Vulture Peak Read Free Page B

United Arab Emirates,” my Colonel said with heavy patience.“That’s where you’re going. Start with corneas, and work your way down till you get to testicles. I want the list of contacts as it develops.”
    “The UAE? I can’t just land in the middle of the Arabian Desert and start selling corneas.”
    “I know. I already told you I looked into the trade a few years back. I have contacts who will be interested in taking on a Thai apprentice organ hunter.”
    I scratched my head. “What are the names of the contacts?”
    “D’you know the Chinese for ‘Old Hundred Names’? Never mind. Just say ‘the Vultures,’ and everyone in the business will know who you’re talking about.”
    “Where are they based?”
    “Everywhere. The ladies speak a thousand languages, own a thousand faces. I think you’ll have a lot of fun with this case. Don’t worry if you have to do things that threaten your marriage. I’ll corroborate it’s all in the line of duty.”

3
    My first thought after leaving his office with shoulders slumped was to rush home to my partner, Chanya, a former whore who’d worked in my mother’s bar, the Old Man’s Club, where we fell in love. We’re not legally married but went through a Buddhist ceremony, which is what counts in the country area where Chanya hails from. A few years ago our only child, a son, died in a traffic accident, and the event changed my darling forever. She grew serious, studied sociology from a distance-learning institute, followed up with a master’s in the same subject, and now works day and night on her Ph.D. thesis, which, naturally, is all about prostitution in Thailand, with a special emphasis on Bangkok. Let me be specific: she conducted almost the whole of her research in Soi Cowboy, where my mother’s bar is situated. All was going well until the university in its wisdom replaced one of her Thai supervisors with a
farang
woman, with whom Chanya did not get along. For a year it had been one long High Noon between the two of them, each trying to outresearch the other. I didn’t think I was going to get the reception I needed by going home right now.
    Instead, I checked the open-plan office where I have a desk to see if my assistant, Lek, was still there. But it was six-fifteen in the evening, and he’d long since left work. I doubted that he’d gone home, though. I pressed an autodial number on my cell phone. When he answered, I could hear a plaintive Isaan folk song in the background and a lot ofsemifemale voices. When he is among his own kind, Lek turns pretty much totally fag.
    “Where are you, Lek?”
    “Master,
darling
, is it really you?
Soo
wonderful of you to think of me.”
    “Lek, I have a new case you’re going to have to help me with.”
    “Anything, Superman, anything you say.”
    “Be serious for a moment. You have a good connection in the army, don’t you?”
    A snigger. “I do love your discretion, master.”
    “There’s a General Zinna angle to the case. I need to talk to you.”
    Lek dropped his fag performance. “Zinna?”
    “Just tell me where you are, I’ll come.”
    “I’m in the Lonesome Cowboy in Nana Plaza. Do hurry, I can’t wait to show you off to my friends.”
    Now I was outside the police station, facing the long row of cooked-food stalls, which would be illegal if they didn’t cater to cops, and I was of two minds about whether to grab a cab or walk to Nana. I knew that if I decided to walk, it would start to rain, and that if I grabbed a cab, it would not. Just to prove that I could predict the future, I started to walk. By the time I got to the end of the soi, the heavens opened; call me Nostradamus. The drops were light enough at first, and of course it was about thirty degrees Celsius, but this was the remnant of a typhoon that had been lashing Vietnam for four days, and now the sky had turned black and all of us on the street were hit with great plashing drops of warm water that soaked you from top down and