“He was tragically hit by an untraceable truck.”

I take a deep breath. “Colonel, this is a murder. We’re cops.”

“This is Thailand, and I got a phone call five minutes ago.”

“Just a phone call is all it takes? The one who made the call-how much is he going to pay?”

“Mind your own business.”

“You have no sense of responsibility at all?”

“Cut it out, mooncalf. If you hadn’t investigated, nobody would have wasted them. If I’m taking money, it’s in return for covering for your fuck-ups. Maybe you’re the one who needs a course in responsible behavior. Who told you to get so intense about a little old snuff movie in the first place? Nobody cares about that whore except you.”

He is using Teflon Voice, preempting all argument. I’ll have to use Baker, I’m thinking as I close the phone. He’s the only lead left. But does he know anything?

9

Three hours later I take a cab to Soi 23, where Lek is waiting for me on the corner. On the grounds of Baker’s apartment building the guard tells us the American farang has received three visitors that afternoon, two of them young Thai men who were probably English students, and one a tall, well-dressed Englishman in his early forties. The Englishman stayed for only ten minutes and came away looking concerned.

This time when Baker opens the door to his flat, he is dressed in an open-neck shirt and long white pants. He is barefoot, however. We settle down in his plastic chairs, and I decide to resume where we left off.

“So your wife, Damrong, is deported, you do some jail time, and the next thing that happens is you arrive here in Thailand teaching English as a foreign language. Want to fill me in?”

He shakes his head and frowns. His posture is one of heroic struggle with demonic forces of pride, which he defeats with a theatrical groan. “I’m here because of her, of course.”

Stifling an embarrassing sob: “I’m that kind of guy-I’m turned on by life in the raw. I’m not really a jerk, I just live like one. When it comes down to the wire, there’s only one kind of woman who can deliver the total experience, and I’m ready to admit that to myself, ready to be humble. I came halfway around the world and stayed four years just for the crumbs she was willing to toss me from time to time, and I’m not even ashamed.”

Looking at me with a strange, twisted smile: “I envy heroin addicts. It must be so easy to kick that habit, in comparison to the habit of the most alive woman you’ve ever met.”

“Most alive,” Lek repeats, then clamps a hand over his mouth at a stern look from me. Baker’s eyes flick now from Lek to me and back again. I let silence tell the story. I’m thinking that if he already knows she’s dead, it will be hard to fake a reaction to the news. Lek and I are watching carefully, trying to sift maya from reality. With a slowness that may or may not be theatrical, he grabs the back of a chair and shifts it so that he’s looking out of his window while he leans on it.

Softly: “How did she die?”

“What kind of death did you have in mind for her, Mr. Baker?”

His head snaps around to glare at me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I shrug. “You admitted to feelings of extreme bitterness, to being a kind of emotional slave. The condition of psychological slavery is invariably a precursor to homicidal thoughts. In your fantasies, from time to time, how did you kill her?” He stares, speechless. “I fear my interrogation technique is not quite up to Western standards, Mr. Baker. You must forgive me. You know how we Thai cops are, virtually no training in the finer points of forensic investigation, nothing but our crude third-world intuition to go by-and what little we’ve been able to glean of human nature in our folksy way. You did dream of killing her from time to time, didn’t you?”

I seem to have broken through to another, more interesting Baker when he says, “She was murdered? Yeah, okay. Guilty of homicidal thoughts against her, so long as you include half the Johns in Bangkok in that category.”

Then all of a sudden another fragment takes over; there is nothing to forewarn us of the flash storm. “Dead? Goddamn it, you people just make me want to puke. You come here to tell a man his ex-wife is dead, and that’s it, you just say it like that, like a weather report, like it’s just a fact like any other.” He is wild-eyed and challenging me with outrage. Perhaps in a newcomer it would have been a convincing response, but this man has been here nearly five years. Finally he makes a show of controlling himself. “Are you going to tell me how she died?”

“First tell me how surprised you are,” I say. Just the quirky, dumb question you’d expect from someone like me, right? Hard to answer though.

“How surprised? What kind of question is that?” He studies me for a moment. “Maybe I need a lawyer.”

I look around the room. “By all means. They’re expensive, though, and it can be quite difficult to find one who, let us say, has your interests at heart. You could spend a long time in jail waiting and then find you have to answer my questions anyway. Up to you.”

He thinks about this and says, “I am personally shocked that she is dead, but no one who knew her would be surprised that she met an early end.”

“Good,” I say, “now we’re getting somewhere. What sort of early death would you have envisioned for your ex-wife? Give us the whole story. Take your time.”

A pause, a groan, then what looks like an honest response: “Nothing you can’t guess. Really.”

I let a couple of beats pass while he wrestles with his heart. “When did you last see her?”

“A couple months ago.” He raises his eyes to look into mine. “Of course I’m not going to demand a lawyer. For what? You don’t have a system of justice-you have a system of extortion. This is a kleptocracy. Everyone who stays here long enough finds that out.” I raise my eyes in a question. “So it would give me some comfort if you would disregard some minor infractions, in the interests of bringing her killer to justice.” There is no self-consciousness now, no posturing; he’s looking for a deal.

“I can’t promise because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can be very lenient for the right person though.”

“How much d’you want?”

“I’m not talking about money. I want information. Everything you know about her life here.”

Shocked: “You don’t want money?” He sighs and purses his lips.

After they let me out of the penitentiary, I came over here looking for her. I found her working in a bar in Soi Cowboy, run by a cop and his mother. She was quite pleased to see me but explained that our relationship was going to be a little different over here. It was business only. I started to do porn shots of her, mostly soft stuff for some American magazines and the Net. Sometimes it was hard porn -it’s a specialist niche these days, anonymous clients put in special requests for a particular girl on the webpage. If the request wasn’t too complicated – you know, a blow job or something-I would supply the cock, using a delayed action timer on the camera. That’s what we met for. Sometimes I would have the business connection, and sometimes it would come from her. She liked to use me as stud and cameraman because we worked well together. We didn’t make a lot that way, but it sure helped supplement my income.“ He waves a hand at the apartment to indicate the extreme simplicity of his life.

“Webpage?”

A shake of the head. “You won’t find it. We would change it from week to week. Punters these days know how to follow the trail, download, and move on. Then the webpage ceases to exist. Some have a twenty-four-hour life cycle.” A shrug.

“This was only a sideline for both of you?”

“Sure. She got eighty percent of the dough, but it still wasn’t exactly big bucks. We were both working.” Looking out the window: “She wasn’t the type to stay anywhere for long. I gave up asking her where she was working. She generally liked to move upward though. She said something about a very upmarket men’s club, somewhere off Sukhumvit in a side soi, but like I say, she never stayed anywhere long. She despised that downmarket bar run by the cop and his mother. She had fun seducing the cop and watching him grovel for the right to lick her cunt-she was hilarious when she was on the rice whiskey. She would give these brilliant imitations of a jerk in love-apparently this cop fell for her real hard.” Turning his face to me with a frank, humble smile: “Just like me in the beginning.”