But the police investigation was unavoidable. When someone died in Bangkok, the police and the body snatchers were dispatched to the scene. In a ritual that passed as teamwork, the cops inspected the body, picked up evidence, photographed the scene, and the body snatchers waited for the all-clear before removing the body. If the dead person was someone important, then all kinds of protocols applied, and officials had to coordinate between agencies, committees, and the press. None of that would happen in this case. A dead massage ying, a nobody from nowhere, would only result in reams of paperwork.

But the book still required an investigation. An investigation compromised by a dozen idle, crying massage girls walking through the room, picking up things, helping themselves to whatever wasn’t nailed down. Food, gold chain, credit card, cash. The thinking was always the same: the victim no longer needed these things. Those who weren’t close to the dead ying had less resistance to the feelings of bad luck in taking from the dead. From their point of view, the sooner the dead ying’s worldly possessions found a new home, the better. The fear of ghosts would come later.

He chased out the two massage yings who had come to stare and went over to the one sitting on the chair, rocking back and forth, as if the window where she sat was the wailing wall and her anguish, now with an audience, had grown more intense. Her chair was positioned to the left of the open window, which was hidden behind white cotton curtains. Calvino asked her why she’d opened the window with the air-con running. She didn’t reply. Then he asked her why she hadn’t opened the door, and why her friend was dead on the bed. He reached over and touched her hands, held them for a moment, checked the fingernails, and then let her hands fall back into her lap. They were the hands of a ying who had recently worked the fields or performed other hard labor. After a couple of months working in a massage parlor, the hands soften. He took her for a newbie.

A shortlist of “why” questions occurred to him. The girl by the window was in no condition to answer any of them, but Calvino asked them anyway. She answered each one the same way: “I don’t know.”

Didn’t know or wasn’t telling? He was a farang and was getting nowhere in questioning her. What did it matter? Let the police sort her out. It was their business and not his. They knew how to get answers, and the ying knew better than to answer every question with a shrug. The mamasan stood in the door, chewing a broken fingernail.

“What’s her name?” he asked the mamasan.

“Her name’s Metta.”

Calvino looked over at Metta, who sat with her legs crossed, one of her broad feet with splayed toes, swinging to some soundtrack playing inside her head.

“And the dead girl?”

“Everyone call her Jazz.”

The mamasan lit another cigarette. What was going through her head? One thought: that suicide in the massage business was never a good thing. Rumors that a ghost, a pale but beautiful young woman ghost, was haunting the building would circulate for months. Suicides spooked the staff and rattled the customers. The mamasan was calculating the number of monks she’d have to arrange to purify the premises of a wayward ghost. That was the way of the living. The dead had to be put to rest with burning incense and chanting monks so that the living could get on with their next massage.

For whatever reason, Jazz had lost her will to live. She’d checked out of her misery, leaving a mess for others to clean up. No one had been in a hurry to call the authorities. But when they arrived they brought with them a crowd like the one that showed up at every death scene. Bystanders paralyzed, bewildered, afraid, and confused, but nevertheless drawn to the flame. Calvino noticed two forks resting on the plate of som tam. It looked like Jazz and Metta had been sharing food. He had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Nothing good will come out of this, he thought. He felt relieved that the police would come and he could get away from the stench of death and the sound of weeping.

The massage parlor staff had involved him in their personal affair. No, that was wrong. He had permitted them to get him involved without fully understanding the situation. It had been, as they say, “up to him.” He hadn’t known there was a dead ying inside. If he had known what was on the other side of the door, he would have immediately called the police. As he leaned against the wall, looking at Jazz’s body, it became perfectly clear what would happen next and what he should expect when the police arrived.