well, the man she went off with that night, this Jimmy Clipp, she’s crazy about him. Totally gaga. I checked him out with the girls at your mother’s bar. He’s a regular there. Very popular. He’s generous, considerate, never hurts anyone, and they say he’s quite the finger artist. His cock isn’t too big, and it’s not crooked. You know how superstitious the girls are and how they think a crooked one is seriously bad juju. Best of all, he’s funny. He doesn’t take sex seriously at all and makes jokes in the middle of boom-boom that crack everybody up.
“But he’s a total jao choo—a butterfly. Even when he’s got the hots for a girl one weekend, he dumps her next time he’s in town, because he’s got curious about another, or he decides to go back to one of his old lusts. And he likes to do two at a time. He’s an engineer on some road they’re building to Laos. It’s China-driven—you know how they want trucks to run from Beijing to the Gulf of Thailand within the decade?”
For the record, DFR, my darling does not normally describe life in quite such mannish terms; she’s doing it to amuse me and somewhat succeeding. I’ve managed a wan smile or two already.
“I haven’t told Dorothy this—she’s in blind lust at the moment. She sort of confided in me she’s never really had good sex in her life before. A few gropes here and there, a night now and then with an incompetent or, even worse, an alcoholic. She tried to be a lesbian like all the other female sociologists in her circle, but it just doesn’t work for her. Most of the men in her life have been male feminists, and everyone knows what cockless wonders they are—now this new guy of hers is a world-class player. For her he’s like nirvana itself. She can’t believe sex can be such fun. That’s why she decided that brothels can be good for women too. He’s back up north working on his road, and she e-mails and SMS’s him all the time.” She pauses for breath. “See, so long as she’s in this state, she agrees with my whole point about prostitution, and she’s going to pass my thesis with full recommendations. That’s why I’m working my buns off to get it finished. You understand, darling?”
“You mean when he dumps her, she’ll change her mind, and brothels will be wicked engines of exploitation all over again?”
“Right. And she’ll start giving me a hard time with my thesis all over again.”
We are discussing how bad it’s going to be when Jimmy Clipp forgets to contact Dorothy next time he’s in town and what we can do to cushion the blow (find Dorothy another john in another brothel?), when we hear a police siren in the distance. We exchange a glance, and Chanya goes pale. This is District 8, after all, and in normal circumstances only one cop in D.8 is allowed to use his siren. Sure enough, the siren gets louder, and Chanya gets paler. Now the siren is at the beginning of our soi and quite deafening.
Chanya has gone to the window and pulled back the curtain. “Sonchai, where’s your gun?” she asks softly.
“Don’t be silly. You can’t kill a cop, especially not a colonel, especially not Vikorn.”
“Not to kill him. For myself. I don’t think I can stand it. Oh, Buddha, it is him!”
I’m still in bed, so I have to imagine Vikorn in his fatigues getting out of the car and prowling to our front door. There is a knock. It is neither loud and arrogant nor soft and humble. Nor is it anything in between. It is a Vikorn knock, the kind no one ignores.
“Can you go, darling?” Chanya says. “I don’t feel so good.”
So much for equality. The first sign of trouble and she hides behind her man. “No,” I say, “I’m already stoned, terrified, catatonic, and hysterical at the same time. I’m staying in bed. Anyway, in bed is exactly how he should find me.”
She goes to the door and opens it. It is a feature of our luxurious apartment that I can see the front door from the bed; see Chanya back away while giving Vikorn the high wai; see his polite wai in return; notice how he hardly seems to notice her, prowls toward me. He is about three inches shorter than me, but he fills the hovel like a giant. Chanya has retreated to a corner, half bent over in some kind of groveling posture.
Now he is staring down at me. He is accompanied by two armed cops in uniform who have been with him long enough to be telepathically sensitive to his every gesture. When he jerks his chin, they retreat and close the front and only door behind them. Chanya draws up our only chair for him to sit on. She backs away as soon as she has placed it next to the mattress.
“How stoned is he?” Vikorn snaps without sitting and without looking at her.
“He’s coming down.”
“Has he asked for sex yet?”
“Yes,” in the tone of a witness for the prosecution, “about ten minutes ago.”
“When did he last smoke?”
“About two and a half hours ago.”
“So he got out of his skull as usual, did a tour of Andromeda, then the blood sank back down to his balls, and he wanted to screw you?”
“Yes.”
He examines me. “You look awful,” my Colonel says. “What’s the matter? Wouldn’t she fuck you? I can’t say I blame her.”
“Everything’s the matter. Especially the eyeballs.” I look at him. “I hate you for making me sell them. And I want to know about those bodies in Phuket—did you do it as part of your election strategy? Yes or no? I don’t care if you kill me, I’m not working for you anymore.”
He rubs his jaw, decides to sit on the chair, then makes an almost imperceptible jerk of the chin toward Chanya behind him. I say, “Darling, why don’t you get yourself a hairdo?” Chanya never has hairdos, but she says, “Oh, yes, oh thank you, darling,” and gives me a high wai in the mode of dutiful wives of yesteryear, then leaves the house in a rush.
Vikorn has stood up and is watching her disappear down the soi; now he turns to stare at me. “Suppose I told you I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“Who did it.”
“Don’t know? What kind of godfather are you? You’re supposed to know even if you didn’t order it yourself.”
“Aren’t you taking everything a little too seriously, Sonchai?”
“What, the eyeballs? What can be more serious than a thousand human eyeballs staring at you resentfully every time you close your own? Oh yes, you can still see with yours, you can open and close your eyelids, aren’t you the lucky one! That’s what they say.”
Vikorn has never had a hallucination in his life, so my state is exotic to him. He frowns in concentration. “Really? They talk to you?”
“All the time.”
“What language do they use?”
“What language? Thai, of course.”
“But none of those eyeballs were Thai. They were mostly Korean.”
“From the North?”
“North, South, what’s the diff? They’re more likely to speak Korean than Thai, aren’t they?”
“How would you know? They don’t talk to you.”
He pauses to look at me for a moment, he seems to hesitate, then asks, “What’s it like to be loony? I’ve always wanted to know.”
“I’m not loony. I’m suffering from aftershock. It can kill—there are farang statistics.”
“People in shock don’t hold conversations with eyeballs.”
The discussion seems to have reached a wall. Vikorn turns away to look out the window, then examines the room for a moment. His eyes come to rest on Chanya’s generic computer, her old printer, tubular steel chair, and collapsible desk. After a few beats I say, “Come on. You can tell me, whodunit? Was it Zinna?”
