John Burdett
The Godfather of Kathmandu
The fourth book in the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series, 2009
For Nit
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank David Giler for his usual invaluable comments, and Douglas Mays, who taught me all I am ever likely to know about padparadschas.
Few are there amongst men who go to the Farther Shore; the rest of this mankind only run about on the bank.
– Gautama, The Dhammapada
The third kind of suffering and pain that the soul endures in this state results from the fact that two other extremes meet here in one, namely, the Divine and the human.
– San Juan de la Cruz, The Dark Night of the Soul
There must be some way out of here.
– Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower”
1
Ours is an age of enforced psychosis. I’ll forgive yours, farang, if you’ll forgive mine-but let’s talk about it later. Right now I’m on the back of a motorbike taxi hurtling toward a to-die-for little murder off Soi 4/4, Sukhumvit. My boss, Colonel Vikorn, called me at home with the good news that he wants me on the case because the victim is said to be some hyper-rich, hyper-famous Hollywood farang and he doesn’t need poor Detective Sukum screwing up with the media. We’ll get to Detective Sukum; for the moment picture me, if you will, with a Force 8 tropical wind in my face causing eyes to tear and ears to itch, on my way to one of our most popular red-light districts where there awaits a larger-than-life dead Westerner.
I’m nearly there. With a little urging my motorbike jockey drives up onto the sidewalk to avoid the massive traffic jam at the Soi 4 junction with Sukhumvit, weaves in between a long line of cooked-food vendors busy feeding the whores from Nana Plaza who have just gotten up (it’s about eleven in the morning), slaloms between a mango seller and a lamppost, returns to the tarmac with the usual jolt to the lower spine, and now we’re slowing to swerve into Subsoi 4.