Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson (5 page)

I found a grimy window in the stairwell on the fifth floor which gave me a reasonable view of the restaurant. There were lights on in one of the offices and I could see half a dozen teenage girls sitting on a couple of sofas, laughing and playing with their mobile phones. They were all wearing the traditional Thai students’ uniform of white shirt and black skirt. I couldn’t see Ying at first but after about fifteen minutes I saw her walk into view and drop down onto one of the sofas. She opened her Chanel bag and took something out. The students started clapping and leaned forward in anticipation.

Ying folded a piece of silver foil into a small crucible and then she flicked a cigarette lighter and I knew exactly what I was seeing. Yah ba being smoked. Amphetamines, the drug of choice for everyone from students at the country’s top universities wanting to stay up studying all night to go-go dancers needing the chemical stimulus to ply their trade all night. It used to be called yah ma, or horse drug, because it gave you the strength and stamina of a horse. The cops started calling it yah ba, the literal translation being Crazy Drug. The spin didn’t work. By the look of things, Ying was supplying the stuff. I hadn’t seen any money change hands so it looked as if she was giving them the stuff free of charge. So in just a few hours I’d caught Knight’s live-in lover in an outright lie and found her giving drugs to students. It wasn’t looking good, not if Knight figured she was the love of his life.

I went back downstairs, thanked my new-found friend, and went over to brief the motorcycle riders. It looked as if we were in for a long night; if Ying and her friends were fired up on amphetamines it could well be that they might go on somewhere else.

I sat in the rental car, keeping the engine running and the airconditioning going, sipping from a bottle of water that I always take with me on surveillance operations. Ying didn’t appear until two o’clock in the morning. There was a teenage boy with her, one of the restaurant workers I figured, with a designer hair cut and baggy jeans. They went to her BMW and a few minutes later I was following them across the city towards Ratchada. There are lots of late-night eating places Ratchada-way so I figured she was taking her friend for a meal. I was wrong. They pulled in front of a dingy apartment block, a far cry from Knight’s palatial accommodation.

I watched them go in. The young guy had a keycard to open the main door so it was probably his place. I waited in the car until four o’clock in the morning by which time it was obvious that they weren’t going anywhere. Lies, drugs, and a toy boy. Young miss Ying was a piece of work, all right.

I asked one of the motorcycle riders to stay outside the block with instructions to phone me as soon as they reappeared. If Ying was like every other Thai girl I knew, that would probably be after midday.

As it turned out, it was after two when they reappeared. My guy phoned me while he was following them and I could barely hear him over the noise of the traffic but I met up with him outside a gold shop in Phaholyothin. Ying and her boy were inside, checking out gold necklaces. Ying was clearly being very generous with Greig Knight’s money.

‘Lucky lad,’ I said in Thai.

‘Huh?’ said the motorcycle taxi driver, frowning.

Thai isn’t the easiest language, being tonal and all, so I said it again. ‘Lucky lad.’

His frown deepened.

‘Pretty girl, buying him presents. Lucky, right?’

He laughed and lit a cigarette. Inside the gold shop, Ying was fastening a gold chain around her friend’s wrist.

‘Never had a girl buy me anything.’

The motorcycle rider squinted across at me. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

I sighed. He obviously didn’t understand what I was getting at. ‘A girl, buying gold for a guy. It’s not something you see every day.’

‘You know that’s a girl, right?’

‘Of course I know it’s a girl. That’s why I’m following her. I’m just saying, she’s buying gold for the guy.’

‘That’s not a guy,’ he said.

Now I was confused. ‘A girl?’

‘A tom.’

‘A tom?’

‘The girl you’re following is buying gold for a tom. The one with the short hair is a girl, Khun Warren.’

I stared at the couple in the shop. Ying kissed her friend on the cheek, then they hugged. I groaned. My guy was right. Ying’s toy boy was a toy girl. Maybe a bit on the masculine side, but still a girl. I’d been so fixated on the possibility of Ying having a boyfriend that I’d missed the obvious. Lesbianism is fairly common in Thailand, more so than in the West. The problem was, how did I come up with the proof that Greig Knight would obviously want? Same-sex hand-holding is the norm in Thailand, and it’s not unusual for girls to share a bed without any sex being involved. In fact, all I had to go on was the kiss and hug and the gold gift. That wouldn’t be enough for Knight, he’d want concrete proof. I was going to need a photograph of the two girls in action to convince Knight that Ying had a lover. And I only had two more nights before my client returned from Hong Kong.

First I had to find out which number the girlfriend’s apartment was, and that was a job for a Thai. There were few farangs in that part of the city and I stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. I told one of the motorcycle taxi drivers, Daeng, to lose his orange vest and pick up a carrier bag of food from a supermarket. All he had to do was to stick close to the girls when they left the gold shop and follow them inside the building. If challenged, all he had to do was to claim that he was making a delivery, but I doubted that it would come to that. By the look of it, the building didn’t even have a security guard.

I told Daeng to phone me on my mobile when he had the room number, then I drove back to the office to the get the equipment I needed. Nothing spectacular, just a mini video camera hooked up to a transmitter, one of a dozen designs they sell in Pantip Plaza, and a digital camera with a telephoto lens. I picked up a meatball sandwich from my local Subway, a foot-long because I was going to be up late and wasn’t sure when I’d get the chance to eat again. I’d just finished the sandwich when my mobile rang. The girls were back in the room. Number 506. I told Daeng to call me if they left the apartment, then I showered and changed. I packed up the equipment in my gym bag, then drove over. It was just after seven when I got there.

Daeng was standing on the pavement and I told him to get into the car with me. We waited with the aircon running and an hour or so later the two girls walked out of the block arm in arm and over to where Ying had parked the BMW. I took a few photographs and waved at the motorcycle guys to follow them.

When they were out of sight Daeng and I walked over to the apartment block. An old lady with snow white hair and skin the colour of polished oak was fumbling with her key card and Daeng helped her, then we slipped inside after her. Room 506 was on the fifth floor and we took the stairs. Daeng stood watch while I went to work on the locks. The door to the apartment had a metal grill across it with a large padlock that took me all of five minutes to pick. The door had an even simpler lock in the handle and I was soon inside the room. Daeng went back downstairs, ready to phone my mobile if the girls came unexpectedly.

The room was about four paces wide and seven paces long with a small bathroom at the far end and a window that had been curtained off. There was a double bed covered with a sheet with a teddy bear pattern and matching pillows and in one corner there was a rice cooker and a sack of Thai rice. On the walls were posters of Thai pop stars and a framed picture of the king of Thailand above the door.

There was a brand new television set and next to it a stereo CD player. Probably gifts from Ying. I used the screwdriver to pry the grill off the left speaker and fitted the camera so that it had a good view of the bed. The battery was good for forty-eight hours and would transmit pictures up to 200 metres. That was fine because I’d be parked across the road. I wouldn’t have sound but that wasn’t a problem either.

I gave the room a quick once-over on the off chance that there might have been something incriminating, but other than a few snapshots of the girls hugging and kissing, there was nothing to set the pulse racing.

I went back outside and told Daeng to call me when the girls got back, then phoned one of the other motorcycle taxi drivers for an update on her progress. Ying was clearly a creature of habit; she was back at the restaurant where I’d followed her to the first night. I drove over to the restaurant and parked in front of the office building I’d visited the previous night. Another bag of extra-salty grasshoppers and a crisp 500-baht note and I was back in the fifth-floor stairwell clicking away as Ying and her student friends smoked amphetamines and drank Thai whiskey. I did get quite a nice shot of Ying kissing her girlfriend full on the lips which I reckon was clearly more than platonic.

Ying and her girlfriend got back to the apartment at three o’clock in the morning. I paid off Daeng and his buddies and gave them each a 1,000-baht bonus. They were worth every baht because I couldn’t have done the job without them.

I sat in the rental car and tuned the receiver to the transmitter in the apartment. I watched the small screen of the video camera, waiting to hit the record button. I didn’t have long to wait. The girls went into the bathroom together and emerged a few minutes later wrapped in towels. The towels soon got tossed aside and Ying and her girlfriend hit the bed, kissing and stroking and generally giving me a hard on the size of a baseball bat. I didn’t know where to look. Actually, that’s a lie. I couldn’t take my eyes off the small screen. Ying was a stunner, I’d known that as soon as I saw the photographs that Knight had given me. But the baggy jeans and T-shirt had hidden the girlfriend’s figure and as she rolled on the bed with Ying I could see that her body was every bit as curvaceous and supple as her partner’s. It would be a tough choice to have to say which one I’d have preferred to have a session with, though from the way the two girls were going at it I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be in with half a chance with either of them. The tape ran out and they were still going strong though every so often they’d take a break from the sexual Olympics and smoke yah ba or drink some more whiskey. I kept on watching long after the tape had stopped. I didn’t have anything better to do, frankly.

I phoned Greig Knight on Monday afternoon and told him I had the evidence he wanted. I went to see him in his office and gave him a file with my report and the photographs I’d taken of Ying and her student friends. And I gave him a copy of the video.

He had a television and video player already set up and he gave the video cassette to Gung to slot into the player. I didn’t want to sit and watch the video with Knight. I’d seen it several times already while drinking a few JDs and Coke back in my apartment. ‘I’ll be on my mobile if you need me,’ I said, getting up.

Knight waved at me to stay where I was. ‘I might need you to do more work,’ he said.

I looked pained. The tape was as conclusive as you could get. Ying on her back. Ying on top. An especially seductive 69 that made me hard just thinking about it. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to watch in company, and I was damn sure that Knight wouldn’t want me there either, not once the lovely Ying had dropped her towel on the bed. But Knight ignored my discomfort and stabbed at the remote control.

I looked across at Gung. He had moved to stand at the door, his face impassive, his arms folded.

I sat back in my chair and tried not to look at the screen, just grateful that there was no sound on the tape. Going by Ying’s facial contortions, I reckon she had at least two very vocal orgasms during the session.

Knight watched the tape for about twenty minutes before switching off the tape. He looked at me without a trace of embarrassment. ‘That’s it?’ he said.

I could feel my cheeks burning. ‘That’s it,’ I repeated.

‘There’s no guy?’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘Just the girl.’

‘She was the only one I saw her with. In an intimate setting.’ I thought that was a nice touch. Intimate setting. It made it seem a bit less sordid.

Knight nodded slowly. ‘It could have been worse, I suppose,’ he said.

‘If it had been a guy?’

‘I’m not exactly the faithful kind,’ said Knight. ‘I love Ying, but I’ve been out in Asia too long to ever want to confine myself to one woman. Even in Hong Kong …’ He left the sentence unfinished, but I knew what he meant. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And while he didn’t want the lovely Ying doing the dirty with another guy, having her in bed with another girl every now and again wasn’t the end of the earth. Plus, if ever he decided the time had come to part company, the tape would make the split a hell of a lot easier.

‘The drugs are a bit of a worry,’ I said. If she ever got picked up by the cops while he was with her and they found yah ba, he’d be looking at prison time too.

‘I know about the yah ba,’ he said. ‘Never in the house and never in the car. She promised.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ I said. I wasn’t sure that I’d take the word of a girl who clearly had only a passing relationship with the truth, but Greig Knight was the client and the client is always right. Except, of course, when he’s wrong.

Knight took out his bulging wallet and took out a handful of 1,000-baht bills. He gave them to me with a rueful smile and then used the remote to rewind the tape.

Gung showed me out, his face still impassive. But as he closed the door, he winked at me.

A few months later I was in my dentist’s waiting room and I picked up one of the glossy magazines. There was a photoshoot of the opening of Greig Knight’s latest restaurant. At the top of the page was a picture of the man himself, grinning like a man possessed, one arm around the shoulders of the lovely Ying, the other around the waist of Ying’s girlfriend. I stopped watching the video after that. The fun had gone out of it.

THE CASE OF THE WAYWARD WIFE

One of my first jobs as a private eye was to check up on a girl called Fai, a rescued bargirl who was now living a life of luxury on the back of a guy called Arthur. Arthur had met Fai in a Nana Plaza bar and had decided that she was the love of his life. He worked in an oil refinery in Rayong, a couple of hours’ drive from Bangkok, and he wasn’t short of a bob or two. He paid her family a decent sin sot, or dowry, moved her into his spacious apartment on the outskirts of Rayong, paid her a monthly allowance that was more than I earned in a good month, and kept her on a long rein. Every now and again he had to pop over to his firm’s head office in Singapore and while he was away Fai would go to Bangkok to see her family. All was well until one of his friends said that he’d seen Fai on Sukhumvit Road, eating at a street stall close to the Thermae.

Arthur was enough of an old Bangkok hand to hear alarm bells at the mention of the Thermae. It’s a Bangkok institution, a late night hang out frequented by freelancers, or Pay For Play girls as I call them, and expats who baulk at paying barfines. There’s always a mixed bag at the Thermae: former bargirls who are past their prime; young girls just down from the countryside who don’t speak enough English to work in the farang bars; office girls who are struggling to pay their rent. The going rate for a short time with a Thermae Pay For Play girl would be about half what it would cost at Soi Cowboy or Nana Plaza. The expats are a mixed bunch too but generally they are at the scummier end of the market, prowling around like tigers hunting for fresh meat. If Fai was hanging around the Thermae, it wasn’t for the bar snacks.

He got in touch with me and asked if I’d keep an eye on her next time he went to Singapore. She normally drove her motorbike to the bus station and took the bus into Bangkok. He paid me a three-day retainer and agreed to put me up in a decent hotel in Rayong for one night and pay for a rental car. I’d stick out too much if I went on the bus with her, so the car was a necessity. I asked him for details of the family members that she went to see in Bangkok, but he didn’t know their names or their addresses. He seemed a trusting chap, and in my experience, trusting chaps in Thailand are lambs to the slaughter. I was looking forward to following Miss Fai, especially once he’d given me a photograph of her. She was drop dead gorgeous, long hair, long legs, long eyelashes, perfect natural breasts and flawless skin. I practically got a hard on looking at her photograph.

The night before he was due to fly to Singapore, I booked into the hotel in Rayong and started spending a good chunk of Arthur’s retainer in the hotel’s nightclub. It got me two bottles of Jack Daniels and a whole lot of new friends, one who was snoring softly next to me when Arthur phoned to tell me that he was leaving the apartment. I knew there was no need to rush as most Thai girls, those that don’t have jobs to go to, don’t usually surface before noon.

Seeing as how Arthur had woken me up, I figured it was only right that my companion should be awake as well, so I rolled on top of her and had my wicked way with her. By the time I’d showered and shaved, she’d fallen asleep again so I went downstairs for the hotel’s eighty-five-baht breakfast. I wasn’t particularly interested in the hard strips of bacon and cold scrambled eggs but the half dozen cups of strong coffee were a good way of kick-starting the day. My new-found friend was still asleep when I got back to the bedroom, no doubt dreaming of her life in New Zealand with her new rich farang. I left her a 500-baht tip on top of her neatly folded jeans and went downstairs to check out. I told them that my ‘wife’ was sleeping but would be up soon.

I picked up a
Bangkok Post
from the lobby, a ten-baht bag of pineapple from a street vendor and a bottle of water from the 7-Eleven and drove the rental car in search of a shady spot outside Arthur’s apartment block.

It was one o’clock and I’d polished off the bag of pineapple before Fai appeared, and she looked even better in real life than she did in her picture. She was wearing tight jeans, impossibly high heels and a low-cut top. She got her motorbike from the car park and I followed her to the bus station. I watched from the car as she bought a ticket for the next aircon bus to Bangkok, and waited for fifteen minutes until she boarded. So far, so good.

I got the number of the bus, then drove like crazy back to Bangkok. The bus would take twice as long, with frequent restroom stops along the way, so I had plenty of time to take the rental car back and phone one of my motorcycle-taxi friends to pick me up and run me over to the Ekkamai bus station. We had just finished our chicken satay snack when the bus rolled up.

Fai got off the bus and climbed into a taxi. Following a car when you’re on a motorcycle is a breeze in Bangkok and we had no problems tailing them along Sukhumvit Road, down Thonglor and up Petchburi Road to Soi 43/1. She went into Miami Apartments, a notorious block of cheap housing that’s home to a good number of Bangkok bargirls. I’d been there a number of times, usually when I was too short of cash to spring for a short-time hotel.

Fai went into the foyer of the rear block, walking by a table where half a dozen girls were tucking into bags of dukadan (grasshoppers) and washing them down with Sangthip whiskey and soda. Two of the girls shouted out to Fai so I figured she was well known there. I waited until Fai had gone before I went over to the table. I recognised two of the girls as Thermae regulars so I gave them a ‘
Sawasdee krup
’ and sat down. As I was offered some grasshoppers, I bought them another bottle of Sangthip, a steal at seventy baht. We had a few glasses before I asked about Fai. The girls knew her, knew that she was married to a farang, and that she often came to stay with her sister who lived in the block. I asked about her sister and the girls told me that she worked in the German bar in Sukhumvit Soi 7. I knew it well. It was a well-known haunt of freelance hookers, most of whom were well past their sell-by date. But with Fai being in town, the girls said, they’d probably be up at the Hard Rock Café in Siam Square, a much more upmarket pick-up joint.

Excellent. I headed home for a few hours’ sleep, and by ten o’clock was revitalised and ready to take on whatever the night might hold. I put on my best pair of Chinos and a freshly ironed polo short, splashed on some aftershave and caught a cab. The Hard Rock Café is the haunt of Westerners with money to burn, and hookers looking for a fast buck. The girls don’t look like hookers, and they’d probably be really offended if you called them prostitutes, but they are definitely there hoping to hook a wealthy farang. Most of them probably have jobs, working in department stores, beauty parlours, travel agents, or banks, but what they earn in a month wouldn’t pay for a night out at the Hard Rock. They turn up, usually in pairs, buy themselves a cheap drink and start the hunt. Play For Pay girls is what I call them. And they can be even more dangerous than the go-go bar hookers. The guys who live in Thailand know the score and treat the place for what it is—a meat market. But tourists who turn up often get the wrong impression. They think that they have suddenly become much more attractive and that the pretty young thing in tight jeans and a sexy top is hanging on their every word because they’re God’s gift to women. They take her back to their hotel, have a night of great sex, and then get all confused when the new love of their life starts asking for an expensive present, a cash donation, or help with their mother’s medical expenses.

I’d been in Thailand long enough to know the score so I ignored all the hot and heavy looks that I was getting from some very attractive women as I walked over to the large square bar in front of the area where the house band was playing some very respectable cover versions.

I slid onto a stool, ordered a Jack Daniels and watched the very sexy lead singer as she belted out some oldies but goldies. Every now and again I’d be accidentally bumped by some lovely hoping to attract my attention but I was working so I ignored them and concentrated on the lead singer and the entrance. It was the normal Hard Rock Café crowd, not particularly attractive middle-aged men drooling over stunning women, with a smattering of American tourist couples who’d come along thinking it was a burger joint as opposed to a pick-up joint. There was a dining area upstairs where farangs with more money than sense were buying expensive steaks for girls who would have been happier with a bowl of noodles.

Fai came in just after midnight. By then the place was packed but I had a prime spot by the bar so I moved over to make a space for her. She was with a girl her own age and a girl who was a few years older who I assumed was the sister. Fai pulled out a 1,000-baht note and bought three bottles of Heineken. They were all buzzing and I figured they’d partaken of some yah ba, the amphetamine-based drug of choice for the city’s movers and shakers. I’m old enough to remember when it was called yah ma, or horse drug, because it made you feel as strong as a horse. The cops thought that was too sexy an image for an addictive drug so they managed to get the media to start calling it yah ba, or crazy drug. It didn’t make the drug any less popular, though.

Up close I could see just what a stunner Fai was, and if she was looking for a playmate for the night I knew she wouldn’t have a problem finding one. She had on tight black trousers, another pair of impossibly-high stiletto heels and a top that showed off a washboard-flat midriff and a diamond pin through her navel. I stopped watching the lead singer and concentrated on the lovely Fai. If I had been Arthur, I’d have taken her to Singapore with me. Or chained her to the bed and locked the door.

I decided to raise my profile and bought a decent bottle of Australian wine and a couple of glasses. Fai and her friends were dancing in front of the band but when she came back to the bar for a gulp of Heineken I gave her my very best Tom Cruise smile and offered her a glass of my wine. Thai girls will rarely refuse a drink and we were soon clinking glasses and looking into each other’s eyes. She did have very sexy eyes. And breasts. Don’t get me started on her breasts. She told me she was in town for the weekend with her sister and that her name was Fai. Excellent. She was actually telling me the truth. We spoke in Thai and she tested me, speaking quickly and using slang, and I could see that she was impressed. Most farangs, even those who’ve lived in Thailand for years, rarely get beyond the ‘You So Pretty, Me So Horny’ stage. I spoke Thai like a Thai, and on the phone most Thais wouldn’t even realise that I was a foreigner.

The wine slid down easily, just like my eyes kept doing, but she didn’t seem to mind that I kept ogling her body. The occasional hand on my arm and thigh let me know that she was interested, and the baseball-sized hard on in my Chinos was a dead giveaway that I was up for it.

I bought another bottle of wine, making sure that I kept the receipt because Arthur would be covering all expenses. Fai and her friends kept leaving the bar for some energetic dancing, and Fai was attracting a fair amount of male attention. I was worried that some other farang might spirit her away but other than a few snatched conversations she didn’t seem to be interested and kept coming back to me and my red wine.

Eventually Hard Rock started to wind down and I found myself outside with Fai and the other two girls. They decided they wanted to continue partying so we all piled into a taxi and went to the King’s Disco in Patpong, a popular venue for barfined bargirls to take their customers. By now I was paying for all the drinks, or at least Arthur was. I parked myself at the bar with a Jack Daniels while the three girls danced the night away. Fai was as attentive as she’d been in Hard Rock. She’d dance for a while then come back and give me a squeeze or a peck on the cheek and then she’d be off again. At one point she disappeared for ten minutes and I thought I’d lost her but then she reappeared at my side and slipped something into my hand. It was an ecstasy tablet, worth about 800 baht, and she grinned at me, waiting for me to swallow it. I’m not a big fan of drugs and prefer to get my buzz from booze, so I palmed the tablet and pretended to swallow it. She winked, patted me on the groin, and headed for the dance floor.

Dawn was breaking when we finally left the disco. Fai’s sister and the friend flagged down a taxi but Fai didn’t complain when I steered her towards another vehicle. I gave the driver my address, and again Fai didn’t complain. In fact she slid her nails along my thigh and kissed my neck, which I took as a good sign. The taxi driver wanted to charge me 200 baht and I called him a robbing lizard in his native Isarn language and told him to use the meter.

We got back to my apartment and I went straight to the shower to wash the smoke and grime of a Bangkok night out of my hair. When I walked into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around my waist, a glorious sight greeted me. The lovely Fai was lying on my bed, her head on my pillow and her shapely legs up on the headboard, wearing nothing but her Chanel Number 7. Arthur would have been impressed. I certainly was. I realised that sleeping with Fai would be unprofessional, but her legs seemed to go on for ever and she made it clear that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. What’s a private eye to do? There was only one thing I could do. Clients are ten a penny but girls with bodies like Fai are few and far between. I mentally apologised to Arthur and jumped onto the bed.

The girl was an absolute star. She wore me out and I only managed a couple of hours’ sleep that night. She was insatiable. Against the door, in the bathroom, on the floor, by the window, every position I knew and a few that I didn’t. It was the following afternoon before she finally let me rest. I made her a coffee and we had a little chat. I said that I wanted her phone number so that I could see her again. She was surprisingly honest and told me that she was married and that she had a great husband who loved her and gave her everything that she wanted. She had a great condo in Rayong, but all her friends lived in Bangkok so every now and again she headed to the city to party. ‘If I didn’t, I’d go crazy,’ she said. And the long and the short of it was that she wouldn’t give me her phone number. She left an hour later, after another sweat-inducing session where she showed me another position that I didn’t believe was possible.