I told him that I could get proof that he was being taken for a ride and asked him to send me another 10,000 baht. Then I told him to tell Metta’s friend that he would send some money to the Western Union office on Sukhumvit Soi 22 the next day.
I was outside the Western Union office with my camera and long lens just before it opened. It was on a busy road but I was able to sit at a duck noodle shop with a perfect view of the shopfront. I didn’t have to wait long.
A black Cherokee Jeep pulled up in front of the office and a middle-aged Isaan woman wearing a gold chain around her neck as thick as my thumb climbed out of the passenger seat. She went into the office and spoke to the girl behind the counter. The woman produced a passport and signed a form and was handed a bundle of banknotes. I managed to get a few good shots of her grinning as she counted Mike’s money.
As she walked out of the Western Union office and headed towards the Jeep, half a dozen policemen in brown uniforms rushed over to her. At the same time a police car screeched to a halt in front of the Jeep and four police motorcycles pulled up behind it. I took a few more photographs with the long lens, then went over to shake hands with the police colonel who’d planned the arrest. The driver of the Jeep was a farang in his sixties, a bald head and heavy jowls and thick-lensed spectacles. He had a gold chain around his neck as thick as the one the woman was wearing.
The woman was crying and telling anyone who’d listen that the farang had made her do it, that he was the one who prowled around internet chatrooms and sent emails to gullible men around the world.
The farang and the woman were regular visitors to the Western Union office, the colonel told me, and in the last month alone had collected a quarter of a million baht from a dozen or so ‘sponsors. They were handcuffed and taken away. The money that Mike sent was handed over to me and I signed a receipt for it. I went back into the Western Union office and cabled it back to Mike, minus my expenses of course.
I phoned him when I got back to the office. I didn’t take any pleasure in telling him that his beloved Metta was a sixty-five-year-old Belgian scam artist, and the photographs that Mike had framed and hung up all around his house were of a well-known Thai soap opera star. He took it quite well, I thought, and thanked me for saving him from making a complete fool of himself.
Mike said that he’d learned his lesson and that he wouldn’t be going near internet chatrooms again. In fact, he decided that he’d come to Thailand himself. He asked me if I’d find him a girlfriend, someone who wouldn’t rip him off. I put him in touch with a reputable dating agency run by Nung, a good friend of mine. When Mike flew over three months later, Nung fixed him up with a few possibles but none took Mike’s fancy. Mike wanted to go travelling around the country and the girls that Nung introduced him to weren’t happy about sharing a hotel room with a farang they had only just met. I decided to play Cupid and went to a beer garden in Soi 7 and after a couple of hours stumbled across Riang, a thirty-five-year-old mother of two who looked twenty-five, pretty and with a good sense of humour. I ran the Mike situation by her and she jumped at the chance of a free holiday, especially if Mike would agree to take her back to her home in Phitsanulok for a couple of days so that she could see her kids. To cut a long story short, they got on like a house on fire. A year later and she was his wife and she and her kids were living with Mike in central London. All’s well that end’s well, that’s what I figure.
THE CASE OF THE MACAU SNATCH
It was a story I’d heard a hundred times over the years in one variation or another. Dang had been born in small village in Khon Kaen, one of six children. Her parents eked out a living on a small rice farm that they leased. Dang was a good student but her options were always going to be limited. She was pretty with a cute smile and she attracted the attention of a good-looking boy who was a few years older. One thing led to another and she fell pregnant just before her seventeenth birthday. Both their families were poor but respectable and the only way for Dang and her boyfriend to save face was for them to elope. They packed a few clothes and caught the bus to Bangkok. The boyfriend had a relative who worked in the Patpong red-light district, and as they had no money and no qualifications Dang had no choice but to start work in a go-go bar. There’s no social security safety net in Thailand. If you don’t work, you either starve or rely on charity. So Dang started dancing around a silver pole and her boyfriend worked as a tout, standing in the street trying to lure customers inside.
They were earning decent money by Thai standards, helped by the fact that Dang was being barfined three or four times a week. But Bangkok is much more expensive than the countryside, and their hard-earned money went as quickly as they earned it. Dang didn’t enjoy going with farangs and she started taking drugs to make herself feel better. She smoked dope for a few months and then a dancer friend persuaded her to start smoking yah ba, the amphetamine that is the drug of choice among the country’s go-go dancers. The more she became addicted to drugs, the less she cared about the sort of men she went with. And before long all thoughts of saving were forgotten-any money she made by selling her body went on drugs for herself and her boyfriend.
Dang had left it too late to do anything about her pregnancy, and once the baby started to show she had to give up work. When the baby was born the boyfriend did a runner. He ended working as a dancer in a gay bar and was apparently a natural. Dang had no choice but to go back and beg forgiveness from her parents. They agreed to look after the baby, a girl, but they were short of money and Dang agreed to go back to Bangkok. She started working in a go-go bar in Nana Plaza and was soon in demand. She was sexy and a good dancer and farangs were queuing up to pay bar for her. A girl in the bar introduced Dang to heroin and Dang soon became an addict. Between the money she paid to her dealer and the cash she sent back to Khon Kaen she had barely enough to cover her rent and food.
She decided to cut her costs a bit and buy her heroin in the slums of Klong Toey, buying a week’s supply at once, plus a bit more to sell on to her friends. That all went well until she was picked up by a plainclothes cop. He offered her the chance to buy her way out of the problem but he wanted more money than she had so she was charged and sentenced to six months inside. She was eighteen years old.
She went cold turkey while in prison. Not that there weren’t drugs-heroin is as easy to get inside prison as it is outside-it was just that she didn’t have any money. And when you’ve no money, a Thai prison is hell on earth. She shared a cell with dozens of other women, many of them hardened criminals and drug addicts, a hole in the ground for a toilet and a bucket to wash in.
Dang survived her ordeal and walked out of the prison drug-free. She swore to herself that she would never take drugs again and so decided not to return to the go-go bars. She still needed money, though, so started working as a freelance prostitute in a well-known expat hangout called the Thermae. The Thermae is a legendary late-night watering hole, where up to 500 girls line the bar on the look out for a customer. Dang was younger than the average Thermae girl, and a lot prettier, so she had no shortage of customers. She started sending money back to her parents again, and began to save.
It was in the Thermae that she met Bob, a wealthy businessman who ran a property company in Bangkok. Bob saw Dang as soon as he walked into the Thermae and made a beeline for her. Most of the girls in the Thermae are well past their sell-by date and Dang was still relatively fresh, despite her six months in prison. Dang for her part could see that Bob was different from the down-at-heel English teachers and sex tourists who normally prowled around the Thermae looking for fresh meat. She jumped at the chance to go back to his penthouse apartment.
By next morning, Bob was smitten. He wanted to keep Dang for himself. He asked her to move in with him, he would pay for her to go to school and a monthly allowance of 40,000 baht a month, about as much as a go-go dancer would earn. Dang asked for the first month’s ‘salary’ in advance and promptly moved in.
All went well for two months, then
one day Bob returned home to find that the lovely Dang had packed her bags and gone. Bob frantically rang around the few friends of hers that he knew but all he got was evasive answers or Thai replies that he couldn’t understand. He went back to the Thermae but there was no sign of her. That’s when he came to talk to me. I listened to his story, and then gave him the benefit of my wisdom and experience: forget about her. She was a bargirl, he’d paid for sex with her, and now she had gone. The best thing he could do would be to forget Dang and find another girl. He could throw a spanner down Sukhumvit Soi 4 and hit a hundred possible candidates.
Bob insisted. He pulled a photograph from his pocket and slid it across the desk. She was a pretty girl, but not a stunner. Blonde streaks in her shoulder-length hair, nice breasts, long legs. I could see the attraction but I was about to tell him he’d be wasting his time when he slapped a fistful of 1,000-baht notes on top of the picture. ‘This girl’s special,’ he said. ‘I want you to find her for me.’
I looked at Bob, his eyes burning with a fierce intensity, and I looked at the pile of banknotes.
‘I just want to know why she left,’ he said. ‘If I did something wrong, I want to know what I did. That’s all. I want a chance to put it right.’
I knew what was coming next. He was going to tell me that he loved her, and I didn’t want to hear that so I just took the money and said that I’d go looking for her.
Unlike most Bangkok expats, my favourite hangout wasn’t a trendy nightclub or even a go-go bar. I preferred to spend my late-night drinking hours on a small plastic stool at a table on the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 13, strategically located between Soi Nana and Soi Cowboy. Khun Moi and her family have sold beer and Sangthip whisky on the corner for more than thirty years. Her relatives run the nearby barbecued chicken stall and the corner motorcycle taxi rank where I could always be sure to find temporary assistants when I needed them. Khun Moi’s business was a stone’s throw from Thermae and is a favourite haunt of streetwalkers. I used to have a stack of twenty-baht notes in my top pocket to help out any down-at-heel girls to buy some spicy somtam or to get the last bus home. So I already had my network of informants in place; all I had to do was to sit on the corner and show Dang’s photograph around. I was only halfway through my second glass of Sangthip by the time I had two of Dang’s friends at my table. They helped me work my way through the bottle as they told me Dang’s story.
It was yet another story that I’d heard a hundred times before. Much as she appreciated his money, Dang had soon become bored living with Bob. She was stuck in the apartment 24/7. Like most expats, Bob worked hard and long and when he got back to the apartment he was in no mood to go out and party. He wanted to stay in and watch TV, while Dang wanted to go out and hit the city’s nightclubs. And by all accounts, Bob had become lax in the sexual area. Dang was bored, pure and simple. But she still needed money. She wanted to build a big house upcountry and one day she wanted to live there with her daughter. Bob was an okay bet short-term, but she felt as if she was in prison. She spoke to a friend-not one of the girls sharing my whisky-who suggested that she go to Macau. Thai girls could make big money in Macau’s massage parlours and bars, far more than was on offer in Thailand. The friend recommended an agent who promised to arrange a job for her if she gave him 10,000 baht. She also needed a new passport under a different name because as a convicted drug user she couldn’t leave the country. That meant more money. Dang used Bob’s second 40,000-baht ‘salary’ to fund her move to Macau.
I phoned Bob the next day and gave him the bad news. I made it sound as if she’d been ‘lured’ to Macau because I wanted him to at least retain some of his self-esteem, but I did make it clear that she’d become bored with life as a housewife. I thought Bob would just accept what I’d told him and that he’d move on with his life. The last thing I expected was that he’d want me to continue with the case but that’s what he said. He wanted me to go to Macau to talk to Dang. He wanted me to tell her that he’d marry her, and that he’d take Dang and her daughter to America. I figured he was crazy. Dang had already demonstrated that she didn’t love him. She’d turned down an easy life with Bob to work as a prostitute in Macau. Sending me after her would be throwing good money after bad. But before I could say that, he offered me 10,000 baht a day plus expenses. Rule number one of the private-eye business: the client is always right. Even when he was wrong. The following day I was on an Air Macau flight. I explained that I might be on a fool’s errand but Bob said he’d be happy enough just to talk to her on the phone. If she told him that it was truly over between them, he’d accept it. Ten thousand baht a day to arrange a phone call. Easy money. Plus I get a free holiday in Macau. If nothing else I’d get a few hours in one of the casinos.
Most of the Thai working girls hang out in the Mandarin Hotel while the Chinese and Russian hookers tended to gather at the more downmarket Lisboa. I checked into the Mandarin, showered and had a meal, then hit the hotel’s lounge bar. I recognised a couple of English jockeys talking to a group of pretty Thai girls in evening dresses. Macau has a big racing industry, second only to Hong Kong in the region, and unlike Thailand there are no restrictions on jockeys and horses. I sat at the bar and said hello to a pretty Isaan girl who was wearing a long blue dress that emphasised her large, presumably enhanced, breasts. I spoke to her in her northern dialect and told her that one of the jockeys was renowned for having a small dick and more money than sense. She thanked me and went over to join the jockeys. She was soon by his side, stroking his arm and fluttering her long eyelashes.
I sat and sipped my Jack Daniels. When the jockey with the small dick went to the toilet, the girl in the blue dress came over to me. She bought me a drink and said that the jockey had agreed to pay her HK$5,000 for short-time, twenty times the going rate in Thailand. She’d be through by midnight and would come to see me in my room, if I wanted. No charge. I thanked her but pulled out the photograph of Dang and said that she was a close friend on my wife’s and that I wanted to check that she was okay. I spun the line that Dang had promised to phone once she got to Macau but that she hadn’t and my wife was starting to worry about her. The girl looked closely at the picture and then shook her head. She hadn’t seen her around, but if she had only recently arrived in Macau then her Chinese employers would probably be watching her quite closely until they could trust her. But most of the off-duty Thai girls went to the UFO nightclub, so she suggested that I try there. We didn’t have time to chat further because the jockey returned from the toilet. I knew about UFO. It was in the same building as a number of massage parlours controlled by a well-known Triad boss who went by the name of Broken Tooth. I left it until after two o’clock before heading there, but it didn’t start to fill up until after three o’clock. A band crowded onto a small stage and began belting out Thai hits. The audience was mainly Thai, working girls who had finished for the night and young Thai men who worked in the local restaurants or lived off the earnings of their girlfriends. The girls didn’t seem as friendly or as approachable as the bargirls I was used to in Thailand. They were mostly in their late twenties or early thirties, eyes dulled by years in the sex industry and associated drug-taking. Usually they came to Macau on three-month contracts to the Triad-owned massage parlours, and providing they were earning good money they were allowed some freedom, and even allowed to do extra freelance hooking in their off-hours. But if they tried to break their contracts they would be deported, often after being beaten or worse. For the fun-loving Thai girls, working in Macau was akin to a prison sentence, and many turned to drugs to get them through it. And the Triads were happy to supply all the drugs that the girls wanted. It wasn’t unusual for a Thai girl to return to Bangkok after three months in Macau with no money and a serious drug habit.
I moved to be closer to the band and started joining in at the chorus. I was soon accepted by the Thais and a round of drinks made me even more popular. I showed Dang’s photograph around and a couple of the girls said that they knew h
er but that she had been at home all day with a cold. She worked in one of Broken Tooth’s massage parlours.
I was back at UFO the following evening, and after a couple of hours and half a dozen Jack Daniels, one of my new-found friends came over with Dang in tow. She looked tired and drawn, nothing like the happy-go-lucky girl in the picture that Bob had given me. She was a bit wary of me but I told her I was a friend of the girls I’d met in Soi 13 and she began to relax. I waited until her third Heineken before I told her that I knew Bob and that he was worried about her.
She was a bit taken aback but asked how he was. I told her that he missed her and that he wanted to talk to her.
‘Why?’ she said, genuinely surprised.
‘He loves you,’ I said. ‘He wants you back.’ I told her of his offer to marry her and talk her and her daughter to the States.
I wanted to get her out of the nightclub so that we could have a quite chat. The clientele was mainly Thai but there were a few hard-eyed Triad soldiers standing around and I didn’t want them getting curious about my conversation with Dang. I asked her if she’d come back to the Mandarin, making it clear that it was only a chat I wanted. She offered to go short-time with me for HK$2,000 and then giggled at the look of horror on my face. ‘Just joking,’ she said, but I’m sure she was serious. I was sure that Bob was making a big mistake by pursuing this girl, but I remembered rule number one of the private-eye business and took her outside to waiting taxi.
I motioned for Dang to keep quiet in the taxi. You never know who is in the pay of the Triads in Macau. I noticed a motorcycle keeping close tabs on us as we drove to the Mandarin. I figured it was probably a Triad soldier keeping track of their investment. If Dang did decide she wanted to go back to Bangkok, I was going to have to be careful.
Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson Page 8