Love Songs From a Shallow Grave Read online

  They’ve transferred the manacle to my left hand and put a restraint around my ankles: two parallel metal bars with chains as heavy as doom that keep my feet a foot and a half apart. They came a few hours earlier, the boy guards, and nailed plywood across all the windows. Since then the fluorescents have been burning continuously and I have no idea of time. I’m covered in flea and mosquito bites and it’s taking all my willpower not to scratch myself raw. In fact, I should have paid more attention at the temple when I was a novice. In a situation like this I really could use an off switch. This would be a good time to step outside my body.

  The teenage guards bring me rice gruel that tastes of motor oil and vomit. But I have to eat. Bad nutrition is better than none at all. They bring a bucket too, as if I can perform here and now. The first time that happened, I started to explain the natural process of excretion, that the body needs seventy-five hours to process food. At the earliest, the waste might clear the body in six hours. But one of the boys rammed the butt of his pistol into the side of my foolish head and I was suddenly flapping around inside an aviary of bats and blackbirds. When I came round, the bucket and the unruly youth were gone. I can feel my head now. It’s swollen to the size and shape of a pomelo. At first I thought I might be enjoying one of my fabulous nightmares. But the lump and the pain and the blood on my shoulder aren’t imagined. Of course, that doesn’t make this any less of a nightmare.

  Behind me on a long, scratched, and partially burned blackboard there are ten chalked sentences that I can’t read. When my ex-roommate first arrived, they forced him to recite the sentences aloud. The man was barely able to see through his swollen black eyes. They kicked the words out of him. I closed my eyes and diverted my mind from the awful sounds by thinking about language. I’d always thought of it as a friend. It’s guided me through life and shown me new directions. Each new language I learned added to me. I became richer. But a language you don’t know, sir, that is one mean, unfriendly son of a bitch. It’s rude and secretive and it pushes you away, keeps you on the outside. And that’s where I am now, on the outside. Not knowing what’s going on makes my teeth curl in frustration. I’ve been groveling for a quote about language to make myself feel more secure, but nothing comes to mind. It was true what the clerk said. I don’t have any thoughts of my own.

  At some time when I was asleep or unconscious, they took out the corpse. I’m alone now. I mean, in body. As you know, in spirit it’s getting a bit crowded in here. Look at you: old, far too young, pregnant, bedraggled, innocent, pleading, but all of you unmistakably confused. You sit cross-legged staring at me, you spirits of the dead, as if expecting me to entertain you, expecting me to have answers. But forgive me, I’m not on top of things enough to know what the questions are. I don’t yet understand why I’m here or what’s expected of me.

  The smiley man came this afternoon … or evening, whichever it was. He was so polite I was certain this was all some terrible mix-up.

  “You must be in pain,” the smiley man said in basic high-school French. “Never mind. You’ll feel better soon. I’m so sorry for all this inconvenience.”

  The words dribbled with insincerity but that brief sharing of language buoyed me. It allowed me to step briefly back inside. He left me a pencil, not sharpened to a point, and a sheet of lined paper torn from a school exercise book. I fired questions at the man’s back—his name, where he’d learned French, what he did, where we all were. But once the smiley man had given his oh-so-polite speech, his duty was done and he clicked the door latch quietly behind him. I remember you smiled then, you spirits—ironic smiles, every one of you.

  They’re still here, the pencil and paper, untouched on the checkered tiles by my right hand.

  “Your story,” the smiley man said. “Just tell us your story and you’ll be free to go.”

  I sit with my back against the wall, staring at the door. I sigh. I reach for the pencil, angle the paper toward me and begin to write,

  “Once upon a time there were three little pigs …”

  Dr. Siri sat beneath the blazing white strip lights in the morgue at Mahosot. Soviet funding had led to the rewiring of a number of the old French buildings and the three technical advisers who’d come to install the lights insisted that it was vital in a hospital to have a minimum of 73 RNO or BZF, or some such twaddle, of visibility. He had no idea what that meant apart from the fact that if the Great Wall of China was visible from space in daylight, the Mahosot morgue would be a glittering beacon at night, visible from even the most distant solar system. He wore his old sunglasses to reduce the glare and decided that, on Monday, he’d borrow the hospital stepladder and remove two of the parallel tubes before everyone received third-degree burns.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t called upon that often to work at night. Even for the living, nothing was that urgent in Vientiane. The dead could always keep for another day. But this had been an exceptional day, and an exceptional case. The poor lady who lay on her side on the cutting table in front of him had been the center of a political storm for much of the afternoon and evening. Siri had, of course, called Inspector Phosy from the nearest telephone he could find in K6. The inspector was the man responsible for all police matters concerning government officials. Phosy and two of his colleagues had jumped into the department jeep and sped to the scene of the crime.

  There followed an unpleasant standoff during which both the Vietnamese security personnel and the Lao National Police Force had stood toe to toe insisting that they had jurisdiction over the crime. Until it was sorted out, Siri wasn’t allowed to remove the body to the morgue and the victim voiced her discontent by smelling terribly. The Vietnamese called in reinforcements from their embassy. The police called in the military. It was starting to look like Sixth Street would be the scene of a new Indo-Chinese war were it not for one simple fact. The movie ended and the politburo members, strolling off their stiff legs, came upon them.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. “Of course this is a Lao matter. Enough of this nonsense.”

  Broken Vietnamese faces notwithstanding, the matter was finally resolved. On their way back in the jeep, Police Inspector Phosy had appeared to be as annoyed with Siri as he was with the entire nation of Vietnam.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Siri had asked.

  “No.”

  “Come on, Phosy. Something’s eating you with a fork.”

  “You didn’t get my message last night?”

  “The ‘need to see you urgently’ message?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Not until early this morning. Mme Daeng saw it as an amber rather than a red alert.”

  “Oh, did she? And this morning?”

  “I had a swimming lesson.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m serious. The Seniors’ Union has a class on Saturday mornings. They cleaned all the gunge out of the Lan Xang pool.”

  “You’re learning to swim, at your age?”

  “I’ve found the god of drowning is particularly insensitive to the age of his victims. I’ve had one or two narrow escapes in water lately. I thought it was time to master the element. And if I suddenly have the urge to swim across to Thailand, I coul—”

  “And your swimming lesson took precedence over my request to see you?”

  “Phosy, you have to admit you’ve become a little oversensitive since you became a father. You’ve had me drop everything and rush to the police dormitory for … for what? A little wind? A touch of diarrhea? A small—”

  “You can never be too careful.”

  “Your wife’s a nurse. And she’s a very competent one. She can handle all these things.”

  “Dr. Siri, Dtui comes from a bloodline of disaster. Her mother lost ten children during or shortly after birth. Our country has a horrible record. Twenty percent of kids don’t make it to their first birthdays. Forty percent don’t reach eleven.”

  “And I guarantee not one of them had a mother who was a quali
fied nurse and a father who could afford to put regular meals on the table. The only danger little Malee has, as far as I can see, is that her father’s going to coddle her to death. Tell me, what was last night’s emergency?”

  “If you aren’t going to take it seriously …”

  “Come on. I’m listening.”

  “She’s yellow.”

  “All over?”

  “It’s hepatitis.”

  “What does Dtui say?”

  “She doesn’t know. She’s got other things on her mind.”

  “What does she say?”

  “She said it’s the light through the curtains.”

  “What color’s the curtain?”

  “White.”

  “Phosy?”

  “Creamy white.”

  “It’s yellow, Phosy. I’ve seen it. Yellow with cartoon dogs or some such.”

  “The baby still looked yellow when I took her outside.”

  “Then stop taking her outside. Goodness, man. It’s the rainy season. She’ll catch a real disease. Then you’ll have something to complain about.”

  Phosy hadn’t appreciated the lecture. He’d sent two of his men with Siri to off-load the corpse and retreated to his office to write his angry report. Madame Daeng had taken the motorcycle home from K6. Siri would be a little while settling poor Dew in at the morgue, then he’d walk back. He wished he could be home with his lovely new books but he needed time alone with the corpse to organize his thoughts. Dew still had a lot of talking to do, he decided. She knew her killer. That much was certain. Their midnight sauna pointed to the possibility that they were lovers. This rendezvous, he decided, was passion. The type of passion that makes you crazy enough to risk your career and your freedom for a few moments of pleasure. When he was young, Siri had known that passion himself.

  He hadn’t had time to search for a false compartment in which the killer might hide a sword. But he was convinced he wouldn’t have found one. If you were planning to kill a lover, there were far more convenient—and much shorter—weapons that would have been easier to conceal. It was almost as if the épée was symbolic, perhaps even part of the ritual. He wondered if the épée was the message itself. What if it wasn’t hidden at all? What if the girl knew she was about to die? Had she wanted to be killed? Had she brought it herself?

  As often occurred in these confusing, ghost-ridden years of his life, Siri felt a familiar anger. He was the host, like it or not, of a thousand-year-old Hmong shaman by the name of Yeh Mung. It was like a gallbladder infection, but of the soul. There was nothing tangible inside to operate on. He was stuck with this presence and still hadn’t mastered the art of living with his ancestor. He’d wondered often whether the fault lay in his failure to grasp the true essence of religion. If he’d been a better Buddhist, perhaps he could have beaten the eightfold path to his spiritual back door, burst into the projection booth, and caught old Yeh Mung tangled up in a thousand years of celluloid. Couldn’t they then have sat down together and organized everything into reels and canned and labeled them? Neither of them would have been confused. Then perhaps, just perhaps, he’d have some control over the spirits that flickered back and forth across his life. Perhaps Dew’s soul could stroll up the central aisle and calmly explain why she was lying before him with a sword through her heart.

  But, as it stood, Siri’s connection to the afterlife was held together with old string. And once again he had to resort to the resources of his own mind, cover the dreams and premonitions in a blanket, and look at the facts. See what was right there in front of him. He used a pair of salad tongs to pick up the towel from its steel tray. That towel had worried him since he’d first seen it. What was it doing there on the floor covered in blood? No, not covered exactly. He laid it out across the second gurney and looked at the pattern. It was less saturated than he’d first thought. The blood had gathered at the center like an inkblot test and all the corners but one were white. It didn’t make sense to him. If it had been used to wipe up blood, the stain would be patchier, streaked. This looked as if blood had merely seeped into it from one corner.

  If he’d been in France or England he could have taken samples of the woman’s blood and samples from the towel, rushed them off to Serology, and had a result—match or no match—before dinner. But he was in Laos, and what Mahosot Hospital classified as a blood unit was old Mrs. Bountien and an antique microscope. And she had a market garden of yams to look after so she only came in on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

  Siri considered walking over to the dormitory and inviting Mr. Geung to help him with the autopsy but he decided to let his assistant enjoy his leisure hours in peace. Siri turned on the noisy Russian air conditioner, put on his attractive green Chinese overalls and his rubber gloves, and turned toward his corpse. Dew had the build of a short, under 110 pound class weightlifter. She was attractive but not classically pretty. She was strongly built, not unlike Siri’s first wife. He got the impression she could have looked after herself in a struggle. He took hold of the handle of the sword and was beginning to wonder whether he’d have the strength to remove it.

  “Y … you’ll hurt your b … back.”

  Siri turned and smiled. The Mr. Geung radar never failed. Siri only had to stroll past the morgue on a weekend and Mr. Geung would know. He’d be there like a shadow beside him. The morgue and the life and death it contained was Mr. Geung’s home.

  “Mr. Geung,” said Siri. “Looks like we have a guest.”

  “You didn’t … didn’t call me.”

  “What for? You have the nose of a dog, my friend. I knew you’d be here.”

  “Ha, I have a dog nose.” Geung sniffed like a bloodhound and walked to the storeroom to put on his apron. Canine sniffs and grunts and laughter emanated from behind the door. His condition was really only a problem for other people, those who felt uncomfortable around him, people like Judge Haeng. But Mr. Geung pottered around inside his Down syndrome taking pleasure from simple things, enjoying the love he felt from his morgue family, doing his job. And his job was to assist Dr. Comrade Siri. But the doctor couldn’t help but notice there was something oddly different about Geung today. He decided he would bring it up once their work was done.

  Siri held on to Dew’s shoulders while Geung, in one glorious Excaliburic flourish, grabbed the épée’s handle in both hands and yanked the shaft from her chest. Siri laid her down on the table and looked at the congealed blood trail that led from her heart. He picked up the towel and spread it across her groin, lining up the stains like a piece of a large puzzle. It fit but it didn’t solve anything. He was almost convinced the blood on the towel had come from the deceased. It had clearly been on her lap at some stage. But what he couldn’t explain was why the towel was stained but had not been saturated by the considerable flow of blood that would have gushed from the wound. Nor could he imagine why it was on the floor when they discovered the body. There had been no blood on Dew’s hands.

  The autopsy took the standard two hours and produced no astounding revelations. She was healthy, and had, at some stage, given birth. She had been killed almost immediately when the sword pierced her heart and she had probably felt little pain. The murderer had either known exactly where to find the heart, and been skillful enough to impale it, or he had been very lucky. The shallow N or Z mark on her thigh was another matter. Siri knew it had not been inflicted by the sword as there had been very little bleeding, barely a trickle. The épée must have killed her first. But this meant the killer had to have used a different weapon to sign his work. From the width of the cut and the condition of the skin, Siri assumed a small flat-bladed knife had been used, perhaps a sharp penknife. But it was a hurried, botched job. A last-minute thought perhaps? No. The killer had gone to the trouble of bringing the knife. Why hurry the final touch? Was he disturbed? Frightened? Disgusted at what he’d done? Siri hated autopsies that left more questions than answers.

  For want of a police forensic investigation unit, Siri took t
he liberty of dusting (as they called it overseas) for fingerprints. He had a fine mixture of chalk and magnesium prepared for just such an eventuality. Despite the fact that he and Geung had been very careful not to touch the sword handle, it yielded no prints. Either it had been wiped clean or the killer had worn gloves. Perhaps a lesser investigator might have given up at that point, but Siri, guided by the guile of his hero Maigret of the Paris Sûreté, continued his curious dust down the shaft. And there he found it. One clear print at the top of the blade. He was proud of himself but had no idea what to do with his find. There might have been some simple way of recording the print but he hadn’t yet learned that skill. So he put the épée on the top shelf in the storeroom and hoped the ceiling lizards wouldn’t lick away his evidence.

  Two tasks remained. First, he would return to the scene of the crime and search for a hiding place for both a sword and a knife. Second, while there, he might even have another conversation with the Vietnamese guard who’d been given sentry duty in front of the K6 sauna. And then there was one more very serious matter, not related to the murder. He walked to Geung, who was scrubbing the overalls in the deep tub.

  “Mr. Geung,” he said.

  “Yes, Comrade Doctor?”

  “Your hair.”

  Geung smiled. “I … I’m very sexy.”

  “Who did that to you?”

  “It … it … it’s a permanent rinse. Nurse Dtui put it o … on my hair.”

  “And you let her?”

  “I’m very ss … sexy.”

  “Irresistible.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think we need to have a word with Nurse Dtui.”

  Gruel and Unusual

  Not for any religious conviction, Sunday was a day of rest in Vientiane. It had certainly been the Sabbath when the French oppressors ruled the roost and it was a habit that carried forward even after the churches were closed and the preachers sent on their way. Although they would never admit it, there were a number of reasons for communist Vientiane to stick with old colonial trends. In fact, historically, had it not been for the French, there would have been no Vientiane in 1978.