Bangkok Noir

And they sent me clients. You need to have practiced law to really have a feel for just how low, dirty, petty, vindictive, fascist, sociopathic, paranoid and sick the fabulously rich really are: every client they sent fit into that category. Oh yes, and there was another unspoken condition attached to the generosity they had shown me: certain cases I had to win, no matter what. Bribing became my principle forensic skill. I’ve been doing it for so long now, I could do it standing on my head. I can even do it without saying anything: I know all the tea ladies in all the government and corporate departments who are trusted to take brown paper envelops from one office to another, concealed under the dish cloths on their trolleys. There are a lot of wealthy tea ladies in Bangkok.

Now even my enemies say I’m more Thai than the Thais and if, in middle age, I am suffering from the self-disgust that lawyers like me need to feel in order to convince ourselves we’re still part of the human family—well, I have two trump cards left to save my soul. One is Uncle Walter—just recently I’ve taken to reading his diaries again, I even had them copied onto Microsoft Word so I can study them at work without the in-laws suspecting: they still post spies, I’m pretty sure my second secretary is in their pay. My other solace is Om.

Okay, you’ve guessed that Om is not my wife. True. Neither is she one of the over-paid whores at the over-priced brothel I have to visit every Saturday night with my brother-in-law Niran as part of our family male bonding ritual (it’s that or snort cocaine with the middle brother, or get drunk out of my mind with the youngest). Om is my innocence, Om is my soul. She came into my life mysteriously (she drove her trolley into mine at the big delly in the basement of the Paragon: a clear violation of aisle eitquette I thought, and said so in gutter slang; she stuck out her chest and tongue at the same time as putting her thumbs to her temples and wiggling her fingers: it was hilarious).

I don’t share Om with anyone. I even take precautions when I visit her in the condo I bought her, which happens to be one block away from my office. I go to her via the supermarket which has two exits onto two different streets… She thinks it’s funny the way I always arrive with unnecessary groceries. She loves nature, by the way, especially trees, and is gentle to a fault. I also supply her with marijuana that the cops give me for free: I’m far too good a customer for them to even think of charging. Not that she uses it much. In fact, I’m not sure she ever really wanted it—with her infallible intuition she saw that I needed to smoke a single joint with her as part of our Friday afternoon loveins, when I shut out the world and everything that has happened to me since I first arrived. And if that’s not impressive, let me tell you: her intuition is not limited to minor bad habits: in bed she knew, from the beginning, exactly what I needed. Not many men have experienced that level of service, so allow me to report: it’s irresistible. Don’t look for it unless you want to be an emotional slave for life. Om knows all about Uncle Walter, of course; I had to tell her so she could be included in my secret life. She reads his work as part of her English language studies.

2.

Om comes (she says) from a very small village on the Cambodian border where everyone is tattooed and speaks Khmer as a first language. Her tattoos are in an ancient Khmer script and, I do believe, are faithful reproductions of still more ancient Hindu spells and magical incantations that can be traced back to the Arians and the Vedas. When I first slept with her she watched the expression on my face when I found the tattoo on her upper left thigh about two centimeters from the entrance to her vagina. I still have no idea what it says and I don’t know why I gulped when I saw it. How can a single syllable in an alien script make anyone gulp? It had an effect though. After the first time I saw it, I became very horny—outrageously so for a man of my age. Since then the tattoos have increased. At the time of writing she owns another at the small of her back, one on her left shoulder and one more about half an inch below her navel. So far as I know they are all ancient Khmer script and represent Bronze Age Brahmin magic.