by Jake Needham
It was indeed, so I shut up and edged our jeep past the accident scene. Twenty minutes later we were rolling slowly through Patong searching for a parking place.
Since the whole village of Patong consists of essentially just two long streets, finding a place to park is pretty much a matter of cruising north along the ocean on Beach Road then turning around and coming back in the opposite direction on the parallel road that is about a hundred yards inland. It was barely past mid-day and we had no problem finding a spot almost immediately.
The west side of Beach Road is mercifully devoid of development and a broad concrete walkway runs along the sand for well over a mile. The beach itself isn’t all that great-the strip of sand is more khaki-colored than golden and a good deal of it is invisible under the ranks of canvas lounge chairs set out for rent by beachfront entrepreneurs-but the ocean is another matter altogether. Maybe, I grudgingly admitted to myself as we locked the Suzuki and set out walking, this hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
The surf was rolling in as we walked, a low shore break that was useless f kwasa aor anyone hauling a board but otherwise suitably picturesque, and a warm breeze washed our faces with heavy salt air. The wind carried a jumble of pungent smells from which I could swear I could pick out the sharp spices of Madagascar and the moist veldt of Tanzania. Of course, I hadn’t the slightest idea what either of those things actually smelled like, but I was still pretty sure they were in there somewhere.
“You hungry, cowboy?”
I was just about to remind Anita we’d eaten breakfast pretty late and it was probably still too soon for lunch when I realized the salt air was already working its customary magic on my appetite.
“I could eat,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know. What do you feel like?”
“Seafood.”
Anita laughed and the sound of it tinkled in the warm breeze like wind chimes.
“Now there’s a surprise,” she said.
We crossed Beach Road and turned north. Open-air seafood restaurants lined the sidewalk, all of them displaying the day’s inventory on beds of ice spread out in big metal tubs. Offered for inspection were local lobsters, giant prawns, mussels, calamari, oysters, and an array of whole fish that were largely unidentifiable, at least to me. Most of the restaurants also sported huge outdoor grills where the seafood was cooked after it had been selected. The cloying smell of burning coconut shells mixed with the meatier odor of charcoal tugged at the river of tourists that flowed up and down the sidewalks of Beach Road.
Young women dressed in traditional sarongs of dazzlingly colored Thai silk greeted passers-by in front of most of the restaurants. Some offered diffident wais, while others bowed and held out menus. A few cut straight to the chase with smiling shouts of “Come inside, please, sir and madam!”
Anita and I wandered past a dozen or more such places without stopping. I had never been very good at this sort of thing. The technique of picking a restaurant or a place to stay in a town I didn’t know very well was always a puzzle to me. How could I be sure a better choice didn’t lurk just a little way up the road?
Anita and I walked past something called the Pizzadelic Internet Pizzeria, which seemed pleasant enough in spite of its name. It offered a blue and white tiled outdoor bar and functional tables set up near the sidewalk underneath a mural that looked like it had been ripped off from a Grateful Dead concert.
“Want to go in here?” I asked, but Anita kept walking without bothering to reply.
A few moments later I spotted a McDonalds. It was pretty nice looking, too. The brick patio out front had some white plastic tables scattered around under a red and yellow striped awning and the place was jammed with an assortment of tourists and locals knocking back the Big Macs, reading newspapers, and generally engaged in what appeared to be some pretty vigorous hanging out.
I half turned toward Anita, but she spoke before I could manage to say anything.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said.
“Hey, okay, maybe it’s not all that great a place to eat, but at least you got to admit the fries have a lot going for them.”
Anita shot me a look.
“It’s not the food,” she said. “And you know it.”
“Know what?”
“You don’t see anything wrong with it, do you?’
“Wrong with what, Anita?”
“Those people.” She gestured with her head at the crowd lounging around in front of McDonalds. “Look at them.”
I looked.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “It’s mostly just tourists hanging out with their girlfriends.”
“Girlfriends?” Anita snorted. “Those women are whores, Jack.”
Ah-ha, so that was it.
“Young Thai girls hanging around with scruffy middle-aged westerners who are probably twice their age? What do you think those women are, Jack? Schoolteachers on holiday?”
“What is it that bothers you so much, Anita? Is it that those men give the girls some money while they’re here? Or is it that the men are middle-aged and the girls are young.”
Anita didn’t bother to answer, but I wasn’t ready to let her off the hook yet. I was still harboring some resentment from the dinner table conversation at Karsarkis’ party.
“Or maybe,” I pressed on, “it’s mostly that the men are white and the girls aren’t.”
“I don’t make judgments based on skin color,” Anita snapped.
“Excuse me,” I pointed out, “but you just did. Western women usually do when it comes to Thai women. You see a Thai woman with a white man and you assume the white man is there because he’s getting sex and the Thai woman is there because she’s being paid for it. And the worst part is you’re not even ashamed of assuming that.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Oh yes, it is. It’s exactly that easy. I made a deal with guys like those over there a long time ago, Anita. They don’t judge me. I don’t judge them. I figure it’s a pretty fair arrangement all around.”
Anita let the subject drop, which I took to be a pretty good sign, and we walked on for a while after that in a silence.
Eventually we came to a waist-high stone wall behind which black iron tables were scattered across a brick courtyard shaded by a thick canopy of palm trees. The tables were dressed with white linen and folded pink napkins and the whole thing made an undeniably pretty picture. When we stopped to take it in a very young woman of uncommon beauty approached with a shy smile, bobbed her head in a diffident greeting, and proffered a menu. I took it and pretended to study its offerings, but mostly I sneaked surreptitious glances at the girl.
She was wearing a traditional Thai sarong made out of green and gold silk that encased her slim figure from head to toe in a sheath of shimmering color. Her long hair was tar black and glowed with a sheen that held its own even against the vivid luminescence of her dress. She had the wide, unblinking eyes of a cat-a Siamese cat, I thought, but quickly dismissed the comparison as far too obvious-and her face formed a warm yet slightly shy smile that for the life of me I could not imagine to be purely commercial.
“That looks good, Jack. Don’t you think?”
“Yes indeed, I do.”
Anita was considerate enough not to require me to acknowledge we were referring to different things altogether.
The yo kstirateung woman showed us to a table positioned between two thick palms, one which had a fine view of the ocean just across the road. I ordered a bottle of some no-name white wine and we sipped it as we studied the menus. The wind rattled the palm fronds above us, the surf rolled with a basso drumming in the background, and the smells of grilling lobster drifted on the warm, salty air.
It was a nice moment, I had to admit, but not nice enough to make me stop wondering why Anita had wanted us to drive to Patong in the first place. Anita had just made it unmistakably clear that Patong was hardly her kind of place and I knew there was som
ething on her mind other than lunch and a walk through town. I just didn’t know what it was yet.
That was the very moment Anita chose to close her menu, put it down, and tell me what was really going on.
TEN
“I thought maybe after lunch we could have a look in some of the real estate offices, Jack. I’ve been thinking it might be nice to buy a house down here. Someplace I could get out of Bangkok to paint.”
I examined Anita carefully. She seemed to be completely serious.
Anita’s career as an artist had recently taken off. Her London agent was a genius at PR and he had hyped Anita as an Italian woman living and painting in exotic Thailand at exactly the right time to make her sound like the next great hot find. Of course, she had a lot of talent, too, and that was probably the biggest reason for her success, but great PR never hurt anybody. Everything she painted was selling and the prices she was getting were jumping, so I had no reason to doubt the guy’s pitch that Anita was hot. That had always been exactly my own point of view.
Regardless, none of that led me to conclude we ought to be buying a house in Phuket.
“No way, Anita. Absolutely no way. We have a perfectly nice apartment in Bangkok, and don’t forget I’m just a poor business school professor. I can’t afford a vacation house in Phuket.”
“I didn’t ask you to buy a vacation house in Phuket, Jack. I said I was thinking of buying a place here to paint. It won’t be your money and it won’t be your decision.”
Uh-oh.
“I’d like your help and your support, Jack. But it’s not absolutely necessary.”
“Okay, Anita. Calm down. I’m sorry if I was a little harsh. I was just surprised, that’s all. We’ve never talked about anything like this before.”
“Well we’re talking about it now.”
We were indeed, and something about it was already making me uncomfortable as hell. The subject had only just come up, but already I had the distinct feeling we weren’t just talking about a house here. Worse, I couldn’t see exactly what it was we actually were talking about.
The rest of lunch went quietly without either of us mentioning real estate again. The palm fronds continued to rattle, the surf continued to roll, and the smell of lobster continued to drift, but everything was different all of a sudden. It felt to me like Anita had just taken several giant steps back into a place where I was not invited.
When our plates had been cleared and we had both declined coffee, Anita scooted her chair back slightly by way of preface. I had no trouble guessing what was coming next, and of course I was right.
amp;ldq nstira sliguo;I’m going to walk around to a couple of the real estate offices and see what they have listed. Are you coming?”
“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine. I won’t be long.”
Anita’s voice was matter-of-fact as she stood up.
“Where will you be?” she asked.
I looked around, but nowhere particularly interesting came to mind, so I shrugged. “I guess I’ll just have another glass of wine here,” I said. “I’ll meet you back at the jeep in…what? An hour?”
“Fine. The jeep then, in an hour.”
“You remember where it is?”
“Yes, Jack.” Anita pitched her voice in that particular way that always made me uneasy. “I can find the jeep without you holding my hand.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind me not going with you?”
“Of course not, Jack. Why would I mind?”
Why, indeed?
Anita had been gone only a few minutes when a fresh glass of wine arrived, closely followed by a busload of tourists. As the gaggle of extended families unloaded and began piling into the restaurant, the sound of their heavily accented Cantonese clearly marked them to me as Hong Kong Chinese. I decided my peaceful afternoon was probably at an end. Cantonese isn’t a spoken language; it’s a screamed language.
I looked around, sizing up possible escape routes, and noticed a middle-aged westerner sitting by himself at a table not far away from me. He had a straw Stetson tipped back on his head and was gazing at the invading horde of Chinese tourists with obvious bemusement. When he caught my eye, he nodded a friendly greeting.
“How you doing?” he hollered over the clamor.
“I’m doing fine,” I called back noncommittally, although of course I wasn’t.
When the man stood up, collected his beer bottle, and started toward me, I was less than thrilled. Companionship was the last thing I wanted right at that moment, much less the companionship of some yahoo sex tourist wearing a cowboy hat.
“I’ll bet you’re a Yank,” the man beamed as soon as he walked up to the table.
“You got me.”
“Well, hot damn,” he said sticking out his hand. “Me, too. My friends call me CW.”
“Jack Shepherd,” I said, shaking the man’s hand.
He eyed the chair Anita had abandoned. “Mind if I set a spell?”
I didn’t know what else to say and I didn’t want to be rude to the guy, so I shook my head. “Go ahead,” I said.
The man sank heavily into the chair, removed his hat, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“I’m from Dallas myself, but I don’t mind telling you, this heat here is knocking me for a goddamned loop.”
“I guess I must be used to it.”
“Where you from?”
“I was born in the States, but I live in Bangkok now.”
“You live in Bangkok? No shit?”
“No shit. amp;rdq s;Nowidth="uo;
“What do you do there, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“I teach at Chulalongkorn University.”
“Really?” The guy bobbed his head in interest. “What do you teach?”
“International business, corporate planning. That kind of stuff.”
“Wow! Ain’t that something?” The man bobbed his head around as if he could hardly grasp such a thing, then he slyly shook his finger at me. “Something tells me that you’re a lawyer.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
“I knew it,” he nodded. “I knew it.”
Tex took a moment to look pleased with himself for his perspicacity.
“Well, hey,” he said after a moment of awkward silence, “you being a local and all, how about answering a question for a fellow countryman?”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Oh, I was just wondering…”
The cowboy leaned back in his chair and chewed at his lip for a moment, presumably demonstrating all the wondering he was doing, before he spoke. “Exactly how long have you known Plato Karsarkis?”
At first, of course, I thought I had misunderstood him.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“I asked how long you’ve known Plato Karsarkis. Actually, Jack, I suppose I ought to ask you this first. Are you representing him? Are you one of Karsarkis’ lawyers now?”
“No, I don’t represent him,” I responded automatically.
Then I recovered enough from my astonishment to start working up a royal mad-on over this rube’s ambush.
“But, just out of curiosity, who the fuck are you to be asking me something like that, Tex?”
The man reached into a back pocket and took out a black leather folder that looked like a wallet. For a moment I thought the man was about to show me his driver’s license, but then he put the folder on the table between us and flipped it open and of course it wasn’t a driver’s license at all.
There was a big silver star inside. It was pinned to one side of the wallet and an identification card inside a plastic-covered pocket was on the other.
“I’m Deputy United States Marshal Clovis Ward and I’m assigned to the Special Operations Group of the United States Marshals Service. We’re responsible for transporting high-profile prisoners and apprehending fugitives.”
“I don’t believe it.” I sat there shaking my
head. “You have got to be shitting me.”
The cowboy used his forefinger to slip a business card out from under his ID and then pushed it across the table to me.
“Call the marshals service in Washington, Mr. Shepherd. They’ll vouch for me.”
I pushed back from the table without picking up the card and folded my arms.
The fellow looked ex-military, like a noncom who had put in his twenty, retired to Florida, and let himself go slightly to seed; but he still looked a little dangerous, too, mostly around his eyes, which were hard and black and weren’t smiling even though the rest of his face was. His hair was close-c sr wmostropped and badly cut above his receding forehead, and while his upper body appeared fit and muscular his khaki shirt stretched where it buttoned over his belly. I thought I glimpsed the thin purple ghost of a tattoo on the back of his left hand, but he kept it turned slightly away from me and I couldn’t be certain. He had a smoker’s face, heavily lined and with a pattern of sharp ridges and clefts that looked like a topographical map of the Grand Canyon, and his leather-toned skin suggested exposure to a lot of sunlight without the use of FDA-approved creams.
The man sat there saying nothing while I studied him, smiling unblinkingly at me and twirling a pair of aviator-style sunglasses between his thumb and forefinger.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
“Just in case I have the wrong idea, why don’t you spell it out for me?”
The man unbuttoned the flap on one of his shirt pockets, reached in with two fingers, and pulled out something that looked like a thin stack of photographs. He put them on the table on top of his business card, but the pictures, if that’s what they were, were face down. When I reached to turn them over, he covered them with a big hand that was hard and callused.
“You know where the Paradise Bar is?”
“The one here in Patong?” I asked, puzzled, not seeing why he wanted to know.
The man nodded.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s just up the road from here, but-”
“Nine o’clock tonight. Be there or be square.”
