30
I’m late for the meeting and racing to the embassy on the back of a Honda 125, listening to Pisit on my Walkman. He is doing his daily run-down of the Thai-language dailies.
The tabloid Thai Rath has resurrected the old story of the cop’s wife who chopped off her husband’s penis (the standard penalty for overuse outside the home) and attached it to a helium balloon to send it sailing over the city. The significance of the balloon was that it made it impossible for Police Sergeant Purachai Sorasuchart to retrieve his organ within the vital nine-hour minimum for our skilled surgeons to reattach it. The organ was never recovered. Thai Rath reports that new evidence from neighbors now suggests that the helium balloon was a sensationalist invention (probably by Thai Rath), for Mrs. Purachai was seen on the day of the severance behind her house prodding about tearfully in the rubbish heap, which was unfortunately much visited by rats who doubtless got there before her. Pisit insinuates that the new evidence itself was stimulated into life by Thai Rath, who wanted an excuse to replay the story which Pisit is now replaying. Now Dr. Muratai comes on the program to be jollied into giving the usual lurid details of the reattachment surgery and why Thai surgeons are the best in the world in this field: they get more practice. “So, gentlemen, if your philandering results in a visit from the knife in the night, whatever you do, retrieve the missing piece and don’t forget the ice.”
Pisit reminds us, Thai-style, that the story had the happiest of endings: Sergeant Purachai retired from the force and ordained as a monk in a forest monastery, from which lofty viewpoint he is able to look back on his erstwhile philandering and his former organ with equal indifference. He claims to be grateful to his wife for propelling him onto the Eightfold Path.
I pull off my headphones as we approach the embassy and realize that I’m ten minutes late for the meeting, which I interrupt when I’m finally through the security and allowed to enter Rosen and Nape’s office.
A lean, fair man in his forties in a buff military uniform, bursting with health, is talking to a rapt audience. “I was Bill Bradley’s superior officer for most of the five years he spent here. He came in March 1996, posted at his own request. I arrived in late November of the same year. He was older than me by five years and he was the kind of sergeant you leave alone, if you’re a smart captain. He was a long-service man and he knew his job inside out. He knew what he had to do better than I could have told him, and he also knew the rule book cover to cover. Frankly, with a sergeant like that under your command your worst fear is he’ll make you look inferior, but Bradley knew how to handle that, too. He was always extremely respectful, especially when there were other servicemen around. I guess you would say he was the perfect sergeant and that perfection made him impenetrable from a personal point of view. If I have any insight at all that I would care to share, it would be that he was a man who sought perfection, of himself and his environment. My guess would be that was why he never tried to rise higher. A good sergeant like him is in total control of his world, even though it’s a small one. Join the officer class, and other forces come to bear on you, forces which are never entirely under your control no matter how good you are. A perfect sergeant, on the other hand, is that rare animal in the military: an almost free man, in command of his turf.”
Rosen said: “Anything in his service record you would like to draw our attention to, Captain?”
“His record was perfect. He was serving at the embassy in Yemen at the time of the attack by a local mob with AK-47s, rifles and other firearms. He risked his life bringing back another marine from the roof of the embassy while the roof was under fire. There was talk of a medal, but it never came through.”
“What about his private life?”
“Like I say, this was an impenetrable man. He did his duty and gave a hundred and ten percent while he was here, but off duty we hardly saw him. He came to those functions he had to attend, when a colleague retired or left Bangkok, for example, but didn’t socialize.”
“Isn’t that unusual for a marine?”
“In a younger man it might have been cause for concern, but Bradley was middle-aged, coming to the end of his thirty-year term. A lot of men value their privacy in those circumstances, and no one was about to cross-examine him about what he did in his spare time.”
“He was a bachelor. Any love interest you know of?”
“Only a very old rumor that he had a relationship with a particularly exotic local woman. I don’t think anyone here knows if that was true or not, because he never brought her here to introduce her. He always came alone to functions and celebrations.”
“Do you know anything about a hobby or interest he might have had in jade?”
“Jade? No, I don’t know anything about that.” A pause. “I did watch him once, in the locker room after a basketball game. He had the kind of physique you just can’t help but stare at. He’d arrived in uniform but now he put on civilian clothes. It was like watching a metamorphosis. Jewelry he could never wear on parade: earrings, rings for his fingers, a gold Buddha pendant. He put on a bright purple Hawaiian silk shirt that only looks good on black skin. That’s about the most intimate I got with the sergeant. Everybody goes through a transformation when they get out of uniform, but I’ve never seen anything that complete before. He just didn’t look like a career soldier. He even stopped walking like one, as soon as he put on that shirt.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Rosen said, and Nape echoed his words. “Oh, just one last thing, Captain. You did say that Bradley’s posting here was at his own request?”
“That’s right. It’s in his file, which I reread when I heard about what had happened.”
When the captain had gone, everyone looked at me, so I said: “Thank you for allowing me to attend, it has been very useful.”
“Useless you mean,” Jones said. “Did the captain tell us one thing we didn’t know already?”
“That Bradley was pathologically secretive,” Nape said. “And led a double life.”
“Not so unusual in long-term soldiers,” Rosen said. “You tend to hang on to what little privacy the service permits.”
“And that he was a control freak,” Nape added.
“All successful men are control freaks,” Jones said.
“D’you want to correct that to ‘all successful people’?” Nape demanded with a glare.
Jones shrank a little under his gaze. “I guess.”
Rosen jerked his chin at them and grimaced toward me. “So, did you speak to your Colonel, Detective?”
“I made a written request that I be permitted to interview Sylvester Warren on his next visit to Thailand, which is today.”
“And?”
“I think I will not receive an answer until after he has left.”
Rosen opened his hands generously. “Like I said, a well-connected man.”
My stitches are healing nicely, but I allow Jones to accompany me to the gate of the embassy with one arm locked in mine, I suppose for support. The marine behind the glass is an old friend these days and he waves me through the turnstile.