“I thought they’d strapped you behind a desk.”

“They let me out every now and then for delicate matters,” said the policeman.

“What’s delicate about this?” Siri asked. “I heard from my inside source that your man here had too much to drink and fell off a cliff. What Mr. Geung couldn’t tell me was why all this warrants so much attention.”

“And that all comes down to who he is,” said Phosy.

“Who is he?”

“Does the name Bui Sok Thinh ring a bell?”

“Not a tinkle.”

“He was the son of Bui Kieu.”

“Still nothing ringing in my ears.”

“Perhaps he was after your time,” said Phosy. “He’s one of the richest men in Vietnam.”

“I thought we’d obliterated wealth,” said Siri. “Did something happen to communist dogma while I was napping?”

“The inevitable happened, Doc,” said Dtui. “It’s the same here. Lots of good intentions but no money. A few years of failed cooperatives and natural disasters and there’s no budget for infrastructure. So we fall back on good old cronyism. We call the rich guys back from lifelong banishment overseas, borrow a few billion here, make a few deals there.”

“Ooh,” said Siri. “Your wife’s grown horns.”

“She’s bored with being poor, I think,” said Phosy. “She’s waiting for me to accept my first graft so she can buy a refrigerator.”

“I feel that refrigerator will be a long time coming,” said Siri.

“That’s what I try to tell her.”

“Never mind, Dtui,” said Siri. “You’re still comparatively young. It’s not too late to find yourself a sugar daddy.”

“No hope there,” said Dtui. “Sugar daddies like them wafer thin with silicon breasts.”

“Sounds awful,” said Siri. “Give me a good old-fashioned naturally buxom girl any day. But back to hairy nose here. Did he get a share of his daddy’s wealth?”

“They sent Thinh to Italy to study during the war. His family had a lot of mandarin money to invest in Europe. Thinh made a fortune in war profiteering. When Uncle Ho took over Vietnam the Viet Minh found themselves short of funds so they started courting the Bui clan. Thinh brokered a deal for the Italians to drill for oil in the gulf of Tonkin. Thinh ran the company. The income from that amounted to a large chunk of the country’s GNP.”

“And how do you go from that to a cold slab in a foreign country?” Siri asked.