48
We drove around aimlessly, Jones and I, while we tried to make sense of my adventure in Warren’s shop. We thrashed it around in a hundred traffic jams, drove to Pattaya, lunched at a fish restaurant by the sea where Jones punished me for not sleeping with her by getting into a rant against Thai cuisine (chili in the fish: How can you ever taste anything properly with your whole frigging mouth on fire?), and returned to Bangkok with no explanation of the puzzle beyond a perceptive remark from the FBI: “One thing’s for sure, somehow Fatima got hold of that tape Iamskoy was talking about. Take it from an American, no way Warren puts up with that kind of shit if she hasn’t got the means to ruin his life.”
“And the Khmer, his bodyguards?”
“Over to you, you’re our tame Asian.”
Night has already fallen as I close the car door on Jones and stroll across the forecourt. The common parts are poorly lit, only the illegal shop with the illegal tarpaulin is bright with lamps which illuminate the motorcycle chauffeurs who are still lolling in their beds and look stoned out of their minds. I climb the steps to my room and see that someone has busted the padlock. Burglars do not normally flatter me with their attentions, because everyone knows I have nothing, even though I’m a cop. It has happened only once before, when a neighbor’s TV packed up in the middle of a soap and he broke into my room in the absolute, but false, certainty that I would have a television of my own. Standing in front of the busted lock, I wonder if someone else’s TV has broken down, or should I be worrying about something more sinister? I decide that my enemies are too sophisticated to bust the lock and wait inside my room to assassinate me in my own home, but I lack the nerve to act on this comfortable conclusion until I hear a prolonged trombone fart from inside. I open the door cautiously. I cannot see him but an animal sense makes me aware of his vast bulk and I can hear his gigantic breathing. He grunts and rubs his eyes as I turn on the light. Torn cardboard six-packs are strewn around the futon, which is far too narrow for him even though he has dragged it into the center of the room. He overflows on either side, but manages to push himself up into a sitting position with some agility.
“I lied to you,” he says in that throaty Harlem drawl.
“I know you did. Leave me any beer?”
He turns around and I notice a new addition to my ménage: an ice cooler. He dips his fingers in what has already turned to water and hands me a dripping can of Singha.
“That’s the last one. Want me to get some more from the shop? I kinda made friends with the owner and those kids on the beds. It ain’t so far from Harlem. I said: What are you on, fellas, meth or ganja? But I already knew it had to be ganja, no way they was so lethargic on meth. They offered me some meth, but I told them I don’t do drugs. So they offered me some women instead, like how many did I want? Kids were ready to get on their bikes and bring me half a dozen. A nigger could feel at home in this country in no time. Poor Billy had a point after all. How’d you know I was lying and what was I lying about?”
“Your reason for being here. The FBI told me you changed planes and airlines in Paris, so you were trying to be incognito. You could have done the journey much more economically if you’d stayed with one airline all the way, and I don’t think you stopped off to admire the Eiffel Tower.”
A grunt. “So you figure I’m here ’cos I was involved in Billy’s meth business?”
“No.”
Silence. “I better go get some more beer.”
By the time he’s on his feet he fills my hovel. I’m reminded of a Buddha statue in a cave that’s too small. I have to stand aside to let him out the door. When he returns he is with a couple of the motorcycle kids, who are weighed down with stacks of six-packs and bags full of ice. Elijah reaches into his pocket and takes out a new padlock with keys dangling from it. “Sorry about the other one. There wasn’t any comfortable lobby or anyplace I could wait.”
“Never mind. How’d you break it so cleanly? I didn’t see any marks on the door.”
He snorts. “That little thing? I did it with my fingers. Muscle power, my friend, still opens doors from time to time.”
“What did you say?” I ask, suddenly transfixed by the ice cooler.
“I adored Billy,” Elijah says. “Probably because he adored me. We hardly knew our father, so I was the only role model he had. We were inseparable until I got my ass sent to reform school, just a little smack deal that went wrong. I was fifteen years old. When I came out they gave me a good probation officer, a black who understood where I was coming from and knew my mother. He says to me: ‘You might have the smarts and the speed, but what you gonna do to your kid brother? You gonna destroy him? No way young Billy can take the kind of shit you’re gonna take. You’re dragging him down to hell without a ladder.’ I didn’t need to think about that because I knew he was right. I started to put some distance between me and the kid, even though it broke my heart. I can’t say I was thrilled when he joined the Marines, but it was a load off my mind. It hurt when he started acting so superior and looked down on me and my wicked ways, it hurt a lot, but it was still a load off my mind. Even when he stopped calling me or talking to me, it was still a load off my mind. I felt like a father who has done better for his son than he ever could do for himself. I was so thrilled when he started calling me again, it was like ten years didn’t count for nothing. We was pals again. Since he died I wake up with the sweats thinking about breaking the people who did that to him. Breaking them across my knee, one by one.”
It is 2:34 a.m. and we’ve drunk most of the beer. Elijah has told me how to cook meth, how to set up a network, how to find cops to bribe in New York. In particular I am now an authority on glassine bags (they have to be the right size—too big and the price is too high for the average crackhead; too small and you’re giving yourself too much work—above all, don’t get fancy and put your own proprietorial stamp on the outside, like gold stars or something, because the courts will assume organized crime). He’s told me everything I need to know if I ever want to deal in drugs in the United States, and now he has finally told me why he is in my country. He has come to tell me because he has realized his quest for vengeance is impossible. With greater speed than the FBI he has understood that crucial thing about Asia: we play by different rules and we are two-thirds of the world. He has come to say goodbye.
When he heaves himself to his feet I need help from the wall to do likewise. I have felt great love for this gigantic man with his gigantic heart, and this love has compelled me to match him beer for beer. I’ve never been so astonishingly drunk in my life. I am also grateful that he has helped me solve one detail of the case which has been nagging at us for weeks, the FBI and me. On rubber knees I follow him to the shop and we hug each other goodbye near the motorcycle taxis. Only the largest of their bikes, a 500 cc Honda, is strong enough to sustain him, and there is much grinning and wonderment when he sits on the back, crushing the suspension. I watch him and the driver wobble off into what is left of the night, then I stumble back to my cave, where, with superhuman concentration, I press the FBI’s number into the keypad of my mobile. I wake her from a deep sleep and it takes some moments to convince her I’m not some Thai variant of a dirty phone call. She is fully awake by the time she has made sense of my drunken mumblings.
“Saw it when Elijah busted my padlock,” I explain with sloppy pride.
“The cobras were in a steamer trunk? Bradley thought he was doing a standard pickup from the airport? The python was there to bust open the trunk?”
“ ‘Xactly.”
“But what about the whole problem with injecting the snakes with yaa baa?”
“Weren’t injected. Packed in straw between ice. Snakes hibernated. Ice smelted. Snakes woke up thirsty. Drank water from smelted ice. Water had yaa baa in it. Yaa baa drove python crazy. Bust the locks no prob.” I cackle. “Must have been f*cking terrifying.”
“What about those two dead snakes you found—the ones that were beaten to death?”
“Squatters had to snatch trunk before we arrived. Some snakes left in back of car. Rest all over Bradley. Killed ones in back with stick or something. Steamer trunks was the way they brought in the yaa baa every few months—that’s why Old Tou had enough to build his hut.”
“Some trusted squatters snatched the trunk out the back door despite the snakes, because it would have blown their whole operation if you’d found it? Yes, I can see that. But that drunk never mentioned anything like that?”
“Maybe he wasn’t so dumb. Maybe they schooled him. Who knows, he’s a drunk.”
A pause which I think must express wonder at my forensic brilliance, or my advanced toxicity—I’m not sure which I’m most impressed with myself.
“No kidding. Well, nice work, partner. We’ll talk when you’ve slept it off. Maybe in a week or so?”