Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson

by Stephen Leather

  I told Damien that I could definitely run a check on her, and that would at least put his mind at rest. Plus, if I didn’t find anything, that boded well for her visa eventually coming through. He wired me a retainer and emailed me her details and a couple of photographs and I got down to business. Ann was a looker, long hair, long legs, curvy figure, very kissable lips. I was sure she’d have made a small fortune dancing and hooking in Nana Plaza.

  I ran the basic checks. She’d never been married and she didn’t have any children. She was living alone in a small studio flat in Soi 22, the same place she’d had when she was dancing. Ann’s stall was on the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 7. She only had her pitch from 9pm onwards and had to wait for the daytime vendors to pack up and go before she could set up shop. Thai laws says that you cannot sell on the public footpath, and to make that point Wednesdays are generally declared ‘no sell’ days but during the rest of the week the day vendors basically pay the local cops for the right to set up shop. Once the day vendor leaves, another vendor can take his place, providing a small fee is paid. That’s the arrangement Ann had, and I reckoned she had a good spot with lots of passing traffic. She was selling cheap T-shirts and sundresses and I found myself a seat in an airconditioned bar in Soi 7 from where I could keep an eye on her.

  Sales were slow on the three nights I watched her. She worked from 9pm until 3am and I reckoned she was doing well if she took in 1,000 baht a night, which would be less than she’d have been paid for an hour’s short-time when she was hooking. The 1,000 baht was turnover, of course. Her profit would be between 300 and 400 baht. Fairly decent money for a Thai, about the same as a schoolteacher or office worker would get, but a fraction of what a pole-dancer would pull in. I saw her chatting to a couple of Thai guys who were selling an assortment of flick knives, samurai swords and knuckle-dusters but there didn’t seem to be anything untoward going on and she always went home alone. On the first day I put on a baseball cap and sunglasses and walked by her pitch, bought a T-shirt from her and flirted with her in my very best Thai. I made her laugh but she wouldn’t give me her phone number and wouldn’t agree to see me for a drink.

  I phoned Damien and told him that Ann was being a good girl and that he had nothing to worry about on that score. He asked me to approach her and tell her that I was a friend of his and that I would help her with her visa application. We agreed a fee and the next day I went to see her. I read through all the correspondence from the embassy and it was clear that they weren’t convinced that she had gone legit, so I decided to beef up her application. I took her to Bo-Bey market where she bought her stock and I collected some receipts and took photographs of her at work. I went with her to her bank and got copies of her statements showing that Damien was sending her money and that she was putting cash in herself. I got her to give me photographs that had been taken when Damien had met her family. I figured we had a pretty good package, and we sent that in to the embassy. A month later Damien phoned me to say that the embassy had turned her down and that Ann had taken it badly.

  I went around to her place in Soi 22 and found her in tears. She’d ‘forgotten’ to tell Damien that she’d made a previous application for a tourist visa with another Australian guy acting as a sponsor. That’s a definite red flag so far as the embassy is concerned. It suggests that the girl isn’t particular about who gets her into the country.

  Ann wasn’t just upset, she was as mad as hell. In true Thai style she said that Australia and everyone in it could go screw themselves. Frankly, as a New Zealander myself, I could sympathise with the sentiment. Anyway, she’d go back to work in Hollywood Strip and find herself a man from a country that would allow her to visit. And that was that. She finished with Damien, sold her business and went back to hooking, and over the next few months I saw her several times leaving Nana Plaza on the arm of one overweight German or another. I gather that Damien flew back to beg her to reconsider but that she refused point blank. He’d had his chance and he’d blown it. He kept calling me asking if I could help, but there was nothing I could do. I felt sorry for him, and for her. I think he loved her, and she was certainly prepared to give up the bar scene and work hard at a real job so that she could be with him. If it hadn’t been for the embassy playing hardball, I really think they might have made it work.

  Anyway, from then on she wouldn’t even look at a guy from Australia, no matter how much money he had. I heard that she hooked a rich German and she now lives with him in Bonn in a huge house and is pregnant with her second child. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Except for Damien, of course. But hey, even a Thai private eye can’t win them all.

  THE CASE OF THE BLACKMAILED BEAUTY

  Klaus was a German, and I don’t get too many German clients. Nothing to do with the war, it’s just that for some reason Germans don’t seem to have as many problems with bargirls as guys from other countries. I used to ask the girls why Germans never seemed to lose their hearts to the girls who dance around the silver poles. The general consensus seemed to be that Germans think with their heads. The Americans think with their hearts. And the Brits think with their dicks. When a tearful bargirl starts to tell a Brit or a Yank that her father is in hospital or her sister needs a new pair of shoes or the water buffalo has died, he gives her money. The German just shrugs and reaches for his beer. The Germans are more pragmatic, they understand that a bargirl has a history and deals with it. The Brits tend to believe every lie they’re told. No, the girl doesn’t have a husband. No, she doesn’t have kids. No, she doesn’t spend hours in an internet cafA© talking to her sponsors around the world. So when Klaus phoned me up and said that he wanted to talk to me about a girl, alarm bells started ringing. I knew it wouldn’t be a straightforward bargirl investigation.

  He’d worked in Thailand for almost a decade, and that sent up a red flag too because most long-term expats are well aware of the dangers of getting involved with a bargirl. And if they wanted to check out a bargirl’s story they usually had plenty of friends who could do the job for them. I’d had a quiet week so I ignored my reservations and arranged to meet him at a Starbucks close to my office.

  He was waiting for me at an outside table, smoking a cigarette with an espresso in front of him. He was in his early forties, balding, and looked as if he spent quite a bit of time in the gym. I ordered a white coffee and then joined him at his table. He started by giving me a potted life history. He’d lived in Berlin, married with two children, then divorced and moved to Thailand to start a new life. He’d built up a successful computer company, importing components from Europe, and now had offices in Germany, Hong Kong and Bangkok. He’d married again to a Thai woman, but happily admitted to a series of affairs. Nothing serious, more often than not just a matter of barfining a bargirl and taking her to a short-time hotel.

  His life had ticked along perfectly until the time he flew down to Phuket to see about opening an office there. In one of the island’s up-market pickup joints he met Nut, the love of his life. She wasn’t a bargirl but a law student, twenty-seven years old and drop dead gorgeous. She was bright, and according to Klaus was able to talk to him about everything. Economics. Politics. Literature. She was on vacation, footloose and fancy free. He had never met such a smart girl before and he was besotted. He started thinking about divorcing Wife Number Two and starting afresh with Nut. He persuaded her to go on holiday with him to Hong Kong, and on their return she said she had to go back to Rhamkamheng University to prepare for her final exams. Klaus was keen to play the white knight. He offered to give her a lump sum to cover all her expenses, and give her a laptop so that she could email him as he travelled around. Nut jumped at his offer of sponsorship. Klaus probably saw it differently, but in my experience young girls aren’t attracted to rich middle-aged farangs because of their good looks, witty conversation or sparkling personalities. Nut said she stayed with her sister in Bangkok but that he could visit whenever he wanted. It was a done deal. Klaus gave her 60,000 baht for her first mon
th’s ‘salary’ and a brand new laptop.

  After they returned to Bangkok, Klaus gave Nut a couple of days to settle in and then phoned her. There was no reply from her mobile and his emails went unanswered. Klaus was distraught. He was already planning to divorce his wife, he believed he had finally met the love of his life, and now she had disappeared. He’d phoned the apartment block where she stayed with her sister but someone there told him that she had moved out.

  ‘I vant you to find her, Varren,’ he said. ‘Money no object.’

  Ah. The three words that every private eye loves to hear. He was as good as his word and took out an envelope containing 50,000 baht. I spent half an hour with him getting as many details as I could and he gave me a photograph that he’d been carrying in his wallet. She was a pretty girl, all right. High cheekbones, rosebud mouth, long lashes.

  My first port of call was the apartment block where Nut was supposed to be living with her sister. I was lucky, it was quite small, just a few floors above the offices of a cleaning company. All residents and visitors had to go in through the offices, which I reckoned was good news because the staff there would almost certainly be able to put names to faces.

  Klaus had told me that Nut had spoken of a previous boyfriend, an English guy who’d returned to London a couple of years earlier. I adopted one of my regular personas-an embassy offcial. Most Thai girls would do anything to get a visa to the West so I walked into the office in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase. There were two girls sitting at a reception desk and I told them that I was from the British Embassy. I told them that Nut had applied for a tourist visa and that we had some questions for her but we weren’t getting a reply from her mobile. I spoke in English and gave them no indication that I spoke or understood Thai. When I finished my prepared speech, the two girls spoke to each other in rapid Thai. I just stood there smiling as one girl said that she thought Nut had moved out two days earlier and that she was now living in an apartment in Rhamkamheng 53.

  ‘Shall we tell the farang?’ said the other girl.

  ‘I suppose so. He looks quite handsome doesn’t he?’

  The two girls looked at me and giggled. I kept what I hoped was an uncomprehending smile on my face.

  ‘She move to Rhamkamheng,’ said the girl who knew.

  I feigned disappointment. ‘That’s a pity, I said. Do you know where?’

  ‘Rhamkamheng 53,’ said the girl.

  ‘I think I have her mobile number,’ said the other girl, in Thai.

  I tried to show no reaction. ‘Is there any way I could phone her, just to let her know about her application?’ I asked.

  The two girls exchanged a look, then they nodded together. ‘I call her for you,’ said the second girl. She took her mobile phone from her handbag, scrolled through her address book and called the number. She handed the phone to me with a smile. I put it to my ear. It was still ringing. I didn’t know if it was the number that Klaus had been trying or if Nut had acquired a new SIM card, but a girl answered.

  ‘Is that Khun Nut?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said a voice, hesitantly.

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d barely been on the case for ten minutes and I was talking to the girl that I’d been paid 50,000 baht to track down. I explained that I was with the British Embassy and that I needed to speak to her about her visa application.

  ‘I didn’t apply for a visa,’ she said.

  ‘Your boyfriend did,’ I said.

  ‘He not my boyfriend anymore,’ she said. ‘I not want to go to England now.’

  I could tell she was about to end the call so I started speaking quickly, assuring her that she could still have a visa even if he wasn’t her boyfriend anymore and that I just needed to go over a few things with her.

  ‘I busy with exams,’ she said. ‘I not want to go to England. Thank you.’ She cut the connection.

  The two girls were watching me so I couldn’t show how frustrated I was. I just smiled and fiddled with the locks on my briefcase. I opened it and made a show of fumbling with some papers. What I was really trying to do was steal a look at the last number dialled. The phone was a Siemens and I was used to Nokias but I managed to call up the number and memorized it before handing the phone back to the girl. Outside, I checked the mobile number against the number that Klaus had given me. It was a different, which meant that either Nut had two phones or that she’d dumped the old SIM card.

  I caught a taxi to Rhamkamheng 53 and wandered around. Finding Nut was going to be like nailing a needle in a haystack. There were at least fifty large apartment blocks lining the soi, mainly cheap places catering to the 50,000 or so students that attend the nearby Rhamkamheng University. It’s rumoured to be the largest university in the world. I stopped off at the motorcycle taxi rank at the head of the soi and spoke to the guys there. They were dark skinned, Isaan boys all of them, so I spoke in Laotian, dropping in an obscenity every few words. I showed Nut’s picture around but all I got was shaking heads. I offered a thousand baht to anyone who found her and that got their interest going, but as much as they wanted the money none of them remembered seeing her. I told them the thousand baht was a standing offer and handed out a few business cards, then I strolled over to the university campus.

  I went to the registration office and went through my British Embassy speech again, that Miss Nut had applied for a visa to visit England and this age of terrorists and criminals we needed to do thorough background checks on all applicants. I gave the office manager Nut’s full name and date of birth but after a few minutes on the computer she returned, shaking her head. There was no one of that name registered at the university.

  That was interesting. It was the first lie that I’d caught her telling. And in my experience, where’s there’s one, there’s many.

  I went back to the office and phoned Klaus. He was relieved that I’d spoken to Nut. ‘At least I know she’s okay,’ he said. ‘I vas starting to think that maybe she had been in an accident.’

  He didn’t sound quite so cheerful when I pointed out that she’d lied to him about studying law at Rhamkamheng University. I gave him Nut’s new mobile number.

  Ten minutes later, Klaus called me back. He’d tried phoning the number but after it had rung a few times the phone had been switched off. He figured that she was refusing to take his call. ‘I vant you to find her for me, Varren,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to her face to face.’

  I told him that the next step would be to get a list of phone calls made to and from the two mobiles, and to get a friend of mine to crack Nut’s email account. And that was going to cost more money. Fifty thousand baht in all. It was up to Klaus to decide if he wanted to pay the extra. I’d already shown that she’d lied about going to university, and she’d got herself a new phone number which suggested that she didn’t want to speak to Klaus. My advice, if he’d asked for it, would be for him to cut his losses and either stick with his wife or look for a new love of his life. But he didn’t ask, and he promised to send the 50,000 baht around by courier, so I kept my big trap shut. The client is always right. Even when he’s wrong.

  Once the money arrived, I got in touch with my phone contact. I gave him the two mobile phone numbers and he promised to get back to me with a list of calls and locations where she’d used the phone. Then I phoned my secret weapon, an American by the name of Pete who works for one of those shady American Government organisations that spend their time analysing phone and email traffic listening for words like ‘bomb’ and ‘al-Qaeda’ and ‘assassination.’ He was based in Washington and had access to some very heavy computing power and code crackers and he owes me a favour because a while back I did a check on his Thai girlfriend at the time and uncovered a husband upcountry and two daughters that she hadn’t told him about. He had a Harvard degree and a doctorate from MIT and an IQ close to 200 but intelligence and common sense don’t always go hand in hand. Anyway, he dumped the lying bargirl and promised me that any time he could help me he would. Not
for free of course, but payments to Pete were money well spent. I gave him Nut’s email address and Pete said he’d call me as soon as he had anything.

  Pete got back to me two days later with the password for Nut’s email account and some very interesting information. Somebody else was hacking into her account on a regular basis.

  Most of the email traffic was from Klaus, and so I was pretty sure that it was the German who was monitoring her account. But when I told Klaus what was going on he insisted that it wasn’t him. I called Pete again and asked him to see if he could find out who was hacking the account.

  I started checking Nut’s email to see if she was talking to other ‘boyfriends’ but there was no activity on the account. The emails that Klaus had sent after she disappeared went unanswered.

  Pete got back to me with some worrying news. He had the email address and password of the guy who’d been monitoring Nut’s email account. He’d had a quick look at the guy’s account but backed off immediately when he saw the content of his emails. The guy worked at the American Embassy and from what Pete saw it was clear that he worked in law enforcement, either with the FBI or DEA.

  Pete passed on the details and warned me to be careful. The guy’s name was Miles Beattie. The account was his personal one but there was some business stuff in it, nothing classified but enough to show that Pete was right to be worried. There were emails from the FBI in Quantico requesting information on two possible drug dealers who were living in Chiang Mai, and responses from the DEA field office in Miami to questions that Beattie had been asking about a Thai family who had extensive property interests there. Among Beattie’s personal emails were messages from a friend called Frank, including a promise to get together for a drink at a well-known go-go bar in Soi Cowboy. And there was one email from a guy in Texas which referred to a porno movie.