The Frenchman was standing.
“I just saw Chemda! Over there. By the kathoey bar.” He hesitated. “Unless—!”
Jake was already running down bustling Sukhumvit, barging past the white men and their miniature girlfriends; but he felt a surprisingly strong hand pull him back.
Barnier’s whiskey breath was hot in his face.
“Think—this cannot be your girlfriend—think—it must be the killer—why would Chemda be skulking around. Jake?”
The good sense was chilling. But Jake didn’t care: he had to take the risk. It might be her. He wrestled himself free of Barnier.
“I’m going to look. Where was she, exactly?”
Barnier puffed his exasperation.
“Idiot. There. There. Fucking madness. She was there. I am going back to my apartment, lock myself in—get my bags—and then I am fucking gone.”
He turned and paced away, joining the crowds, another older white guy among the younger Asian girls and the he shes. Jake found Julia at his side.
She helped, but it was swiftly obvious the search was fruitless. They searched up and down Soi 2, and Soi 4, they ran past Beer Garden and Foodland Supermarket, they pushed past the freelance hookers and the Saudi wives and the blind karaoke singers warbling their terrible songs.
Nothing.
“Maybe,” Julia suggested, “maybe Barnier imagined it. Probably. He is drunk.”
“He is delusional.” Jake spat his disappointment. “Fucking drunken lunatic. Ah, fuck … Fuck it.” He rubbed the tiredness and despair into his face with weary hands. “Come on. I don’t believe he saw anything. Let’s go to my hotel. See if Chemda left a message.”
This was, of course, pathetically hopeful, as he knew: but he had no hopes left.
The American woman was silent as they paced down hot, busy, nocturnal Soi Nana.
“Jake, I’m sorry. For what happened in that bar. Chemda.”
“It’s OK. I believe you. And I also know the killer just can’t be Chemda.”
They were at the corner of Soi 6. A whore in a microskirt was bowing to a small shrine, a spirit house, erected in front of the Shakerz Coyote Tavern.
“So who is it?”
“A clone?” Jake sighed. “Who knows. If they can cut your conscience out of your head, what can’t they do? Clone you? Multiply you? Your guess is better than mine.”
Julia put a hand on his tensed, muscled, angry shoulder.
“We’ll find her.”
“Yeah. Of course we will. Somewhere in Asia. Where shall we start looking? India?”
They walked quickly down Soi 6, past the Sukhumvit Grand with its saluting guards, where a snicket of a side road led under papaya trees. It was a cloistered spot in the kineticism of the city: two Thai kids were sitting on stools playing guitar, softly, like troubadours in the moonlight. Another spirit house lurked in the very darkest corner.
Julia said, “What about her family?”
“Speak to them? Sure. That’s the obvious solution, isn’t it? I even tried. But I don’t think they trust me, they already think I kidnapped her, whisked her away into danger. Can I blame them—”
“But she was already in trouble when you met her, in Laos, right?”
“Yes, but…” Jake sighed. “Since I met her she’s got into a lot more trouble. And I wonder. Maybe it is my fault? Blundering into situations I don’t understand? That’s the thing with Cambodia, Thailand, all these countries—you think you have grasped a situation, then it turns out it was entirely the opposite, it all meant something different.” He gazed at the lobby of his hotel, the Sukhumvit Crown. Desolate. “Jesus, what are we gonna do?”
As if it was an answer, he felt a buzzing in his pocket.
His phone, blinking an American cell number. Tyrone. Tyrone.
He eagerly clicked ACCEPT.
“Ty?”
“Hey. You OK? Any news of Chemda?”
“So you heard. You got my message?”
“Yes, but—”
“We don’t know where she is, Ty. Just gone. I’ve been trying to ring you. Do you know anything? Just … desperate.”
“I’m trying to tell you. Look…” Tyrone’s drawl hinted at something. A revelation.
“What, Ty? What?”
The silence was sharp. Then Tyrone answered: “I have good and bad news. I think I know where Chemda is.”
“She’s OK, probably, at the moment. Probably.”
The signal from Phnom Penh faded out. Jake sprinted up the steps to get better reception, waving at Julia as he did: wait here, this is important, sorry.
Tyrone was back on the line: “I did some investigating for you.”
“Like how?”
“I had a brainstorm when I got your message. Figured her dynasty must know something. I just went to the Sovirom house, the compound, and I did it—I confronted her mother. And she fessed up. She fessed up and broke down. They’ve had a kidnap note.”
“Who is it? The Lao?”
Jake stared at the dingy hotel parking lot. Julia was sitting on the steps, staring at the darkness. The boys had stopped guitaring songs. A rat was nosing between garbage bags, a fat and brazen tropical rat.
“Chemda is in China.” Tyrone sighed. “Yunnan. Right up by the Tibetan border, a place called—”
“Balagezong!”
An intake of breath.
“Yep. Jesus, Jake. Balagezong. How do you know that?”
Jake hastily explained—the conversation with Barnier, the terrible brain surgeries. Somewhere in Phnom Penh, Tyrone swore his surprise.
“Wow. OK. That makes sense. Total madness, but a lot of goddamn sense. So that’s what they are doing. And that explains why Madame Tek was so freaked—”
“What do you mean?”
Tyrone paused. “Prepare yourself. Really. Prepare yourself. I’m sorry. But through her crying jags I pretty much got the impression, from Madame Tek, that some physical threat had been made against Chemda, that they were threatening to do something awful to her, unless Sovirom Sen gave them what they wanted.”
“Which is? What do they want?”
Tyrone did a verbal shrug: “No idea. Maybe just money. But apparently he has flown to Yunnan, to meet them, to try and get his daughter back before they—”
“Cut open her brain. Section her brain.”
The rat squealed as it fought another rat for a piece of rotting carp head.
“Yeah. Yes. Sorry, Jake. I’m sorry. God. But yes, that must be the threat. Chemda’s mother was just a mess, crying a river, crying like the fucking Hudson.”
“I’m going there. Balagezong. I have to go there.”
Tyrone protested: “Jake Jake Jake. C’mon, calm down. I figured you’d say that—but c’mon—think about it, this is very very dangerous now—”
“Ty, they already tried to kill me. In Anlong. Can it get any worse? Now they are going to cut open Chemda? Turn her into some fucking zombie? I’m going, tonight.”
A very short silence. Then a long sigh. Then: “OK, mad Englishman. I’ll do my best from here. Try and get more information. I know you are Mr. Guilt Trip, but this isn’t your fault, Jake, you didn’t do this—”
“But I love her and she saved my life in Laos and I love her. I’ll call you from China.”
He broke off the call and stepped over to Julia. With as few words as possible he explained the situation. Her face trembled at the corners of her lips. Guilt spoke without words.
“So I’m going to leave tonight, now, sooner,” said Jake. “First I better go and tell Barnier, then arrange flights, to Kunming—”
Wordless and quick, they made the corner of Soi 6 and Soi 4 to Pachara Suites. It was just a three-minute walk, past the Seven Seas restaurant with the girls in old Singapore Airlines dresses, past the squid sellers with their racks of rubbery ganglions ready to char-grill.
At the last junction, they heard the ambulance sirens.
Sprinting around the corner, they saw it all: the flashing red lights, the police cars askew on the sidewalk, and a man drenched in red paint being escorted from the lobby.
Jake watched, quite stunned.
It wasn’t a man in red paint. It was a Thai man in blood.
He was covered in gore, splashed energetically with human blood, and he was handcuffed and being manhandled by two policemen.
Crowds were gathered, people were hanging off balconies, staring down at the emergency, at the sirens and the unholstered guns and the swiveling red lights. At the man covered in blood being tugged toward a police car. Jake recognized him. The doorman from Pachara Suites.
He pushed through the onlookers, and two cops with white gloves, but another policeman stopped him from going any farther. Jake shouted across the yards that separated them.
“Hey! Supashok? You remember me? Supashok! Jake Thurby.”
The face turned.
“Supashok? Remember? I was with Chemda? The Khmer girl. This morning—you let us see Mr. Barnier? It’s me, Jake—”
The terrified man regarded Jake, and then he yelled. He screamed and he pointed:
“You! It was her—your girlfrien’! She kill him! I let her in then I hear scream!”
Jake backed away. A Thai policeman was pressing down on the doorman’s head, forcing him into the car. Supashok was still shouting at Jake, in English.
“She kill him. Your girlfrien’. Kill him!”
The cops weren’t listening to his screaming words; probably they couldn’t understand English. They didn’t know the doorman was accusing Chemda of killing Barnier. But soon the doorman would speak Thai. And explain. And soon the cops would get it.
Shrinking even further into the crowds, Jake grabbed Julia’s hand and they paced away, discreetly, and then less discreetly they jogged—and then they fled. Running from the blood, running from the scene, running down Soi 6, running past the Heidelberg German pub, where the hookers and the midgets sat outside on their bar stools cackling and laughing and eating rice noodles and saying, Meester, meester. Welcome, welcome.