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

by Stephen Leather

  A good night’s sleep had actually made my muscles ache even more but a promise was a promise so that afternoon I turned up at the massage place and asked for another rub down from Miss Wanna. She was surprised to see me lying on the table in my baggy jacket and pants, but I told her that she’d done such a good job on my back that I’d come back for round two. What she didn’t know was that I’d put a tape recorder in the pocket of my jeans that were hanging on a peg by the end of the table.

  I had arranged with Derek to send her a text while she was working on me. I chatted away, wincing as her fingers bit into my aching muscles. After twenty minutes of torture, her mobile phone beeped. She seemed happy enough to ignore it, but I said that she should see who it was as it might be a ‘special’ farang. She laughed and checked her phone.

  She read the text and I asked her again if it was from her ‘special’ farang. She shook her head and said that she was still waiting to meet someone special.

  ‘So who was that from?’ I asked.

  ‘An Australian guy,’ she said. ‘He texts me all the time.’

  ‘What does he say?’ I asked. ‘Does he say he loves you?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘And what about you?’ I asked. ‘Do you say you love him?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He is a nice man. I don’t want to make him sad and he bought me this gold bracelet.’ She held up her right arm and showed me an expensive bracelet on her wrist. ‘He gives me money, too. All the time. I say “I love you” very loudly, but then I add very quietly “the same as I love my father”. Which is the truth.’

  I felt a bit sorry for Derek then, because no guy wants to hear the love of his life saying that she loves him the same as a father. He hadn’t told me how old he was but I figured he was probably in his fifties. To be honest, that’s one of the major reasons that Thai-farang relationships end in tears. The guys are generally much older than the girls they fall for, and in a way it serves them right. Does any fifty year old guy really believe that a twenty-five-year old is going to think that he is God’s gift to women? It’s about money and security, which is what ninety per cent of Thai women want. They want someone to take care of them and their families. And if they have to tell the odd white lie to get that money and security, then they will.

  Anyway, I had what I wanted on tape. Wanna went back to kneading my back and by the end of the hour I was in agony. I showered and dressed and limped home. I sent the cassette tape to Derek in Dubai and never heard from him again.

  Wanna was a nice enough girl, and genuine in her way. She wanted enough money to build a house for herself and her boy in Sisaket, and maybe one day she would find a man that she would love. But Derek wasn’t that man, and he’d just have to accept that. The beauty of Thailand is that there are plenty more fish in the sea. The drawback, of course, is that there are a fair amount of sharks, too.

  The next day, I got another email from a guy in Canada who’d also fallen for the charms of a massage girl. Rick had met Vee in a traditional Thai massage place of Sukhumvit Road while he was on holiday six months earlier. He’d fallen for her hard and had been back twice since. Miss Vee was twenty-nine and had never been married and from the picture he sent me she had the most amazing pair of breasts. I could see the attraction. On his last trip he’d offered to support Vee and told her that she could stop work. He’d started to send her money, but wanted me to check that she was keeping to her end of the deal. I thought he was crazy. In fact, I think anyone who offers to support a girl that he’s met on holiday needs his head examining. I reckon there must be something in the water in Thailand that makes farangs act irrationally. Would a Canadian go to America on holiday and pay a waitress to stop work? Would he hell. Anyway, I wasn’t being paid to tell Rick that he was crazy. He wanted to pay me to check up on the lovely Miss Vee and I was more than happy to take his money. Normally I’d be right on the case, but the problem was that the last two massages courtesy of Miss Wanna had left me aching all over and I really couldn’t face another.

  I phoned the parlour where Miss Vee worked and confirmed that they did hotel visits, which is usually a sign that there’s more than just regular massages going on. I asked if Miss Vee was available and was told she was. I said I’d call back to confirm a booking. I headed for Gulliver’s in Soi 5, one of my regular watering holes. The barmaid pulled my bottle of Jack Daniels off the shelf as soon as she saw me walk in. It was early afternoon but I needed something to kill the pain. I looked around and smiled when I saw that my timing was perfect. Sitting on the far side of the bar was ‘Aussie’ Andy, a former helicopter pilot from Brisbane. I asked him if he had a couple of hours to kill which was a pointless question because he was retired and did little more than hang around bars and pick up attractive women. I said I’d pay for the hotel room and the massage. He wanted the Oriental but I told him he’d have to settle for the Miami Hotel in Soi 13 which would only cost 500 baht and which was just around the corner from Miss Vee’s place of work.

  I took Aussie Andy around to the hotel, booked him in, then called the parlour and arranged for Miss Vee. The fee would be 300 baht for a one-hour massage, I was told, payable in advance. Then I headed back to Gulliver’s. I wished I was as sure of the next Grand National winner as I was of Miss Vee asking for more money for ‘extras’.

  I’d had four JDs and my aches and pains were starting to go when Aussie Andy came back, smelling of soap and looking like the cat that had got the cream. Miss Vee wasn’t a bad sort, he said, considering she was thirty-eight. He’d checked her ID while she was in the toilet, which I thought was using his initiative. It showed that she’d been lying about her age and from my experience if a girl lies about one thing then you can’t believe a word she says. Anyway, Miss Vee hadn’t been in the room for two minutes before she was offering him a ‘special’ massage for an extra 2,000 baht.

  Andy played it straight and handed over the 300 baht that he said was the agreed fee. She phoned the agency and said that she’d been paid, then she started giving him the massage. A lot of baby oil was used, and she spent most of her time concentrating on his nether regions before telling him that he could have a ‘special’ massage for 1,500 baht.

  Andy gritted his teeth and said that he was happy with a regular massage. She poured on more oil, then asked him to roll onto his back. The price of a ‘special’ massage dropped to 1,000 baht. Andy declined, but then her top came off and more oil got poured and Andy said he’d be willing to go an extra 500. They agreed to split the difference and settled for 800 baht. I handed him the money and he bought me a drink. Miss Vee had performed admirably, he said, and her magnificent breasts were most definitely the real thing.

  As soon as I got home I sent Rick an email telling him that not only was Vee working, she was also more than happy to have sex with clients. He must have been straight on the phone to her because the next day I got a reply from him. Rick wanted to know if I was sure that she was having sex because she’s told him that she was just helping out with the hotel visits because the parlour was short-staffed. She’d assured him that she only did straight massages.

  I’ve never understood why clients will always take the word of their girlfriend over the evidence that I’ve given them. Time and time again I’d present my report only to have the client phone or email asking me if I was sure. Was I sure? Of course I was sure! What did they think they were paying me for? And of course the girlfriend is going to lie. She’s hardly likely to admit that she was screwing around, not when there’s money at stake, is she? I didn’t argue with Rick, I just phoned Andy and asked if there were any details he could give me that would convince Rick that he’d had sex with his nearest and dearest. Andy told me about the tattoo of a butterfly that she had on the small of her back, the three moles on the inside of her right thigh, and the fact that she whimpered like an injured kitten when she came. I passed on the information to Rick and I never heard from him again. It was probably more detail than he want
ed. I felt a bit bad about bursting Rick’s balloon, but I figure I was saving him money and heartache down the line.

  THE CASE OF THE SUSPICIOUS SPOUSES

  A big chunk of my work in the early days came from sex tourists who’d fallen in love with bargirls and wanted me to check up on whether or not they were being faithful. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the answer was no, she was still sleeping with paying customers. It was money for the proverbial old rope. Initially I got work through word of mouth, but after a year or so I figured I should go out looking for business, and the best way to do that was through the internet. I set up a website advertising my services, www.thaiprivateeye.com, and before long I was getting assignments from around the world.

  One of the first emails I got through the website was from a woman named Barbara who lived in Glasgow in bonnie Scotland. Any country that makes Johnnie Walker Black Label has got my vote of thanks, so I was more than happy to help Barbara. Plus she sent my retainer by bank transfer within forty-eight hours of me taking the case, which in my mind at least put paid to the theory that the Scots are tight with money. Barbara’s husband had been in Thailand for a couple of months, and while she had no evidence that her husband was fooling around, she had a feeling that something was wrong. Women’s intuition. And she wanted me to find out if he was having an affair with a Thai girl.

  Her husband, William, was an artist and he’d been travelling around the Chiang Mai area, painting. For a lot of the time he’d been staying with a friend, but she didn’t have an address for him. All she knew was that it was a penthouse apartment with a stunning view. Not much help, really. He was going to stay in Bangkok for a week or so before returning to Scotland, but she didn’t know which hotel he’d be staying at. I explained that Bangkok was a city of more than ten million people, so without an address I had no hope of finding him. She did know the date of his return flight, and that he was flying British Airways. He’d bought a cheap economy ticket and he was locked into his return date so he’d have to be on that flight. I asked her to email me a photograph of him and I’d put him under surveillance at the airport. In my experience, if a guy has a Thai girlfriend she will see him off at the airport, for no other reason than he’d probably give her all his unwanted baht before heading for the plane.

  The money, and the photograph, arrived within forty-eight hours. William was a good-looking guy with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, in his early thirties. If he’d wanted to fool around in Thailand, I didn’t think he’d have had any problems.

  I got to the airport a good three hours before the flight was due to leave and wandered around with a paper cup of coffee. He appeared ninety minutes before the flight was due to close, pushing a trolley loaded with two suitcases and a dozen or two cardboard tubes that I assumed contained his artwork. And hanging on his arm was an absolute stunner. The girl was in her early twenties, waist-length glossy black hair, smooth white skin, great figure and a mouth that just begged to be kissed. I took a few pictures with my digital camera. She kept planting kisses on his cheek, and I got a belting photograph of him with both hands on her bum, kissing her full on the mouth. A lot of times on surveillance operations I’m always amazed at how plain the girls are. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Thailand so long but I’ve become very selective whereas a lot of tourists seem to jump on the first girl they see. I get paid to check up on some of the ugliest girls in the country, and the guys get really upset when I tell them that the love of their life is still sleeping with customers. But William’s girl was faultless, and I had half a mind to ‘accidentally’ bump into her and get her phone number after he’d flown off. But I’m nothing if not professional so I carried on taking a few long-range photographs.

  They went and sat in a pub on the first floor while they waited for his flight, and I managed to get a couple more shots of them getting close and personal, then followed them to the departure gate where true to form he took out his wallet and gave her all his Thai money. She put up quite a performance, shaking her head and wiping tears from her eyes, but she took the money. After he’d kissed her and waved and gone through to immigration, I followed the girl to the taxi rank. Lots of heads turned to watch her as she walked. She got into a taxi and it headed down the expressway.

  I caught a cab home and emailed the pictures to the wife, along with a report of what I’d seen. Easy money. I could imagine the scene in Glasgow when William arrived home. Thai girls tend to cut off the dicks of unfaithful husbands. Upcountry they toss the bloody remains to the ducks, and in the cities they put it in a food blender. I doubted that Barbara would be as cruel as that, but I reckoned William was still in for a shock when he got home.

  A couple of days later, I got an email from the husband. I opened it, expecting a torrent of abuse, but to my surprise it was quite a chatty epistle, complimenting me on my professional approach to the job. And he thanked me for bringing an unhappy situation to an end. According to William, the love had gone from his marriage years ago and he had been trying to find a way of ending it. My investigation had been the spark for him and his wife to start talking about divorce, and now they had decided to consult lawyers and end the marriage. There were no kids and his wife had a well-paid job, so all they had to do was to decide on a fair split of the marital assets. Once that was out of the way, William planned to fly back to Thailand and start a new life with Som, the girl who’d been at the airport. And the main reason for the email was that William wanted to pay me to run a check on the lovely Som! I couldn’t believe it at first and thought it was a wind-up, but William was serious. Som had been a go-go dancer in the Long Gun Bar in Soi Cowboy, and while he’d paid her to stop work he was worried that she might go back to her old ways while he was in Scotland. I gave him my bank details and told him to send over a retainer. I told him I didn’t need a photograph of the lovely Som, but I’d need her date of birth, full Thai name and any other details he had.

  A couple of days later he emailed me all the information. Som was twenty-two and lived in a cheap hotel in Soi 15, not far from Soi Cowboy. I knew the place. It was a well-known bargirl haunt. She went to school in Siam Square most mornings. Her mother lived in Pattaya with an elderly German.

  William said that he’d agreed to transfer 15,000 baht a month into Som’s bank account. That set alarm bells ringing right away. A halfway decent bargirl can easily earn four times that dancing around a silver pole and sleeping with customers. A real pro with high-spending Japanese customers can earn six figures. Som was a stunner and I found it difficult to believe that she was staying at home for just 15,000 baht. Her hotel bill would be almost 10,000 baht a month, even on a long-term lease, then there would be her mobile phone bills, clothes, cosmetics, food. And as a bargirl, even a former one, there would be a good chance of a drugs problem and a very good chance that there was a family to support.

  William said that she emailed him pretty much every day, and that she always answered her mobile.

  I started to follow her. It wasn’t difficult. She didn’t own a car or a motorcycle and used taxis, motorcycle taxis and the Skytrain. Over a few days I kept a close eye on her. She went to school during the week, spent most of her time in her room, probably watching TV, and went out to eat at night with girlfriends. More often than not, Som would pick up the bill. I saw her using several different mobile phones, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear what she was saying. Multiple phones is always a bad sign. It suggests multiple boyfriends or sponsors. She never went to a nightclub or to the city’s red-light districts. She went to Pattaya one weekend but stayed with her mother and didn’t go near the bars.

  I didn’t see her with another guy, Thai or farang, but it was clear that her lifestyle was costing well over 15,000 baht a month and as she wasn’t working the money had to be coming from somewhere.

  I reported back to William. Som wasn’t seeing anyone, but she was living well beyond her means. I said that if he wanted to be sure that she didn’t have any other sponsors I
’d have to check her bank account. At best that would mean a visit to a branch to sneak a look at a computer terminal, at worst it would mean a bribe of tens of thousands of baht. William said he’d pay me for another day to visit the bank and sent through the extra money to my account along with the details of her account.

  I went along to a branch of Som’s bank in a tourist area, found a sweet young cashier, flashed her my most charming smile and told her that I’d sent money to my girlfriend but that she’d told me that it hadn’t arrived yet. I asked the cashier if she could check that the money had actually gone through. The girl told me what I already knew, that I’d have to go to Som’s branch to confirm the transfer, all she could do on her terminal was to check the balance. She called it up on screen and as she did I leaned over and took a quick look. There was close to two million baht in the account. I flashed the cashier a thumbs up. ‘Great,’ I said. ‘The money must have gone through,’ I said. ‘We’re building a house.’ I thanked her and hurried out.

  I phoned William and told him that Som had a stack of money in her account, far more than she could have saved, even as a go-go dancer. The only way she could have amassed that amount of cash was from a generous sponsor, and probably more than one. She certainly didn’t need William’s 15,000 baht a month.

  ‘But you’ve never seen her with another guy?’ he said. I could hear the hope in his voice. I’ve heard it hundreds of times over the years. It was the sound of a man who wanted to believe that he wasn’t being lied to, even when all the evidence suggested the contrary. I don’t know what it is with these guys. They really do check their brains in at the airport. I don’t understand it. I understand bargirls. They work for money. Period. They don’t dance in go-go bars and sleep with men twice their age for fun. They do it for money. But the guys who fall in love with them, just what goes through their minds? The guys who cling to the hope that their bargirls are special, that their bargirls don’t lie and cheat, they’re the ones that I really don’t understand.