Vulture Peak (26 page)

“A lot of people use this house,” Om says. “But they are all connected.” She is dressed, sitting upright on one of the chaise longues while I watch her from a rosewood chair of classic Chinese design. There is a tinkling brook between us. “Manu’s lover, that army general, owns it jointly with that Chinese woman, but he never comes. He uses it to maintain his connections with Beijing. Especially his banking and military connections. He and the Chinese woman put it at the disposal of that Chinese creep—that’s his picture you put on the bed.”

“Mr. To?”

“His name’s Wong.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. My father was Chinese. That’s why my skin is light. He was a peasant from Canton who fled the Cultural Revolution. He was quite old by the time he reached Thailand and married my mother. He said the only thing he could give me was his language. Cantonese. Wong was a Hong Kong Chinese, and so were those women he dragged everywhere with him, so they always spoke Cantonese. They didn’t know I could understand everything they said. I never let on.”

“Go on.”

“What happened that night I told you about, it was all true, but it was only the first time. It seems I was a great success with the Chinese bankers that Wong was entertaining here.”

“Wong was at the party?”

“Oh no, he was much too high up for that. He just made the place available and paid for the entertainment.” She stares at the flow of pure water in the little brook between us. “I didn’t even meet him until the next time.”

“The next time?”

“Yes. Like I said, we were a hit. Especially me. Those were just peasant boys at that party who got recruited into banking—they’d never seen anything like it. Especially that little trick with the gold
ring. The word spread. Wong’s masters in Beijing were delighted, so Wong did it over and over again. Only this time he insisted on private rehearsals.”

“I see.”

“The Hong Kong Chinese woman was his face at the party, making sure everything went smoothly, but he planned everything.”

“And he—”

“He never screwed me. He groped me a lot, but he was a born voyeur. He sat with his two weird women and watched me do things for him. Often he would have them film me while he masturbated. And every time what he wanted was a little weirder, a little more extreme. He got very aroused just having me as his creature, telling me ‘Do this, do that’—all the time pretending it was a rehearsal, of course. He would turn bright red, and the sweat would pour down his face.”

“And at the same time you were—I mean, Manu was your client?”

“There was overlap. That General Zinna called the bar one night—he’d heard about us from Wong—to say he had a special assignment, money no object. He told the
mamasan
about his problem, and she came up here with me the first night. Nobody knew how Manu would react. They kept him locked up in the main bedroom while they explained to me that he could be difficult. I got scared and asked if he had AIDS. They said no, nothing like that, no communicable disease—but he’d been in an accident. It would be better for both of us if I worked in the dark. So I did. He was like an animal at first, but I could feel his hurt. He had me every way he wanted, but he stopped being rough after a while. They paid me more money that night than I had earned for six months. I bought my mum a house. The
mamasan
said they were very pleased with me.

“Then the client—Manu—wanted me again. So the second time I told him to switch the lights on. It was a shock—I thought I was going to ruin everything by vomiting—but I remembered my vow to help all living creatures toward enlightenment, and that saved me. When he realized I could have sex with him knowing what he looked like, he just melted. He can’t live without me. He’s like a child with me.” She looks me in the eye. “You know he can hardly talk, only
whimper and blather? When he wants to tell me something, he has to write it down. The accident ruined his larynx almost completely.” Om swallows and looks away.

“How many
entertainments
did you take part in all together?”

“I’m not sure. About ten.”

“And the clients—were they always midlevel bankers?”

She looks away, bites her lip.

“Om?”

“No. But I told you, these were all people from the north, in the Beijing area. They didn’t speak Cantonese so I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

“Always from the north, Om?”

She is holding out on me. She exhales. “No, not always from the north.”

“So there were occasions when you did understand everything that was being said, when they assumed you could not understand a word?”

Reluctantly: “Yes.”

“And what were they talking about?”

“It happened twice. Once it was a bunch of cops from Shenzen, the other time it was a group of prison officers from somewhere in Guanzhou.”

I wait. It seems she has forgotten the question. “What were they talking about, Om?”

“Body parts,” she says. She looks into my eyes. “That was the connection. Even when the group was from the north, I could understand some words. I didn’t follow the story until the Cantonese-speaking groups came. Then I put the picture together. It seems there is quite an industry—everything that goes on in this house is connected. Even Manu—he is connected through his operation. He knows some of the players. He knew Wong, for example, who you call To.”

I think about that. “But I still don’t get it. What’s the connection between a bunch of men on stag parties to Phuket and the organ-trafficking industry?”

“Exactly that. The parties were all for men who had had successful transplants of one kind or another. They were allowed to invite their
guanxi
group to celebrate their survival—‘like being reborn,’ was what they kept saying. Ordinary Chinese are just as superstitious as Thais. If they think some piece of good fortune has saved their lives, they feel obliged to share the joy, give thanks.”

“Transplant operations made possible by removing the organs of people who had been executed … by that particular work group?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. When it was the cops, yes. I think they had a thing going, you know, if a fellow cop needed a fresh new liver, or kidney, or something, they would go and find one for him. Same with the prison officers. These were tightly knit male groupings, you know, with that thing men do: all for one and one for all.” She scowls, then shrugs. “Survival.”

I let about five minutes pass while she stares at the stream and twists a tissue into a knot and slowly shreds it over the floor. “So, Om, are you going to tell me who killed Mr. Wong and his two assistants?”

She stares down at the little pile of white tissue fragments on the parquet, then looks up at me. “You see, Manu thinks of this house as his own. He likes to feel he can sneak up here anytime he likes, like a wild animal with a secret nest. And he has all the keys. Of course he stays away when there’s a party or something, but it’s part of his relationship with Zinna that he can have anything of Zinna’s—because of Zinna’s guilt.

“One night I was here ‘rehearsing’ in front of Wong and the other two. They were facing me, and I was standing in front of the balcony, so I was the only one who saw Manu. He used his key to slip in, but he must have known there were people here because of the car outside. So he made no noise. I was naked, and Wong was telling me what he wanted. It was quite extreme, and I felt humiliated because of Manu. Manu disappeared for a moment, and I thought he’d gone. But it seems he just went somewhere in the house where there was a gun. It was a pistol.

“Suddenly he wasn’t Manu the cripple anymore. I could see the kind of young man he must have been before the accident. He walked tall. I was sure he’d do something cruel to them, because he was in such a rage. But he didn’t. He controlled himself. He was a soldier, so he knew how to aim a gun. He shot all three of them in the back of the
head, one after the other in less than a second. It was an execution.” Silence, then: “Who cares if people like that die? They were going to be reborn as pigs or insects anyway.”

She is staring into space. I say, “The three cadavers were expertly harvested for all major organs, even faces. Who did that?” She stares at me until her eyes grow big, but she doesn’t answer. “Who called a certain telephone number to bring in the experts? The ones who know how to extract valuable organs and sell them on the international market?”

She continues to stare, as if my question has no meaning.

I’ve hit the ground running. Vikorn called me about a minute after I landed in Bangkok and ordered me to take a cab straight to the police station. Now I’m knocking on his door. Now I’m taking a seat at his desk. The three Americans are here in their usual positions: Linda and Ben on the Italian sofa, the older man, Jack, on a high chair with arms. I tell the story of my trip to Phuket and Om’s evidence. The Americans listen intently to every word; Vikorn nods now and then. When I’ve finished there is a long silence, then Jack says, “Linda?”

“I’m fortified in my original opinion,” Linda says. “I say we keep the Colonel’s name out of this. Let the detective carry on with the investigation if he wants to. I guess there are quite a few loose ends to tie up. Especially if we assume the perp, this Manu character, doesn’t have the skill to remove organs from the recently deceased. But let him do it sotto voce. No publicity until after the election.”

“Reason?” Jack says.

“If there’s any relevant message at all in this case, it’s highly confusing. You have a crazed killer whose life was destroyed by a medical procedure and who, in a jealous rage, murdered a high-level Chinese banker with strong connections in Beijing. That’s going to be how the media present it and how the public receives it: the human/sensational angle. It’s going to be hard to present the Colonel as a clear hero saving the country from the evils of organ trafficking. Mixed
messages are always big trouble. I say we either get an organ-trafficking story with clear unambiguous lines, or we dump organ trafficking altogether as a campaign theme. After all, the Colonel’s way ahead in the polls—we don’t need any complications.”

“Do we know anything about the bank this Mr. To worked for?” Jack says.

“An old-style merchant bank that was big on the mainland, then fled to Hong Kong after the revolution, then mended ties with Beijing and became one of its unofficial commercial arms,” Linda says. “They are strongly connected to the Ministry of Correctional Services, which has been buying up a lot of real estate in Beijing and renting it out as office and residential accommodation. We think the ministry uses its real estate portfolio as collateral to borrow money from this bank at very low rates of interest.”

“That would give them an edge,” Ben says.

“Anyway, are we all agreed about Linda’s point?” Jack says. “The detective here keeps his investigation under strict wraps until after the election? Or preferably, stops investigating until the Colonel is governor?”

“Too right,” Ben says.

The three Americans look at Vikorn, who says nothing. The atmosphere has subtly changed. Something has triggered a new hostility from Linda and Ben toward Jack, who looks uneasy. We remain silent until Linda coughs. We all look at Linda.

“Ah, I’m afraid I have to ask a question, Jack,” she says. “The preamble to the question is that from what I know of Correctional Services in Beijing, they don’t get involved in small stuff.”

“Right,” Ben says.

“I mean, these are smart, ambitious cadres turned masters of the universe. They don’t much care who runs Bangkok. These guys shoot for gold.”

“Right,” Ben says.

“I have no idea where you’re going with this, Linda,” Jack says, avoiding her stare.

“Where I’m going with this, Jack,” Linda says with a crack in her voice, “is to point out that of the three of us, you are the one with
strong, high-level ties with that ministry. ’Cause what I don’t want is a repeat of the Sierra Leone thing and those blood diamond allegations that came just a little too close for comfort.”

“Right,” Ben says.

Now I understand that the balance of power has mysteriously shifted. Jack is rubbing a hand on one of the arms of his chair.

“I don’t need the money, Jack,” Linda says. “I didn’t lose fifty million when Lehman collapsed and another twenty million with Madoff.”

“Me either,” Ben says.

“I stayed in cash, then bought gold,” Linda says. “You do see where I’m going here, Jack? Me and Ben here, we’re not desperate for the dough.”

“I hear you,” Jack says.

“Getting a third-world cop elected as governor of a little city nobody worries much about is one thing. Promising to take him all the way to leader of a country on behalf of a certain Beijing ministry with seriously powerful rivals in other ministries—I don’t want to be on the Red Army’s hit list.”

“Me either,” Ben says.

“Or worse, the hit list of one of the PRC police consortia.”

“I hear you,” Jack says.

“Next thing you know, we have the Yips up our asses.”

“They’re with Correctional Services,” Jack says. “They would be on our side in that scenario.”

“They’ve also done work for the police and army,” Ben says.

“Not to mention regional bosses,” Linda says.

“Look,” Jack says, “I got the message. If I have instructions to take the Colonel higher, I’ll do it on my own, okay?”

“Just so long as that’s clear to everybody,” Linda says.

“I’ll second that,” Ben says.

Silence. The eruption of aggression and distrust seems to have made them feel more at home. “So, who’s going to check out this Inspector Chan?” Jack says.

Jack and Linda look at Ben.

“Okay,” Ben says.

“And we need something real on the Yips,” Jack says, recovering authority. “Ben and I tried to wake up our old contacts in the Company, but nothing doing. We need updating. I had no idea they’d gotten so big. Either the Company or the Bureau must know about them.”

“Okay,” Linda says.

The three of them stand on a common impulse and leave the room. Now it’s Vikorn and me alone together.

Silence. “So, are you aiming to run the country? Is that what this is really all about?” He doesn’t answer. “Nobody really figures you for governor—it doesn’t make sense. You make more on heroin than you ever would peddling city construction contracts. Prime minister, though—I can see that might be a temptation. Is that the deal you have with Beijing?” He stares at me. “Which ministry is behind you?”