The Godfather of Kathmandu Read Free Page A

although he brushed his hand over his short gray hair and stood up when he got bored with sitting down. He is of average height, muscular, given to wearing the homely brown fatigues of a police colonel the way Napoléon wore his old uniform to reassure the troops (Vikorn is a multimillionaire; some even use the B word to describe his wealth); but for a man in his midsixties he moves with an unusual suppleness; only gangsters are so feline at his age. In his considered opinion old Corleone was a total sissy for refusing to trade in smack, and Sollozzo was well within his rights to try to have him bumped off. My Colonel even honored me with one of his famous analects:
    “What’s wrong with trafficking in heroin? The smack goes to Europe or America. Some self-obsessed narcissist who otherwise would be causing untold pollution driving to and from work every day, probably in a car without passengers, only to go burning electricity in an overheated office somewhere—thanks to us he stays home in a stupor and gets the sack. His work gets outsourced to Bangladesh, where someone does the same job better for a fifth of the pay, which he uses to feed a family of seven, and to top it all he commutes to work on a bicycle—the whole earth benefits.”
    On the other hand, he liked the ruthless way young Michael Corleone cleared out the opposition after the Don had been shot, but doubted it was really necessary to flee New York and start over in Las Vegas. With better planning and more efficient use of funds, contacts, and leverage, the Corleones could have bridged the country like a colossus with a foot on both coasts. He loved the way they severed the head of the racehorse to intimidate Jack Woltz, but despised them for failing properly to capitalize on the wheeze: “They could have had the whole film industry wrapped up after that. This is the problem with
farang jao paw:
they’re shortsighted, triumphalistic, and they don’t have Buddhist restraint or humility—that’s why I hate dealing with them.”
    But there was one feature of the Don’s setup that intrigued Vikorn and brought that gleam into his eyes which invariably spells danger for someone, usually me. “That light-skinned
farang
who’s not as hairy as the others—what’s his name?”
    “Hagen. He’s light-skinned because he’s Irish-born. Vito Corleone adopted him after Sonny Corleone dragged him in off the street one day. The Don sent him to law school.”
    “Yeah, that one. What do they call him, his job title?”
    “Consigliere.”
    “Right,” he said, looking directly into my eyes.
    As usual, he had taken me by surprise. I had thought we were discussing an old movie nobody talks about anymore. I had not detected any signals that we were discussing the rest of my life.
    “No,” I said. “Don’t even think about it. You know me, I’m the biggest wimp on the force, I only survive through your patronage, in ten years of active service I’ve never killed anyone, not even by accident—isn’t that despicable? All the real men on the force think I might be a secret
katoey
, a ladyboy like Lek—” I was stuttering a little at this point, for while I was speaking my subconscious was delivering pictures of me full of holes bent over a car hood somewhere in Klong Toey, near the river. Or maybe in the river itself.
    “I, I, I have this Bu-, Bu-, Bu-, Buddhist conscience, I really do try to follow the Eightfold Path, I mean I take it seriously, I don’t juh-, juh-, just go to temple, I study Buddhism, I probably know more about Buddhism than the average monk, you said it yourself, I’m a monk manqué—no.” I said it again, more to convince myself than him, “No. No, no, no way I could be anybody’s consigliere.”
    He was gazing at me more with amusement than irritation. “Have you discussed it with your mother?”
    Aghast: “My mother? Of course not, you’ve only just mentioned it.”
    He let me have one of his tiger smiles. “Don’t get so