John Burdett - The Godfather of Kathmandu

ALSO BY JOHN BURDETT

Bangkok Haunts

Bangkok Tattoo

Bangkok 8

The Last Six Million Seconds

A Personal History of Thirst

For Nit

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank David Giler for his usual invaluable comments, and Douglas Mays, who taught me all I am ever likely to know about padparadschas.

Ours is an age of enforced psychosis. Ill forgive yours, farang, if youll forgive minebut lets talk about it later. Right now Im on the back of a motorbike taxi hurtling toward a to-die-for little murder off Soi 4/4, Sukhumvit. My boss, Colonel Vikorn, called me at home with the good news that he wants me on the case because the victim is said to be some hyper-rich, hyper-famous Hollywood farang and he doesnt need poor Detective Sukum screwing up with the media. Well get to Detective Sukum; for the moment picture me, if you will, with a Force 8 tropical wind in my face causing eyes to tear and ears to itch, on my way to one of our most popular red-light districts where there awaits a larger-than-life dead Westerner.

Im nearly there. With a little urging my motorbike jockey drives up onto the sidewalk to avoid the massive traffic jam at the Soi 4 junction with Sukhumvit, weaves in between a long line of cooked-food vendors busy feeding the whores from Nana Plaza who have just gotten up (its about eleven in the morning), slaloms between a mango seller and a lamppost, returns to the tarmac with the usual jolt to the lower spine, and now were slowing to swerve into Subsoi 4. (Should one add the two fours to make the lucky number eight, or should one accept the stark warning: two fours mean death twice within the Cantonese luck system, which has taken over the world as a vital component of globalization?) Finally, here we are with a couple of squad cars and a forensic van in the parking area of the flophouse to welcome yours truly on this fair morning.

Also waiting for me is my long-haired assistant, Lek, a katoeytranssexualwho has not yet scraped together the courage or the funds for the final op. He avoids the supernatural brightness in my eyes (Ive been meditating all night) to inform me, sotto voce, that Detective Sukum is here before me and has already developed possessive feelings toward the cadaver. The good Sukum is half a grade above me, and we are rivals for promotion. Like any jungle carnivore, Sukum is hunched over the kill as if it were all his own workand who can blame him? Necrophilia is a professional hazard on any murder squad, and I have no doubt my rival is slobbering over his magnificent prize, just as if he had come across the Koh-i-noor diamond in a sewer. Within the value system into which we were all inducted at cadet school, this murder is everyones definition of ruang yai: a big one. It will be interesting to see how Sukum handles my inconvenient arrival. I think I might be able to surprise him.

Lek leads me past the guards hut into the parking deck which is also the entrance area for a ten-story apartment building that was erected in a hurry fifteen years ago in order to profit on a no-frills basis from the sexual frustration of Western men over the age of forty: a fail-proof business decision, the owners got their money back in the first three years and its been honey all the way ever since. Paint is chipped and flaking from the walls, revealing white plaster with occasional graffiti (Fuck you, farang, in Thai; Sarlee, you were so good last night, in English); the lift is tinyeven the slim Lek and I find ourselves embarrassingly close for a moment. (Our clash of colognes reveals our sexual orientations. He will use nothing less than Chanel No. 5, which he begs from my mother, Nong; mine is a rugged, take-no-prisoners little number from Armani.)

This could be one for the FBI, I say in the elevator.

Shes stuck in Virginia, Lek says. Poor little thing broke her arm during combat training. She was fighting two instructors at the same time, and of course they both came off worse, but she still cant really call herself one of the boys because shes in love with me. Dont tell her I said that.

Kimberley? Really?

She sent me an e-mail yesterday.

Kimberley Jones, an FBI agent, is a friend of mine and Leks. Especially Leks. Its a long story. She worked with me on a few cases of an international nature and fell in love with Lek, which awkward fact has confused the hell out of her. Does her lust for a transsexual make her a dyke or not? I fear there is little in your culture, farang, to provide guidance on this conundrumso she calls me all the time.

The corridor on the fourth floor leads to room 422, where two uniformed cops are stationed.

They part to let us into the apartment, where a massive American at least six feet long waits propped up in semi-sitting position on a bed wearing only a gigantic pair of shorts, over the top of which a great wormy mass of intestines has flopped like tripe in a butchers shop. (His bed is so narrow that parts of his flesh sag over each side, and one has to wonder how he coped when engaged in sexual congress.) The drama of this center-screen image at first makes the various slim Thai cops and forensic technicians seem like a chorus to a Greek tragedy. Then Sukum steps forward.

Detective Sukum Montri is a good-looking Thai cop in his early thirties, very upright and proper when not consumed by fear, aggression, and lustlike the rest of us; but right now I discern in his eyes the fire of one who has decided that this is the moment when the fig leaf of comradeship must be dropped by both protagonists to reveal the competing stiffness of their virile members. Well, I have good news for him: today, thanks to the way my psychosis is hanging, Im all metasSanskrit for loving-kindness. However, it is important not to spoil people. I shall break the good news that I dont give a damn about promotion todayor for the rest of my lifelater. For the moment, let us enjoy Sukum.

He wears a black jacket, black pants, white shirt, thin pink nylon tie (pink because its Tuesdayour days of the week are color coded), all items generic, i.e., not good enough to qualify as fakes. The jacket is particularly narrow at the shoulders, pinching under the arms and badly crumpled, even though Im sure it was freshly pressed yesterday. (Our gifted imitators of French and Italian haute couture would never be so crass; Sukums tailor, if he has one, must be Thai Chinese of the old cloth-saving school.)

Good morning, Detective. I take careful note of the position of his hands as he wais me (palms pressed together and raised to mouth level, with precisely the right mindful pause), before I wai him back in exactly the same way. Sukum coughs. Its very kind of you to rush over to help me out, he says. I grunt noncommittally, causing a brief grin to cross Leks face.