Lek is normally the most self-effacing of assistants, with the discretion of a trusted servant. When he feels he has served beyond the call of duty and craves recognition over and above the usual, however, he acquires the characteristics of a neglected wife. He ambushed me as I walked into the station and hasn’t stopped following me and talking for the past ten minutes:
“Talk about footwork, oh Buddha, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve gone through the past two days when you were off shopping in Hong Kong. How you must have suffered, darling. I feel so sorry for you.”
I arrive at my desk, pull back the chair, sit, and put my feet up on the desk while he stands beside me. “Tell me about it, Lek. What angle were you following up? I forget.”
“Oh, he forgot. The maharaja of District Eight carelessly distributes duties, assigns tasks, and goes tiger hunting. You told me to check out the shareholders of the mansion in Phuket-you do remember Phuket, Vulture Peak? You know, the case?”
I let him have my best patrician smile, the kind that sends a message of infinite tolerance for the intellectual shortcomings of slaves. “Tell me about the shareholders.”
“Well of course, none of them are in Bangkok-that would have been just too easy, wouldn’t it? And when I checked out the registered home addresses, of course there are no telephone numbers.”
“Where are the registered addresses?”
“Each and every one of them in Isaan, darling. And I don’t mean urban Isaan, like Udon Thani or Khorat-oh no, nothing easy like that, I mean deep country Isaan, the kind of place that was genuine jungle with monkeys swinging from tree to tree about five minutes ago and even now is hardly more than shacks with corrugated roofs.”
“Really?”
“Would I lie? Want to see the blisters on my feet? I nearly died of heatstroke about five thousand times. My expenses for bottled water alone will tell you what I’ve been through.”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture. So, did you talk to any of the shareholders?”
“Depends what you mean by talk. There was only one actually living where he was supposed to live, and he was eighty-five years old, almost blind, and so deaf I got laryngitis from shouting at him.”
“But he’s the real thing, a shareholder in the Vulture Peak mansion?”
“Oh, yes, no doubt about it. He remembers signing his name and having his ID card photocopied-and that’s as far as it goes. He’s never been to Phuket in his life and has no idea he’s worth maybe thirty million baht. And of course I didn’t tell him, you know, just in case something goes wrong. I wouldn’t want to get his hopes up, an old man like that. I felt so sorry for him and jealous as hell at the same time. Imagine, a multimillionaire, and he’s living in a shack with no water or electricity.”
“But who put him up to it? He told you that?”
“All he knows is someone came to see him one day and said they were an agent for a rich man who wanted to buy a mansion and they would give him twenty thousand baht if he signed a contract first, then another sixty thousand once the formalities had been finalized, on condition he kept his mouth shut. And he didn’t have to do anything, not even leave his shack. So was he going to say no, a lonely old man starving to death? He couldn’t believe his luck. He still hasn’t spent all the money they gave him, says he can live on it for another year at least.”
“When did this happen?”
“Just before the last official sale of the property.”
“Can we trace the agent he’s talking about?”
“Of course not, darling. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“Anonymity?”
“My, you’re quick today!”
“But the agent, was he Bangkok-did he speak to the old man in Isaan or in Standard Thai?” Lek scratches his chin. “You didn’t ask?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Lek?”
“Well, I didn’t need to. Like I say, the old guy is nearly deaf, lived in Isaan all his life. I wouldn’t expect he’d understand anything except Isaan.”
“One of the documents he signed must have been a power of attorney.”
“Right.”
“So why was no power of attorney attached to the entry in the registry?”
“Want me to go and see that little tart of a clerk?”
“All the way back to Phuket?”
Lek taps his nose. “Not necessarily.” I let a couple of beats pass and wait. When Lek is pleased with himself, he can’t hold out for long. He sighs. “Well, I couldn’t believe a little civil servant ratlet like that could afford the operation when I can’t.”
“You were jealous?”
“As hell, if you want to know. Anyway, I made inquiries.”
“On the katoey network? And?”
“Just as I thought-he has a sponsor. A farang who hangs out in Pattaya. The tart flies up to be with him every weekend.”
“You have the address?”
“How much do you love me?”
“For Buddha’s sake.”
“Well, you haven’t been at all affectionate ever since you went to Dubai.”
It’s my turn to sigh. “I’ll buy you lunch at Ma Ka’s.”
“Really? When?”
“Now. We’ll eat, then get a cab down to Pattaya, check out the farang. ”
“But it’s not the weekend-the clerk will be in Phuket.”
“That might not matter.”
Lek raises his eyes. “Master, I’m so glad you’re fully recovered, and I do hope you won’t be abusing drugs again for a day or so. Please remember my career is inextricably bound up with yours.”
“Any more sarcasm, and I’m not buying you lunch.”
The difference between Bangkok and Pattaya, which is about an hour’s drive down the coast, is quite simple from the tourist perspective: Bangkok has many industries, Pattaya only one. As a consequence, the mayor has persuaded the authorities to bend the rules somewhat. Whereas in Bangkok some attempt is made to keep the sex industry under control and restricted to certain well-known areas, in Pattaya it proclaims itself from the rooftops-or, more accurately, the neon.
When we reach the coast road the blatant bars compete for lurid attention: the Cock and Pussy, the Quickie, and one with no name but a sign on which a balding farang with huge beer gut and tufts of ginger hair is having congress with a shapely Thai girl, doggy style. Nor is the entertainment restricted to the conservative end of the sexual spectrum who still, quaintly, do it nature’s way; the gay and the katoey market is so large, it occupies subdistricts in which an old-fashioned heterosexual lech may well feel unwelcome and out of date. Is it permissible for me to confess that boys for sale in underpants standing on stages fills me with a particular sadness that I don’t feel in the case of tough girls happy to be in the business of manipulating a force of nature? (Sorry, DFR, but IMHO political correctness is soft fascism, and I’ll have nothing to do with it.) I’m not in the best of moods when we stroll down the pedestrianized high street to a couple of lanes dedicated to transsexuals. I feel Lek’s excitement to be in a burg dedicated to his own kind.
“Oh my, look at the money on that job!” he says of a platinum blonde with blouse-bursting breasts, silicone-enhanced buttocks, and cupid-bow lips leaning against a wall outside a bar named Love. “And to think he was just a humble farmhand humping rice up in Isaan only months ago.”
“How d’you know?”
“Statistics, darling, statistics. I wonder how much cocaine his sponsor sold to pay for that.”
This is Lek’s moment, and I let him lead. He has counseled that rather than surprise the clerk’s farang sugar daddy in his lair immediately, we would do well to make preliminary inquiries. Although the katoey market occupies many streets, long-term players tend to hang out in this particular cul-de-sac, which in comparison to the rest of the town appears restrained, even discreet.
Lek is fascinated by the platinum blonde, whether out of sexual attraction or an interest in the surgical investment is hard to say. He leads to the Love bar and gives him/her a friendly wai as we enter. It is early in the evening, and only a few katoeys are lounging among the tables and chairs. One of them rouses himself to cross the floor in a Marilyn Monroe walk to slip behind the bar.
Lek already knows the stage name of the clerk at the land registry in Phuket.
“Sally-O?” the katoey behind the bar says, and makes an exaggerated pout that includes placing an index finger along one side of his cheek and inclining his head while furrowing his brow. “Well, I do happen to know one Sally-O.”
“Well, how many Sally-O’s are there, for Buddha’s sake?” Lek says.
“There’s no need to have a tantrum, darling. Names come and go with the fashion. About six months ago every second girl was calling herself Sally-O-now you hardly hear it at all. Postsurgery names these days tend to be more international. Mon Amour is top of the pops, but Japanese Monicas are all the rage too.”
“He’s a government clerk in Phuket in his day job,” Lek says, and describes the clerk. The katoey raises his eyes. I reach for my wallet and take out a five-hundred-baht note. The katoey sneers. I take out another five hundred but keep my finger on both notes after I place them on the bar. The katoey sighs. “I might be wrong, but the person you describe could be the Sally-O who is a regular at the Spank Me bar three doors down.” He picks up the thousand baht and retreats to the far end of the bar, on which he leans in a way that showcases his implants.
Despite its name, the Spank Me bar is a no-frills place where the katoeys are dressed in jeans and T-shirts-enviably slim, with flat stomachs and breast sizes under control-and sport real smiles. The manager is also a katoey, but of the brisk business-minded kind. The bar is designed to make long-term players feel relaxed and part of a family. He guesses immediately that we are cops and sees the wisdom of cooperating.
“Sally-O? Sure, she comes in with her husband most weekends. When they’re not on his yacht, that is.”
“Yacht?”
“He keeps it at the Phuket Yacht Club. He used to be a keen sailor, but after his illness he sold the sailboat and bought some kind of floating champagne palace.”
He takes in our incomprehension. “You do know who he is, don’t you?” Lek and I shake our heads.
“Used to be quite famous, a third-division pop star, part of the wallpaper in the seventies, sold the fifties retro stuff, you know, Elvis-style glitter with silver pants that split and padded shoulders. Couldn’t sing to save his life, but kids went for the glitter.”
“Rich?”
The katoey thinks about it. “Hard to say. To me he’s rich, but he was never top of the league-or the pops. And he had a lot of trouble with his health. Booze, drugs, dirty needles-he had a problem when he first started coming in here. He would drink and drink until he fell over. Then he disappeared for a few months, and when he returned, he looked like death. Liver failing badly. Then he got himself a transplant. Now he doesn’t drink anything except fruit juice. You have to admire his dedication. It’s all fear, of course. He was about as close to death as you can get and still breathe. He looks rough most of the time, but at least he can walk and talk. Sally-O is his long-term companion. I think they stay on his boat together a lot of the time, but they still need the bright lights.”
“A transplant?” I say.
“Right. A transplant. All on the black market, of course, no questions asked-otherwise he would have gone back to England to have it done officially, wouldn’t he?”
I let the strange coincidence sink in. “You don’t happen to know who arranged the transplant for him?”
The katoey smiles. “All I can tell you is, it didn’t happen here.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where the operation took place, but I know he paid a few visits to Hong Kong, and one night he came in here with some kind of Chinese princess-I mean the real thing, money all over her, HiSo manners. Nice woman, knew how to charm, but way out of our league-out of his league too. I guess even aristocracy have to make a living these days.”
“Was she tall, willowy, elegant with long hands?”
He laughs. “Exactly. All of those things.”
“Did she speak Thai, by any chance?”
“Intermediate Thai with a strong accent, perfect English, and I heard her on the phone talking in Chinese.”
“What is the name of the pop star?”
“Freddie Monroe. Named after that Hollywood woman, I suppose, the one who slept with John Kennedy-or was it the other one she slept with?”
“Would you happen to have his cell phone number?”
“Sure-so long as you don’t tell him you got it from me. We survive here by discretion.”
He takes out his own cell phone, presses some buttons and reads off the number while I plug it into my own. I think I’ve driven him as hard as I can, considering he is not a suspect and does not need to answer questions from a Bangkok cop when he surely pays protection to the local force. I chance just one more.
“This clerk, is he the usual run of katoey, d’you think?”
He frowns in contemplation. “There is no usual run of katoey, ” the katoey says with a kind of sadness. “For thousands of years young men have been volunteering for castration as a way out. To discover what kind of katoey you’re dealing with, you have to find out what demon they’re running from. Maybe they do want to be women, maybe they’re simply gays looking for a higher profile. Sometimes it’s pure money-modifying the body to please the customers. But most of the time it’s a case of building a fantasy life until it’s realer than the mundane. Taking control over your own identity right down to gender itself. Above all, katoeys are fantasists.”
“Did Sally-O nurse a particular fantasy that you know of?”
“Sure. She thought she was the reincarnation of a fifteenth-century Chinese eunuch. Apparently there was a famous one who went to sea, but I’m not strong on history.”