The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,7
at. What your mother pointed out as well. You’re so smart the way you handle him—the whole citizenry of District Eight has reason to be grateful to you.” Chanya started to use terms like “citizenry,” and “reluctantly let slip” after she enrolled in a distance-learning course in sociology at one of our online universities.
“But don’t you see, it only works because it’s informal. If I become his consigliere, I’m on the payroll, I can’t threaten to resign every five minutes the way I do now. He’ll have me under his thumb totally.” At this point I used Pleading Eyes, normally a fail-safe tactic. This time, though, she remained unmoved.
“Sweetheart, you’re going to be thirty-seven this year. You’re not the boy genius anymore. You need to consolidate. I think you’ll do marvelously as his—whatsit. You’ll save twice as many lives as you do now. He’ll listen to you more carefully, he’ll have to, how else will he justify …” Her voice faded strategically.
Feeling deflated, my eyes rested on Pichai for a moment, then I caressed his head. I gave a huge sigh. “So, how much did Nong tell you Vikorn told her he would pay me?”
“Actually, your mother negotiated a bit on your behalf. He started at a hundred thousand, but your mum is such a genius negotiator—she used all the arguments you just used, but much more effectively, and she really went on about the extra threat to Pichai and me, what a strain it was going to be on your whole family, the risks to your life. She referred to Pichai—I mean in his last incarnation—a lot, how he got shot in the line of duty and he wasn’t even bent.” She paused here, smiled at the water tank, then slowly turned the beam on me. “She got him up to two and a half.”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand baht a month?” I had to give credit where it was due; nobody has ever gotten that kind of money out of Vikorn.
“Your mother is brilliant, and she did it all for us. Just think, we can send Pichai to an international school, he’ll speak English without an accent, he’ll be a famous surgeon just like he wanted to be last time but couldn’t because his family was too poor. And if I have another baby we’ll be able to use international-quality hospitals, not that stupid pediatrician who couldn’t get the milk right so we had to put up with Pichai screaming with colic every night. And we’ll be able to buy a house in a gated community, no more worries about security.”
“You and Nong have already accepted on my behalf, haven’t you?”
She beamed and made eyes. I looked pointedly at Pichai. “It’s okay, my sister is coming back from the country this afternoon. She’s promised to take care of Pichai for a couple of days. We’ll have the night to ourselves.”
It was sexual coercion of the most despicable kind, of course. Chanya thought so too and was proud of it. After I came for the third time (actually, I didn’t really want to come three times, but she was on one of those missions to prove she was as good as she used to be; I was quite sore afterward, but I didn’t say anything), she said with undisguised triumph, “Was that a yes?”
“Honey, I don’t mind risking my life—”
She put a hand over my mouth. “I know you’d die a thousand times and commit a thousand crimes for us, but that’s not what we want of you, Sonchai. Being a consig-ee thing will be safer and better paid. Everyone thinks you’re his consig-ee thing anyway.” An utterly frank look: “Sonchai, since we’ve had Pichai I’ve grown up. In the country there are a thousand ways to be happy, but in the city only one: money. I can’t bear the thought of Pichai turning into some dope dealer, running all over town doing yaa baa—like you did with him in his last life. It’s very sick, but for his generation of boys it’s going to be education or drug running. Just as for girls it’s education or prostitution. Globalism and capitalist democracy aren’t going to allow anything in between. What are you doing?”
I was waving my right hand while pinching my thumb and forefinger together. “Waving an invisible white flag.”
As I recall, at this point we all sat back and waited to see how my Colonel would use me in my new capacity: what deeds of derring-do could possibly