by Alisa Smith
“Lena?” the man said, approaching me.
“Sho-nuff?”
He smiled. “I go by Frederick now.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DECEMBER 13, 1945
APPROACHING CHIEF PHAO’S mansion gave me a new perspective. Either Bill preferred to be tucked away on his own, away from his dangerous cronies, or maybe he was not quite so rich as I first thought. Bill’s palazzo, though grand, was set amongst estates that had seen better days. I inspected the neighbour’s property, which you could not see from inside Bill’s grounds, on the boat ride across the river. The livestock in their yard had trampled it down to mud, so that Bill’s garden was an oasis beside it. Apparently, those in the core of national power, like Phao, had moved away from the river and into a new neighbourhood where everything was clean and modern. There were paved streets rather than filthy canals, and smooth cement walls instead of chaotic thatching in every empty space.
Bill rang the bell and a genuine English butler swung open the door. He held a silver tray, and Bill deposited a calling card upon it. Silently, the butler led us through echoing marble hallways into the drawing room, where Chief Phao sat in velvet gloom. “Mr. Yardley and Mr. Godfrey,” the servant bellowed, startling me with this sudden departure from his former quiet.
The chief of police did not stand to greet us. As I shook his cool hand, I was conscious of how sweaty my own was. He had pudgy baby cheeks that should have belonged to an innocent face. But his narrow eyes contained more darkness than Bill’s ever did at his most drugged and deranged, though Bill had assured me that Phao did not confuse himself by taking opium. I sat down and the servant handed me a glass of cognac before withdrawing, bowing as he closed the double doors behind him. Having time to look about me as Bill humoured the chief with small talk, managing to raise a curled smile to the madman’s lips—for such I already thought him to be—I noted that his hideaway was incongruously decorated with paintings of European ladies having picnics. Surely he did not choose these himself. He must have had a decorator to tell him the styles favoured by normal rich people.
Chief Phao launched into a story of a police hunt he had recently led, where they had caught the criminal at the river’s edge. “It was unfortunate. I had to drown him myself to keep him from escaping. He was a danger to public order,” he said, his large, sensual mouth suggesting an enjoyment of the taste of terror. The chief leaned over an ornate gilt table and plucked a cigar out of an inlaid ivory humidor, then invited Bill and me to do the same.
I supposed such stories were meant to reassure us that the chief could find Link, but he showed no intention of apologizing or explaining what went wrong.
“I assume you don’t mean to drown Hughes,” Bill said at last. “I want him alive.”
“Do not worry. I will find him. The Americans promised to send me cash to recruit more men.” He puffed on his cigar in satisfaction, and I wanted to ask, What Americans? I did not want to believe this could be any kind of official aid, given the unholy pleasure he had in taking the law into his own hands.
“You been talking to the Russians as well?” Bill asked.
“Not me, my friend.” Chief Phao held out his arms as though offering to show us how open he was. It looked more like an invitation to be strangled.
“Don’t care if you do, as long as I get what I want.” Bill smiled easily.
“I cleaned up that mess Mr. Smile left behind. No trace. I look out for my friends.”
“My concern is, we don’t have Hughes yet,” Bill persisted. He tapped the ash from his cigar into an ashtray table made of veined glassy stone.
“Chief Phao always finishes what he starts. You will still pay me now, yes?” On his pinky finger, a ruby ring glinted, as though it was the very object rage would choose to be. He was not a man to say no to—though I worried Bill might try.
Bill placed a small cloth bag containing gold coins on the table and I felt relieved. Chief Phao looked inside and silently raised one finger, and Bill took another gold coin from his jacket pocket and put it in the bag also. I was glad the social portion of this awkward visit was over. I discreetly wrote down the price in a notebook I had brought.
In the car on the way back to the dock, Bill opined, “That’s one crazy fucker.”
I wanted to ask, So why do you deal with him? But I knew the answer. Chief Phao controlled the Siamese police force, which numbered forty thousand and was more powerful than the military. No one else had a strong enough grip on the country to escort a drug shipment from the Burmese border to the Bangkok warehouses—or to root out one man hiding in the chaotic backstreets of the city.
“After this business, we need some relaxation. You want to see some sights?”
“Sure.” It was good of him to think of me at last.
He said that tomorrow we would tour the Grand Palace, Bangkok’s most famous landmark. It would be nice to forget about Link Hughes for a while, I thought, and let the chief do the work to find him.
* * *
AFTER AN EARLY lunch at the palazzo, Bill handed me an American passport with another man’s name but my own likeness. “Where’d you get the picture?” I asked.
“Shively took it.”
I had no memory of him taking a picture. I scowled. The man’s sneaking knew no bounds. Instead of making a comment I knew would be useless, I asked if we were leaving the country. Bill explained that we needed a tourist permit to visit the palace grounds, and he didn’t want any trace left of us. I understood Bill’s interest in invisibility, since he’d escaped from death row, but why did I need some fake identity to tour the palace? I supposed, since I was in an underground trade, it was probably safest not to be on record anywhere.
We crossed the river and walked through the cool archway leading from the pier to the street, where an unmarked cream limousine waited. Dass had gone ahead of us to collect it from the garage. We drove along New Road, and Bill seemed to take special interest as we crossed a canal with portions of brick wall standing twelve feet high in places. “The ancient City Moat,” he said. “I like these old canals. Isn’t there one nearer the palace?”
“Yes,” Dass said. “Klong Talad. Even the English call these smaller canals a klong. Asdang Road runs beside it.” The translation was obviously for my benefit, but I already knew that much Siamese. I decided I liked Smile better than Dass, because he didn’t waste words condescending to me like that. I was glad Smile was safely back at the palazzo, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about abandoning him at the hospital.
Smile had been frustrated that he couldn’t give Bill any more information about those Russians. He had been as surprised as I was by their arrival and had no chance to talk to them, what with the bullets and the knifings. Though apparently Bill knew something about the dead one. Chief Phao had sent over some pictures of the body, and Bill nodded to himself as he flipped through them.
I leaned forward to enjoy the view out the car window. There were temples everywhere I looked, spires and towers like extravagant wedding cakes. The canal walls dropped off from the road and on the water, about eight feet below, men rowed small boats Dass said were called sampans. The poor fellows were doing their best to avoid the faster motor barges in the narrow klong. The barges left large wakes behind, and the waves slapped against the canal walls, rocking the small boats mercilessly.
“Let’s drive around the palace walls,” Bill said.
The walls were blindingly white, tall, and crenellated, with watchtowers sprinkled along the expanse. Bill counted off the entryways in a notebook, licking his pencil. Most entrances had only a single heavy door with two guards. Over the top of the walls I could see golden towers and red pagoda roofs crammed everywhere. The palace looked like a town to itself, and I was keen to get a gander inside.
As we swung around to the river side, Dass pointed out the king’s royal yacht, the three-masted Maha Chakri, moored at a private dock. “The king often arrives by river from his country palaces. It is tradition.”
“A man can’t have too many palaces,” Bill said.
“Your palazzo suits me well enough,” I said.
“You could earn enough in our ventures to buy your own,” he said, leaning across to punch me on the shoulder, too hard as always. “This is the real land of opportunity. Forget about America.”
He looked a little sad as he said it, though. He could never go back there—but I still could, if I wanted. Did I? I was sometimes homesick, but it was irrational. There was nothing and no one waiting for me there. I wouldn’t mind a palazzo.
Bill pulled some official-looking papers from his pocket and gave them a read, brusque now. “Hey Dass, any idea which is the Gate of Supreme Victory? What a name. That’s where we’re supposed to go in.”
Having completed the circle, Dass pulled to the curb and retrieved a tourist map from the glove box. “This looks like the place,” he said. “Good luck.”
Bill presented our papers to one of the guards, uniformed in a Western style with standard black dress pants, a white jacket with epaulettes, and a leather strap across the chest. The white helmet was more fanciful, Napoleonic maybe, with a golden crest, a tall spike sticking up, and a gold strap that looked uncomfortably balanced between the guard’s lower lip and chin.
Once the heavy red door was safely closed behind us, Bill muttered, “Let’s make a show of looking at the gardens.” We strolled up the stone-paved roadway past compounds within compounds, the roofs nearly blinding me with the reflected glare off the bright metal. “Is it real gold?” I asked.
“Supposed to be plated, anyhow. If you want to see gold, I’ve heard the Emerald Buddha temple will blow your brains. But my itinerary has the Chakri Palace listed first. So we’ll go there like good tourists.”
After we passed through an iron gate with another two guards, we had a full view of the three-story main building. It was like an Italian palace wearing a pagoda as a hat, which somehow worked. Bill took out a small book, A Guide to Bangkok, published by the royal state railway, which described the areas open to the public. “Fantastically pruned dwarf trees, it says.” Bill rolled his eyes. “Whatever cranks your handle. Wish they had less words and more maps. There’s no floor plans at all.”
We walked up a long flight of stairs and yet more guards waved us inside the main doors of the Chakri Palace after a cursory look at our papers. We stood in the centre of the throne hall and stared at the ceiling, which was distant and dripping with fanciful carvings of a European type. The throne itself looked foreign with a golden carved disk behind and a tiered dome hanging over it like an umbrella. The images over the flanking doorways were elephant heads, I realized. Another exotic touch. A European court would probably use a lion.
“Doors everywhere,” was all Bill said.
He looked over his shoulder and then tried the handle of one, wiggling it. “Nope.”
By now it was dawning on me that Bill was not in fact giving me a chance to see the sights. He was behaving very much as though he was casing the joint. I was irritated that he couldn’t have just told me we were planning some kind of job. As Bill paused to draw schematics in his book, I felt a sudden anxiety to be involved in a plot against the most formidable structure in Siam. We’d passed a lot of guards. When he was done sketching, which seemed to take forever, we backtracked to the main foyer where we’d seen two more huge rooms leading off from each side. Consulting his guide, Bill said these were the Eastern and Western Galleries: one for the kings, one for the queens. Each was ringed with portraits and black marble busts. The royal clothing throughout time was a hodgepodge of Far Eastern pointed shoes, sarongs, and European military styles. Our steps echoed across the star-patterned stone tile.
“Fewer doors, but more mirrors,” he said. “Mirrors can be useful.”
He casually tried these doors too, but except for the one we’d come in, they were all locked. “Time to check out the Emerald Buddha,” he said. “By the boo, it’s just jade, but it’s still worth a fortune in Asia.”
Was he planning to steal it? Oh Christ. This would be a thousand times more difficult than robbing a bank in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Bill had specifically chosen that job because of the Canadians’ naïve reputation. This was a royal palace, for heaven’s sake.
We descended the main palace stairs into the sun, which was now blazing. So far, we had not seen any other tourists, so I felt conspicuous in the wide-open plaza. We drooped our way through the heat to the temple complex, the gods living behind their own walls. Inside, the buildings were close together, creating shady little mazes. As we climbed steps made of swirled marble onto the porch of the main temple, I noticed a tidy row of sandals along the outside wall. “We got to take off our shoes also,” Bill said. “This is a holy place to them.”
“Hope my feet smell okay,” I joked, trying to cover my nerves. I peeled off my socks and stuffed them in my shoes. I sniffed. “Maybe not.”
The black and white stone was cool on my feet as we padded inside. While the palace had many riches, the temple blew it out of the water. There were gold statues guarding statues that guarded other gold statues, and the Buddha on the highest platform had a precious green face above its gold robes. The emerald one. About thirty monks kneeled or sat cross-legged in front of the artistic madness, praying quietly. Thankfully they paid us no mind, and did not turn their heads. To my surprise, Bill had dropped to his knees in a position like the monks’, and I wondered if he thought to pray. Then I realized he was feeling along the edges of the stone tiles, looking for something. I wished he didn’t have to do that. What if a monk got suspicious?
Hoping to dissociate myself from Bill, I walked along the walls of the cavernous room, which were covered in murals of endless buildings and people. I got interested in them in spite of myself. As I looked more closely, I realized they were paintings of the palace complex, over and over, depicting different episodes in its history. I almost imagined if I looked long enough, I could find a little painting of me and Bill somewhere.
I lingered over the paintings as Bill changed spots a few times, testing more tiles. When he finally straightened up, tugging on his pant legs, I followed him out the door with relief. I sat on the porch to pull on my socks and shoes. I wanted to ask him what he was looking for, but it seemed a question best saved for outside the palace walls.
“They like their gold in these parts,” Bill said. “I managed to capture some from the Japs at the end of the war. You can take a gander when you’re at my warehouse. Nothing like a bar of twenty-four-carat gold. Not really stealing, I think, if you steal it from thieves. Kind of undoes itself.”
“Maybe it’s double stealing. You could give it back,” I said. I knew my argument sounded weak, since I’d helped Bill steal stuff myself. But I really didn’t want to break into this walled-up, guard-infested palace complex.
“Nobody knows whose it is anymore. Except I know it’s mine now.” He started to walk away. “Come on, let’s check out the wall from the inside.”
We left the temple complex and headed to the edge of the main grounds. Bill said we should look involved in a conversation, so the guards wouldn’t think much of our wanderings—we were just distracted tourists. I was distracted, all right, by the worry that the guards would clue in to us. Bill paused in front of the stables and poked at some grates which smelled not too fine, apparently being where they washed out the horse dung. After checking there were no witnesses, he even bent down and pulled hard on one of the grates, but it didn’t move. We completed a full circuit of the walls, Bill casually making a note in pencil now and again on his list of sights. We followed every pathway between all the buildings until I was baked as a foil-wrapped potato. I’d used up my supply of dry handkerchiefs, which I kept stuffed in every pocket for mopping up the heat. Sweat ran down my forehead unchecked, but I dared not suggest we leave.
“I’ll just lean in the shade here, if you want to look around more.” Though this was a tough place to lean, with pointy-beake
d heads carved everywhere.
“No need. Got all I can get today.”
I had a feeling of skulking as I passed the stern-faced guards, but Bill sauntered as always. The red door snicked shut behind us, well oiled, barely making a noise despite its heavy weight.
We rendezvoused with Dass where he was waiting for us a few blocks to the east on a side street, and he pulled the car closer as he saw us coming. Once we were safely inside, I asked Bill what he had been looking for on the temple floor.
“A door to a secret tunnel,” he said.
That was far more intriguing than anything I expected, and I felt my eyebrows raise up my forehead. Looking satisfied at my reaction, Bill explained there was a legend of an escape hatch in case of war to spirit away the Emerald Buddha, the nation’s prize possession, along with the king.
“Tell me straight. Are you planning to steal the Buddha?” It had not been as large as I expected, and in theory could be carried, depending on its weight.
“That would be crazy,” Bill said. That didn’t answer the question as far as I was concerned, since he’d been known to do crazy things. “But I need that goddamn tunnel, and I couldn’t find a trace of it. I’m going to have to work my source a lot harder,” Bill said. “With Mr. Smile Chang to assist.”
I wasn’t sure if I looked glad or sad. I hated to be left out of things, but this sounded like a dirty job.
“Don’t worry. I need my chronicler to record this piece of history, if it exists. You’ll be coming along.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE QUARLO
I HUGGED THE man I’d always known as Sho-nuff, one of Bill’s loyal men from the Clockwork Gang, and stood back to study him. He had streaks of grey at his temples, and a nautical air with the jaunty captain’s hat he’d adopted. He still looked strong as a longshoreman. I had a thousand questions, but could only ask one at a time. I started with the easiest. “Why Frederick?”
