EVERYONE was quiet during the ride to the Grand Rose Hotel. Calvino concentrated on driving; this made it easier to ignore his concerns about Jess networking an LAPD heroin case with Pratt. His thoughts turned to the BMWs the Chinese family had bought themselves out of the hotel revenues and the Isan ghost workers who never showed up for work and drew checks that they never received. Naylor fingered the fifteen-baht gold chain around his neck like the links were worry beads, thinking about whether Jep would be waiting for him when he returned. Wondering whether Weasel was posting on the Cause-members, site that Tailgunner had clearly violated the yings in front of witnesses. Jess was thinking about his first kick-boxing teacher, who had lived in a small wooden house in Sukhumvit Road years before there were any apartments or office buildings there, and how the teacher had been killed a few years ago by gunmen who had ambushed him as he got out of his car. The hit was connected to fixing a kick-boxing match and gambling and misunderstandings over turf and face.
The Grand Rose Hotel was located on an even numbered Soi. Sukhumvit Road had even and odd numbered sois on different sides of the road but adjacent numbers rarely were opposite one another so that Soi 38 was opposite Soi 55 and so on. This mismatching was a perfect metaphor for mismatching between the yings and their johns on the Causeway. As Calvino turned into the soi, the road passed through empty overgrown fields. Five minutes later, he entered the driveway of the hotel, set back at the end of a small sub-soi. On the left was an open-air noodle shop where a half a dozen locals in shorts and flip-flops, seated on plastic stools, slurped down bowls of noodles. On the right of the hotel, a new office block with a tall, ornate gate with a guard box had been constructed. Food vendors had staked out the front entrance of the Grand Rose, setting up folding tables and plastic stools and colorful beach umbrellas to provide shade, and these acted as unofficial boundary markers. Location, location, location, thought Calvino. The place was a three-time loser.
“Looks more like a hotel that has been converted into a guest house than a hotel,” said Naylor, craning his neck to get a closer look.
“Not like the hotel in the color brochures the owners Fed Ex’ed to California,” said Calvino. The accountant’s report said money had been diverted from maintenance. What it didn’t say was that all of the money had been diverted, thought Calvino. He tried swallowing the laughter building up in his throat. He coughed into his hand, and turned away.
“I am shocked,” said Jess, taking off his sunglasses. He was smiling.
The hotel grounds were overgrown with weeds and hundreds of rose bushes that had been allowed to grow wild. Deep red, pale pink, pure white roses grew in thick clumps, the stems bending over to touch the dirt. Tall weeds everywhere. It looked like an evil garden. A place haunted by spirits. Plants were dead or dying, brown stumps dotted the grounds. Chickens scratched in the dirt, others ran under the rose bushes in one corner of the garden. A goat tied to a tree, head down, eyed them as it chewed some very dry looking grass. A couple of dogs with pink sores on their bellies slept on their backs under a cement table with stone benches and ignored them altogether.
“This place is a fucking dump. Someone is trying to kill me so Dr. Nat doesn’t buy this place? Getting shot at for a five-star hotel is one thing, but getting shot in a language I can’t even understand, for this? I can’t fucking believe it.”
“Want to go back to the Brandy?” asked Jess.
“We’re here now. Let’s at least talk to them. I mean the land has to be worth something. Maybe if we bulldozed all the weeds and bushes, got rid of the chickens and goats and, you know, fucking started from scratch.” Naylor stayed in the car until Calvino and Jess were out, and they had a look around. The purpose was to make certain the immediate perimeter had no threats before letting Naylor out of the car. When he finally crawled out of the backseat, Naylor almost tripped over a one-legged beggar sprawled out on the curb holding a tin cup and ringing a small temple bell. The sound of the bell filled the air as a kind of warning, clear as a prayer to the Almighty.
“The Grand Rose has a certain native charm,” said Calvino. He dropped a few coins into the cup. “Isn’t that the credo of the Cause? Buying native charm?”
“Rub salt in the wound. If that makes you feel any fucking better,” said Naylor.
Jess, who had been leaning on the door of Calvino’s car, slammed it shut. The three men stood at the foot of the stairs, each waiting for the other to make the first move. No one had to hammer home the obvious: the Grand Rose Hotel was no longer a functioning hotel. All one could say was that a number of the wild rose bushes had flourished as a by-product of the neglect but there was nothing grand or flourishing about the garden, the grounds, or the hotel.
“I’ll go ahead and check it out first,” said Calvino. He climbed to the top of stairs and opened the door to the lobby. Or what had once been a lobby. The open space had been converted into a series of small wooden stalls with vendors selling an odd assortment of items: carry-on luggage, back-packs, headless dummies in one-piece swimming suits, dusty metal kitchen cupboards stacked with tablecloths, linens, towels, swimming suits, wood carvings, hot tubs, and kitchen appliances. It seemed that everyone in the Chinese family had their own pet project, their sure-fire scheme to sell goods to the people who had once stayed at the hotel. Though the hot tubs and kitchen appliances catered to another market—farangs living in the general area. Since farangs couldn’t own houses, the venture, like the hotel, appeared doomed. What struck Calvino as he walked past the stalls was the absence of customers. Not even one Australian-packbacker. Beyond the stalls, they found the front desk, with a tiny, ancient Chinese woman with black teeth, her silver hair tied in a bun on the back of her head, wearing green brocade silk pyjamas.
Calvino spoke into his mic. “It’s clear. Bring Naylor up.” Clear wasn’t exactly the right word, he thought.
A moment later Naylor and Jess entered the lobby. The old woman looked up from a Chinese language newspaper and stared without blinking at the two farangs. Then she stared at Jess and asked him how much commission he was asking to bring the farang to the hotel. She frowned when he said he didn’t want a commission and that Naylor had a business meeting with the owners.
“I am Wes Naylor and I have a meeting with Mr. Kitti.” He had not followed Jess’s explanation in Thai.
The old woman blinked for the first time as she stared at Naylor’s huge gold chain and looked away at Jess, her eyes laughing the way the smug, the insane laugh, someone with the knowledge that she had them walking into a trap. I know what these farangs want, her eyes were saying. But they are wasting their time.
“I have an appointment with the owner of the hotel,” he said slowly. “I am buying this hotel. Treat me well. I am about to become your new boss. So be nice to me or you’ll be on rose pruning detail for the next six months. Is that clear, Private?”
Jess translated into Thai (minus the military allusion and the irony—neither of which translated well into Thai) as the old woman lazily picked up a telephone and started speaking in Chinese dialect to someone on the other end. A couple of minutes later a Thai in his late thirties appeared at the reception desk. He wore a white shirt open at the neck with a gold chain and amulets that rattled as he walked.
“I am Kitti,” he said looking over the two farangs and one Thai, rocking back on his heels. “And you have already met my aunt. I am afraid her English is not very good.”
“I think she understands more than you think,” said Naylor, introducing himself as Wes Naylor. He offered his hand to Kitti, who shook it. “I am Doc Nat’s lawyer. Partner, whatever. I am here from LA to close the deal.”
“Yes, I know who you are and why you are here.” Kitti had one of those nervous laughs. But his eyes were dead like a fish in the market. He obviously did not take after his aunt. “My brothers and sisters are running a little late. Bangkok traffic. But of course I am glad that you are on time.” Meaning by being on time they had arrived early.
/> “Please follow me.” Kitti led them through the lobby area to a stairwell. A sign on the elevator read in English, Out of Service. It was an old hand-lettered yellowing paper sign, the edges curling up as the tape had turned brown with age. Neglect. The entire place reeked of a terrible, awful neglect like one of those German corpses someone found five years after some loner died in his Berlin apartment. The conference carpet smelled of mildew and a rat ran across the floor and between Naylor’s parted feet. They entered a conference room.
“Please take a chair,” said Kitti gesturing at the table.
“What kind of dog was that?” Naylor asked, pulling back an armless wooden chair and sitting down.
“An urban legend breed,” said Calvino.
Jess stayed at the entrance, his right hand raised, palming the scanning device, keeping Kitti in sight at all times. Calvino watched him scanning the room. Through the earphone he heard Jess whisper. “Clear.”
Kitti walked around to the head of the table, pulled out the chairman of the board’s chair, one of those chairs with armrests done up in expensive leather that looks like a throne, and sat down. Papers were spread out neatly in front of his place. A few minutes later a couple of young Isan yings appeared with trays of water and coffee. They served the guests first and then Kitti, before silently disappearing from the room. At least two of the Isan employees on the payroll seemed to be found and accounted for, thought Calvino.
“You do have electricity?” asked Naylor, squinting at his coffee.
Kitti pushed his chair back and it made the sound of chalk going the wrong way over the blackboard—a high-pitched squeal. Then Kitti rose and walked over and turned on the lights. The carpet had been peeled back from under the table, leaving bare wooden planks. Several long overhead neon lights started to twitch to life.
“Is that better?” asked Khun Kitti with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah, I can see, if that’s what you mean.” Rats had gnawed on the curtain, leaving the ends in tatters. A line of scum like a bathtub ring from an offshore oil rigger stretched across the windows. Dust balls were stacked against cobwebs in the corners. An empty fish tank was in one corner; the glass of the tank was yellowish and inside were pieces of rock and what looked like dead weeds. It could have been a rat’s nest. A line of red ants marched across the far end of the table. The conference room made Calvino homesick for his apartment.
On the wall directly behind where Kitti sat was a framed painting of an old Chinese man wearing a gray shirt with a Mao collar; his ears were huge and he wore scholarly gold-rimmed glasses. The skin was pocked and hung loose around his neck. Hundreds of roses dotted the foreground and background. The artist was much better at painting flowers than portraits.
“That’s a painting of my late father,” said Khun Kitti.
“Heart attack or cancer?” asked Naylor.
Kitti bit his lip and ignored the question, shifting his papers.
“A highly unfortunate accident,” Kitti whispered from the top of the table.
A small altar had been erected in front of the painting—a couple of Chinese blue and white vases holding fresh roses, a glass of water, a cup of tea, and cups filled with sand holding several burning incense sticks. The conference room smelled of stale incense; and the old man’s eyes in the painting followed them around the room in an intrusive, suspicious fashion. Calvino had the feeling that members of the family didn’t like coming into this room except for very important affairs where the authority and stature of the dead father was called for. The old man looked like a menace and he wondered if his accident might have been planned.
“And Jess and Vincent are my bodyguards. I have had several death threats. Seems someone didn’t want me coming here. Didn’t want me coming to close this deal. You wouldn’t happen to have any idea who that might be?”
Kitti’s laugh became a rattle-like noise in the back of his throat.
“What I just said doesn’t strike me as being all that funny. What I said was someone doesn’t want the deal to go through. And I thought you might share with us your thoughts on that subject. Since we have a little time until the others arrive, we might want to cut straight to the chase. Exactly who would want to kill me because Doc Nat and Doc Damrong and me are buying this fine hotel?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I think you don’t understand us. My brothers and sisters have some conflict. This is normal. What family doesn’t have their differences? Is everyone in America happy with each other? I don’t think so. Always there will be someone who says, ‘I don’t agree.’ You persuade that person with reason. Our family doesn’t use threats.”
Calvino glanced over at Jess. Did Kitti believe this bullshit? Members of the family had already established a history of shooting and knifing each other. And they wouldn’t threaten a farang? Does a bear shit in the woods?
“Then let’s call it a big misunderstanding,” said Naylor. “Obviously you have persuaded your family and they agree with you that this is a good deal. That will make things simple.”
Naylor seemed to be handling himself okay. He tapped his fingers on the table as Kitti closed his eyes, collecting his thoughts.
“Simple and complex.” Kitti grinned without laughing this time.
“Which is it? It can’t be both.”
“Gray is both white and black. Many things in the world have more than one color or texture or meaning.”
Other members of the family slowly started to filter into the room, walking past Jess, who cupped his metal detector, checking each of them out as they filed inside. None of them had any concealed weapons, or weapons the metal detector would have picked up. Finally they all had taken chairs at the table. Five men and three yings. They came to the meeting dressed in casual clothes. The yings wore all their jewelry, wore a lot of make-up and had their hair done in those helmet-like khunying styles. Kitti rattled on to the guests in English and from the expression on the faces of the newly arrived it was clear they were not taking on board what he was saying, and that the absence of understanding didn’t seem to bother any of them. They left Kitti to talk in English, letting him take on his powerful role of the family’s English language spokesman. That was easy, since nothing said or promised in English mattered. English had performance value but it had no value beyond the show.
“Doc Nat showed me your power of attorney. It says that you can sign for all the shareholders. Your signature binds all of them. They can’t even revoke the power of attorney without giving Dr. Nat two weeks’ notice. So there shouldn’t be any gray or black. Just pure white all the way.” Wes Naylor looked across the table at what he assumed were all the other family shareholders.
“I can sign but before I sign I must consult with my brothers and sisters.” Kitti then went around the table and introduced all of them. “Our family does things by consensus. We don’t like pressure.”
Wes Naylor immediately forgot which names went with which faces across the table as he tapped the table with the knuckle of his thumb. He looked totally pissed off. Jess leaned against the door and Calvino stood opposite him in the far corner of the conference room; each closely watched the members of the family.
“Ask them if they want this.” Naylor pulled an envelope out of his briefcase and opened it. Inside was a check. He laid it on the table, turned it around and slid it down the table in front of the family. “One and a half million dollars. That was your price for the hotel. Let’s sign the contract.”
“What about our employees?” asked one of the brothers in halting English.
“Except for the old lady at reception, and the two tea yings, I didn’t see any employees,” said Naylor.
“We have seventy-three employees on the payroll,” said the brother with a small moustache. He looked like a bad carbon copy of the old man in the painting. “You must guarantee them a job for five years.”
“That’s not part of the deal,” said Naylor, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“And my sister and h
er family live on the fourth floor in three rooms. We want them to have the right to live there for the next ten years.”
Naylor sat down, the check on the table, shook his head, which he cradled in his hands, elbows resting on the table.
“Does anyone else have a request?” asked Naylor. “Please raise your hand. I am taking notes. Say, a pension plan for the receptionist?”
No one understood Naylor’s attempt at irony.
“My younger brother Viravat wants a five year extension on the maintenance contract between the hotel and his company.”
“Maintenance of what?” asked Naylor.
“The grounds, the hotel, and the elevator.”
“Keeping them in the their current five-star condition. Look, the purpose of this meeting was for Kitti to sign the contract. And for me to deliver the check and to witness your signatures on the agreement. Not to renegotiate the deal. Doc Nat and his brother Damrong have already signed. Look. Those are their signatures. I have the money. Now you are telling me you want to rewrite the deal?” Naylor sat back in the chair, his face flushed red with anger. “I can’t fucking believe it.”
“We want you to be flexible. To understand us.”
“This place is a third-world slum. The elevators don’t work. The lobby is filled with hawkers. You have ten guests for one-hundred and fifty rooms. And now you want us to make concessions. Now. At the closing. We should be knocking a million off the purchase price.”
“My brothers and sisters have raised very minor changes, Mr. Naylor,” said Kitti. “You have a power of attorney. You can just write down a few words and amend the contract. Then everything will be fine. We don’t want to make problems. Our father built this hotel. He loved roses. He loved gardens. We must do nothing to tarnish father’s memory. You have to understand the decision to sell is hard for us. Our father spent his whole life building this hotel for his family.”
All the time that Kitti was talking, the brother who chain-smoked was cracking his knuckles one by one, then bending his fingers all the way back so that the nails touched the wrist.
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