Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson (4 page)

Anyway, I took my bowl over to the old woman and asked for more noodles. I smiled at Joy and said ‘
Sawasdee krup
.’

We started chatting in Thai and I asked her if it was engagement ring on her finger. She beamed and said that yes, she was getting married to a farang, a guy from Scotland called Bill. She took a bottle of water from the fridge and hurried back up stairs.

The old woman handed me my bowl of noodles with another flash of gold teeth.

‘She is very beautiful,’ I said.

The old woman nodded.

‘The farang doesn’t mind that she’s a katoey?’ I asked.

The old woman had the grace to blush. ‘He doesn’t know,’ she said.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Isn’t he going to find out sometime?’

The old woman shrugged. ‘My son is going to have the operation soon,’ she said. She made a scissor cutting motion with her fingers. ‘As soon as the farang sends the money.’ She cackled and stirred her soup with a long metal ladle.

I took my bowl of noodles back to my table. It can be a funny old world at times.

I waited until I was back in Bangkok before faxing my report to the client. I suppose I should have phoned but I couldn’t face telling him, even over the phone. I sent him a typewritten report and a copy of the print out I’d got from the Government office and a translation. And I faxed a copy of my bill. Four days later I got a cheque through the post. No note, just a cheque. I figured there was nothing he wanted to say. They way I see it, he had a lucky escape. Sooner or later he would have found out, even with Joy’s skill at oral sex, and even with all her family in on the secret. That’s what blew me away. He’d met the folks, he’d discussed a dowry with them, all the time thinking that he was getting a beautiful girl, and a virgin to boot. And no one had said a thing. Maybe they were hoping that MacKay would send them enough money to pay for the operation before the wedding. Then I had a thought that made me shudder. If I hadn’t found out what was going on, and if Joy had had the final cut, and if she could come up with an excuse for why she wasn’t getting pregnant, than MacKay might never have discovered the truth.

THE CASE OF THE LESBIAN LOVER

Greig Knight was one of the few real success stories among Thailand’s expat community. The Thais don’t make it easy for foreigners to succeed in business, but Greig had bucked the trend and made a decent-sized fortune building up a chain of American-style restaurants. You know the sort of thing: racks of ribs, barbecued chickens smeared in hickory sauce, burgers covered in cheese and bacon with French fries the size of a labourer’s fingers. Not that they were called French fries in Knight’s restaurants. Ever since 9/11 they were Freedom fries in all his establishments and there wasn’t a bottle of French wine on the menu. Knight had served in the military—he’d been one of the first soldiers into Kuwait—before deciding that he’d rather take his chances in the Land of Smiles. He landed at Don Muang without being able to speak a word of Thai and a cheque from the US Government in his back pocket. He found a decent hotel, decent beer, but couldn’t find a decent burger despite looking the length and breadth of the city. He figured the only way he was going to get the sort of food he wanted was to cook it himself, so he set up a small burger joint in a soi close to Patpong. He never looked back and now he owns a huge house in one of the more heavily fortified areas of town and flies himself to Hong Kong to watch his racehorses run.

He didn’t tell me who he was when he phoned. He just said that he needed a private detective and asked me to meet him at Starbucks in Soi Thonglor. He said he’d be reading a copy of the Asian Wall Street Journal but his choice of reading material wasn’t important because he was the only farang in the place. I recognised him immediately from photographs in the glossy magazines they leave around in my dentist’s. Usually he was holding court at the opening of one of his restaurants, or attending a function to honour some visiting American dignitary or other, standing with his arm around a leggy Thai beauty queen or a gay DJ raising a glass of champagne to the camera, grinning with a set of teeth so white that they had to have been capped. He was well over six foot tall, greying at the temples with flint-grey eyes that looked at me inquisitively as I walked over to his table. He unwound himself from his chair. He was thin with a runner’s build, and as I knew for a fact that he ate in one of his own restaurants every night, he must have had the metabolism of a humming bird.

‘Greig Knight,’ he said. He nodded at the muscular Thai man who was sitting in the armchair opposite his. ‘This is Gung. My driver.’

Gung stood up and waied me with a cold smile. He didn’t look like a driver. He looked more like a bodyguard and from the way he held himself I figured he was former military or police.

Knight wound himself back into his armchair and waved for me to take Gung’s place. Gung stood slightly to the left of Knight, his arms crossed. He didn’t look like the sort of man you’d want to meet in a dark alley.

‘As you’ve probably guessed, it’s a woman,’ said Knight.

‘It usually is.’ I said.

‘Do you want a coffee?’

‘Black.’

‘You don’t want a cappuccino or a latte?’

‘I’m a traditional sort of guy,’ I said.’

‘Cappuccino is for wimps?’

‘My thoughts exactly.’

Knight grinned and nodded at Gung. ‘Mr Olson will have the same as me,’ he said. ‘Same as we like our heavyweight boxers.’

Gung frowned.

‘Strong and black,’ said Knight, and he tapped the table in front of him with a large ring on his left hand.

I chuckled but Gung’s frown just deepened. He nodded and walked over to the counter.

‘He’s been with me for ten years,’ said Knight. ‘Just so you know, I trust him completely.’

‘Former army?’

Knight nodded. ‘Captain in the Thahan Phran.’

I raised an eyebrow. The Thahan Phran are Thailand’s paramilitary border guards. Hard bastards. You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of one, dark alley or not.

He steepled his fingers under his chin and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve got a live-in girlfriend. Ying.’ He smiled. ‘Beautiful girl. Sexy as hell.’

‘You’re a very lucky man,’ I said.

‘If I thought that, I wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I was in a Humvee, a few years back. Had a sergeant who thought he was Michael Schumacher. Took it as an insult to his manhood if he had to put his foot on the brake. We were heading into Kuwait City, full-pelt. I don’t know what it was, but I just had a feeling that something was wrong. I told the sergeant to stop. He moaned like hell but he pulled over. I went ahead on foot. Fifty feet in front of where we stopped was a landmine. A biggie.’

‘Wow.’

‘Wow is right. Humvees are damn big vehicles but the mine would have blown it to kingdom come. But if the hairs on the back of my neck hadn’t stood to attention, my army career would have come to an abrupt end there and then.’

‘And this Ying is making your hair stand to attention, is that it?’

Knight made a gun out of his right hand and faked shooting me in the face. ‘Got it in one. There’s nothing I can put my finger on, it’s just a feeling.’

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a couple of photographs and handed them to me. I tried to look at them without drooling. She was beautiful all right. Shampoo commercial hair, toothpaste commercial teeth, moisturiser commercial skin, you get the picture. Drop dead lovely, but as Greig Knight was one of the richest farangs in Thailand, it was only to be expected. The only dogs he’d go near would be at the greyhound track in Macau.

‘I’ve written her Thai name, date of birth and ID card number on the back of one of the pictures,’ said Knight. ‘Look, I pay all her bills, I’ve bought her a BMW, a house for her parents in Surin, and I’ve given her a gold Amex card. She gets an allowance of 200,000 baht a month and I’ve lost count of the gold jewellery I’ve bought for her.’

I tried not to turn green with envy but he was giving her twice what I made in a good month. And I didn’t have a BMW. Or a gold Amex card. But then I didn’t have a body to die for and a face to kill for.

‘She’s as loving as she ever was,’ Knight continued. ‘The sex is great, there are no mysterious late-night phone calls, nothing I can put my finger on.’

‘Just a feeling?’

Knight nodded. ‘That’s right.’

I didn’t say anything to Knight but in my experience once a guy feels that his wife or girlfriend is up to no good, she probably is.

‘I’m flying to Hong Kong this weekend. I asked Ying to go with me but she said she was busy, she’s got a conference in Pattaya that she has to go to.’

‘A conference?’

‘She works for a pharmaceuticals company. Sales director. She doesn’t need to, I’ve told her that, but she wants her independence.’

I wanted to point out that she didn’t want her independence enough to turn down 200,000 baht a month or give him back the BMW, but I kept my mouth shut. Discretion being the better part of not pissing off the client and all that.

‘Anyway, I’m off to Hong Kong, she’ll be in Pattaya, so I want you to follow her. You can do that?’

I smiled confidently. ‘No problem. I’ll need her car registration number.’

‘It’s on the back of the photograph,’ said Knight. He pulled out a thick wallet and flicked his thumbnail across a stack of 1,000-baht bills, counted out thirty and handed them to me. ‘This is on account,’ he said. ‘But money’s no object, I just want to know the truth, one way or another.’

I pocketed the cash and nodded over at the bodyguard. ‘Is Gung going with you?’

‘No, he’s looking after my house.’ I’d seen Knight’s house in one of the glossy magazines. It was in an expensive area of Sukhumvit, a mix of old Thai teak and white minimalist chic, full of modern Asian art and ancient Buddha figures looted from Burma.

‘Get Gung to call me when she leaves the house, and if you can get any details of what hotel she’s staying at, so much the better.’

‘Whatever you need,’ said Knight. He scribbled on the back of an embossed business card and handed it to me. ‘My private number is on there. Gung’s too.’

I shook his hand and headed out. The money was burning a hole in my pocket, I had several bills that were past their sell-by date and I owed my maid last month’s salary.

By Friday afternoon I was all set. Knight was on a three o’clock Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong so he left his house at just before midday, sitting in the back of a. large Mercedes. I was in a rental car, an inconspicuous Honda Civic, down the road. He didn’t see me. As a rule, guys in the back of big Mercs didn’t notice men in small Japanese cars.

Further down the road were three motorcycle taxis that I’d booked for the day. Two thousand baht each. They sat under the shade of an advertising hoarding promoting a shampoo that blackened, thickened and strengthened, all in one. The Thais love black hair and white skin and spend a fortune on products that promise either. The motorcycle riders had short-cropped hair and skin the colour of burnt mahogany, blackened from years ferrying passengers around the city under the unforgiving sun. They were smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and kept looking over towards the Honda, waiting for my signal. I’d lent them mobile phones so that they could stay in touch once we were on the lovely Miss Ying’s trail.

Following someone is a difficult business at the best of times, but in Bangkok it can be a nightmare. For a start, there’s the congestion. At rush hour many of the city’s major intersections hit gridlock. And the traffic lights can sometimes take up to fifteen minutes to change. So you might sit in slow-moving traffic for an hour or so, only to see your quarry skip through a light just as it changes to red. Even if you can keep up with your quarry, following them as they change lanes means taking your life into your hands because Bangkok traffic is the most unforgiving in the world. All pretence of politeness goes out of the window when a Thai gets behind the wheel of a car. That’s where the motorcycle taxi drivers come in handy. There are tens of thousands of them around the city, whizzing through the traffic, delivering officer workers to their desks, hookers to the go-go bars and students to their classrooms. They used to wear coloured vests denoting the soi they worked in, but the Government changed the regulations and made them all wear orange vests which makes using them as chasers even easier.

Using bikes doesn’t solve all your problems though because the city is crisscrossed with expressways and motorcycles and aren’t allowed to use them. Still, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

At one o’clock Gung called my mobile to say that Ying was packing a bag and that she’d asked him to go down to the carpark to make sure that her car airconditioner was running. It must be nice to have money, I said to Gung. I was going to ask him if he warmed the toilet seat for her as well as cooling her car but the boys in the Thahan Phran aren’t renowned for their sense of humour.

I waved over at the three motorcycle riders and they climbed onto their bikes. They were all under 100cc—small bikes that could nip in and out of the traffic. When a farang buys a bike he usually goes for a big Harley or a 1000cc Yamaha and sits there with all that power throbbing between his legs feeling like he’s lord of the jungle. But as soon as the traffic locks up the big bikes are locked up too and the farang sits there sweating like a pig and breathing in diesel fumes as the Thais on their little bikes whiz by. Big isn’t always best. That’s what I tell the girls anyway.

The BMW rolled out of the underground carpark and I let a couple of cars go before following her. Two of the bikes roared past her and then slowed a hundred yards or so ahead of her. If she was going to Pattaya she’d probably use the expressway which meant that I’d be following her most of the way on my own with the bikes making their way along the regular road. But at least once she was on the expressway I’d be able to hang back because I’d know where she was going. The bikes could pick her up at the Pattaya end. Easy peasy.

The BMW took a left turn and that had me frowning because that meant she was heading away from the expressway. The bikes kept her in sight so I dropped back. I lost her ten minutes later but after a phone call to one of the motorcycle riders I was back on track. They saw her park outside a restaurant. One of Knight’s restaurants. I left the rental a short walk from the restaurant.

I told the motorcycle boys to hang around while I went inside. On the ground floor there was a large circular bar with half a dozen customers, mainly expats. There were ten circular dining tables but the lunch crowd had gone and it was too early for the evening session. There was no sign of the lovely Ying.

I sat at the bar and ordered a Jack Daniels and waited. One JD became two and two became three and there was still no sign of her. The men’s room was upstairs so I grinned at the barman and said that I had to take a leak and headed up. There was a pool table and another dozen tables, but the place was empty. There was a small locked door leading up to the top floor and a note in Thai and English that said ‘Staff Only’.

It was getting late, too late to make it to Pattaya in time for a sales conference. I made a call to the company where Ying worked and in my very best Thai explained that my girlfriend was attending a sales conference in Pattaya and that she’d forgotten her make-up bag and that I wanted to get it to her but I didn’t know where the conference was being held. The conference was at the Ambassador Jomtien, a very helpful young switchboard girl explained, but that the conference finished at five so there was no need to get the bag to my girlfriend because she’d be back in Bangkok later tonight. I thanked her. So, I’d caught her out in one lie, and in my experience lies are like cockroaches. If you find one, there’ll be hundreds of others behind the skirting board. At least in the sort of places that I stay in.

I went back downstairs and paid my bill, then took a walk outside. There were lights up on the top floor so I figured that was where Ying was holed up. Next door to the restaurant was a ten-storey office block. Sitting on a deckchair at the entrance was a dark-skinned security guard in a uniform several sizes too big for him. I wandered over and started chatting to him in Laos. He was a nice guy, his wife was back in Udon Thani taking care of their five kids and he sent back most of his wages each month. Down the road from the office block I’d seen a street vendor selling a variety of fried insects, much loved by the people of Isaan. I asked him how he liked his grasshoppers and then went and bought him a bag of well-salted insects. I shared them with him as we talked. They taste a lot better than they sound, really. A bit like pork scratchings, it’s the crunch and the salt you’re aware of rather than a definite taste. Fried maggots are okay, too. I’ve never really had a problem eating insects. There’s no difference between a grasshopper and a prawn, really. So we shared the goodies and then I gave him a 500-baht note and asked him if he’d take me up the building stairwell so that I could take a look into the windows of the top floor of the restaurant. I spunhim a story about my girlfriend being inside with another farang but he was only interested in the money and he was more than happy to let me go upstairs on my own.