The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk
A Bob Lowe Investigation
Zach J Brodsky
Copyright © 2019 Zach J Brodsky
Published by Brodsky Press 2019
E-book edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
www.zachjbrodsky.com
ISBN 978-1-9164938-2-7
DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is book is dedicated to Tobias and Jemima; thanks for encouraging me to take the time to focus on creating the first book in the Bob Lowe Series. This book was written in Thailand, India, and the UK. Bangkok continues to be a remarkable city and anyone who has visited will probably see a hint of realism even in the most absurd events in The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk.
In common with Bob Lowe, I love this city and country that has been my home for many years. The first time I tasted ba me moo daeng giaw naam (Noodle soup with barbecue pork and dumplings) at the top of Sukhumvit 68, I knew I was somewhere special.
Many thanks to my editor Melanie Underwood for her hard work and for convincing me that I really should be hyphenating tuk-tuk!
Bangkok, November 2019
Glossary of Thai Words
555 – 5 in Thai is ‘ha’ so 555 in a text is laughing, ha haha
Aroi Maak – delicious
Farang – foreigner
Gaeng Maak – Very good
Ka, Khrap – Polite particles added to a sentence
Khaw Man Gai – Chicken with rice
Khun – A polite prefix to a name, Mr/Miss etc.
Maak – very when added to an adjective
Mai pen rai – Never mind, no worries
Mamasan – the woman who runs a bar with women for hire.
Moo Daeng – Barbecued Pork
Na – Particle used to soften a sentence
Narak – Cute
Nong – A prefix before the name of someone younger
Pee – A prefix before the name of someone older
Phuut Thai – Speak Thai
Soi – road
Ting tong – crazy
Wai – A greeting, placing both hands together
Yaba – Literally ‘crazy drug’ a cheap local amphetamine derivative
Ya ice – local name for crystal methamphetamine
ONE
Bob sat in his office and looked out at the people rushing through the mall. It was 10:30am, rather late for people to be on their way to work, he mused to himself. He called it his ‘office’, but on this day he was perched in ‘Coffee Corner’, a mediocre café in the corner of the ground floor of a small mall, near to Asok Skytrain station and attached to an office block. He had skirted by Starbucks on the way in and chuckled to himself. There were people paying a hundred baht and upwards for a coffee, some of the frappé-whatsits were nearer to two hundred. At Coffee Corner it was thirty-five baht for a hot black coffee. It suited Bob Lowe perfectly. He didn’t always have an office base as such, but on this Monday morning he actually had some work to do, or potential work. Bob Lowe’s Private Investigation service with its tagline of ‘no job too small’, had been running for nearly six months and business was slow off the ground, to say the least. Bob’s low-cost, means-tested, limited advertising business model was not proving totally effective.
“Time, my dear Susie. We must give it time,” Bob had repeatedly said to his friend and supposed business partner, Susie Hoare. Her role as business partner was at present confined to listening to Lowe’s musings and rants and allowing him to sleep on her sofa. He had quickly realised that with no guaranteed salary and his backup funds running seriously low, that rent was a luxury he simply couldn’t afford.
Bob felt he had hit on a potential winning formula. He had heard in the past of farang (foreigners) in town who provided a service for overseas clients. They would check up on their girlfriends and confirm if they were still operating as ‘bar girls’, the term Bangkok gave to its bar-based prostitutes. This had proved quite profitable for some people. Who, Bob wondered, was providing the same such service to local women? Many an expat philanderer was to be found playing around, cheating on their girlfriends and Lowe felt he was just the man to assist.
He had explained this many times to Susie, trying hard not to reveal to her that he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the bar girl scene in Bangkok. That was all in his past, he told himself.
“But, Bob, what can you charge them? Surely most won’t be able to pay you enough for you to make a living.”
“Aha. Well ahead of you there, Suze. I already have a payment plan worked out for my less financially secure clients. On taking the job I will charge one beer. One more beer for each day I am working the case and two beers on successful completion.” Bob sat back, with a smug, satisfied grin on his face.
Susie was horrified. “Oh my God! You’re actually serious!” Her trademark big toothy grin spread across her face, revealing her wrinkles in a sort of rippling effect.
Bob was deadly serious. When it came to beer, Bob Lowe didn’t joke. He reckoned if he could get himself two or three of the low-income clients a week, and spend about a week on each case, then he could basically get free beer. This was of course supplementary to the paying clients he felt he would eventually be able to get.
Bob was already spreading the word in the bars he frequented, and with some of the girls he knew. What he really needed was for them to pass the word on to the ex-bar girls. He envisioned a sort of pyramid scheme where his potential client base would grow simply and exponentially. The ones who had settled with a boyfriend, these were the ones he needed to market his services to; this was where the money was at, in Bob’s opinion. He was confident that he knew how these men would operate. They would never drink in the same bar or areas where they had met their partners for example. That was basic, and Bob knew all the alternatives and options.
He continued to wait in Coffee Corner. The previous night he had received a call from just such an ex-bar girl, Pim. Bob remembered her well. Pim had never forgotten him either; he was quite a unique character in all manner of ways, but there was one specific reason Pim remembered him. The night Bob had ‘bar-fined’ Pim, paid the fee to have her take leave from her bar job for the night, he had become encased with guilt. This was classic Lowe. Pim had told him that he was her fourth client of the day, and he’d suddenly felt a wave of sympathy. She explained that she was exhausted and that the previous client had not been a nice guy. She kept repeating that he was ‘very strong man’. Bob wasn’t sure if he wanted to enquire as to just what that meant. He just assumed it couldn’t have been a good thing. Bob dropped her home in a taxi, gave her one thousand baht and went off in search of a massage; with happy ending of course. Such was the contradiction, the enigma that was Bob Lowe. Having felt guilty at hiring the services of a woman for sex, he took refuge in getting a massage with sex attached.
On the phone call, Pim had told Bob, “I remember you, you good man.”
Bob had explained to Pim that they needed to meet so he could get all the details from her. Bob then rambled on, and most of it went over Pim’s head, or at least beyond her level of interest.
“You see I don’t have an office, Pim. My clients you see. Always consider the clients. Put the c
lients first. They don’t want…you don’t want to face the indignity of walking into a private detective agency. Mobile offices, or ‘work spaces’, it’s all the rage these days, Pim, you trust me on this.”
He had arranged to meet Pim at ten thirty in Coffee Corner. The fact that Pim could be up and about that early in the morning was a clear sign that she’d left the bar girl game. In the old days, Bob knew all too well, she’d have usually worked until three or four in the morning or if she’d landed a client she might be occupied until lunchtime the next day or, on occasions, even beyond that.
He almost didn’t recognise Pim when she walked in. She looked like a normal person, he thought, and instantly scolded himself internally for such a crass thought. When Lowe had known Pim from her days working in Soi Cowboy she had tended to wear a tight crop top to show off her bust and a very short skirt with silver stilettoes. He realised how stupid he had been to expect that vision of Pim to walk into Coffee Corner at ten thirty to meet him.
She took a seat next to Bob. She had not been confident she would recognise him but at this time he was the only person in the small café.
“Ah, my dear Pim, you’re looking a picture of health if I may be so bold.”
“Hello, Khun Bob, how are you?” Pim replied, somewhat awkwardly.
“Couldn’t be better, can’t complain. This new business of mine really is very exciting. Boy do I have some big cases to deal with.”
Bob had no idea why he started to begin this bullshit with Pim, she wasn’t remotely interested and it certainly wasn’t going to influence her in ‘employing’ his services.
Bob could sense her disinterest, not something Bob was always able to do, his lack of perceptive ability being one of his many faults. He thought it prudent to get straight down to business.
“So, what can I do for you, Miss Pim?” Bob got a cheap notepad out of his scruffy plastic bag, and opened to a fresh page onto which he wrote, P014. He chose the number fourteen at random, he didn’t want Pim to think he didn’t have multiple clients.
“You see, Pim, even my notes will be anonymous and entirely confidential.”
“It about my boyfriend, I not know if he good man or bad man.”
“I see, tell me more…” Bob wrote his first notes on this case: Boyf, good or bad?
“He home late many time. He say he working alway but I smell beer sometime. Sometime he go to holiday and he say it work. I not know. My friend say English teacher not need go away Saturday, Sunday.”
“Yes, I see your predicament. Well you’ve come to the right man. This is an area of speciality for me.” Bob tried to relax Pim. Put the client at ease. Rule number one on the Lowe PI list of rules.
Bob began to take down all the salient details. Pim had met this ‘Brian’ character in the usual bar she worked. It took Bob some time to ascertain that his name was in fact Brian, not an easy name for Pim to pronounce. At first Bob had heard ‘By on’ and had thought he may be named after Lord Byron, the great English poet.
“And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on,” Bob quoted Byron, adding, “tragically apt, my dear.”
Pim didn’t know how to react. She did see Bob write the name down and corrected him. “No it not write this. It B-R-I-A-N, same like that.”
Bob fought the temptation to try and teach Pim how to pronounce her boyfriend’s first name.
“Now, what’s his surname?” Bob tried to sound professional.
Pim explained that she wasn’t sure what his surname was. A rather extraordinary state of affairs, but Bob wondered if this Brian could pronounce or spell Pim’s full name.
Given that Pim and Brian had lived together for six months she gave remarkably little information. She knew he taught English, but wasn’t entirely sure where although she explained she could find out. She gave Bob a few first names of Brian’s friends, but little else. In fact the only really concrete and useful thing was Brian’s address, which was, nonetheless, a good place to start.
In Bob’s means-tested system he had to enquire about Pim’s finances. She explained that Brian gave her fifteen thousand baht a month out of which she had to pay bills (not including rent) and do the food shopping and general home expenses. The rest she could send to her family.
Bob explained that he’d need five hundred baht to retain his services, then he would charge five hundred baht for each week he was working the case, plus expenses. To Bob’s relief, Pim agreed without complaint; he really didn’t want to start having to negotiate his fee down.
Pim paid Bob a thousand baht upfront and Bob explained he would be in touch by the LINE messaging app, with necessary updates. Pim added ‘LOWEPI’ to her contacts’ list and left Bob to get on with the case. Pim promised to text Bob if and when Brian was out in the evening. Bob had told Pim he would be following Brian on the way to work the next morning.
Bob sat back and slurped noisily on the dregs of his coffee. He politely indicated to the waitress that he’d like one more. “Bob Lowe PI. Who’d have thought it? Lowe is back,” he muttered to himself at a volume that most people would be too embarrassed to talk aloud, in public, but Bob Lowe wasn’t most people.
He chuckled at the extraordinary path his life seemed to be taking, yet again. From being a first-class honours graduate in politics and economics, then a somewhat successful investment banker, he had proceeded to quit it all for a life of teaching English overseas. Initially Bob had embraced the job with great enthusiasm, almost passion. Within a year he was a grizzled, drunk, sex-pat or ‘Nana Dweller’. Nana Dweller was a term exclusive to Bangkok, coined to describe the desperate men who spent all their time and money in the Nana area of town; one of Bangkok’s notorious red-light districts. He had finally found a place where he felt he belonged – that is Bangkok rather than specifically the dodgy parts of town. The reality was that it was the dodgy parts of town where he invested most of his time. He spent years kidding himself that he was living the dream, before it all came crashing down. Those days were behind him now, although he had to keep reminding himself to prevent his mind wandering either misty eyed into the past or bringing him back down to a depression.
TWO
Suchart Lerksapong was a man of routine. He woke every day at 6:30am and brewed himself a strong cup of coffee in his kitchen, before heading out to sit in front of his small house. Suchart lived in a cosy wooden Thai house just off Soi Pipat, which was in turn just off Soi Convent in the fashionable Silom part of town. His small soi had managed to retain its strong ‘Thainess’ despite being a stone’s throw from a part of town that was rapidly and inevitably gentrifying; giving in to the modern world of high-rise condos, transnational corporation head offices, and shopping malls. Suchart wasn’t really one of those cantankerous old men who didn’t like change, but he did miss the old Bangkok ways.
Suchart had lived in this same house for nearly forty years since he arrived as a young man from his home town of Lopburi where he was born and raised. His children had long since fled the family home, but still lived in Bangkok and visited often. His darling wife, Ploy, had passed away some three years earlier. It was strange for Suchart at times, how quiet the house was. He still missed Ploy terribly, and thought about her all the time, but he had also become quite accustomed to living alone. He liked being able to do his own thing, watch whatever he wanted on TV, cook whatever he felt like eating and leave the house a mess at times. He used to laugh to himself when he noticed he hadn’t cleaned up his coffee mug, thinking what Ploy would have said to him.
Suchart still earned a decent enough living from driving his tuk-tuk and he enjoyed the job. He’d chat a lot with customers, many of whom were regulars taking small trips around the area. For example, there was the young businessman who would often grab a quick ride to the Skytrain station (BTS), if there were no motorbikes available. Of course a good number of his customers were tourists, and Suchart enjoyed his attempts at speaking English with them. He felt proud of his ability to speak English, though
in reality his grasp of the language was very limited.
He was also very proud of his job. Suchart Lerksapong was indeed a proud man. He felt that by driving a tuk-tuk he was desperately preserving an important part of Thai culture. His kids told him frequently ‘people order taxis with their mobile phones these days’, but Suchart was convinced the humble tuk-tuk still had a role to play.
On this particular morning, Suchart was awoken at 5am by an alarming noise outside. It was alarming that there was any noise at all. Nothing happened on this soi before 5:30am and even that was not a noise to wake you. He peered outside his upstairs window; Suchart’s house was a simple two-floor design. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He blinked to check he wasn’t seeing things in a state of half-sleep. He clearly saw his tuk-tuk trundling down the soi. Stolen. He shimmied down the stairs, and only confirmed what he had seen from the window. The tuk-tuk which was always parked outside, tucked right into his house, had gone.
In his typically pragmatic way, Suchart decided he would go back to sleep and then contact the police first thing in the morning. There was little point trying to contact the Silom police at 5am, they’d still be dealing with the drunken happenings of a typical Bangkok night.
Crime on this soi? Suchart asked himself. It really was unheard of. In all his forty years the only criminal activities he could ever remember were local kids (sometimes his own!), pinching sweets from Nat and Ning’s small ‘Mom & Pop’ store which was a few houses down. He’d never seen a policeman actually down his little sub-soi. Sure, on Soi Convent itself, but never down this quiet little alley.
Suchart felt a wave of melancholy sweep over him. What is happening to the world? He lay in bed and pondered that at least his beloved Ploy didn’t have to face the devastation of a stolen tuk-tuk right outside their house.
Suchart re-woke at 7:10am, he’d had something of a lie-in, what with all the drama of the theft two hours earlier. He crept down his rickety old wooden staircase to make himself a cup of coffee, as he did every morning. This time he felt he needed to see once again the horrors of the stolen tuk-tuk. He peered out of the metallic netted grid-style front door and got another shock that he really wasn’t expecting. There, exactly as he had parked it the night before sat his tuk-tuk, in all its glory. After his delight and relief had passed he sat down with his coffee, bewildered. Had he dreamt it? Impossible! He remembered moving to the window, the wooden floorboards creaking and the unmistakable sound of his electric vehicle moving off down the soi. Those details could simply not be a dream, that was out of the question.
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