24
As soon as Nong has gone the FBI returns with a frown on her face. She cannot speak Thai, but I think she saw my mother and the Colonel flirting in the corridor. Perhaps she is suffering from advanced culture shock? I already know she and the Colonel are not going to get along.
She brings the news that Bradley’s computer has arrived, and a few minutes later she begins organizing a bridge over the bed, cables, even an Internet connection. Kimberley Jones does not flirt, indeed I think she must have taken an antiflirting course at Quantico, so there is a stiffness in the way she leans over me every few minutes. When we have the computer up and running, it is even more awkward. Half the time I have her bosom in my face, which often causes her to blush. Did American culture go back in time about a hundred years? I’m sure all those movies from the Vietnam era showed a more relaxed people. Not that it matters. We become quite excited, in a professional sense, once we enter Bradley’s e-mail files.
Pretty soon we are joined by Rosen and Nape, who look over my shoulder at the monitor. Everything is affable and even jolly until I say: “This guy, Sylvester Warren, does anyone know who he is?” Silence from the rest of the team. I search out Kimberley Jones’ eyes. She looks away. Rosen coughs.
“You have a way of coming straight to the point, Detective, I’ll give you that.”
Nape comes to the rescue. “I don’t think we’d want to let it be known we’re even reading e-mails from Mr. Warren. Not unless we get something concrete we can use.”
Rosen agrees with a vigorous nod. “That’s right. If what we have is a revenge killing in a narcotics feud, we don’t want to drag Warren into it. Not if all he’s doing here is keeping up an erudite correspondence with Bradley on some obscure aspect of the jade trade.”
I make big eyes from one to the other in the most charming and humble manner. Nape grins. “Warren’s a big shot. Actually, he’s a big shot here as well as in New York. He comes to Bangkok every month, gets invited to receptions at the embassy. He mixes extensively with local high society, especially the Chinese. He’s a jeweler and art dealer, big-time. He has shops in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Paris, London—and here. His passion is jade. It’s not surprising he would have contacts with Bradley, who’s coming across as a gifted amateur, living here in Bangkok, and a fellow American.”
“What a wonderful, democratic society you have, that a sergeant in the Marines hobnobs with a baron like this Warren.”
All three check my face for sarcasm, which I did not intend. I have managed to produce an awkward silence. Rosen says: “Well, Americans talk to each other. We still do that. Especially if there’s a profit to be made.”
I think I get the point and use the program to select some of Warren’s e-mails and Bradley’s replies to him. Helplessness radiates from my American colleagues as I read aloud.
Bill, your piece arrived yesterday FedEx. The boys are getting the point, I agree, but there’s still a long way to go.
Bill, look, this is good work which I can sell anywhere, but it’s not what we discussed. I’m arriving on a Thai Airways flight next Tues. We’ll talk.
Bill, I have to tell you I was very impressed with the latest piece. It’s not quite there, but it’s damn close. I’m going to release the second tranche today. Keep it up.
I interrupt my reading to search the three sets of eyes around the bed, until Rosen says to Nape: “Tell him.”
He clears his throat. “Sylvester Warren is a very well-connected man. He knows senators, congressmen. He probably fits out thirty percent of America’s richest women and a lot of our richest men with their jewelry, thanks to his gift for finding the best original designers. Basically, he knows everyone with real money, donates huge amounts to the Republican Party and somewhat less to the Democrats. He’s occasionally invited to the White House. He knows judges, senior lawyers. He’s also been under surveillance by the FBI for years. We suspect him of art frauds, but he’s just too smart to catch. Also, we don’t have a whole lot of specialists in imperial jade and he’s probably the world’s leading expert. It’s his hobby, his passion as well as his profession. If he’s a crook, he’s only ripping off the rich, and the rich don’t like to admit to being ripped off. There’s a limit to how many resources the Bureau wants to put into something like this, given our other priorities.”
I click my tongue. “Would I be right in thinking his collection of imperial jade is one of the biggest outside of museums?”
“Yes.”
“And he sells off a piece every now and then, probably at an auction?”
“Usually privately, but every now and then Christie’s or Sotheby’s gets a piece of the action. When they do, it’s a special occasion. People you thought had been dead for years come out of the woodwork. Of course, the bidding is done by proxies, the public doesn’t know who the real bidders are.”
Rosen, frowning, takes up the story. “Washington’s not keen on collecting evidence against Warren, not unless it’s so good all his friends will be forced to disown him, and he’s too smart for there to be evidence like that. Another problem, frankly, is that if there is evidence, it’s likely to originate here in Thailand, and—do I have to go on?”
“He’s too well connected here for such evidence to survive a day after it comes to light?” Nods from the FBI. “How old is Mr. Warren?”
“He’s sixty-two and looks like a young forty.”
“And began his career in his twenties?”
“Got a master’s in gemology and another in Chinese studies, specializing in the late imperial period. He speaks Mandarin well and his Thai is very good.” A pause while Nape moves his finger around the edge of the monitor. “He also speaks the Swatow dialect. That say anything to you?”
“Swatow? Where the Chiu Chow come from? Chiu Chow run Thailand,” I say. “They run our banks, all major businesses. They have Thai names, but they’re Chiu Chow.”
“I think you’ve got the point,” Rosen says.
Nape pauses to check my expression, which I have rendered studious. He coughs and continues. “A possible hypothesis which we don’t want to go into print looks like this. A relatively crass black sergeant in the Marines, with an unexpected eye for beauty, starts a web page shortly after making a trip to Laos, where he bought an experimental lump or two of unprocessed jade sometime after May 17, 1996, probably just a few months after his arrival. Sylvester Warren sees the exhibit on the web page, notes the apparent quality of the workmanship, whatever he might think of the theme, and looks up Sergeant Bradley on one of his visits to Bangkok. Bradley is probably overwhelmed and astonished that his little venture has drawn such a distinguished eye. He also sees an opportunity to put money aside for his retirement. What he’s got that Warren wants is direct on-the-ground contact with local craftsmen, who are probably of Chinese extraction, probably the artistic inheritors of world-class jade workers who fled the Communists in 1949. Warren has his own craftsmen, of course, the best in the world, but he can’t use them for anything illegal. Bradley can provide both a firewall and American-style quality control. We’re talking fakes. Every time a museum or private collector comes out with a catalogue, there are people all over the world who copy the best pieces and sell them. There’s no scientific way to prove a fake jade—carbon-14 dating doesn’t work, neither does thermoluminescence”—to Rosen—“I checked all this out yesterday.”
I look up. “For Bradley’s craftsmen to copy Warren’s pieces properly, they would have to have the original?”
“We thought of that,” Kimberley Jones says. “We talked about Bradley absconding with some priceless piece from the Warren Collection, but it just doesn’t fit. There was nowhere Bradley could hide from Warren, and probably nowhere he could have sold the piece at a halfway decent price. These artifacts are matters of public record, experts know who owns what down to the date of purchase. Only Warren could sell something from the Warren Collection, real or fake.”
“Anyway,” Nape adds, “is Warren going to use snakes in a revenge killing? With his money and contacts here, he could have snuffed Bradley and made it look like natural causes. Why would he want the heat?”
A moment of communal reflection. I say: “What does the word ‘tranche’ mean?”
“Slice. What it probably means here is that Warren was financing the experiment, giving Bradley installments of cash through one of his agents in Bangkok. Like a lot of very wealthy people, Warren is notoriously tight with money. We don’t think he was giving much away. Big bucks was the carrot he was offering only when Bradley had produced a perfect copy of one of Warren’s pieces.”
“A strange game for Warren to play, if he’s so rich.”
Rosen rumbles, “Welcome to American capitalism. It’s a great system, except that no one ever has enough.”
I say, “The horse and rider?” and draw only blank expressions. My strength is fading. I allow myself the luxury of forsaking human consciousness for the bosom of the Buddha.