• • •

On the way home the traffic moves like molasses, and it’s about eleven in the evening when I drop Lek off at the Asok-Sukhumvit interchange so he can take the subway to Klong Toey, where he recently took on a small illegal house at a knockdown rent. I think he’s finally settling his home base in preparation for the operation that will turn him into a woman.

The first thing I want to do at my hovel is check my Kathmandu guidebook. I am unable to find either the Newar Guesthouse or the Nixon, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, except perhaps that these two establishments are too basic even to qualify for the “budget” category. Or maybe they don’t need to advertise?

Now I have a good reason to go back up to Kathmandu to investigate, and when I call Vikorn he’s enthusiastic: “Yeah, find out who’s doing the snitching up there.” I immediately wai my little red electric Buddha in the shrine I put up in my bedroom after Pichai died, roll a joint, and try to stop my mind from slipping, slipping, slipping away. Too late, a tiny dying body attached to a respirator pops up in my mind’s eye and I feel my heart starting to sink and hear the whirr of blade wheels. Then: Businessmen, they drink my wine. My cell phone is ringing. I forgot to turn it off before I lit the joint.

It’s Sukum. His voice is glum. “I finally managed to talk to her over the phone.”

“Who?”

“Mad Moi. Doctor Death.”

“At the Oriental? She talked to you?”

“Yes. Only to let me know she has a cast-iron alibi. At the time the American was killed, she was at one of those HiSo parties, with photographers everywhere. I didn’t need to question witnesses, there’s a whole webpage dedicated to the party, with pictures of her nearly naked in one of those ball gowns HiSo women wear, cleavage all the way down to her belly button. I guess her drug diet keeps her slim. She said the photographers will all have date and time features on their cameras, so I could probably work out to the minute where she was and who she was talking to for the whole of that night.”

“Why is she staying at the Oriental?”

“Because she is having her house on the river renovated. She’s booked the Somerset Maugham Suite for two months. That’s more than a year’s salary for me.”

Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I don’t like the “for me” coda. I think it’s a reference to cops like myself who have alternative sources of income. I feel one of those twinges you get when someone activates the guilt chakra. Sukum adds, “Of course, there is such a thing as remote murder.”

“Sure, but it’s a hard case to argue when the homicide is aggravated by cannibalism at the scene of the crime.”

Sukum giggles. “I really think you should speak to her. She just won’t take me seriously. It’s quite insulting.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

Everything that happens in Thailand happens thanks to go-betweens; it’s our Chinese side. When I call my mother to tell her I need to get in touch with Doctor Moi, I can hear drunken farang and whores laughing in the background along with “California Dreaming.” Over the noise of the bar, Nong says there’s no way she knows of getting directly in touch with the notorious aristocrat, but she’ll leave messages all over town for Moi to call me if she deigns. To my great surprise, Nong has a response from the doctor before dawn: she would be delighted to meet me to discuss the case.

By the time I’ve showered and shaved, though, another mood kicks in. I remember I’m consigliere first and cop second; I’m despising myself all over again. Now that Pichai’s dead and Chanya’s in a nunnery, why the hell am I stuck in this predicament? Because it’s a continuum. Karma. I’m thinking, Blade wheel, I need the blade wheel. But when my cell phone starts ringing and I see from the screen it is Vikorn himself, I cannot resist pressing the green glyph.

“So?”

“Smith won’t talk,” I say. “She doesn’t know anything.” I hear a provisional sigh of relief.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Sonchai, I’m asking you as jao paw. You know what I’ll have to do if you’re going soft here.”

“I’m not going soft. She’s a typical low-grade mule; I would guess she was born into a one-parent family and brought up in city housing with no real prospects, considering her attitude, emotional underdevelopment, and general lack of inspiration or ability. If she’d been talented she might have started her own pharmaceutical business by now, but being essentially of peasant orientation, she has turned herself into a dumb animal ideal for your operation. She couldn’t talk if she wanted to.”

“Thank you, Consigliere,” Vikorn says.

I’m in a four-button, double-breasted blazer by Zegna, a spread-collar linen shirt by Givenchy, tropical wool flannel slacks, and patent leather slip-ons by Baker-Benjes, and I smell terrific as I stroll nonchalantly past the security guards on the great entrance doors to the Oriental Hotel. The guards speak out of the corner of their mouths into their lapel microphones; security is one of the hotel’s selling points. Another is the full-strength British Raj nostalgia of the Authors’ wing with its light-flooded solarium where potted bamboo soars while staff in traditional Thai silks do all they can to spoil you, especially at tea time.

Now I am seated on one of the high-backed rattan thrones under the wrought iron staircase at a woven rattan glass-topped table amid a riot of pastel shades and incredibly pretentious HiSo types, mostly of Chinese extraction, with a few English ladies who may be old enough to remember the original Raj. They have the best of it, these memsahibs, who are not only too old to care about their figures but have also given up worrying about their health, since they are days away from losing it altogether and therefore free to tuck into the clotted cream, strawberry jam, and scones with insouciant abandon, washing it all down with lashings of the best Darjeeling. I just wish I’d had the foresight to roll a joint to smoke in the men’s room, instead of hanging out here like a mouse in a trap.

Well, she has taken forty minutes, just for me, but now here she is, making her entrance at the top of the stairs in a black-and-white silk trouser suit which hangs perfectly on her emaciated body. As a connoisseur of criminal integrity, I cannot help admiring the way she is still able to pull it off, the HiSo sangfroid yes-I’m-bad-but-try-to-catch-me performance, even while her liver must be showing signs of domestic violence.

Doctor Moi is forty-three years and two months old, and although there must be organs owned by her which possess the characteristics of those double that age, nevertheless she learned enough at the Swiss finishing school to pay special attention to the parts exposed to the view of others: she looks pretty good. Her skin is Han white, as translucent as jade, and her features-a fine Chinese face with delicate, intelligent lines atop a Modigliani neck-strike one as the last word in good breeding. She is tall for a Chinese of Teochew race, almost six feet, and knows how to use her height to project elegance. Similarly, her hair: it is thick, black, and long, falling from the crown of her head in a series of sine curves and slow-motion bounces as she moves across the floor attracting all the attention she can use. A long string of large pearls loops around her neck and provides something for her to play with on her approach. And there is a black velvet choker around her neck with a precious stone of some kind in the middle, occupying the soft cavity under her Adam’s apple. The stone is orangey pink and cut with a thousand facets that reflect light. Naturally, I stand, give her the high wai that her social position deserves, then take the hand she has extended for me to kiss.

“How wonderful to see you again, Sonchai. I don’t think we’ve met since I had that silly misunderstanding with your mother.”