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time, but he can go into a dope-trance for days.” Embarrassed in front of me, he knocks more aggressively, then, muttering Fucking katoey bitch, fishes out his cell phone. He speaks into it using his Isaan dialect based on Khmer, sounding much like a whore in a temper. “I told him I was bringing you,” he says, folding the phone and putting it away. “Now he’s all shit-faced from the ganja.” Then he offers me a pained smile. “He’ll open up in a minute. He has to get back from the moon.”

Finally we hear sounds of life from the other side of the door. A couple of bolts are drawn back, and he opens a crack. Then he reveals himself in his full glory, wearing only a pair of cycling shorts: a surprisingly bony, masculine face with purple eyeshadow and lipstick, long ink-black hair drawn back in a ponytail in the ancient way, and a magnificent tattoo of a chrysanthemum adorning his hairless chest, where two small new breasts are budding. His gestures are exaggerated in the tradition of his tribe, but there’s something else: it is not difficult to believe there is a real woman behind the prizefighter’s features. When he drops the katoey posturing, he can seem genuinely female.

“Darling,” he manages, and bends forward from the hips to allow Lek to peck him on the cheek.

“You’re stoned,” Lek chides.

“I’m in the middle of a major work, love. I need the meditation aid.”

“This is my boss, Detective Jitpleecheep,” Lek says with a slight pout.

“Ever so pleased to meet you,” Pi-Oon says, and beckons us inside.

Now I’m thinking: Gauguin. Pi-Oon has used those same tropical purples, morbid mauves, and old golds to adorn the walls and roof of his wooden hut with images of katoey nightlife. A cabaret star with similar features to his is holding a microphone in the centerpiece of a triptych. I realize that every human depicted in his work is a transsexual. I’m most fascinated, though, by the frisson of his big boney tough-guy face, which seems to beg for love and tenderness. He gestures at the floor, which is unencumbered by furniture save for a few cushions. We all sit in semilotus with our backs against the wall. “We’ve come about the snuff movie,” Lek says, still irritated.

The words cause a dreadful pain to corrupt our host’s features. He places a palm against one cheek, his eyes great bulbs of horror. “Oh my Buddha, oh my, I never thought it was real, you know.” Looking at me:

“It’s was only when Pi-Lek told me you were investigating that I thought, oh, oh, oh, Pi-Oon has got himself into hot water here. Pi-Oon, I said to myself, Pi-Oon honey, you’ve got the biggest mouth in Krung Thep. I wish I’d never got drunk and told everyone. I never drink, normally, so it went straight to my head, and I just spilled my guts.”

“Tell us what you saw,” I say.

“Well, at first it was just a big yawn, don’t you know, because the girl’s a real girl, and who wants to watch a tart do it nature’s way like a farm animal, you know, but my man’s bi, so I watched it with him to be polite, you know. And of course it made him horny as hell.” Glancing at Lek with a wink: “What a punishment he gave me afterward, you wouldn’t believe.” Turning back to me while Lek suppresses a smirk: “So it’s some silly whore doing a fairly elaborate boom-boom with a dishy stud in a black gimp mask, and at the end he snuffs her with a rope around her neck, but it never occurred to me that it was for real, you know, I thought it was virtual. Of course I did. I mean, why wouldn’t it be virtual in this day and age? Why go to the expense of snuffing the tart when you could fake it and use her again? Common sense says it’s virtual.”

“Who’s your man?” Lek demands, drawing a scowl from both Pi-Oon and me.

Pi-Oon casts me a helpless glance. “Isn’t our Pi-Lek direct? Doesn’t mince words, comes straight to the point.” Frowning: “You know I can’t tell you that. It’s