“I understand. You think that I have not been behaving like a monk, therefore I cannot be one. This is called clinging to fixed images or, more generally, ignorance. Do you always behave like a detective, Detective?”

The elegance of his answer startles me into playing a poor hand. “For a monk you spend an awful lot of time in an Internet cafe. Are you a modernist Buddhist?”

A smile-not quite patronizing, but close. “Of course not. Modernism is largely a form of entertainment, and a superficial one at that. It doesn’t survive environmental disasters or oil shortages. It doesn’t even survive terrorist attacks. It certainly doesn’t survive poverty, which is the lot of most of us. One flick of a switch, and the images fade from the screen. Ancient questions begin to torment us all over again: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? But without wisdom, these questions turn toxic. Confusion seeks relief in bigotry, which leads to conflict. One high-tech war, and we’re back to the Stone Age. This is the connection between modernism and Buddhism. In other words, there isn’t one unless you posit the latter as a cure for the former.” A sudden charming smile: “On the other hand, it’s convenient to download Buddhist texts without having to spend hours searching for them in a library. Until recently I’d had no idea how limited Theravada is. If I were to ordain today, I think I would do so in Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives.”

I push my chair back. It has dawned on me that the case has taken an unexpected, even a shocking turn. In my surprise I find I am mesmerized by this young phra, whose true identity seems to grow more elusive whenever he opens his mouth. Have I mistaken his mannerisms for those of a fraud exactly because he is so advanced that he is no longer conscious of the effect he has on others? Perhaps he doesn’t give a damn. Real monks don’t.

“I’ll take you to a private room.”

In our smallest interrogation room I say, “You have been watching me for more than a week now. Why?”

“I wanted to tell you about my sister,” he says with that same balance of compassion and detachment that may or may not be authentic.

My tension collapses in a grateful sigh. “You sister’s name is Damrong?”

“Yes. You guessed anyway from the scars. I made it obvious enough.”

“You have information regarding her death?”

“No, none at all.”

“So why come to me?”

“Because she has information she wants to give you. She visits me every night. Her soul is not at rest.”

I take a moment to absorb this forensic bombshell. “Why play games? Why not come to see me like a normal person?”

“I am not a normal person. I am a monk.”

“Or does it have something to do with that?” I point to his left wrist, where a short white scar exactly replicates the scar on Damrong’s wrist.

“Not what you think,” he says with a smile. “A teenage prank, nothing more.”

I grunt in resignation. “Please tell me all you know,” I say with a sigh.

“Not here,” he says, looking a little fastidiously around the small bare room. “I prefer the outdoors. I think you do too, is that not so?”

He leads, I follow, out into the blinding light and the never-ending business of the street. I remain half a step behind him, as protocol requires. We keep pace with a man in a straw hat pulling a cart piled high with brushes, brooms, and dustpans while I bend my ear to catch the monk’s every ward.

Damrong, according to her brother, was something of a female arhat, or Buddhist saint. Born with the name of Gamon, now using the Sangha name of Phra Titanaka, he was a sickly child. Even at that time their mother was a yaa baa addict and losing her mind, given to sudden bouts of irrational violent anger. Their father was a career criminal whose body was covered in tattoos bearing magical incantations in khom, the ancient Khmer script, who was ritually murdered by local police when Gamon was seven years old. Both parents were Khmer refugees, who fled after Nixon bombed the eastern half of their country and destabilized the whole of it. Both children were born in a refugee camp on the Thai side of the border. His reverence for his sister is impressive.

“I would never have survived without her. She took all my beatings when our father was still alive-she wouldn’t let him touch me. She was so fierce, he was afraid of her. And she saved me from our mother too.”

“She paid for your education?”

“Yes. All of it”

Our eyes meet. My own education was funded in the same way. I cannot help asking, “You knew where the money was coming from?”

“Not at first. Of course, I grew up and could not help knowing.”

His discipline is excellent. The single trickle down his cheek from his left eye must surely cause an itching sensation, but he makes no attempt to wipe it away. From his level, even his emotional anguish is simply another misleading phenomenon, like everything else in the world. He is amused that I admire him. He has no idea how tempted I used to be, perhaps still am, by the monastic life. I spent a year in a forest monastery in my midteens. It was the most peaceful year of my life, and the simplest.

We stop at a crossroads to let a motorcycle trolley pass; it is festooned with lottery tickets and brightly colored magazines, to the extent that the guy riding it is invisible. The cop in me has a cruel question: “Do you know how good she was at what she did?”

He suppresses a shudder. “Of course. She was very beautiful and had a brilliant mind. That’s how she paid for my education, from the time she reached sixteen and could sell herself. The way she saw it, she could provide me with the chance she never had. But I was never that clever. I think in another country, or if she had been born into a different class, she would have been a great surgeon.”

“A surgeon?”

“She had a natural healing gift and was a supremely unselfish person. She learned about nutrition and drugs so she could stop our mother from killing me.” He allows himself a gulp. “She was very gentle.”

“When did you hear of her death?”

A shrug. “She came to me in a dream.”

Since his information is voluntary, I have no way of forcing him. I am intrigued, though.

“There is nothing more you can tell me? You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to check me out.”

“I needed to know if you would be receptive. I’m overjoyed to have found such a devout man as you.”

A thought wings its way into my mind, perhaps originating in his. “You knew she was dead because she came to you as a ghost. How could you be so sure?”

He has turned to face me, with exactly the same abstract elegance as all his other movements. “I have said enough for the time being. I came to make contact.”

“How shall we proceed?”

“When I have more information, I will find a way of telling you. I would not like to meet at the police station again, though. We shall meet at the local wat, if you don’t mind.” I experience a sense of loss, a fear I might not see him again. He offers a compassionate smile. “Don’t worry-whom the Buddha intends to bring together, nothing can keep apart.”

I smile, quite seduced by this extraordinary saint. “That’s true,” I say enthusiastically. Then the cop within starts with his annoying doubts, which I suppress.

It is pathetic, but I cannot help wanting this young man’s approval. Nor can I help feeling the need for some kind of absolution. “Did you know your sister worked at my mother’s club for a while? We knew each other, Damrong and I.”

My question seems to cause a shift in his consciousness. There is a contraction of his brow, a frightening concentration at the chakra between his eyes. His look is quite merciless, and there is no need for him to say, I know everything.

“She said you were a holy fool,” he mutters before he crosses the road.