Cho says something to the beautiful woman that brings out a big smile on Plaa’s face. The woman looks startled and turns to the man, who looks annoyed.
He turns to me and in impeccable, upper-class British English, with just the barest tint of a Thai accent, asks what it is that I “make of all this”? It hasn’t occurred to him that I’m part of it.
I explain what’s going on, and as I do I can see the turmoil going on inside him. Despite his best efforts, it’s emblazoned across his face. The part of him that has spent a lot of time outside Thailand wants to argue with me. But he is Thai, after all, and arguing is either beneath him or just not done.
At first it looks like he might ignore us, order lunch and go about his business. But when the woman tugs on his arm and whispers to him, he gets up, shooting me something uncertain between a smile and a grimace, and they walk out.
Most of the other people who had sat down at already occupied tables get up to leave as well. The maitre d’ tries stopping them at the door, but no one’s listening to him. Finally he gives up and retreats down the hallway toward the office guarded by the big man.
The waiters aren’t even bothering to come around anymore. They know no one’s going to order anything. Once in a while someone will take a very small sip of the drink in front of them, but that’s all any of us are having for lunch.
The big guy and the maitre d’ come back out of the hallway and look the place over. The big guy says something to him, and their eyes focus on our table. The maitre d’ gestures for one of the head waiters to come over and has him take his place by the door as the muscle and he go outside.
The maitre d’ is back in about ten minutes with an impressive looking cop. He’s in a crisp, ironed uniform with polished gold buttons and military insignia. They head down the hallway to the office.
The restaurant is silent. No one is talking at their tables. The staff look on with their mouths firmly shut. There’s no clatter from the kitchen.
In short order the cop, the bruiser and the maitre d’ stream out of the hallway and make a beeline for our table. I stand up, preparing to take the brunt of whatever it is they’ve decided to do with us.
Something moves in the far periphery of my vision. I look over, and it’s the Thai magazine editor and his bulldog reporter getting up from their table and also making quickly toward ours. This is going to be interesting.
Both groups reach us at the same time. Maybe the small cassette recorder in the outstretched arm of the reporter beats out the maitre d’ by a hair. They all stop and look at each other.
The reporter and editor look expectant, enthusiastic. This could be exactly the sort of story that their readers really eat up.
The maitre d’ looks like he’s about to start stomping his feet and spitting. The heavy looks like he just wants to stomp somebody, anybody, bad.
The cop looks nervous. He’s supposed to be there on the side of Big Shrimp, but he’s got higher-ups to answer to and they don’t like publicity. He throws me a look, like maybe I can help him out of this jam.
Plaa and Cho are sitting quietly. They’ve moved their drinks in a little closer and bent their heads over them. Their eyes flick up and back down to look at the six of us standing around the table. Everyone else in the restaurant is looking, too, and not being discreet about it.
There’s a flash of light and then another. We all look around, and there’s the correspondent of my magazine with a camera. I turn back to face the maitre d’ and his posse and paste a big grin on my face.
“Smile, fellas.”
The big guy starts moving in the direction of my correspondent, but he’s by the front door and scurries out. He gives up, steps back and makes a move to snatch the tape recorder from the reporter, but the maitre d’ puts out a hand to stop him.
No one’s got guns out, but it’s beginning to feel like a Mexican standoff.
The maitre d’ steps around the table up to me and speaks low so that no one else can hear.
“You want order lunch now, mister?” Despite the words, it isn’t really a question.
“We might after a while. My friends and I are thirsty. We want to enjoy our drinks first.” I don’t shout, but I make sure I’m loud enough to be heard by the people at nearby tables.
He looks down at Plaa and Cho and then around the whole dining room. He looks back at me with an unhappy smile. He wishes I could help him out, too. It was a mistake speaking to me. If it had been Cho or Plaa, or most of the other Thai people in the restaurant, he could simply have insisted that they leave.
The maitre d’ turns and talks to the cop. I think he’s asking if there’s anything he can do.
But the cop wants no part of it. He raises his hands in what appears to be some form of surrender, smiles, shrugs his shoulders, turns on his heels and walks out as quickly as he can without looking like he’s running.
The big guy’s had enough. He starts toward me, his hands out. Taking apart a farang in front of a whole restaurant and a muckraking reporter and editor is not a smart move. But I don’t think he’s really thought it out. He’s just itching to do something to earn his keep.
The maitre d’ looks horrified. He knows this is not good. But he’s not about to get between me and anybody’s fists or feet.
It’s fight or flight. I don’t have much time to make up my mind.
The pager on the bruiser’s belt makes it up for me. It buzzes, freezing him in his tracks. He takes a look at the display and unclips it to show the maitre d’, and the both of them head back to the office pronto.
I sit back down, wishing I could gulp my beer even if it is warm and flat. Instead, I take a small, awful sip.
In about a minute the maitre d’ has returned by himself. He leans down to whisper in my ear.
“Khunying Preeya ask to have the pleasure of your company in the office.”
It seems unlikely that she’d have the big guy work me over anywhere on the premises, but I’m not sure.
“Please thank Khunying Preeya for me, but I am enjoying the company of my friends and the hospitality of her restaurant. If she would like to come to our table, I will be happy to buy her a drink and make her welcome.”
Once again he looks like he doesn’t know what to do. I almost feel bad for him as he quick-steps back to the office.
The reporter and editor are still standing by the table, and I gesture to them to sit down. The reporter puts her cassette recorder down between us. I cover it with a hand.
“I’m not the one you want to interview.”
“Yeah, but the interview I’m after won’t talk to me.” She’s been to school in the U.S. I can hear it in her voice.
“Who’s that?”
“Who do you think? The General, Khunying’s husband. He’s the real story in this place.”
I’m sure he is. There’ve been rumors swirling around him for weeks, but there’s no way she’s going to get to him.
“Okay, but what’s going on at the moment is about my friend here, Khun Plaa. It’s her you should be talking to.” I explain the situation.
From the look on her face, I can almost see the wheels and cogs begin to spin in her brain. She smiles at me, gets up and moves to sit next to Plaa. They bend their heads together to talk.
The editor looks at me and smiles. Then he says something to Cho, who translates. The editor’s apologized for not speaking English. I apologize in return for not speaking Thai. He and Cho bend their heads together in conversation.
It’s getting late enough that I’ll probably have to cancel my next appointment as well. I’m willing to do that, but I’m not sure how long I can sit here taking the occasional small sip of a beer gone bad.
My notebook sits in front of me like an accusation. I’d got it out thinking I’d at least make some notes about something, anything that I could write an article on for the magazine. My editor makes me crazy, but I don’t want to give him any cause to fire me. How can I relate what’s going on here now to t
he Thai economy, which is, after all, what I’m supposed to be covering?
I haven’t got anywhere with that train of thought when the maitre d’ reappears with the boss lady herself. The big guy stands back at the entrance to the office hall. I get up as they approach the table. She holds out a surprisingly indelicate, rough hand with three of its fingers bulging on either side of garish, expensive rings. She’s wearing a severe gray silk suit, and her hair is done up in a coif I associate more with Texas than Thailand. She does not look happy.
“I am Khunying Preeya, and you are… ?”
“Ray Sharp.”
“Why do you disturb my restaurant’s lunch business, Mister Sharp?”
I invite her to sit down at the table, but she ignores me. I guess she left the standard social graces in her office.
“I have eaten, Mister Sharp. You and your associates have not. I insist that you order meals or that you leave the premises. This is a restaurant, Mister Sharp. It is not a waiting room.”
“I am here, Khunying Preeya, to help my friend, Khun Plaa, recover the money and cooler that were stolen from her.”
The boss lady looks down at Plaa and flutters a hand at her, then me. “Why are the troubles of a common street vendor of any concern to me?”
I smile and gesture to the restaurant around us.
“Apparently they are, or will be.”
“Are you threatening me, Mister Sharp? Do you know who my husband is? I am going to call him.” She lifts a hand with a mobile phone in it.
Everyone knows who her husband is. He’s politically connected, but word on the street lately is that some of his ties might be coming loose. There are more than slight whiffs of scandal. But he hasn’t been talking. Generals who stay out of the public eye tend to last longer than those who don’t. He won’t want publicity.
“Go ahead. Maybe he will want to get mixed up in this. But I’d be surprised. For now, my friends like it here, Khunying Preeya. It is cool and comfortable. They could become regulars. I have a lot of friends, and my friends have friends as well.”
“What do you want, Mister Sharp?”
“It’s not about what I want.” I almost say “lady,” but you never get anywhere in Thailand by not at least pretending to be polite. “If you would be so kind as to speak with my friend Khun Plaa, I am sure you can work something out.”
“She can come to my office.” The boss lady begins to turn and walk away, and it takes a lot of effort for me to sound civil. If Plaa goes back there alone, who knows what might happen?
“I don’t think my friend will feel comfortable in your office. This is such a nice room, and there is an empty table in the corner where you can have some privacy. It would be best if you spoke out here.”
She almost loses her cool but keeps herself in check with no more than a minor harrumph. She crooks one of her heavily weighted fingers at Plaa and walks to the table that my correspondent, the editor and the reporter have left.
Plaa looks up at me, not sure what to do.
“Go, talk to her. Tell her what you want. You’ve got the power here.”
She turns to the reporter, and they whisper to each other.
They get up together and follow the boss lady to the table. Plaa sits next to the khunying, the reporter across the table but still close enough to lend support.
Everyone in the restaurant is trying to look like they aren’t trying to listen. There’s no way to hear anything, but it’s hard to be patient, especially when I’m so thirsty. I take a bigger sip and then a gulp of the terrible beer. There’s still half of it left when I put it down, and it hasn’t helped at all. It was just reminiscent enough of something refreshing to make my thirst worse.
After about five minutes the boss lady makes a call on her mobile phone. She says something, listens and then responds with something shrill, not quite a shriek, but close. She listens again and hands the phone to the reporter.
The reporter speaks briefly and then spends the next few minutes listening, taking notes and not saying anything. When she’s done, she hands the phone back to the khunying, who begins talking but then stops in what is obviously mid-sentence. When she hangs up, she looks around the room frowning. She looks at Plaa and her body sags a little in her chair.
The boss lady gestures to the hallway. The big guy comes out and bends down to her. She whispers something and he hurries away. She stands up and says something that makes Plaa smile and the reporter shrug her shoulders. Then she walks away toward her office.
The two of them return to our table. Plaa sits down, still smiling, and takes a big sip of her now cool tea. The reporter leans in to whisper to her editor. He smiles, then frowns, then smiles again. She sees me watching them, and when she’s done talking to the editor, she looks at me.
“I talked with the General.”
“Get anything interesting?”
“No, just a statement, but it means your friend Khun Plaa gets her cooler back and they’ll leave her alone in the future.”
“Great, but what’s in it for you?”
“We’ll be the only paper that’s got anything at all from the General.”
“Sure, but it’s just him blowing his own horn.”
“It’s a start.”
“How?”
“It raises his profile. That’s not good for a general in this country.”
“Give him enough rope?”
“Hopefully.”
About ten minutes later the big guy walks up to the table looking like he’s about to explode. I begin to get up, not sure what I can do. But all he does is roughly drop Plaa’s cooler onto the table in front of her. The sound booms across the quiet restaurant.
Plaa stands up to look into her cooler. When she closes the lid again, she’s smiling.
The editor waves a waiter over and orders drinks, cold and hot ones, whatever anybody wants, for the whole restaurant.
Cho and I share a tall, frosty Kloster before heading out to the van and back into the traffic. I might even make it to my last two appointments.
I still didn’t get my fish for lunch. Next time.
Eric Stone
Eric Stone has worked as a writer, photographer, editor, publisher and publishing consultant. As a writer he’s covered a wide range of topics, including business, economics, finance, politics, arts, culture, sports, and travel. For eleven years he lived in Asia, based in Hong Kong, then Jakarta. He’s best known for his Ray Sharp PI series, set in Asia and based on stories he covered as a journalist,including Shanghaied, Flight of the Hornbill, Grave Imports, and Living Room of the Dead. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
Hot Enough to Kill
Collin Piprell
The sun burns a white-hot hole in the sky over Bangkok. Eyes are filled with disquiet; street dogs slink, panting, from shade to shade. According to the radio, this is the hottest April in fifty years.
Sombat the legless boy down the road was found dead yesterday, still upright on his little wooden cart, the one he propelled by hauling back on the steel crane-operator’s lever. It was amazing how, so frail, he clattered and squeaked around the neighborhood, honed down to sinew and spirit, yanking away on that big handle. But yesterday was too hot, and he tried to go too far too fast. Or maybe he just got tired of it all. Who knows? He sat there as though asleep, breathless, like the day itself, motionless as the leaves on the trees behind the temple wall, his face drawn but peaceful.
The lane where Chai stays with his brother Vajira and his brother’s wife is all but deserted. Vajira is surprised that Chai isn’t going to the temple. Everybody liked the boy, and there’s to be a tamboon, a merit-making ceremony, to mark his passing. But Chai has something he must do today. It’s too hot to move, really, but this is something he has to do. It’s going to bring in money. Good money. And his brother Vajira has been paying for everything the past couple of months. The temple is all very well. It’s a good thing. But right now money comes first. There will be time for the temple later. So
he has come to meet his new partner, into the middle of the city in the traffic and the heat, to do this job.
And now he’s waiting.
A little way along, on the other side of the pedestrian overpass from where Chai waits, a beggar sits at his station. He’s older than Sombat was, but just as legless, the legs of his short pants pinned up and empty. His face is full of mortification, his life one long humiliation. As people come by, he rattles the few coins in his cup, supplicant, bending forward to bang forehead and cup on the steel deck, pisspools either side of his head. A legless beggar in a puddle of his own urine, left by his handlers for a long day shift on the overpass. A couple of people drop coins into his cup. Most do not. Fastidious, they walk around him and his piss. One band of youths laugh, pointing to the pools. Three armed soldiers on patrol in camouflage outfits look, just as they look everywhere, for signs of insurgency. It’s a full year after the last Red Shirt protests boiled over, but the government is still in power, the soldiers are still here and Chai is still hungry. No one asks the beggar if he wants to be moved. The police won’t move him, Chai knows; they have been paid.
Chai leaves his post to turn and stroll past the soldiers. He stops to check his pockets as though he’s looking for something and watches as, oblivious to his presence, the patrol descends on the opposite side. He returns to his vantage point.
Looking down, he can see his partner, Dit, standing a little back from the street with his motorcycle. Beside Dit, under a road construction sign like a pup tent, a dog rests in the shade. The naked red ulcers all over its body look sore. Its muzzle, now healed, has been crushed and twisted to one side, maybe from too close an encounter with a car. That painfully contorted dog face turns and turns, strangely peaceful, observing passers-by with quiet interest.
Bangkok Noir Page 19