by Jake Needham
“So now can we talk about finding this woman?” Tay asked.
Max nodded, leaned back, and folded his arms.
“You have the floor.”
Tay related the woman’s description in as much detail as he could and told Max exactly when she had been at Secrets.
“I figured there couldn’t be that many attractive white women who come to Pattaya, and knowing the exact time she was here I thought I could find people who had seen her, maybe even pictures from surveillance cameras. I thought if I could figure out where she had stayed or how she had gotten here or left, that would lead to some kind of identification. She didn’t just materialize and then dematerialize. Some kind of transportation was involved and she almost certainly stayed in a hotel somewhere.”
“She could be a local.”
“August doesn’t think so. He seems certain she came here just for that meeting with him and then left again.”
“What was the meeting about?”
Tay just looked at Max.
“Okay, okay,” Max shrugged. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“There aren’t a lot of ways to get in and out of Secrets,” Tay continued. “I thought I would find some street vendors who had seen her or at least some cameras that might have caught her walking by. But I checked the area this evening at exactly the time she would have been there and it was a lot quieter than I remembered it.”
“Business sucks now. The military takeover has scared off the tourists. We’re all hurting, man.”
“I couldn’t find any surveillance cameras in the area either.”
“John doesn’t have any cameras at Secrets?”
“No.”
“Fuck, I got them all over the place here. Most bars have them even if they won’t admit it. A lot of people come to Pattaya who don’t really want anyone to know they’re here. Being on camera isn’t something they’d be too happy about.”
“But you’re telling me most bars have cameras anyway?”
“Sure. We cover our ass. If some punter finds out and gets pissed off, so what? There are always more where he came from. Sure as shit John must’ve been up to some flaky shit at Secrets if he didn’t want any cameras around.”
“You have cameras out front?”
“Nope, all inside. I honestly can’t think of any bars that have outside cameras. There are a few webcams around in Walking Street, but I think they’re just live feeds. As far as I know, those feeds aren’t recorded anywhere.”
“So, the chances of finding a picture of her aren’t very good?”
“Unless she made the rounds of the go-go bars and hustled a few broads, I’d say there is no chance at all.”
“Then I guess it’s back to finding people who saw her when she came to Secrets. Street vendors, doormen, maybe waiters or store clerks. And there was damn near nobody around when I walked the area around Secrets tonight. That’s not very encouraging.”
Max chuckled. “Don’t give up so fast, my little friend. You’re looking for the wrong people.”
“Really? Then who should I be looking for?”
Max got up and opened the office door. He shouted something into the bar and waited until a skinny young boy Tay hadn’t seen before appeared and stood deferentially in the doorway with his hands folded. Max rattled off something in the language Tay had heard before and now gathered must be Korean. The boy nodded quickly, turned, and trotted away.
“Drink your water, Tay. This shouldn’t take but a few minutes.”
Sure enough, not more than five minutes later there was a sharp rap on the office door and Max bellowed, “Enter!”
The door opened and Tay looked at the slightly tubby middle-aged Thai standing there. He wore a light blue T-shirt with dark blue jeans and white sneakers, but over his clothes was a bright orange visibility vest with the number 1 in black on one side of the vest and a few words in Thai lettering on the other.
Tay had seen motorcycle taxi riders all over Pattaya waiting patiently for passengers in queues at busy locations around town or, not infrequently, stretched out on top of the bikes fast asleep. Tay had never ridden a motorcycle taxi. Being stuck in traffic sucking on the exhaust from a clapped-out Chinese bus didn’t particularly appeal to him, but he knew that motorcycle taxis were a mainstay of the urban transportation system all over Thailand.
Max spoke several sentences to the man in the orange vest in rapid-fire Thai and he nodded without saying anything.
“Give me that woman’s description again, Tay.”
“Somewhat Chinese looking, but more western than Chinese. Slim and on the short side. Black hair pulled back into a braided bun. She was wearing jeans and black ankle boots with low heels and a white shirt buttoned at the cuffs. She had a big green leather shoulder bag hanging over her shoulder that looked expensive. Actually, August described her as looking expensive in general. He said the most striking thing about her was her pale complexion. He said she was so pale she glowed like an angel stepping out of a Tintoretto painting.”
“Glowed?”
“Glowed.”
“Huh.”
Max scratched his ear and considered that.
“And just remind me exactly when would she have been walking back and forth to Secrets,” he said after a moment.
Tay told him.
Max thought for a moment, then looked back at the man in the orange vest and rattled at him in Thai for a minute or two. The man listened, but he said nothing. He just responded with a wai, a gracious gesture of respect common in Thailand in which the palms of both hands are brought together just below the chin in a way that looks rather like the Christian sign of prayer, then he closed the door and disappeared.
“Where are you staying, Tay?”
“At the Hilton.”
“Huh,” Max grunted. “I should have guessed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a nice hotel. You look like a man who stays in nice hotels.”
Tay wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he said nothing.
“These motorcycle taxi guys see everything. Somchai is the big boss around this area. He’ll put out the word to the boys and, if she was here, we’ll get some sightings. Maybe enough to map out her movements around town. By the way, each sighting Somchai comes up with is going to cost a thousand baht for whoever saw this woman plus another five hundred baht for Somchai. I assume you can cover that.”
Tay nodded. That was less than $50 for each sighting. A bargain.
“Then go back to the Hilton,” Max said. “Order yourself a nice dinner from room service and wait for me to call. I’ll bet I have something for you in a couple of hours.”
As it turned out, it only took one hour and thirty-seven minutes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After Tay got back to the Hilton, the first thing he did was lock the gun Max had given him in the room safe. The second thing he did was find the room service menu.
He wasn’t looking for a dining experience, he just wanted not to feel hungry, and the club sandwich was the first thing that caught his eye that didn’t look like it would be more effort to eat than it was worth. He would wager hotels sold a lot of club sandwiches to a lot of people for exactly that reason.
When the telephone in Tay’s room rang, he was just finishing the last quarter of his sandwich.
“Hello?”
“Take the elevator to the ground floor lobby, go outside, and turn right. Walk toward Beach Road. There’s a Starbucks about fifty feet down that way. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”
“Max?”
“Who the fuck you expecting? Donald Trump? Fifteen minutes.”
And with that Max hung up.
When Tay found the Starbucks, Max was already sitting at an outside table with a tourist map of Pattaya spread open in front of him. It was late enough that the place was half empty so no one else was near enough to overhear their conversation, and there was enough breeze off the ocean th
at Tay wasn’t actually dripping sweat so he didn’t mind the lack of air conditioning.
“What have you got?” Tay asked as he sat down.
“Nine motorcycle taxi guys who think they saw her and are sure they have the right period of time, and three more who are sure they saw her but aren’t positive about the time.”
Max pointed to the map.
“The red x’s are the ones who are sure about the time, and the black x’s are the others.”
Tay looked at the map in the dim light, but it was a bit blurry no matter how much he squinted. Damn it all, he was going to have to get glasses.
Eventually he was able to pick out the ocean, and that was a start. Then he found what he thought was Beach Road, but after that he was pretty well lost.
It didn’t really matter. Lost or not, he saw immediately that the x’s were sprinkled all around the map in no discernible pattern. Either some or all of the sightings were wrong, or the woman had been pretty much everywhere in town.
“When you offer money for information, some of it is bullshit,” Max said, “but some of it is good.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“Why ask me? You’re the fucking detective.”
Tay glanced at Max without responding, then pulled the map closer and squinted at it some more.
“Where is Secrets?” he asked.
Max took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket, studied the map for a moment, and then drew a small circle on it.
“And where are we now?”
Max drew a second circle.
With the locations of Secrets and the Hilton marked, the sightings began to look a little more orderly. There were a few outliers, three in particular off to themselves near the top of the map, but most of the sightings were strung out roughly in a straight line between the two locations.
Max put his finger on two sightings that were close together at the end of the line closest to the Hilton.
“Somchai thinks these are the most reliable reports. He says he’s pretty sure neither of these riders were drunk or high on paint thinner that day.”
Tay glanced up and saw Max wasn’t smiling. He made a mental note to renew his policy of not riding on a motorcycle taxi in Thailand no matter how tempted he might become.
Looking back at the map, Tay tried to work out where the sightings had occurred that Max was pointing to, but he wasn’t familiar enough with Pattaya for the map to make immediate sense to him.
“Where were those sightings, Max?” he asked. “Give me some kind of landmark.”
When Max didn’t respond, Tay glanced up again and saw Max was just sitting there pointing toward the street. Looking in the direction Max indicated with his index finger, Tay took in the line of orange-vested motorcycle taxi drivers lined up with their bikes in front of Starbucks waiting for passengers.
“Here?”
Max nodded. “Maybe she was meeting someone, or maybe she just drank a lot of coffee.”
“Or maybe she was staying at the Hilton.”
“See?” Max said spreading his hands, “I knew you were a fucking detective.”
Tay left Max enough money to take care of the tipsters and a bit of extra for his trouble, then he took the map upstairs to his room and called room service for a pot of coffee. He hadn’t bothered to order any when he was downstairs in Starbucks. He had better taste in coffee than that.
Right after breakfast the next morning, Tay went down to the lobby and checked out the desk clerks behind the long reception counter. They were all attractive young women who appeared to be in their twenties, but that was not why Tay was checking them out. He was looking for somebody who appeared deferential, somebody not likely to ask him too many questions.
When he had made his choice, he walked directly up to where the woman was working, her head down studying something on a computer screen.
“I’m Inspector Tay of the Singapore Police.”
The woman’s head snapped up and Tay saw her body tense. He held up his warrant card.
“Who is the hotel’s security director?”
The woman’s eye darted back and forth as if she was looking for help. Tay didn’t want to give her time to find any.
“What is his name, please, madam?”
“Uh…” Her eyes darted back and forth again, but seemed to find nothing. “Khun Robert,” she stammered. “Khun Robert is Director of Security.”
Khun is a polite form of address Thais place in front of almost everyone’s name, particularly people whom they think might be of superior status. Thais are good at keeping social and professional rankings of status straight. They have to be to live in Thailand.
But Khun Robert? Now it was Tay’s turn to look startled.
“Your Director of Security isn’t Thai?” Tay asked.
“Oh yes.” The young woman nodded her head vigorously. “He Thai.”
Odd. A Thai named Robert?
“Would you get him for me, please?”
The young woman hesitated. Her eyes did the flipping around thing again.
“Right now,” Tay snapped in his best policeman’s voice. He hoped it would intimidate the young woman without scaring the crap out of her.
It worked fine. She jerked up a telephone receiver without any further hesitation and said something in Thai that Tay thought included the name Khun Robert. She waited a few moments, glancing back at Tay and offering an uncertain smile, and then began to speak again in a tone that was decidedly deferential. Tay had little doubt that she had reached the Director of Security.
When she hung up, she said to Tay, “He coming.”
Tay thanked her and walked across the lobby away from the reception desk where he stood looking out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at Pattaya Bay. He did that for three reasons. The first was that he didn’t want to have this conversation in front of a desk clerk who would almost certainly be tempted to gossip about it later. The second was that he needed some time to size up the Director of Security before he had to make his pitch to him. And the third reason was that he wanted to check the lobby for cameras.
He found several and was just wondering whether there were others he couldn’t find when he glanced back toward the reception desk and saw a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit talking to the young desk clerk. Any doubt as to who it was evaporated when the woman pointed toward Tay and the man turned to look. Tay beat back the impulse to wave.
Tay made him for mid-fifties. He looked to be around six feet tall and heavily built, and his shaved head glimmered in the morning sun streaming into the lobby. He made Tay think of an athlete who had grown older and heavier and had shaved his head when he started going bald. The man’s face looked generically Asian with something else thrown in, but his skin was brown and his face was deeply lined. Tay would never have picked him as a Thai. Maybe he wasn’t and the woman on the reception desk only assumed he must be.
“Inspector?” he asked when he had crossed the lobby to where Tay was waiting. “I’m Robert Jackson, the Director of Security. I’m sorry, but the receptionist didn’t remember your name.”
Which suited Tay just fine.
“Inspector Samuel Tay. I’m with Singapore CID.” Tay extended his hand.
After they had shaken, Jackson extracted a business card from the breast pocket of his jacket. He offered it to Tay with both hands in the Asian manner. Tay accepted it the same way and pretended to study it for a moment in the expected gesture of respect. After he pocketed the business card, he took out his warrant card and held it up. Jackson bent forward slightly and inspected it, but he followed the accepted protocol and didn’t attempt to take it.
“Forgive me, but I’m a little surprised that the Director of Security isn’t a Thai.”
“Oh, I’m a Thai all right,” Jackson chuckled. “That’s how I got this job.”
“It probably helped that your English is very good.”
“It should be. I was born in L.A. and I was an L.A. cop for twenty years.�
�� He placed his forefinger against his cheek. “That’s where all these lines came from.”
Now it was Tay’s turn to chuckle as he knew he was expected to. “So, now I suppose you must be—”
“Happily retired. When I had my twenty in, I pulled the pin as quickly as I could and went looking for a better way to live. I found it here.”
“Too many assumptions. Now I’m a little embarrassed.”
“Don’t be, Inspector. It’s not exactly painted on my forehead.”
Jackson smiled and Tay was a little surprised at the warmth in it. He figured there might be some mileage in the old cop-to-cop pitch. Jackson probably didn’t see many foreign cops here.
“How may I help you, Inspector?”
“We’re trying to locate a woman who we think may have stayed here a little less than a week ago.”
“What makes you think she was here?”
“We have sightings in Pattaya that appear to suggest she moved between this area and other parts of town.”
“Is there an outstanding warrant on her?”
“No, nothing like that. She’s more of a witness. At least she might be.”
Close enough for government work.
“We just need to talk to her,” Tay hurried on, “and I’m trying to establish her movements so we can locate her. That’s why I’m here… informally.”
Tay knew that word informally would signal to a retired L.A. cop that they were keeping this investigation away from the Thai police. He also knew that a retired L.A. cop who was the security director of the Hilton in Pattaya would understand exactly why they were doing that. The Thai cops had considerably less than an impeccable reputation for discretion, a poor reputation for diligence, and no reputation at all for integrity.
“Then she’s not here now?”
“Not as far as I know.”
Jackson fished a notebook and pen out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “May I know her name?”
“I wish I could tell you, but all I have is a description. I was hoping you would let me review your CCTV data and see if I can pick her up.”
