people to relocate to somewhere squalor-tolerant, so it’s not going to happen quite yet. Not if Sergeant Satorn has his way: he knew everyone. Betel-chewing old ladies gave him the high
wai
as if he were a revered monk; teenage girls on the game grabbed him around his vast stomach: he was the only father figure they had known. Young men about to shoot up saw him coming and disappeared down a dark alley; not-so-young men with serious crime on their minds were shrewd enough to give him big face by
waiing
and half bowing at the same time. Young mothers with dirty faces and screaming infants extracted small sums from him as he passed. Lotus Bud just loved being loved, although some of the attention he could have done without. When one of the crazy women called out,
“Lotus,”
he turned to smile, only to have her call it out again, in exactly the same tone, as if he hadn’t responded. And again and again, so a shrieked
“Lotus”
followed our steps as we proceeded. He scratched his head and shrugged.
Now the crime scene started to announce itself. It was exactly as the Sergeant had described: as if a great wind from Jupiter came one day and simply blew away three shacks, smashing the wood beams into splinters, spreading the heavier items such as cooking stoves and pots around an area about twenty yards in diameter, and throwing the lighter things like books, toilet rolls, documents, and tubular chairs across a vast expanse. Already we were seeing splinters and papers from the explosion littering the footpath. Nothing lay smoldering, however, and there were no signs of things or people having been ripped up by shrapnel. When we arrived at the epicenter I saw men and women in white coveralls moving methodically over the area, probing with sticks, and occasionally bending down to pick something up. They were serious specialists from the antiterrorism unit, and I could see they had already decided there was nothing of interest to them there. There was a certain disdain in their postures and lack of enthusiasm:
We trained all those months for a little toy bomb like this?
The items they found of interest they laid out on a blue tarp spread on the ground. Automatically my eye checked through the items on the tarp, even as the detective in charge of the investigation came to meet me.
He was young and rendered suddenly insecure to find a more senior detective on the scene. The Sergeant, though, in my pay after accepting my modest bribe, explained about the cell phone, the photos, and why I was there. I was afraid some sinister suspicion would invade his young mind; it was, after all, more than a little strange, even in the context of local law enforcement, that I should have become part of the crime scene. But the detective, too, was overwhelmed by the sense that we were in a private kingdom run by the Sergeant in which anything could happen. On the other hand, those pictures of me on the smart phone needed to be dealt with in some way.
“You don’t know who could have taken them?”
“No idea.”
“There’s no clue in the phone as to the identity of the owner?”
“None at all.”
The young detective was too Thai—too programmed by deference, in other words—to ask me to let him keep the phone. He waited for me to offer, but I changed the subject. He shrugged as if to say,
You’re more senior than me, I can’t stop you.
I left him to chat with the Sergeant while I walked along the side of the tarp.
I was, as usual, quite solitary in my quest and wondering why this should be a recurrent theme of my life, when I remembered my new friend. Even on my most alienated days I’m never more than half a pariah; from a certain angle, depending on the light, I can appear quite normal and adjusted. Krom was, in a sense, a more pure form of the loner and therefore strangely comforting—even someone to look up to. I also wondered what she knew about the bomb, if anything. I took out my phone and called her. She answered on the
wai
as if he were a revered monk; teenage girls on the game grabbed him around his vast stomach: he was the only father figure they had known. Young men about to shoot up saw him coming and disappeared down a dark alley; not-so-young men with serious crime on their minds were shrewd enough to give him big face by
waiing
and half bowing at the same time. Young mothers with dirty faces and screaming infants extracted small sums from him as he passed. Lotus Bud just loved being loved, although some of the attention he could have done without. When one of the crazy women called out,
“Lotus,”
he turned to smile, only to have her call it out again, in exactly the same tone, as if he hadn’t responded. And again and again, so a shrieked
“Lotus”
followed our steps as we proceeded. He scratched his head and shrugged.
Now the crime scene started to announce itself. It was exactly as the Sergeant had described: as if a great wind from Jupiter came one day and simply blew away three shacks, smashing the wood beams into splinters, spreading the heavier items such as cooking stoves and pots around an area about twenty yards in diameter, and throwing the lighter things like books, toilet rolls, documents, and tubular chairs across a vast expanse. Already we were seeing splinters and papers from the explosion littering the footpath. Nothing lay smoldering, however, and there were no signs of things or people having been ripped up by shrapnel. When we arrived at the epicenter I saw men and women in white coveralls moving methodically over the area, probing with sticks, and occasionally bending down to pick something up. They were serious specialists from the antiterrorism unit, and I could see they had already decided there was nothing of interest to them there. There was a certain disdain in their postures and lack of enthusiasm:
We trained all those months for a little toy bomb like this?
The items they found of interest they laid out on a blue tarp spread on the ground. Automatically my eye checked through the items on the tarp, even as the detective in charge of the investigation came to meet me.
He was young and rendered suddenly insecure to find a more senior detective on the scene. The Sergeant, though, in my pay after accepting my modest bribe, explained about the cell phone, the photos, and why I was there. I was afraid some sinister suspicion would invade his young mind; it was, after all, more than a little strange, even in the context of local law enforcement, that I should have become part of the crime scene. But the detective, too, was overwhelmed by the sense that we were in a private kingdom run by the Sergeant in which anything could happen. On the other hand, those pictures of me on the smart phone needed to be dealt with in some way.
“You don’t know who could have taken them?”
“No idea.”
“There’s no clue in the phone as to the identity of the owner?”
“None at all.”
The young detective was too Thai—too programmed by deference, in other words—to ask me to let him keep the phone. He waited for me to offer, but I changed the subject. He shrugged as if to say,
You’re more senior than me, I can’t stop you.
I left him to chat with the Sergeant while I walked along the side of the tarp.
I was, as usual, quite solitary in my quest and wondering why this should be a recurrent theme of my life, when I remembered my new friend. Even on my most alienated days I’m never more than half a pariah; from a certain angle, depending on the light, I can appear quite normal and adjusted. Krom was, in a sense, a more pure form of the loner and therefore strangely comforting—even someone to look up to. I also wondered what she knew about the bomb, if anything. I took out my phone and called her. She answered on the
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