An empty parking area fronted the narrow soi where they had stopped. Across it was a large two-story concrete building that looked like an abandoned military installation. The mottled gray surface of the structure was cracked and pitted and there were no windows, only regularly spaced circles that had once been some shade of brown and which marched in ranks across the façade like painted portholes. Strings of tiny white lights outlined the edges of the building. Those that weren’t burned out blinked on and off irregularly.
“Little Princess,” the boy shouted over the engine, revving it impatiently. “Nobody here. Tell you, close.”
They climbed down and Eddie paid the driver, who stared at them briefly then roared away.
“Nice fella,” Winnebago observed. “Real helpful.”
They walked across the parking lot toward what Eddie assumed to be the entrance. There was a tiny canopy over a single door with a pile of cardboard Singha beer boxes stacked on one side and an empty metal stool on the other. Two scrawny dogs that had taken shelter from the sun in the tiny sliver of shade thrown by the canopy hauled themselves up and eased away from the approaching men. It wasn’t even midday yet and Eddie could already feel the heat in the concrete through the soles of his shoes.
Eddie pushed at the door and rattled the handle. Locked. He banged half-heartedly a couple of times, but the door was heavy and the sound was too muffled to carry even if someone had been inside. While Winnebago stood with his hands on his hips surveying the empty parking lot, Eddie stepped back shading his eyes with one hand and looked up. He scanned the front of the building for a minute. When he accepted that there was nothing to see, he dropped his hand and moved back into the shade.
“Suppose this is it?” Winnebago asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t look like a massage parlor.”
“No, but that’s what it is. I just don’t know if it’s the right one. What were you expecting a massage parlor to look like?”
“I don’t know. Something a little more…you know, sexy.”
Bangkok’s massage parlors were made for darkness, Eddie knew, but he wasn’t sure how to explain that to Winnebago. In the vampire hours, they were crystal palaces where throngs of graceful, young girls, wasp-waisted in long brightly-colored silk sarongs, smiled and giggled to each other as they reclined on carpeted risers behind huge plate glass windows, each wearing a small badge with a number.
In a world that spun too fast, the parlors gave asylum to weary males. They were sanitariums of the night, safe houses for the seriously battle-fatigued, sanctuaries for those who had made one too many patrols into the sexual jungles of the West, the dark places where the real massacres in the war of the sexes took place. In daylight, however, massage parlors were shabby structures that looked like derelict warehouses. You could almost smell the spilled beer, stale cigarette smoke, and industrial-strength disinfectant through the pitted concrete walls.
Eddie scanned the street.
Could this be the same place he had seen in the picture, the street where Harry Austin’s broken body lay in a shallow, muddy hole? He supposed it could be, but then so could half the streets he had seen in Bangkok. One mud hole looked pretty much like another.
“I got an idea,” Winnebago suddenly said. “Come on.”
Eddie watched as Winnebago set out across the parking lot with a purposeful stride. Glancing back once at the locked door, he followed. By the time he caught up, Winnebago had reached the street.
“Where we going?”
“Find some folks. See what they can tell us.”
“Even if we’re in the right place, Winnebago, it’s been a month or two. No one’s going to know what we’re talking about.”
“Bullshit! How many dead foreigners do you suppose they find in the streets around here?”
That wasn’t a question Eddie wanted to dwell on too much, so he just nodded vaguely at Winnebago and let it pass.
The narrow road wasn’t very long and they could see where it ended up ahead. There were several shophouses in a straight line on one corner, the local version of a strip mall apparently, and a restaurant on the opposite side. Between where they were and the end of the soi, however, there was nothing but more high concrete walls topped with broken glass.
The first two gates they walked past were solid iron—huge, black plates that looked as if they could stop tanks—but the third was a little friendlier. It was made up of round bars about three inches apart, and they stopped and peered through.
There was nothing to see except a vacant lot. A few scraggly palm trees, fronds half brown from the brutal sun, clung to life along what once might have been a shell driveway. The house to which it had once led was long gone and nothing but junk and weeds now covered the lot. There was a mound of folding metal chairs, several old tires, a scattering of cardboard cartons, and even the rusted-out frame of what had once probably been a small pick-up truck. At the back of the lot, a large animal that looked like a misshapen cow grazed contentedly on the tufts of grass growing through the garbage.
“Jesus,” Winnebago muttered. “It looks like an Indian reservation with water buffalo shit.”
The next two gates were also solid and firmly closed, but just before they got to the shophouses, Winnebago found one that was half open. Poking his head inside, he saw a manicured lawn with a driveway of crushed red rock that led to a sprawling house elevated slightly above the road. Just inside the gate, an old man in a gray safari suit was swishing a long feather duster over a dark green BMW with blacked-out windows. The car was parked facing toward the gate as if it were ready for a quick getaway.
“Afternoon!” Winnebago called out.
The old man looked up and confusion spread over his face when he saw Winnebago grinning in through the half-open gate.
“Could I ask you something?”
The old man glanced over his shoulder toward the house and then at Winnebago again, after which he turned his back and resumed dusting.
“He probably doesn’t speak English,” Eddie suggested.
“Good point.” Winnebago chewed on his lip briefly, and then screeched, “Hoh yee mahn neih yat goh mahn taih ma?”
The old man stiffened visibly at the noises coming from Winnebago. He turned slowly and stared, goggle-eyed, looking exactly like someone who had just encountered a talking horse.
Eddie was almost as dumbstruck as the old man.
“What the hell was that?” he asked Winnebago.
“Chinese. The Cantonese dialect. The guy looks more Chinese than Thai, I figure.”
“How do you know that?” Eddie looked from Winnebago to the man and back again. “And where the hell did you learn Cantonese?”
“I read a lot at the store.” Winnebago gave Eddie a stern look. “Now do you want to take over here, or shall I go on?”
Eddie stepped back, and with a slight bow gave Winnebago the floor.
“Ngoh yauh geen sih seung cheng gaau neih ah,” Winnebago said to the old man.
The man took a hesitant step toward the gate. “Neih seung dim ah?”
The sound was all spit and gargle. Eddie had no idea what the old man was saying, but it was pretty obvious he wasn’t offering them a tour of the premises.
“Neih ji ‘m jidou yauh goh baahk yahn hai ni tiu gaai bei sai jaw sih ah?” Winnebago said and pointed over his shoulder at the road. “Keuih bei ch’e jong sei ge.”
“Ngoh doi ni geen sih yat dee doh ‘m ji baw,” the man said with a scowl and another mouthful of spit and gargle.
Winnebago made an effort to keep the conversation going in spite of the old man’s unfriendliness. “Neih haih ‘m haih jiu haih neih jaw gan ge?”
“‘M gwan neih sih!” The man suddenly rushed to the gate with surprising nimbleness and began to push it closed. “Jau ah neih! Ngoh ‘m joi tung neih gong lah! Ngoh mu’t yeh doh ‘m ji ah!”
“Ngoh ‘m haih seung ma faan…” The gate clanged shut in Winnebago’s face and he trailed off.
<
br /> “You going to give me the play by play on all that?” Eddie asked after a decent interval.
“I just asked the old bastard if he knew anything about a white man being run over around here.”
“And he said?”
“Exactly, or just approximately?”
“Approximately is good.”
“Fuck off was what he said, approximately.”
Eddie nodded, anything but surprised. “So now what, Charlie Chan?”
“Just a second.” Winnebago took a couple of steps back, cupped his hands around his mouth, and screamed over the closed gate, “Loh yeh, diu neih loh mo!”
“Make you feel better?” Eddie asked.
“Fuck yeah.”
Eddie and Winnebago examined the shophouses carefully as they walked the rest of the way to the end of the soi. The first was completely empty with a large, English-language FOR RENT sign on its door. Through the window of the second, they could see what looked like a hairdressing salon, but the lights were out and there was no one inside. The third and fourth units had been joined together into a single space and it was stuffed full of Asian furniture and sculpture. Winnebago tried the door, and when the knob turned in his hand, he and Eddie went inside.
“This is real good stuff,” Winnebago said, looking around.
“And you would know that exactly how?”
Before Winnebago could answer, a tall man materialized between two standing Buddha figures as quietly and unexpectedly as if his appearance was the grand finale to a magic trick.
“Vat may I do for you, gentlemen?”
Eddie thought the man’s German accent suited his appearance perfectly. He was lean and taut-looking despite looking well into his sixties. Steel-rimmed glasses rested on the end of his hawk-nose, and his hair had been shaved so closely over his skull that only gray fuzz remained.
“Is that the Little Princess massage parlor up at the other end of this soi?” Eddie asked.
The German stared at Eddie as unblinkingly as a stuffed owl. “Are you looking for a massage?”
“No, I’m investigating the death of an American who was killed here a few months ago. I’m a lawyer from San Francisco.”
“I did not zink you ver a buyer of Asian antiquities.”
And why the hell not? Eddie thought, but he forced a smile. “I represent the man’s family. We understand he was hit by a car in front of the Little Princess massage parlor.”
The German continued to stare at Eddie, but now he looked amused for some reason, although Eddie couldn’t think of anything he had said which was even remotely funny.
“Perhaps you knew the man. His name was Harry Austin.”
“I vould not know anyone who vent to a place like that,” the German said. His voice offered little hope the conversation would continue for much longer.
Looking for some help, Eddie glanced around for Winnebago and saw him off across the shop peering closely at a big, gold-lacquered Buddha. The figure was seated with its legs curled under it and had huge, sad eyes outlined in black. Gently, Winnebago reached out and ran a finger along the figure’s arm, tracing it slowly down to an open palm that was curled gracefully into its lap.
“Now if you vould be good enough to go on your vay and let me get back to—”
“Ist das Sukhothai?” Winnebago called out in German.
The man looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowing as he examined Winnebago. He had the expression of someone who was certain he was about to be made the butt of a cruel joke.
“It is from the Sukhothai period, ja.”
“Fenfzehnte Jahrhundert?” Winnebago ran his finger back up the image’s arm to its shoulder. “No, not fifteenth, fourteenth. Fourteenth century, isn’t it?”
The German shot Eddie a look. Eddie smiled back blandly.
“You know Sukhothai figures?” the German asked Winnebago, unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice.
“Oh, sure. They’re much more peaceful looking than those from the Lanna period, don’t you think?”
The German stared at Winnebago. Eddie tried not to.
“I’ve always particularly loved this form of the seated Buddha,” Winnebago went on in a soft voice, ignoring both of them. “It’s the gentleness of the open hand that gets me every time. Thais call this position the bhumisparsa mudra, don’t they?”
***
WHEN Eddie and Winnebago came out of the German’s shop a half hour later, they knew something they had not known before, at least not for certain. They were unquestionably standing in the soi where Harry Austin had died.
Ignoring Eddie completely as they toured the shop, the German eventually told Winnebago what he knew about the foreigner who had been killed in front of the Little Princess.
“It’s a shame he didn’t actually see the accident,” Eddie mused.
“Yeah, but he saw the body, and he saw the man who dragged it inside.”
“The description wasn’t very helpful. Caucasian, forties or fifties, average height, average build. Christ, Winnebago, that fits most of the Western men in Bangkok.”
“Somebody at that massage place knows something.” Winnebago nodded earnestly at Eddie. “I guess we better come back tonight when the place is open and do a little research, huh?”
“I was thinking of something else you could do tonight that might be even more constructive.”
“Yeah?”
Eddie kept his tone as neutral as he could. “Maybe your pal Fritz could remember something else if you asked him again in a more social setting.”
“Forget it, man.”
“Well, he did ask you to have dinner with him and—”
“No fucking way, man. You have dinner with him.”
“I don’t think he liked me as much as he did you.”
Winnebago gave Eddie a look some people might have had trouble putting a name to, but Eddie knew exactly what it meant.
Twenty
THE American Embassy in Bangkok always made Bar think of a particularly prosperous prison, all blast-hardened concrete, slit windows, high walls, and iron gates.
The huge compound sprawled along both sides of Wireless Road about halfway between Lumpini Park and Ploenchit Road. Bar loved the name Wireless Road. The sound of it fairly reverberated with intrigue and it reminded him of a black and white television series from the fifties called ‘Foreign Correspondent’ that had riveted him as a boy. He could never say Wireless Road without hearing off in the distance the sound of an old BBC radio broadcast, all hissing and static in the background with an earnest-sounding voice shouting out dispatches in an exaggerated British accent from some remote corner of the empire. Of course, the BBC still sounded like that most of the time and he figured that was probably why now everybody watched CNN.
Bar didn’t like going to the American Embassy and he avoided the place whenever he could. It just flat out made him jumpy as hell. He had this terrible fear that once he was inside the gates they might never let him out again.
Americans have always been keenly suspicious of other Americans who voluntarily chose to live in another country. After all, half the population of the world seems to be clamoring to move to California and work in a 7-Eleven. So what the hell was with this guy who wanted to live in Bangkok? He must have done something. Yeah, that was it. Committed a crime or something. If he wasn’t a drug dealer, he had to be a tax dodger or maybe he owed child support to a penniless ex-wife on welfare back in St. Louis. Bastard. Low life. Had to be. Otherwise he’d want to live in America like everybody else.
No matter how much the idea bothered him, this was still one of those times when Bar knew he had to suck it up and go to the embassy. He couldn’t work out on his own what the photograph that was inside the envelope the motorcycle messenger had passed to him meant, but he didn’t like the look of it one bit. He knew a guy at the embassy he was sure could help him so he swallowed his misgivings and went to see him.
Chuck McBride was DEA, one of dozens agents who
were posted in Thailand and working out of American diplomatic facilities. Bar met him one night at the Crown Royal and they had become friends in spite of Bar’s usual policy of avoiding all Americans in Thailand, particularly government guys. Bar had never thought of Chuck as anything at all like the rest of those arrogant, prissy jerk-offs who passed for US government employees abroad. He looked more like a semi-pro jock from some Alabama football team that had never met with much success. He had a neat blond crew cut, a fleshy face that couldn’t seem to organize itself, and no neck, at least none that anyone had ever been able to find.
Chuck and Bar spent a lot of time fooling around town together and more than once Bar had left Chuck sitting on a curb somewhere trying to get sober enough to hit one more place before calling it a night. Bar liked cruising Bangkok with Chuck for two reasons: he was pretty good company, and he carried a really big gun. Both of those things, Bar thought, were important when you hit the local streets on a Saturday night, although you could probably get along without the company if you really had to.
It took less than ten minutes in Chuck’s office for Bar to tell him everything he knew about Eddie Dare and Winnebago Jones. He recounted the story Eddie told about being hired by someone calling himself the general to find out what happened to Harry Austin and he described the pictures with the red circles that Eddie claimed he had gotten in San Francisco. Finally, he related his own encounter the night before with the motorcycle messenger and then pushed the airmail envelope the guy had given him across the desk to Chuck. After that, Bar sat back, folded his arms, and waited for the verdict.
Chuck pondered, running his hand back and forth through his crew cut so that Bar would see he was thinking and not asleep.
“You sure that’s it?” he asked after a while.
“So help me. That’s the whole story.”
“And the guy on the bike just handed this to you?”
“Yep.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Chuck carefully lifted the envelope by its edges, compressed it slightly so that the end Bar had torn off popped open, and then shook out the single photograph inside. He picked up the photo and examined it curiously while Bar sat quietly and watched.
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