The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,30

has spent much of his life developing: “Tell you what, if you like I’ll give you that stupid murder old Sukum has got his knickers in a twist about. Put your name on the top of the file: you’ll be officer in charge. That way you’ll be sure to get promoted when the board next meets, even if you are half farang. What were the circumstances again, I seem to remember it sounded kind of exotic?”

“Famous rich farang Hollywood director gutted from solar plexus to crotch,” I heard myself saying in a bored and somewhat sulky voice, “a stone in his mouth, suggesting, probably falsely, that he was done in by the Sicilian mafia, but there was also an imago in his mouth and it looked as if someone had recently feasted on his brains: the top hemisphere of the skull was cut around and removed—probably done by a rotary saw of the surgical kind. Some of the brains had been eaten: a paper plate and a plastic spoon were found in that squalid flophouse at the end of Soi Four/Four. All of which indicates the invisible hand of Thomas Harris.”

“So why doesn’t someone arrest Thomas Harris?”

“He didn’t do it. He wrote the novels the crime is based on, along with Poe’s ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and maybe some other noir influences—I wouldn’t be surprised to find Baudelaire in there somewhere.” To Vikorn’s baffled gaze, I say, “I guess you have to be at least half farang.”

“Exactly. The case is yours.”

“I don’t want it. I don’t want promotion. Let Sukum get the credit; I’ve already told him I’ll help if he wants.”

I watch the old man’s expression freeze into contempt. “You’ve been meditating again, haven’t you? I can always tell when your monk manqué side starts to show. Was it those bloody hills up there that got you all sanctimonious? I knew I should have sent someone with you.” I do not say, You know exactly why I feel like this. He went back to his desk shaking his head, pretending to be baffled. “Other jao por have to worry about getting ripped off by their staff, normal stuff like that. You I have to worry about losing to the Buddha. What did I do to deserve it? Get out. And, by the way, the Hollywood case is yours.”

I stand up to go. At the door I say in a humble, half-dead voice, “Let Sukum keep the case, I’ll solve it for him—I just don’t want the stress of all the paperwork.”

He purses his lips ambiguously, and I’m forced to leave it at that.

Now, back at my desk in the open-plan office I’m logged on to Yahoo! to check my horoscope. Apparently, I should avoid antique collectors for the next two days, along with other claustrophobic situations. When I check my Chinese horoscope on one of the other clairvoyant sites, I find that Wood Rabbits like me can expect a clear run of good luck. The online I-Ching (I always use the Wilhelm translation) is less positive:

Hexagram 36. Darkening of the Light, “Line Six”

He penetrates the left side of the belly.

One gets at the very heart of the darkening of the light,

And leaves gate and courtyard.

That sounds more like it. I’m just through the commentary when I spy Sukum, purple and apoplectic with rage, charging toward me, drawing disapproving glances from our Buddhist colleagues. The open-plan office makes it possible to prepare for attack from a distant desk. I find myself wanting to huddle, somehow, while I watch him negotiate desk after desk, monitor after monitor, where mostly uniformed cops try to figure out how best to prioritize the relentless storm of crime reports. He is too Thai to really make a scene in public, so when he finally arrives at my desk he hisses rather than yells.

“You brown-nosing hypocritical asshole, you just forced the Old Man to give you the Hollywood case because you cut a big drug deal wherever you went last month and now he’s eating out of your hand. You make me want to vomit. You’re not fit to be a cop. You should be in jail.”

“Would you like to repeat that to Colonel Vikorn, Khun Sukum?” I ask softly.

Now he’s all crestfallen, and I feel pity for him. He so very, very much wants this next promotion, so very, very much wants to show his wife and best friends he can beat me at the art of detection, that he has violated my mourning