“What are you saying?”
“Something’s not right about any of this. I don’t know what is wrong, but I am saying that we ought to be asking a few more questions. With your friend Dr. Nat for a start. Why didn’t he tell you Naylor had part of the action and had something to do with the Cause-members website?”
“Dr. Nat’s of the generation before TV. Forget about computers and websites. He wouldn’t know about that. And Naylor’s not going to tell us anything we don’t already know,” said Jess.
“But I can tell you where this is going. He’s likely been on-line with his Cause buddies and a dozen guys know exactly where he’s planning to go, who he’s planning to see, not to mention that he’s staying at the Brandy. He announced his hong number in the lobby. Someone who is trying to maintain a low profile doesn’t go broadcasting this information to the world. And we find out he’s settling a personal conflict between a couple of Cause-members. The guy is trying to get himself killed.”
“What are you trying to say, that you want off the assignment?”
Calvino stared at him. “I think you better tell me a little bit more about Dr. Nat’s business in LA and the deal that is attracting the death threats.”
SEVEN
DOCTOR NAT WAS a slight, smallish Thai man with a moon-shaped face. He weighed about 130 pounds and measured no more than 5’6". Dr. Nat looked like he had made up his mind to stop growing around fourteen years old; that he had had enough with childhood and decided it was time to become an adult. After finishing medical school, he went to LA to visit an uncle. He never came back. After finishing an internship, he opened a small-time medical practice on the fourth floor of a rundown office building in downtown LA. For Dr. Nat, time had stopped twenty-two years ago. Posters of Krabi and Phuket were thumbnailed to the walls of his sparely furnished waiting room. A Thai receptionist who had turned forty sat leafing through magazines behind a window inside the entrance. On a good day there would be one or two patients waiting in the lobby for appointments with Dr. Nat. Most of the time there was no waiting; it was straight in to see the doctor. Almost all of Dr. Nat’s patients were first-generation Thais, who took off their shoes and sat barefoot—on that rare day when they had to wait—thumbing old copies of Thai magazines, waiting for the doctor to call out their name. Confiding in each other how much they missed Thailand. Khit tueng muang Thai mak. Nat had been Jess’s doctor ever since he was a teenager. Nat had harboured a secret that one day he confided to Jess, “As soon as my last son finishes college next year, I am going home.” He meant Thailand.
From the way that Dr. Nat delivered his confidential speech, he gave every indication that he had been waiting to buy his return ticket for the last twenty-two years and had been telling every patient the same confidential story for the last twenty-two years. To the same patients, in the same office. Dr. Nat had spent his time in LA like the patients in the waiting room, waiting for an appointment and returning to their real life on the other side of the doctor’s office door. He had lived in LA most of his adult life but his true life, his inner secret life, remained firmly rooted in Thailand. Sundays he took his family out to the Valley and walked around wat Thai, walking down the ramp to the basement, buying noodles with green curry. Dr. Nat after all those years had become something of an institution in the Thai community. But his practice never took off. His office was shabby and in a low-rent part of LA. He made enough money for a modest house, for two new cars, to send his two sons to university and to set aside money for resuming his life in Thailand. His wife did not work; she stayed at home, cooking, tending the garden, and looking after the children. They were decent, hard-working, frugal people and very conservative with their money.
Then Viagra came out and suddenly Dr. Nat had a new class of patients: farangs going to Thailand. Money started to accumulate for the first time in his life and he started to feel like he was secure enough to make a financial investment back home. His patients, old and new, gave him advice about investment opportunities in Thailand in real estate, stocks, rice mills, petrochemical plants, fisheries. Everyone had a brother, sister-in-law, or uncle who had the inside track on a sure deal. Dr. Nat heard each of them out, took down the details and phoned Dr. Damrong, his younger brother, who was a doctor at Bumrungrad Hospital. And Dr. Damrong would check out each tip, only to phone back a week later with evidence of fraud, incompetence, non-existent inventory, big shareholders’ loans, and other defects in the usual structure of family-run Thai companies, not to mention the almost universal absence of any business plan. Sure they were ready to unload the rotten stuff at a high price. Only Dr. Nat and his brothers were buying. Sometimes a patient with the hot tip phoned him and asked if the good doctor wanted to put money in a surefire deal, one that only he and his mother and father were investing in personally, it was that certain, and Dr. Nat told them kindly—having heard this line before—that his funds were locked up. He was, in other words, someone who was not a soft touch; he was conservative, cautious, and skeptical during the boom years when everyone else lost their heads, throwing all their logs into the fire of greed. Those people ended with a heap of ashes to show for their efforts, but not Dr. Nat. A year into the recession, a deal came to him not from a patient but from his younger brother, who was even more cautious than he was about investing with strangers.
There was a small hotel in a reasonably good part of the Sukhumvit Road that had been chronically mismanaged by a Chinese-Thai family and after the father died—a tragic accidental death—the children were at each other’s throat over who would win control of the hotel. With all the time spent fighting amongst the brothers and sisters, the management became distracted and the hotel had become rundown and squalid and was running at a considerable loss. The eldest brother, Kitti, had been one of Dr. Damrong’s patients, and had confided in the good doctor the family story of how much revenue the hotel was losing since the old man’s strange, unexpected death and how the conflict and struggle over ownership and division of the spoils was ripping apart his family. One brother had been wounded by a gunman. A sister-in-law had received death threats. The family was at war with itself. Kitti’s second youngest brother, Prapat, had hinted his vote was for the family to sell the company which owned the hotel. He also hinted that his vote was for sale.
Prapat said, “Sell the hotel. Talk with Dr. Damrong.”
The plan made sense to Kitti. Why not sell the hotel and divide up the proceeds of the sale between the brothers and sisters? What better way for the family to reconcile? Cash was, after all, a great healer of all wounds. Well, almost all wounds—exceptions were many, including the self-inflicted wound of their father’s, a mortal wound which all the family wealth, nor had it prevented their father’s terrible, bitter end. Why not sell the hotel for a good price to Dr. Nat and Dr. Damrong? It would be good karma for the family to have sold the hotel to two good doctors that everyone respected and admired.
Dr. Damrong was invited by Kitti to come around to inspect the hotel. Later that afternoon, he drove over to the hotel, walked through the large lobby with dead plants and broken furniture, an empty coffee shop with cockroaches scuttling across the floor. He was taken up to see some of the hongs. The elevator was out of action so they walked up the stairs to the fourth floor. The first three floors had been closed off due to an “electrical wiring” problem, Dr. Damrong was told by the elderly receptionist. Meaning it was a death trap with enough code violations that it should have been closed down as a public safety threat years ago. Only nothing in Bangkok had ever been shut down for that reason in her memory. After she unlocked the door, he stepped into a cell-like hong with a musky, closed up smell; the walls were damp, the blue wallpaper peeling off in sheets. “We have a little water problem upstairs. It only affects this hong,” said Kitti. The old woman lit a cheroot and smiled, leaning against the unpainted, open door. The toilet had not been cleaned in months and had a yellow filmy scum over the water thick enough to pass for custard. Maybe it was custard. A thick lay
er of dust forming itself into balls covered the window sill behind the toilet. The pillows smelled of mildew. If there was ever a place that appeared doomed, ready for a mid-night insurance fire or the wrecker’s ball, it was this hotel. Neglect, hatred, distraction had laid waste to the structure; the hotel, if this hong was any indication (Dr. Damrong suspected they had showed him one of the better hongs), was in a state of ruin. But in that ruined condition, he saw an opportunity. When God served up a miserable, doomed piece of rubble, one looked at the small but quiet, nice, efficient hotel being held captive inside. It was the tiny woman inside the fat, bloated patient who pleaded for redemption, hands in a wai, asking for the magic pill to strip away the fat. Here was the perfect chance to start to free the hostage from the crazed family. He knew what prescription was needed. Dr. Damrong couldn’t wait to phone his brother.
On the way down the stairs to the lobby, the receptionist stopped in the stairwell and blew out a cloud of smoke, her old yellow eyes smiling as she said there were one hundred and twenty hongs but only eight hongs were occupied. On the other hand, only eight hongs might have been habitable. “We have renovation plans which will be included in the purchase price,” said Kitti, giving the old woman a dirty look. Even the minimal amount of loyalty expected of hotel staff had evaporated. How old was she, wondered Dr. Damrong. And who was she?
Dr. Nat had never heard his brother so excited about an investment. Not ever. For a million and a half dollars they could own a one-hundred twenty room hotel in the heart of farang ghetto section of Sukhumvit Road. This was the deal they had been waiting for; this was the deal that would give Dr. Nat the face he needed to leave LA and to return to Thailand. Kitti wanted a quick sale. Paperwork was dispatched to Dr. Nat, and he telephoned Prapat, who had flown into LA, and they had lunch. Another patient and investment advisor, Kowit was also at lunch. Kowit, a Thai who had been in LA for longer than Dr. Nat, owned a funeral home, a golf course, a night club, and several mini-marts. It was Kowit who suggested that the doctor might cut a lawyer by the name of Wes Naylor into a part of the action, say five percent, for a premium payment and use the farang to look over the documents, negotiate the details, and draft the contracts as well as to deal with the family in Bangkok and help bring in the farang customers. “Say five percent of five million dollars. That’s closer to the real value. Why give the farang a break?” This seemed like a good idea: a farang front man who could put the whole deal together and pay money for a small interest in the hotel and fill up the hongs with rich farangs. The deal was looking better by the day. Until, two days after Dr. Nat had offered Wes Naylor a minority partnership arrangement and plans were already made for Naylor’s trip to Bangkok, Naylor received his first death threat at three in the morning. Naylor was sleeping, rolled over, picked up the phone, and as in a dream, heard a male with foreign accent telling him that he was dead meat if he came to Bangkok. He phoned Dr. Nat, who phoned his brother, who phoned Kitti, who phoned Prapat, who then phoned Dr. Nat to tell him that a faction involving one younger brother and one older sister were against the sale but didn’t have sufficient power in the family to stop the sale from going through.
“THE kid brother and dragon lady sister are making death threats?” asked Calvino, coming out of the bathroom having splashed water on his face. He was dripping on the carpet.
“We don’t know for sure. But it looks that way,” said Jess. “Once the deal is signed, the danger is over. Their fight is lost. Only if they can scare away Wes Naylor they can win.” He looked away from the window where he had been watching the parking lot below. From Calvino’s hong there was a line of vision that allowed one to watch who came and left the hotel.
“Or if they kill him, they win. Someone in the family has already been shot. Another threatened. Sounds convincing enough to me.”
Calvino picked up the towel from the end of his bed and dried his face.
“That’s where we come in,” said Jess. “Our job is to keep Naylor alive.”
“If they kill him after the deal’s done?” Calvino left the question hanging.
“Then that’s his problem.” Jess smiled and gave Calvino the thumbs up.
“Good. We are thinking along the same lines,” said Calvino. “After all, he’s only in for five percent.”
“The real threat ends in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, we have to expect more of what happened on the expressway.” Jess backed out of the window of Calvino’s hong, watching men leaving for Nana Plaza.
“Whoever is stalking Naylor knows they can threaten him with no problem,” said Calvino. “You get a free pass to threaten a farang.”
Calvino’s Law: Never threaten anyone wearing a uniform, or who has more influence or packs a gun with higher velocity. The last part can be omitted if one is a better, faster shot than the gunman.
“I think I understand why Naylor wanted part of this hotel.”
“He’s branching out from the website. Adding on value for his members. The hotel is a clubhouse for the Cause. What else?” Calvino was pulling on his jacket.
“Dr. Nat would never have heard of the Cause.”
“Dispensing all the Viagra to farangs, it had to cross his mind, ‘Hey, why are all these guys wearing the same blue pin?’”
Jess nodded. “California’s full of cults. No one notices.”
“Had you?” asked Calvino.
Jess shook his head.
“Come on, let’s get Naylor and see if we can keep him alive tonight.”
JESS looked on as Calvino rapped his knuckles on the door, forgetting his hand was still bruised and tender from his fight. That hurt. He shook his hand, thinking a fist was nothing more than a hand shaped by fear and anger, a hand that could be offered in friendship or as a weapon. As a damaged weapon, this hand was swollen, throbbing. “Fuck, it’s still sore,” he said, shaking his hand. He was also thinking he was cursing more than he used to; his tolerance was fraying. Drawing in a big breath, he waited a moment before trying the door knob. He stood back, waiting for Naylor to come to the door. But he wasn’t in his hong or if he was in his hong, he wasn’t answering the door.
“He’s gone,” said Jess.
No question about that. Naylor had already left. Calvino turned around and said to Jess, “Let’s go find him.”
In the lobby they found him sitting at a table with three hookers. The Pfizer Gang had vanished—wandered off to their hong with their first-round choice in search of the Monster Fuck, or to the bars for an early-bird special before younger guys showed up and hogged all the attention from the best looking dancers. Naylor had already changed out of his long-haul flight clothes and into his boogie night-time gear; his hair was still wet from the shower. He had gone for the all black look: trousers, boots, and a black shirt buttoned to the neck with a green and red serpent necktie. Over the collar was a fifteen-baht gold chain as thick as a gangster’s pinky finger, hanging down over the tie. From Truman Capote to Johnny Cash. He rolled up his shirt to his elbows and explained his tattoos to the yings.
“My bodyguards,” he called out. “Yings, meet my guardians.”
The jet lag and speed pills had turned his eyes blood-shot over a yellowish color. His eyes immediately registered that neither of the men standing over him had come to the table to learn about his tattoos. He pushed down his shirt sleeves and buttoned them. The hookers looked disappointed. Most hookers loved looking at tattoos. It was close to interest in reading palms. Though fondling Naylor’s fifteen-baht gold chain would have given them the most pleasure. But the fun had ended.
“You should have waited for us, Wes,” said Jess.
“I know, I know. But I figured coming down the lobby was no big deal.”
“Like driving on the expressway was no big deal,” said Calvino.
One of the yings unbuttoned his cuff and rolled the sleeve back up.
“What’s that?” she asked, tracing the image with her finger.
“Now that is something you don’t wanna
ever see in real life,” said Naylor, as he pointed at the tattoos on his right arm—a “snake” (the word uttered by Calvino in a low whisper) ran from the elbow to his wrist and had an uncanny resemblance to the decorations on his necktie. More of a serpent-like creature than a snake since it was breathing red flames and the two-prong tongue licked at the palm of his hand.
“And this dragon here is a big warning sign. It’s from a Southern China triad. And it means I am Chinese Mafia. So don’t fuck with me or you are in big, big trouble. Whatever you do, don’t call this animal a snake.” He switched to his left arm, “And you see this writing in Chinese here? You know what it means? I am to be feared.”
“With arms like that, you don’t need bodyguards,” said Calvino.
“That’s what I tried to tell Doc Nat. We talked about it, and I said, ‘Okay, doc, we do it your way. Two bodyguards. You pay for them. They don’t come out of my five percent. And I think you’re wasting your money. Nobody is going to fuck with the Chinese Mafia.’”
His blue eyes were a little too close together and he squinted at Calvino like somehow he could bring him into focus. Blond-haired, blue-eyed Chinese Mafia, sure, thought Calvino.
“I think we should stick close to the hotel,” said Jess.
“No goddamn way,” Naylor was on his feet. “I am heading to the Plaza. I also have a delivery to make. A letter and some pictures a member wants me to deliver to his girlfriend. Apparently she was a Monster Fuck. And I have a peace council to hold.”
He stood up in his Judge Dredd outfit looking like the kind of judge Cause-members would expect to arrive to settle their disputes. Naylor headed straight for the door.
THE Plaza was nearly invisible from the Brandy Hotel parking lot. This was Mecca for those with a new religion. The narrow entrance was jammed with tuk-tuks, motorcycles, vans, vendor carts and cars—a two-car-wide esophagus leading into a U-shape gut that had swallowed more than it could digest; a gut roiling with juices, dense from a huge banquet of neon-lit beer bars, go-go bars, restaurants, food stalls, massage parlors, short-time hongs, and discos. Three stories of esoteric possibilities, a buffet feast for members of the Cause, Pfizer gangs (who had their own chapter in the Cause), and thousands of unaffiliated others, who, squeezing through this tiny obstructed passage to the growling stomach of the night, knew the most important ingredients were the yings who lined the edges, crowding the slopes, talking in the stairwells, hanging over the balconies, smoking cigarettes in their short bar robes.
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