Big Mango (9786167611037) (20 page)

“Bullshit! How many dead foreigners do you
suppose they find in the streets around here?”

That wasn’t a question Eddie wanted to dwell
on too much, so he just nodded vaguely at Winnebago and let it
pass.

The narrow road wasn’t very long and they
could see where it ended up ahead. There were several shophouses in
a straight line on one corner, the local version of a strip mall
apparently, and a restaurant on the opposite side. Between where
they were and the end of the soi, however, there was nothing but
more high concrete walls topped with broken glass.

The first two gates they walked past were
solid iron—huge, black plates that looked as if they could stop
tanks—but the third was a little friendlier. It was made up of
round bars about three inches apart, and they stopped and peered
through.

There was nothing to see except a vacant lot.
A few scraggly palm trees, fronds half brown from the brutal sun,
clung to life along what once might have been a shell driveway. The
house to which it had once led was long gone and nothing but junk
and weeds now covered the lot. There was a mound of folding metal
chairs, several old tires, a scattering of cardboard cartons, and
even the rusted-out frame of what had once probably been a small
pick-up truck. At the back of the lot, a large animal that looked
like a misshapen cow grazed contentedly on the tufts of grass
growing through the garbage.

“Jesus,” Winnebago muttered. “It looks like
an Indian reservation with water buffalo shit.”

The next two gates were also solid and firmly
closed, but just before they got to the shophouses, Winnebago found
one that was half open. Poking his head inside, he saw a manicured
lawn with a driveway of crushed red rock that led to a sprawling
house elevated slightly above the road. Just inside the gate, an
old man in a gray safari suit was swishing a long feather duster
over a dark green BMW with blacked-out windows. The car was parked
facing toward the gate as if it were ready for a quick getaway.

“Afternoon!” Winnebago called out.

The old man looked up and confusion spread
over his face when he saw Winnebago grinning in through the
half-open gate.

“Could I ask you something?”

The old man glanced over his shoulder toward
the house and then at Winnebago again, after which he turned his
back and resumed dusting.

“He probably doesn’t speak English,” Eddie
suggested.

“Good point.” Winnebago chewed on his lip
briefly, and then screeched, “
Hoh yee mahn neih yat goh mahn
taih ma?
”

The old man stiffened visibly at the noises
coming from Winnebago. He turned slowly and stared, goggle-eyed,
looking exactly like someone who had just encountered a talking
horse.

Eddie was almost as dumbstruck as the old
man.

“What the hell was that?” he asked
Winnebago.

“Chinese. The Cantonese dialect. The guy
looks more Chinese than Thai, I figure.”

“How do you know that?” Eddie looked from
Winnebago to the man and back again. “And where the hell did you
learn Cantonese?”

“I read a lot at the store.” Winnebago gave
Eddie a stern look. “Now do you want to take over here, or shall I
go on?”

Eddie stepped back, and with a slight bow
gave Winnebago the floor.

“
Ngoh yauh geen sih seung cheng gaau neih
ah,”
Winnebago said to the old man.

The man took a hesitant step toward the gate.
“
Neih seung dim ah?”

The sound was all spit and gargle. Eddie had
no idea what the old man was saying, but it was pretty obvious he
wasn’t offering them a tour of the premises.

“
Neih ji ‘m jidou yauh goh baahk yahn hai
ni tiu gaai bei sai jaw sih ah?”
Winnebago said and pointed
over his shoulder at the road. “
Keuih bei ch’e jong sei
ge.”

“
Ngoh doi ni geen sih yat dee doh ‘m ji
baw,”
the man said with a scowl and another mouthful of spit
and gargle.

Winnebago made an effort to keep the
conversation going in spite of the old man’s unfriendliness.
“
Neih haih ‘m haih jiu haih neih jaw gan ge?”

“‘
M gwan neih sih!”
The man suddenly
rushed to the gate with surprising nimbleness and began to push it
closed. “
Jau ah neih! Ngoh ‘m joi tung neih gong lah! Ngoh mu’t
yeh doh ‘m ji ah!
”

“
Ngoh ‘m haih seung ma faan…”
The gate
clanged shut in Winnebago’s face and he trailed off.

“You going to give me the play by play on all
that?” Eddie asked after a decent interval.

“I just asked the old bastard if he knew
anything about a white man being run over around here.”

“And he said?”

“Exactly, or just approximately?”

“Approximately is good.”

“Fuck off was what he said,
approximately.”

Eddie nodded, anything but surprised. “So now
what, Charlie Chan?”

“Just a second.” Winnebago took a couple of
steps back, cupped his hands around his mouth, and screamed over
the closed gate, “
Loh yeh, diu neih loh mo!”

“Make you feel better?” Eddie asked.

“Fuck yeah.”

Eddie and Winnebago examined the shophouses
carefully as they walked the rest of the way to the end of the soi.
The first was completely empty with a large, English-language FOR
RENT sign on its door. Through the window of the second, they could
see what looked like a hairdressing salon, but the lights were out
and there was no one inside. The third and fourth units had been
joined together into a single space and it was stuffed full of
Asian furniture and sculpture. Winnebago tried the door, and when
the knob turned in his hand, he and Eddie went inside.

“This is real good stuff,” Winnebago said,
looking around.

“And you would know that exactly how?”

Before Winnebago could answer, a tall man
materialized between two standing Buddha figures as quietly and
unexpectedly as if his appearance was the grand finale to a magic
trick.

“Vat may I do for you, gentlemen?”

Eddie thought the man’s German accent suited
his appearance perfectly. He was lean and taut-looking despite
looking well into his sixties. Steel-rimmed glasses rested on the
end of his hawk-nose, and his hair had been shaved so closely over
his skull that only gray fuzz remained.

“Is that the Little Princess massage parlor
up at the other end of this soi?” Eddie asked.

The German stared at Eddie as unblinkingly as
a stuffed owl. “Are you looking for a massage?”

“No, I’m investigating the death of an
American who was killed here a few months ago. I’m a lawyer from
San Francisco.”

“I did not zink you ver a buyer of Asian
antiquities.”

And why the hell not?
Eddie thought,
but he forced a smile. “I represent the man’s family. We understand
he was hit by a car in front of the Little Princess massage
parlor.”

The German continued to stare at Eddie, but
now he looked amused for some reason, although Eddie couldn’t think
of anything he had said which was even remotely funny.

“Perhaps you knew the man. His name was Harry
Austin.”

“I vould not know anyone who vent to a place
like that,” the German said. His voice offered little hope the
conversation would continue for much longer.

Looking for some help, Eddie glanced around
for Winnebago and saw him off across the shop peering closely at a
big, gold-lacquered Buddha. The figure was seated with its legs
curled under it and had huge, sad eyes outlined in black. Gently,
Winnebago reached out and ran a finger along the figure’s arm,
tracing it slowly down to an open palm that was curled gracefully
into its lap.

“Now if you vould be good enough to go on
your vay and let me get back to—”

“
Ist das Sukhothai
?” Winnebago called
out in German.

The man looked over his shoulder, eyes
narrowing as he examined Winnebago. He had the expression of
someone who was certain he was about to be made the butt of a cruel
joke.

“It is from the Sukhothai period,
ja
.”

“
Fenfzehnte Jahrhundert
?” Winnebago
ran his finger back up the image’s arm to its shoulder. “No, not
fifteenth, fourteenth. Fourteenth century, isn’t it?”

The German shot Eddie a look. Eddie smiled
back blandly.

“You know Sukhothai figures?” the German
asked Winnebago, unable to keep the astonishment out of his
voice.

“Oh, sure. They’re much more peaceful looking
than those from the Lanna period, don’t you think?”

The German stared at Winnebago. Eddie tried
not to.

“I’ve always particularly loved this form of
the seated Buddha,” Winnebago went on in a soft voice, ignoring
both of them. “It’s the gentleness of the open hand that gets me
every time. Thais call this position the
bhumisparsa mudra,
don’t they?”

***

WHEN
Eddie and Winnebago
came out of the German’s shop a half hour later, they knew
something they had not known before, at least not for certain. They
were unquestionably standing in the soi where Harry Austin had
died.

Ignoring Eddie completely as they toured the
shop, the German eventually told Winnebago what he knew about the
foreigner who had been killed in front of the Little Princess.

“It’s a shame he didn’t actually see the
accident,” Eddie mused.

“Yeah, but he saw the body, and he saw the
man who dragged it inside.”

“The description wasn’t very helpful.
Caucasian, forties or fifties, average height, average build.
Christ, Winnebago, that fits most of the Western men in
Bangkok.”

“Somebody at that massage place knows
something.” Winnebago nodded earnestly at Eddie. “I guess we better
come back tonight when the place is open and do a little research,
huh?”

“I was thinking of something else you could
do tonight that might be even more constructive.”

“Yeah?”

Eddie kept his tone as neutral as he could.
“Maybe your pal Fritz could remember something else if you asked
him again in a more social setting.”

“Forget it, man.”

“Well, he did ask you to have dinner with him
and—”

“No fucking way, man. You have dinner with
him.”

“I don’t think he liked me as much as he did
you.”

Winnebago gave Eddie a look some people might
have had trouble putting a name to, but Eddie knew exactly what it
meant.

THE
American Embassy in
Bangkok always made Bar think of a particularly prosperous prison,
all blast-hardened concrete, slit windows, high walls, and iron
gates.

The huge compound sprawled along both sides
of Wireless Road about halfway between Lumpini Park and Ploenchit
Road. Bar loved the name Wireless Road. The sound of it fairly
reverberated with intrigue and it reminded him of a black and white
television series from the fifties called ‘Foreign Correspondent’
that had riveted him as a boy. He could never say Wireless Road
without hearing off in the distance the sound of an old BBC radio
broadcast, all hissing and static in the background with an
earnest-sounding voice shouting out dispatches in an exaggerated
British accent from some remote corner of the empire. Of course,
the BBC still sounded like that most of the time and he figured
that was probably why now everybody watched CNN.

Bar didn’t like going to the American Embassy
and he avoided the place whenever he could. It just flat out made
him jumpy as hell. He had this terrible fear that once he was
inside the gates they might never let him out again.

Americans have always been keenly suspicious
of other Americans who voluntarily chose to live in another
country. After all, half the population of the world seems to be
clamoring to move to California and work in a 7-Eleven. So what the
hell was with this guy who wanted to live in Bangkok? He must have
done something. Yeah, that was it. Committed a crime or something.
If he wasn’t a drug dealer, he had to be a tax dodger or maybe he
owed child support to a penniless ex-wife on welfare back in St.
Louis. Bastard. Low life. Had to be. Otherwise he’d want to live in
America like everybody else.

No matter how much the idea bothered him,
this was still one of those times when Bar knew he had to suck it
up and go to the embassy. He couldn’t work out on his own what the
photograph that was inside the envelope the motorcycle messenger
had passed to him meant, but he didn’t like the look of it one bit.
He knew a guy at the embassy he was sure could help him so he
swallowed his misgivings and went to see him.

Chuck McBride was DEA, one of dozens agents
who were posted in Thailand and working out of American diplomatic
facilities. Bar met him one night at the Crown Royal and they had
become friends in spite of Bar’s usual policy of avoiding all
Americans in Thailand, particularly government guys. Bar had never
thought of Chuck as anything at all like the rest of those
arrogant, prissy jerk-offs who passed for US government employees
abroad. He looked more like a semi-pro jock from some Alabama
football team that had never met with much success. He had a neat
blond crew cut, a fleshy face that couldn’t seem to organize
itself, and no neck, at least none that anyone had ever been able
to find.

Chuck and Bar spent a lot of time fooling
around town together and more than once Bar had left Chuck sitting
on a curb somewhere trying to get sober enough to hit one more
place before calling it a night. Bar liked cruising Bangkok with
Chuck for two reasons: he was pretty good company, and he carried a
really big gun. Both of those things, Bar thought, were important
when you hit the local streets on a Saturday night, although you
could probably get along without the company if you really had
to.