Cockroaches(24)

10


Saturday, January 11


Inspector Crumley was out when Harry returned to the police station, but Nho gave him a thumbs-up and said “Roger” when Harry politely asked him to contact the telecommunications company and check all the conversations to and from the ambassador’s mobile phone on the day of the murder.

It was almost five o’clock when Harry finally got hold of the inspector. As it was late she suggested they head to a riverboat to see the canals, “so as to get the sightseeing over and done with.”

At the River Pier they were offered one of the long boats for six hundred baht, but the price soon fell to three hundred after Crumley had tongue-lashed the boatman in Thai.

They headed down the Chao Phraya before turning into one of the narrow canals. Wooden shacks looking as if they might collapse at any moment clung to poles in the river, and the smell of food, sewage and petrol drifted past in waves. Harry had a sense they were passing through the sitting rooms of the people who lived there. Only lines of green potted plants prevented them from looking straight in, but no one seemed particularly bothered; on the contrary, they waved and smiled.

Three boys in shorts sitting on a pier, wet after emerging from the brown water, called after them. Crumley shook a good-natured fist at them and the boatman laughed.

“What did they shout?” Harry asked.

She pointed to her head. “Mâe chii. It means mother, priest or nun. Nuns in Thailand shave their heads. If I wore a white gown I’d probably be treated with more respect,” she said.

“Oh yes? It seems as if you have enough respect. Your people—”

“That’s because I respect them,” she interrupted. “And because I’m good at my job.” She cleared her throat and spat over the railing. “But maybe that surprises you because I’m a woman?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Foreigners are often surprised when they realize women can get ahead in this country. It isn’t as macho as it seems here. In fact, it’s more of a problem that I’m a foreigner.”

A light breeze created a cooling draft in the humid air; from a clump of trees came the chirping song of grasshoppers and they stared at the same bloodred sun as the evening before.

“What made you move here?”

Harry had a sense he might have crossed an invisible red line, but he ignored it.

“My mother’s Thai,” she said after a pause. “Dad was stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam War and met her here in Bangkok in 1967.” She laughed and put a cushion behind her back. “Mom swears she got pregnant the first night they were together.”

“With you?”

She nodded. “After the capitulation he took us to the States, to Fort Lauderdale, where he served as a lieutenant colonel. When we came back here my mother found out he’d been married when they met. He’d written home and arranged the divorce when he discovered Mom was pregnant.” She shook her head. “He had every opportunity to run away and leave us in Bangkok if he’d wanted to. Perhaps he did want to, deep down. Who knows.”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“It’s not the kind of question you necessarily want an honest answer to, is it. I would never have got a real answer from him anyway. He was just like that.”

“Was?”

“Yes, he’s dead.” She turned to him. “Does it bother you, me talking about my family?”

Harry bit into a cigarette filter. “Not at all.”

“Running away was never really an option for my father. He had a thing about responsibility. When I was eleven I was allowed to take a kitten from some neighbors in Fort Lauderdale. After a lot of fuss Dad said yes on the condition that I looked after it. Two weeks later I’d lost interest and asked if I could give it back. Then Dad took me and the kitten down to the garage. “You can’t run away from responsibility,” he said. “That’s how civilizations crumble.” Then he took his service rifle and fired a bullet through the kitten’s head. Afterward I had to get soap and water and scrub the garage floor. That was how he was. That was why …” She removed her sunglasses, took a corner of her shirt, wiped them and squinted into the setting sun. “That was why he could never accept the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Mom and I moved here when I was eighteen.”

Harry nodded. “I can imagine it wasn’t so easy for your mother to go to an American military base after the war.”

“The base wasn’t so bad. Other Americans, however, the ones who hadn’t been there but had lost a son or a sweetheart in Vietnam, they hated us. For them anyone with slanted eyes was Charlie.”