The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,104
hard at the photograph, looks away toward the electric rice cookers, seems to come to a conclusion, and nods. “I’ll help you, off the record. But I want immunity for myself and my maid. After all, we’re talking about a suicide.”
I acknowledge the last point with a nod. “First, I’d like to know—is this the reason you refused to show me the movie? Could this be the reason you won’t let it be shown even in private viewings? That surprised me above everything else, when I thought about it. After all, if you really wanted to honor the dead, you would want the genius of his last work to be available to the world.”
She ignores the question. “I’d like to know where you got this—do you have the whole movie, or only this still?”
I shake my head. “Don’t make me say, I’m the one who asks the questions.”
A flash of anger crosses her long face, but she smoothes it over with a casual exercise of will. She gives a theatrical sigh. “I suppose I’m in your hands, Detective.” She looks around the shopping mall. “This is hardly the best place to talk. If I’d known you were going to pull this trick, I would never have suggested meeting here.”
I follow her gaze. It all rather depends on how your sense of security works. To be sure, there are plenty of people around, and it is even possible someone could be eavesdropping; on the other hand, nobody knew we intended to meet here, so it is unlikely we are being spied on. When I catch Moi’s expression, though, I see that it is more the need for privacy that is motivating her. I do not say, How about the police station?
She fishes out a super-slim silver cell phone and presses a single button. When she speaks, it is not in Thai or English. I am not an expert, but I would bet Wall Street against a Thai mango that it is the Teochew dialect she’s using. Now she has closed the phone. “I told my maid to take a taxi home—we’ve been shopping. But then you knew that. We saw you spying on us.” She gives a grim smile. “My car and driver are in the garage downstairs.”
It is, of course, a dark blue Benz with a driver in fawn livery designed to intimidate traffic cops and anyone else prone to get in the way. The driver is gaunt, and I doubt there is a single Thai gene in him. I note how casually she exercises her authority, using the Teochew dialect; as with the maid, these two, also, go way back. But there is a sliding glass divider which enables her to shut out the driver altogether as we emerge from the garage into the gridlock on Sukhumvit. After a couple of minutes I have to admire her discretion; surely in all Bangkok there could not be a better or more secure place to hold an intensely private conversation; no one can get to us here, barricaded as we are by a filthy bus on our left, a builder’s truck on our right, private cars straight ahead, and traffic backed up behind us all the way to the river. The gridlock is so dense even motorbike taxis are at a standstill, their riders fretting, noses and mouths covered. Pollution radiates steadily and vertically.
Moi looks straight ahead into the infinite traffic. When she finally clears her throat, she begins with the immortal words, “You are half Thai, perhaps there is enough Asian blood in you to understand there is such a thing as the world of the dead?”
I think I was prepared for anything except that sentence. I give her a double take and say, “World of the dead?” But she seems not to hear me. On the contrary, she is sitting bolt upright with a grimace of concentration on some internal object. Then she starts to talk. She is leaning forward slightly, utterly absorbed in some inner vision, and her words seem to be an earnest attempt to describe what she is seeing. Unfortunately, she is speaking in Teochew, so I cannot understand a word of it. Carefully, so as not to interrupt her trance, I reopen the glass partition a couple of inches, so the driver is exposed to her words. His reaction, after a couple of minutes, is to maneuver the Benz to the inside lane, then, when the traffic finally starts to move, he turns into a