Pattaya 24/7

by Christopher G. Moore

  Calvino glanced around the empty restaurant. Tables and chairs gathering dust. He had an idea the owner could remember everyone who ever came through the door. “He worked as a reporter,” said Calvino.

  “He worked for my newspaper,” said Mike.

  The owner slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Oh, I remember, he came in months and months ago and . . .”

  “And?” asked Calvino.

  “He brought his wife and kids for dinner. It was his wife’s birthday.”

  “Did you know he worked for the local newspaper?” asked Calvino.

  The owner nodded. “He asked if I had ever hired any Khmer girls as waitresses. And I told him all my girls were Thai. I whispered so his wife wouldn’t hear that if he wanted Khmer girls there was a massage parlor four doors up the road. He’d find plenty of them working there.”

  “Did he you ever see him again?”

  The owner shook head. “Just that one time.”

  In Pattaya you only saw someone once before he disappeared. Vaporized. As far as the owner was concerned, Pramote had ceased to exist a very long time ago. This was the same turn-off switch that foreigners used with each other. It was no special offence to the Thais; it was just that the foreigners didn’t know any better. And who could expect them to know? They liked to stay within a narrow circle of people they could trust. It was a place that attracted people who wanted to start a new life, people who had decided to go missing in action. No one asked too many questions, and the collective forgetting of individual past lives was a silent bond between them. It didn’t matter if a man was on the run from an ex-wife, ex-employer, the police, the mob, so long as he stayed off the radar screen, laid low, and became one of those people others weren’t hunting for. There were other kinds of foreigners, ex-military, retirees or people who had woken up and discovered they had grown old and heard Pattaya was a perfect place to run away. They were on the run from old age, which, like the police or mob, would one day tap them on the shoulder and put them in their grave. It turned out that Zorro had used a small grubstake to start up a small business and something like a mention in Mike’s newspaper meant the difference between going under and getting through another couple of months until the tourists returned. It was a place where men came to hide; it was also a place where men came to die. Not of old age but at the hand of someone looking to settle a score.

  Mike was already at the door when Calvino turned around with one more question for the owner.

  “Where do you get your goat cheese?”

  The owner smiled. There was a question he liked. “It is very good, yes?”

  “Where did you say it came from?”

  “A very tall man who is a piano player.”

  “Valentine?”

  The owner nodded. “I can give you his number if you want.”

  “Do you remember a man who worked for Valentine? Prasit was his name. He was a gardener and worked with the goats, too.”

  He screwed up his mouth, “Prasit, Prasit?” Then a light went on. “Of course, I remember him.”

  “He’s dead,” said Calvino.

  The owner’s head jerked slightly. “You bring news of two dead men. I hope that you are finished.”

  Calvino took another name card from a stack near the front door. “I’ll give you a call if I can think of anyone else.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  AFTER LUNCH, MIKE returned to his office and Calvino walked four doors down to the massage parlor. The Harmony Massage parlor occupied a shophouse constructed from concrete blocks with all the grace and elegance of a public pier. The tinted windows prevented perverts from leering at the girls sitting inside. The mirror opposite of a police interrogation room: those inside could look out and those outside were left to their imaginations. Calvino walked through the dimly lit main room. An old woman swept what appeared to be broken glass at the far end. The broom scratched the glass against the floor. Well-thumbed newspapers and magazines covered a table in the waiting area. Like the Greek restaurant, the massage parlor was empty. The only visible inhabitants were the old maid and a mama san sitting behind the front desk, her nose in a cheap paperback. She looked up as Calvino leaned on the desk. A price list was inside a plastic stand on the counter.

  Baht 200 for an hour, Baht 400 for an oil massage. Fix price. No negotiations.

  Calvino looked up from the sign. “Where are the girls?” asked Calvino.

  The mama san looked over the top of her glasses. Creases and lines criss-crossed her face like a series of cobwebs; it was difficult to believe the face staring up had ever been young. She glanced over her shoulder. He saw a door framed with opaque glass like the kind used in public toilets.

  “You have any Khmer girls?”

  She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “You want dark-skinned girl?” she asked.

  “You have?”

  A moment later a girl with pencil-thin arms and legs walked in wearing baggy shorts, flip-flops and a tight-fitting T-shirt with the words: Ready to Serve, Ready to Die. She had green- blue bruises on her arms.

  “Are you a Cambodian girl?”

  “I Surin girl,” she said, edgy, her smile peaking before being erased altogether.

  “Nice. But I really am looking for a Khmer girl.”

  “Same, same,” said the mama san.

  “Either you have Khmer girls or you don’t.”

  “You make trouble for me?”

  “I am not making trouble for anybody. All I am asking is if you have any Khmer working here.”

  The mama san had hit a button under her desk with the dexterity of an executioner working on auto-pilot. A minute later, two men came running out from the other side of the door. The first one through, his fist balled up, caught Calvino in the stomach, doubling him over. The second one kicked him in the head as he started to go down. It was a perfect kick, landing square and hard. His ear rang and he saw a starburst inside in his head. The Surin ying disappeared, the mama san slipped her glasses on and turned the page in her paperback as the two men continued to punch and kick Calvino. Blood poured from one ear. He raised his hands to protect himself in time to catch the leg of one of the men, and he twisted it hard; hearing something crack, he let go. The man howled in pain; his eyes flashed a sickly white, the pupils having gone north. Calvino caught his breath, shook his head, and got to his feet as the second man—who was younger and fitter than the one wailing on the floor—threw a couple of kick-boxing moves. Calvino backed away, bleeding. The young man moved forward, kicking and punching, none of the blows landing.

  Backpedaling, stumbling and nearly falling, Calvino steadied himself against a small palm tree, uprooting it from the planter. He figured that Valentine would forgive him for ripping out a living being with a hard-to-remember Latin name.

  Calvino waited for the young man to give him an opening and, finding it, on the last series of kicks, the chance came. He thrust the dirt and roots of the palm tree into the kick-boxer’s face, blinding him long enough for Calvino to land three hard punches that knocked out two teeth and flattened the man’s nose. As he stood back, the mama san had put down her novel and replaced her reading glasses with another pair of glasses. She held a .38 on him, her finger inside the trigger case. He rubbed his knuckles. They were cut and bruised and throbbed. One of the Calvino’s laws: Never argue with someone pointing a .38 at your midsection and asking you to leave by the same door you came in.

  “I was just leaving. If your massages weren’t so rough you might have more business. You might a try a sensitivity course for some of the staff. Something to think about when you are counting your money.”

  “You ask too many questions. People don’t like. You go to Bangkok, then no problem. You stay in Pattaya, then maybe a big problem for you. You understand?”

  She was speaking English. And she was holding a gun on him. Of course he understood. “Who told you I was asking questions?”

  “You go now. Or there may be an accident.
”

  “Like Khun Pramote had an accident.”

  The mama san said nothing only tightening her lips, her knuckles white around the large gun.

  “I think you not live long in Thailand,” she said.

  “Long enough to have a good idea when it’s time to leave. Glad to have met you and the boys. Next time I’ll make an appointment.”

  One of the men—he had palm tree dirt on his face—had almost climbed to his feet when Calvino hit him hard in the gut, folding him down on the floor as the air went out of his lungs. The old woman had already moved in with her broom, sweeping around the bodies and collecting the dirt into a neat pile. She was in the line of fire. Still, it had been a stupid move, he thought. A nervous mama san with a gun would have happily shot the maid and him and had the local police call it a lover’s triangle.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  VALENTINE DRESSED CASUALLY, having slipped into his favorite TV viewing clothing: a pair of baggy old shorts and a T-shirt. His hair was still wet. He was freshly showered and sat on the sofa using the remote to surf through a DVD with the best of National Geographic programs. In his lap was a plate of goat cheese and crackers. He never moved his eye from the TV screen as he attempted with one hand to spread a cracker with the smooth, soft white cheese. The knife kept slipping. Number One took the knife away the way a mother would from a child and finished buttering cheese onto the cracker. He opened his mouth without looking at her, the cracker or the cheese, and she slipped it inside much like one would feed a zoo animal. On his right-hand side, within reach, a bottle of white wine cooled in a bucket of ice. Another of the girls slowly turned the bottle in the ice. The air-con chilled the room, the ice chilled the bottle, and together they watched savages in hot, steamy climes, sweating and panting. Kem’s job was to rotate the bottle in the bucket of ice and she was charged with the responsibility of keeping his glass filled to the half-way mark. Calvino slipped in and lowered himself into a chair. The light from the window slanted onto the floor. Valentine saw Calvino out of the corner of his eye.

  “Welcome, Vincent. Have some wine and cheese.” Valentine was distracted as he spotted the program he’d been searching for halfway down the menu showing on the screen.

  “The glass isn’t half full,” he said, his eyes on Kem.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Please pay attention. And get a glass for Khun Vincent. Hurry, hurry or you’ll miss the opening.”

  “I could use a drink.”

  “National Geographic should be called the savages’ channel. This is truly remarkable family entertainment. How else can a man forge a bond with his harem? A rhetorical question. Number One likes the pagan rituals of small Indians who lived on ants and snakes in the Amazon forest. I believe she likes their diet. And Number Two is quite keen on a rite of passage for young girls in Africa where village women cut off the clitoris. Number Three is a fan of Papua New Guinea cannibals with the shrunken heads of their enemies tied around their waist. And my personal favorite is a sad one. A saga about a goat-herding family in New Zealand where there is poison in the soil and half of the goats die off from cancer. I tear up each time I see the poor goats.”

  “Something for the entire family,” said Calvino.

  Valentine looked up, hitting the Pause button. “My God, what happened to your face?” His jaw dropped as he lowered his wine glass and plate of cheese.

  “I can’t recommend the Harmony massage parlor.”

  “Some savage beat you, my good man. Did you go to the hospital? Quickly, get Khun Vincent a towel and ice from the bucket,” Valentine barked at Number Two. She had just returned with a fresh wine glass.

  Calvino sat in a chair a few feet away from the sofa and Valentine’s harem.

  “My God, my dear fellow. You have suffered serious wounds and bruising.”

  Calvino shrugged as Number Two pressed a towel packed with ice against the side of his face. “I trust this altercation wasn’t connected with your work on my behalf.”

  “Valentine, you are in the clear.”

  “I didn’t mean that. . .”

  “Forget about it. If it hadn’t been for a potted palm tree, it would have been a lot worse.”

  “A palm tree?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  The cold pack felt as good as anything Calvino could imagine. There was an age when you got beat up and somehow a few hours later it didn’t seem so bad. He had passed that age into a time when a few hours later it throbbed and ached, pain shooting in every direction. The ice cut the pain, smoothed it out; feeling numb was about as close to a painless state as he could expect. On the TV screen, a mob of youth, naked and scared, shivered in the dirt as their elders, bare-breasted, danced around pounding drums and singing.

  “I tell the girls that to observe the behavior of savages is an education in itself. They can see how lucky they are to be with me. And how far they have developed. And mostly how easy it would be, if they left, to slide back into the barbarity of tribes. We are always on the edge of violence and chaos. I am afraid it is our lot. And from the look of your face, some rather nasty savages took turns attacking you.”

  He cuddled with all of his sanom and together they watched the TV. Or what seemed like all. Maew had slipped away, found Fon and brought her back to the television room. She came inside, ignored Valentine and the TV, and walked straight over to look at Calvino’s wounds. She knelt down and pulled the towel away, making a clicking noise with her tongue.

  “When she makes that noise with the goats, it is never good,” said Valentine, devouring another cracker. He took a sip from his wine. “Is it serious?”

  Fon looked up, “He needs stitches.”

  “This is much better than National Geographic. I am joking. Khun Fon, please render assistance to Mr. Calvino. On second thought, you may forget that he isn’t a goat. And you aren’t a doctor. I think after this program ends, we should drive him into town for a proper doctor to have a look.”

  There was a jagged cut running above Calvino’s right ear. “The cut needs stitches,” Fon said to Calvino.

  “Can you do it?”

  She nodded. He stood up and handed the towel to Number Two. “Valentine, I’ll be back. We need to talk.”

  “If you want my opinion, you should see a proper doctor. He could lose his ear if you’re not careful. Going from Vincent Calvino to Vincent Van Gogh isn’t a particularly brilliant career move. Unless, of course, you can paint.”

  “If I want your opinion, Valentine, I’ll ask for it.”

  “As you wish.” He picked up the remote and a National Geographic special appeared on the screen showing natives who lived in a swampy area of Australia. A poisoned dart hit a wild pig and the natives fell on the screeching animal with spears and knives. The harem watched with large, unblinking eyes.

  There were only a few places in the world where a man could become a sugar daddy on a beer budget. Pattaya was one of them. Try making that work in Sidney or London or Toronto or New York, thought Calvino on the way out. A man couldn’t live on a park bench for the amount in Pattaya that covered a tilac, her family, a maid and three square meals, a daily six-pack of beer and the weekly short-time hotel bill. Medium wealth bought a harem and a huge estate and a cool room to watch half-naked savages on the National Geographic channel. Calvino had begun to understand why it had been so important for Valentine to restore the equilibrium of the estate. He wasn’t getting full value for his money.

  Outside, he followed Fon along the path, passing the kitchen on the way to the gardener’s house. The Great Dane and the two smaller dogs followed behind. The smell of blood attracted not only dogs but also flying insects. In less than a minute, he was inside the small house and Fon had opened a small medical kit. She laid out the cotton balls, alcohol, scissors, and bandages.

  “This is going to hurt a little,” she said. “I can give you an injection.”

  “Do you have a bottle of Mekhong?”

  Fon w
alked over to a cupboard and pulled out a large bottle of Mekhong, screwed off the cap and poured one finger into a glass. He watched her slip the cap back on to the bottle.

  “You stitch and I’ll pour,” said Calvino.

  He knocked back three fast shots. She threaded a silver needle and expertly made four stitches to close the cut above Calvino’s right ear. She put antiseptic ointment over the stitches and a bandage to cover the wound.

  “There, you should be alright.” Her touch had been soft but sure. The needle felt cold puncturing the skin; then it burnt and stung at the same time. He threw back two more shots and shivered.

  “I talked with Pramote’s widow.” Fon looked puzzled. “She did this?”

  “A woman did this? No, let me explain. She’s the wife of the reporter who was found in the bottom of the well. He’d been shot and the killers dumped his body in the well. It looked like a hit. I remember that your husband kept newspapers in the prayer room. One of the newspapers had a story about the dead reporter. I thought there might be a connection.”

  “You think the same person killed my husband?”

  “I am not sure.” He caught his reflection in a mirror hanging from the knob of a drawer. He looked terrible. His jaw throbbed; his knuckles were stiff and raw. His gut hurt where he’d been kicked. Everything ached. All he could think about was telling Fon about Pramote’s widow.

  “But I was thinking you should meet her. I think you’d like her.”

  “Why do you think that? Because we lose our husbands?”

  “She has a couple of kids.”

  Fon finished with the bandage. Most of his ear was covered in white gaze. “Then she has better luck than me.”

  “The way I see it, you are both fighters. But I get the feeling you are both holding back. That you know some things that you’re not talking about. Information that could lead to the killer.”