The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,34
way the strict Buddhist owners have preserved a sacred ficus tree, which somehow rises through the roof and is the primary source of luck for the girls, who rarely fail to bring lotus buds and wai the tree before they sit at the bar and work on being irresistible. I’m a little embarrassed that at least half of them know me and say hi and wai me as we walk in, but the good Sukum again shows his generous side. “I know you have shares in one of Colonel Vikorn’s brothels. I know your mother runs it and also has shares in it. You must know lots of working girls.”
“Let’s be frank, Detective—my mother was on the Game. That’s the only reason I got enough education to be a cop. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.”
At the words on the Game, Sukum snaps his face away from me, leaving me the back of his head with its crop of spiky ink-black hair. I’m thinking, I’ve really done it now and maybe he wont be able to work with me anymore, I’m just too weird, when he says, still looking away at the tree shrine, “How can you say that? How can you just come out with it like that, as if it doesn’t matter?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you. I was just being frank, that’s all.”
“No, no, no.” He raises both palms to press his cheeks. Then in a whispered hiss: “My mother was too. That’s what has made me so petty. It was because I let rip with the sex instinct in a previous lifetime that my mother was a whore in this one. I feel I can never express who I really am in this lifetime. Even I think it’s weird the way I obsess about my car, when it’s just an ordinary Toyota. How can you rise above your karma so easily?”
Buddha knows where this might have led if Marli—stage name: Madonna—did not come over to join us. She is joined in turn by Sarli, Nik, Tonni, and Pong. They all once worked at my mother’s bar, where I still occasionally work as papasan. Girls grow out of dancing on stage at an early point in their careers; most don’t like to do it after the age of about twenty-seven, at which point they graduate to less strenuous forms of self-promotion, often going freelance right here at the Rose Garden. I introduce them all to Sukum, who, I know, is trying hard not to see his mother in their faces.
“Sonchai, so long since we’ve seen you, what are you doing here? Are you looking for girls to dance at the Old Man’s Club?”
“Sonchai, dear papasan, will you buy me a drink?”
I order beers all around. “I’m working,” I say. “You must have heard about the farang murder at the flophouse on Soi Four/Four?”
They all immediately drop their eyes—whether out of respect for the memory of a valued customer or fear of bad luck is hard to say. I nod to Sukum, who fishes out a navy-blue passport with an eagle on the front. It is hardly necessary to show them the photo.
“We were so shocked.”
“He was such a good customer.”
“He came about four times a year. He was a good payer. A really nice guy.”
“What was great was the way he would usually take two or more of us, so it was fun.”
“He was funny about being fat. He would say, You get on top, honey, I’m scared of flattening you. He wasn’t, you know, the other kind of farang.”
“That’s right. He wasn’t neua.” Neua means “north;” we use it to describe people who suffer from a superiority complex.
“Did he take you to a luxury apartment or a flophouse?” Sukum wants to know. He still can’t get it out of his head that someone would waste money on a flophouse; it wasn’t as if the farang had a wife or live-in lover back at the penthouse.
“It would depend. He would get the hots for a girl sometimes for a month, then he would take her back to his penthouse on Soi Eight. But most of the time, when he was just playing the field, he would use the flophouse. I guess he didn’t want people at the penthouse to know about his appetite.”
“It was incredible. Of course, he used the blue pill a lot. He was one of those farang who always have to stick their dicks in someone or other. He was an