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did most of the talking. The interrogation started at the front desk of the hotel. It continued in the lobby, out into the street where they showed him the body, and back in his room. Maybe they thought they could find an inconsistency in his answers. They pounded away as if he were guilty of a crime. The main policeman interrogating Calvino spoke good English. He wrote notes as Calvino gave the same answers to the same questions he’d been asked over and over until his phone rang again. Colonel Pratt was on the line. It was his turn to ask the questions.
    â€œWho was she, Vincent?” asked Colonel Pratt.
    â€œShe didn’t tell me her name.”
    â€œBut you knew her?”
    â€œShe was lighting incense sticks in front of the spirit house outside the hotel when I arrived. A seagull startled her and she looked around and smiled. I smiled back. Does that sound like an intimate relationship?”
    â€œVincent, what happened is disturbing.”
    â€œI’m not real happy about it either. I’m supposed to be relaxing, having fun. The idea was to keep away from Apichart’s backup team.”
    The thought had crossed Colonel Pratt’s mind that Apichart might have had something to do with the woman falling off a balcony, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t make the connection work. Apichart would have had no idea where Calvino had gone. Only the General and Ratana had known the name of the hotel.
    â€œI’ll drive to Pattaya tomorrow morning.”
    â€œPratt, the cops are talking about putting me in jail. Someone whispered fifty thousand baht would keep me out.”
    There was a moment of silence. Someone had put the squeeze on Calvino, and the Colonel took that as a direct slap in his face and in the General’s as well. “Don’t pay anyone anything,” he said.
    â€œWhat happened has got nothing to do with Apichart and nothing to do with me,” Calvino said. “People fall off balconies all the time in Pattaya. You read the newspapers.” He looked around the room filled with uniformed cops.
    â€œThose are depressed farangs, Vincent. Not young Thai women.”
    The Colonel had a point. The ying Calvino had seen at the spirit house had been in her prime. She’d had everything to live for.
    â€œI don’t want to spend the night in jail. I wanna pay the fifty grand.”
    Colonel Pratt hadn’t had time to phone General Yosaporn about what had happened in Pattaya. The General’s friend, after all, owned the hotel. He’d have to tell him before the owner phoned.
    Ratana had warned Calvino about the danger of using a coffin to collect the rent, and now her words rang in his ears:
This is bad luck
. With the body count already at three, he was starting to doubt himself.
    â€œYou’re not going to jail. Let me work on it,” said Pratt, ending the call. He had sounded weary, upset, and yet resigned to figuring out how to keep Calvino out of jail and in his room. It couldn’t be the farang way; that never worked. It had to be a middle path, a compromise. Fifty thousand was a starting position, leaving room for negotiations. After questioning Calvino, they’d think he would understand that the figure was the opening bid. It was now Pratt’s turn to negotiate a reduction, closer to the price reserved for Thais. But a farang, now and again, given the right connections, had ways of approaching the same results.
    In the hours after the woman’s death, Calvino’s Pattaya vacation had ended with all the warning of a sunburn on an overcast day.Sitting in his room, waiting for Pratt to make a deal, he was stuck between the world of freedom and the world of jail. None of the police had been able to decide what to do with him. That was a good sign; they were cautious, firm, and suspicious. After they’d found out General Yosaporn had personally paid for Calvino’s room, their mood changed. The thermostat of their