37

That’s exactly how I found him when I came this morning,” Nat whispers, hoarse with horror, sharing wide eyes with Lek (to whom I had to talk sternly before he would get out of bed; he apologized in the cab, the estrogen is upsetting his system, he’s starting to feel moody even though his nascent breasts are hardly noticeable). “I stayed with him every weekend. He gave me a key.” She shows me.

We are standing in a rented two-room apartment on Soi 22, Sukhumvit. Stephen Bright had a beautiful body; its youth and sinewy texture are apparent still even though its internal organization has already failed. At this very moment cell walls are breaking down, bacteria are burrowing into previously forbidden zones, the composite has lost all integrity. The entity that played Bright for twenty-seven years is frankly relieved to be rid of its chemical prison and at the moment of writing is having a lot more fun in a gentler, kinder galaxy. He did all he could to avoid yet another early death by violence but, having performed his duty as he saw it, now looks forward to a long period of rest and recreation. He hasn’t totally rejected our solar system but will probably favor Venus for his next visit. Looking at it with terrestrial eyes, though, his body, minus the penis (discarded in a cheap wastepaper bin), with a great gaping gash in his gut, purple tubes hanging out like bunches of grapes-well, what can one say? It’s a mess. This time I am the one to turn the corpse over. Yep, afraid so.

Lek covers his mouth, shares another very female glance of terminal terror with Nat, then finds a carpet to kneel on while he wais the Buddha. Seeing this, Nat immediately joins him. (Over here it’s not death but the dead who send the green balls down our trouser legs. Believe me, there’s nothing more depressing than a clinging ghost on your back for life.) I wait while the two of them, palms joined in high wais, silently inoculate themselves with a potent mixture of magic, superstition, and customized Buddhism. Nat is the first to stand up, followed by Lek, who cannot resist a second glance into the wastepaper bin. He involuntarily touches his crotch area. (I’ve resisted this reflex myself, but only just.) Nat reads his mind. “It’s different for you-they’ll use an anesthetic, and anyway you don’t need yours.”

“I’ve always hated it,” Lek agrees, “but I’m used to it, you know?”

I am watching Nat closely. The horror is genuine. So is the sorrow. She catches my eye. “Stephen Bright proposed to me a couple of nights ago. I thought maybe I’d finally got lucky. I mean, he was a serious boy, and I think he actually loved me. He’d suffered so much, you know, and he was always so grateful when we made love. He said I was a very generous lover. Actually, I didn’t do anything I didn’t do with other customers-he was just so grateful all the time.” She bursts into tears.

“His back?”

She shudders. “That was my fault. I have this thing about tats, you know, and I kept asking him, wouldn’t he like something on his back? He said he’d look into it. Then one night he surprised me with it. It went all the way from his shoulders to the top of his backside. It wasn’t at all what I expected but it was amazing, I mean really superior.”

“Did he tell you who did it?”

“He said it was a Japanese who was known to the intelligence community. That’s all he said.”

I have decided to bypass Hudson, not out of mistrust-his commitment to the meaningless is surely unimpeachable-but because I don’t think I can quite stand his Arabic at this moment. The female CIA seems an oasis of sanity in comparison.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Detective Jitpleecheep.”

“Yes, Detective?”

“You’d better come.” I give her the address, then I tell Nat to take Lek back to the club. She puts her arm around him in a sisterly gesture, hugs him.

“I don’t know if I’m really going to go through with it,” Lek moans as they leave. “Maybe I’ll just use tape. Lots of dancers do.”

“You really want to be half and half all your life?” Nat asks gently at the door.

“No.”

The female CIA arrives, with Hudson. I watch her while she stares silently for several minutes at Bright’s corpse; were she not a seasoned professional, I would describe the succession of expressions on her face as emanating from deep prurience. She composes herself eventually; it’s like watching someone get dressed after an orgy: “You see, they severed his penis, just as we suspected they would. And look at his back.”

Hudson and I follow her directions. There is hardly any difference between him and Mitch Turner in this respect-the whole of the top layer of skin has been peeled away, from shoulders to lower back, leaving the subcutaneous blubber to seep.

“Well, at least we don’t need a homicide detective to tell us these deaths are linked.” She looks at Hudson. “But the ones who assassinated Mitch Turner died in that explosion in Indonesia, am I correct? So this is a brilliantly coordinated, centrally planned, high-level Al Qaeda atrocity: different hitmen deliberately copying the first murder, so as to demonstrate corporate identity. The intention is to intimidate all Americans everywhere.” Biting her lower lip: “This is big. Much bigger than I thought. It’s the psychology of terrorism honed to a remarkable level of sophistication. If this gets out, Americans will be more afraid than ever to travel overseas. If these kinds of killings show up in the States, as I’m sure they will sooner or later, the whole of the American mind will be held for ransom. It’s brilliant, it’s evil.” To me: “Any crinkly black hairs? I want the best forensic investigation you can manage on this apartment. If you need any special support-for example, a kit to lift prints off flesh, analysis of microscopic fiber samples-let me know. I’ll have them ship whatever you need with some skilled operators on the next plane.” Looking curiously at Hudson: “This really is starting to look like war.”

Hudson stiffens at this holy word.

An hour later Vikorn and I are standing together in Bright’s apartment. The situation, as much as the corpse, has begun to give me a headache.

“I just don’t see any way out of it,” I tell him.

Vikorn is strangely unperturbed. “It’s okay. I still have a few of those hairs left. No fingers, unfortunately.”

“Are you crazy? Those hairs belong to a terrorist who’s known to have been killed before the murder. You’ll blow the whole scam.”

He shakes his head at my obtuseness and at the same time takes an airmail envelope out of his pocket. He rips it open and begins shaking it around the room. Crinkly hairs fall out like black snow.

“You’ll never understand them. You present dedicated farang with contradictory evidence, and they’ll use their infinite ingenuity to mislead themselves even further.”