Pattaya 24/7

by Christopher G. Moore

  “I am late. Or Khun Suthan was early. What do you think?”

  “I think that Khun Suthan was early.”

  The second Khmer had escaped on the back of a motorcycle. The captain arrived a moment later carrying a bag. He waied Veera, who climbed out of the back of his chauffeur- driven car. Veera returned the captain’s wai. “I think you bring in a very big catch,” said Veera.

  “Okay catch. As far as fish go.”

  Veera lifted his head back and laughed. “You always joke me. But you are my very good friend. I understand you. And you know that I love my friends.”

  The captain sighed. “I could have a small problem.”

  He passed the briefcase to Veera. A broad smile crossed his face.

  “Khun Suthan, you never worry about small things. Please, come to my house and have lunch with me and my wife and son. Don’t say no. I won’t hear no.”

  In the back of the Mercedes, Captain Suthan hinted that the two Khmer who had been on his trawler might cause a problem. He wasn’t sure. They’d overheard him speaking Khmer and English. Maybe they would make trouble, maybe they would shut up. Who knows what a man will do when he’s away from the boat with a few drinks inside him? The captain had done his part; he had delivered the money to Veera. Some lingering doubt told him not to trust the Khmer. With the attack on the southern armory and the stealing of M16s, gun smuggling had reached a higher level of danger. The captain assumed weapons were in the footlocker. The crew made the same assumption. Not all of the crew were Thai. Like the Burmese, the Khmer were devious, unreliable, and had to be carefully watched. That’s what schoolbooks taught. Who would doubt the wisdom of one’s teachers?

  Veera opened the briefcase and glanced at the cash inside.

  The trawler was at last mortgage free. Captain Suthan was at last his own man. As far as one could be one’s own man in a world of Veeras.

  That evening as the Khmer stumbled out of a roadside bar, three men and the boss from the motorcycle queue waited.

  The sound of men singing and talking spilled out into the street behind them. That wasn’t the only sound. The sound of a drum echoed and merged into the lower frequency sound of a steel beam as it caught the first Khmer on the forehead, and bone and brains splattered in a shower onto the road. The blow made a loud, sickeningly hollow sound, a half-cry, and then the singing from inside the bar once again filled the night. The second Khmer, the ringleader from the trawler who was one step behind broke into a run. Two of the men kick-started their motorcycles and within twenty meters the runner lay in the road, blood pouring out of his head. The boss pulled up in a pickup and the second body was loaded next to the first one. One of the men carefully slipped a slightly soiled white envelope from the back pocket of one body, and then patted down the other body and rolled it over as the pickup headed along the road. He found the other envelope and held them both against the back window, rapping his knuckles against the glass. Slowly the boss turned and smiled.

  FOUR

  FROM THE THIRD-story office window, Calvino looked down at the street choked with double-parked cars and vans. It was eleven in the morning. A skyward flash of brilliant light caught his eye. Rain clouds from southern China streaked with jagged white cracks cut across the sky. A pause followed the flash; the silence was punctured by a loud boom that rippled like a series of explosions. In that split second the window shook and the sky turned brilliant white. The semi-feral dogs in the soi howled. Maids sucked in their breath, afraid of ghosts, afraid of flooding, afraid of the looming premature darkness. Vincent Calvino turned away from the window as the first drops pelted against the glass. Motorcycle taxis scattered for cover. On small sois off Sukhumvit Road, the traffic had slowed and soon like sticky rice would become glutinous and messy.

  Ratana had phoned half an hour before, talking about her Chinese lessons and her confinement to her mother’s house. She checked in five or six times a day. Whenever she was bored, she picked up the phone and rang his number. He answered knowing it was his secretary. Her voice was deep, thick with mucous that came with flu-like symptoms. She had been ill. That was one reason she was home. And her tone carried a sense of the worry planted in her mind by her mother, turned nurse, turned Chinese-language instructor. The unrest in the south and rumors of violence spreading to Bangkok was the other reason. She said that she understood now what people who had gone through the Cultural Revolution had experienced. Storms clouds weren’t the only thing breezing down from China. One of those animal-to-man diseases had hitched rides on migratory birds or spread inside planes over all Asia, attaching itself to the lungs, nose, mouth and eyes of passengers—sniffling, coughing, hacking, spitting passengers, sweat pouring out of them. It had gone dormant for many months and then suddenly resurfaced with a vengeance, kill- ing the young and the old, the feeble and the helpless. Nine days before, Ratana had returned from a shopping trip to Hong Kong and immediately her mother had placed her in quarantine. It had happened so quickly that she hadn’t had a chance to think, and once she did, the depression set in. Her lifeline was the telephone to her boss. Vincent Calvino listened to the phone ring, knowing who it was and that she was depressed and scared and anxious; he stood watching the rain hit the lane.

  The old world of Bangkok was undergoing change. Closing hours had moved to midnight. Disease alerts. Rumors of terrorism were whispered in the ears of Ratana’s mother; she whispered them to her daughter. Calvino was undecided what it all meant. Were these rumors and events ordinary volatility within an existing phase of the Thai life cycle? Or were they evidence of something deeper, more fundamental, and far more radical—a phase transition to a different cycle, a new life? Like when ice turns to water. A disease that killed hundred or thousands caused phase volatility; one that killed millions could trigger a pandemic, a phase transition. Like when water turns to steam.

  There was no way to know until it happened, Calvino told himself. Meanwhile there was nothing to do but wait. The days since Ratana’s return from Hong Kong had been one of life’s low points. He had no secretary and no outstanding cases. In between jobs, in between lives, as he watched the rain, he thought his own life might also be in for a phase transi- tion. Heat and energy made all the difference. The difference between work and being jobless. The difference between a prostitute and a nice girl. The difference between a bandit and a terrorist. The difference between life and death. The same thing, but in a different phase. Ice to water to steam.

  The wet streets below reminded him that he had forgotten to close the window in his apartment. The thought of damp sheets on the bed was depressing; Ratana’s absence had left the office a lonely, silent and grim place. He fought against the urge for a drink.

  He looked over at the ringing telephone. He was still blinking from the blinding flash of lightning. It was her call for help, he thought. Her Chinese lesson would be finished by now and she would need the comfort of his voice. A halo of sound surrounded the telephone. He knew this wasn’t a divine message. The divine was in light, not in sound. He picked up the phone. It was Searles Valentine, an old friend and client, calling from Pattaya.

  “Is it raining in Bangkok?” asked Valentine.

  “Pouring,” said Calvino.

  “It is very good for the garden.”

  “I don’t have a garden.”

  “Pity.”

  His new generation of friends in Thailand called him Valentine. A few close friends from school called him Val. Calvino called him Valentine. He seemed to like that. Only his mother and schoolmasters had called him Searles until one day, he took Calvino aside and said, “About this name Searles. I’d rather you didn’t call me Searles. Please call me Valentine. I would consider it a favor.”

  Calvino didn’t ask why calling someone by their last name as opposed to their first name could be considered a favor. He assumed that Valentine had his reasons. People had funny quirks about names. As if what one called a person or a thing mattered in a world of nameless pain and sufferin
g.

  This time when Valentine called, Calvino had a good idea that he wasn’t making a personal call. A couple of days earlier, Valentine had made that clear in an email. The morning he’d received Valentine’s email, there had been eighty-three emails—offers to increase his breast size, penis size, stock deals, special deals to Disney World. After he deleted the spam, only one email was left. It was from Valentine. His message had been simple and to the point. I’d like to engage you in a matter. I’ll phone with the details. Valentine.

  Calvino read the email several times, looking for some other hint of what Valentine had wanted. But there was nothing below the surface of those stark, cold words. Valentine had a problem and he wished to discuss it at a time of his choosing. Calvino imagined that it was a delicate problem that required complete confidence. When the call came in that morning of the lightning and thunder, Valentine told him the story. His gardener, a man name Prasit, had apparently committed suicide, but some of the people employed on the estate were convinced that Prasit had been murdered. And what did Searles Valentine believe about the cause of his gardener’s death? He didn’t speculate about alternative causes, and knowing Valentine—not well but well enough—Calvino guessed the cause of death didn’t much matter one way or the other. Suicide was as good a cause as any, so why not just leave the matter as the police had left it? That was Valentine’s attitude. What mattered most to Searles Valentine was his demand for peace, order, and tranquility. Calvino’s job was to reinstate the old status quo to this small kingdom. How was he to perform this act of magic? By magically lifting all doubt as to the gardener’s death and reassuring the insecure employees that the poor man had indeed killed himself.

  “A death here and there is really nothing in the grand scheme of things,” Valentine said.

  “Really all I need is your professional confirmation of Prasit’s suicide. It’s really quite simple. Then all will return to normal.”

  On the surface, it appeared that Valentine would have made a good fascist, or Stalinist for that matter. This was unfair. His personality and talents were too complex to label. In his honesty and frankness, there was something touching, refreshing, without artifice, screens, rationalizations.

  He lived on twenty rai of land on a lush estate eight kilometers outside of Pattaya. On the phone, he invited Calvino to spend a few days on the estate—a grand, overused word and one that Valentine avoided himself—in describing the large grounds with gardens of coconut trees and flowers and scrubs, outbuildings, farm land, goat enclosures, forest land, the moat stocked with eels and catfish and the rambling hacienda deep inside, out of sight from the road, a place of refuge.

  As Calvino listened to Valentine’s plea, he wondered what the point was of staying at the office in Bangkok. The phone pressed to his ear, he looked out the window at the steady rain. There was nothing keeping him in Bangkok. A chill of loneliness spiked through his body and he shuddered. There was no reason to not take the case. He stared at the rain-swept street. How many times had he willed a client to phone so he’d have enough money to cover the monthly expenses? Now he had a client begging him to take a case. Was he that proud? That crazy? Sitting on the edge of his desk, he listened to Valentine pleading and offering money. He remembered how well Valentine played the piano. The man was a genuine artist and the death of the gardener had caused his world to come unstuck. And that was the only world Valentine cared about. His personal bubble world. His cocoon stuffed with hand-picked butterflies. That’s when a private eye knows he’s in business: a man who is used to absolute control finds it draining out of his life and he’d do anything, pay any amount to have it back again.

  “Vincent, you are tormenting me,” said Valentine. “I don’t get many clients from Pattaya.”

  “My friend, Doctor Iain, says never ask, ‘What are the pros and cons of Pattaya?’ Ask instead, ‘Who are the pros and cons in Pattaya?’ and then you stand a chance to understand how the system works.”

  Calvino smiled to himself. Valentine was quick-witted. Spending time working for a man with some good humor and talent wouldn’t be a bad thing. Valentine heard nothing but silence and interpreted the absence of a response to be some hesitation to leave Bangkok.

  “It would be dreadful to work for what the average man would pay you,” said Valentine. “But, you see, I am not average. I am willing to pay the full rate. Are you accepting my invitation?”

  “Is this a social call or work?” asked Calvino.

  “Both. As I meant to say in my email, what I have in mind is social and business. Whatever your usual fee is won’t be a problem.”

  What he meant and what he said were different orders of communication. One had been in the email; one had been left out.

  “Three hundred dollars a day and expenses,” said Calvino.

  “Perfectly reasonable, my dear fellow. I can give you an advance if you like. I normally don’t advance funds to anyone in this country. It’s an abhorrent practice guaranteed to make a man come to grief. There is a saying that once you put sugar cane in an elephant’s mouth, you can never retrieve it.”

  “Ooy khao pak chang,” said Calvino, translating the saying into Thai.

  “Very good. You’ve been studying your Thai.”

  Valentine was rich, distinguished; a famous pianist. He was recognized internationally as one of the great classical pianists. He had a following in London, Paris, New York, Moscow, and Berlin. His CDs had sold half-million; not Madonna or a boy band’s worth of CDs, but by classical standards, he was a superstar with a following.

  “My gardener hanged himself inside his room and it is quite annoying.”

  “Thoughtless,” said Calvino.

  “My feeling exactly. If he was going to kill himself, at least he could’ve gone into Pattaya and hanged himself off the premises. A thoughtful employee would have done that. But he was of the gardener class and obviously one can’t expect too much.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Don’t mock me, Vincent. I see no reason to get sentimental. Prasit was a good gardener. I am sorry he’s dead. But I am more sorry about how he’s gone about inconveniencing me. After all, I had paid him well and treated him fairly.”

  “Why not let the police deal with it?”

  “Some of my people believe that it wasn’t suicide. The police think the opposite. So there we are. A division of opinion.” Valentine had a feudal lord’s notion of the people on his estate. They belonged to him. Some of his chattels obviously had a different point of view from their lord.

  “Who’s questioning the police report?”

  “My Number One. I can’t shake her from the silly idea. I am certain that Prasit’s widow has put this silly piece of nonsense into her head. I need you to remove that nonsense.”

  “How do you propose I do that?”

  “You drive down to my house and stay here. Look at the scene, draw the logical conclusion that Prasit hanged himself, and explain it to her. It’s very simple.”

  “Why would she listen to me, if she won’t listen to the police or to you?”

  “My dear fellow, women only listen to and believe the men they don’t sleep with. It’s a variation on the theme that no man is a hero to his valet. Prasit’s widow is an exception to the rule. I don’t sleep with her. But she won’t listen to me. And she certainly doesn’t believe a word the police say.”

  Outside the window the rain fell. Nothing moved. “Is it raining in Pattaya?”

  “Beautiful, clear skies,” said Valentine. “Can you come this evening? I will see a splendid dinner is prepared and then you can start putting the puzzle together.”

  “Dinner. I’ll be there.”

  A death inevitably disrupted the life of those close to the scene. If the death were a murder, that was an entirely differ- ent level of disruption, as police investigators, reporters, and others appeared on the doorstep asking questions. Treating everyone as a potential suspect. Not to mention the slow accumulation of neighbors an
d assorted onlookers drawn to the scene of the drama. Valentine’s inconvenience would have happened on several fronts: from supervising the early morning feeding of the goat herd, returning to the main house for breakfast and reading the morning papers, sipping tea, a swim in the pool, checking email, then a nap, followed by hours at the grand piano, and at night one of the sanom visiting his quarters. Each stage of the daily cycle had been disturbed, blurred, making him miserable.

  Calvino thought, as he put down the phone, that this appeared less of a murder case than a crossword puzzle for Valentine; one of those difficult five across words that was just on the tip of his tongue. If only that word would come; but it remained out of reach. Prasit’s death became an amusement presenting multiple possible solutions. In Valentine’s mind the gardener’s death had only one obvious cause. The man had awoken one day thoroughly depressed, understood his lot in life—which was one of servile, demeaning work. His wife was away and so she wasn’t there to comfort him, and he removed his belt, looped it around his neck, fixed the buckle to the door knob, sat down and bent forward in his chair until his life slowly slipped away. In the case of a suicide, most people who knew the deceased sought an alternative explanation which would exonerate the dead man; to make him non-culpable for his death. To find an exterior cause to explain this terrible effect. Like many people, Valentine understood how easy it was for others to project their sensibilities onto another, or their situation, or indeed their death. Despite his annoyance, he felt the widow’s refusal to accept the police report was perfectly understandable and that Vincent Calvino was the man to talk sense to her. A domestic murder case was just what the doctor ordered, thought Calvino. Getting lost in an ordinary murder case would divert him from contemplating the meaning of the changes swirling in the polluted Bangkok air. A break from news flashes about viruses, bombings, ter- rorists, and the creep of what increasingly felt like a gradual slide into martial law.