FIVE
“You’re looking radiant today, Susie.”
“Oh, Bob, you old charmer!” Inside Susie was thrilled by this compliment, she need the boost; her self-esteem had taken quite a battering over the last few years, culminating in her walking in on her husband in a drug-fuelled sex session with a middle-aged Australian guy. It was the final episode in a marriage that had been petering out since soon after the wedding day.
Bob updated Susie on the complexities of the Pim case and the super news that she had paid some money upfront.
“This is the start, Susie, it’s all coming together.”
Bob had realised early on that the key to success in his PI job was going to be marketing and networking.
“You see, Susie, I need to take a more sophisticated, nuanced approach to this.”
“How so?” Susie’s interest was genuine even though she saw this whole enterprise as something of a counselling activity for her old friend.
“Well, Suze, I can’t just rely on word of mouth. I can’t just limit myself to BGM.”
“BGM?” Suzie enquired.
Bob chortled. “Bar Girl Marketing. I should run courses on this stuff. I can see it now. Big posters around town. Bob Lowe – One day BGM seminars. Three thousand baht a head. Now where was I?”
This was a well-trodden path for Susie. Drinking and eating dinner with Bob and allowing him to get lost in his own thoughts. Their friendship had been developing for over a year since the unfortunate incident with Bob’s one-time friend and Bangkok petty criminal, Alf Hayes. The event had left Bob emotionally crushed and feeling that he was without a friend in the world. Susie had been there for him and he had begun to realise she was actually a pleasant enough woman. He felt guilty for some of the more unkind ways he had treated her in the decade or so both had spent in the Big Mango.
He was careful with what he said to Susie when it came to his encyclopaedic knowledge of the bar girl scene, he didn’t want her to know just how much of an expert he was. He was amazed by her naivety though. He had learnt during his first year in Bangkok that the idea of the impoverished girl selling her body as a last resort desperate way to earn cash was both a lazy stereotype and ludicrous over simplification. True, at his worst Bob had gone too far the other way. For years he effectively denied there was anything negative or exploitative about the bar scene in Nana. But people like Susie were blissfully unaware of the complexities of the Bangkok sex industry. Some of the women there were more akin to slick operators running small businesses. They balanced the day to day bar work with two or three long-term overseas boyfriends. Each man would pay a monthly allowance to his girl and typically visit for a few weeks each year. They often supported kids and family elsewhere in the country. They earnt good money and it certainly wasn’t easy to balance three different relationships as well as not let on to their boyfriend that they were still working bars. Bob had also known of a young university student who simply wanted a pleasant enough partner to fund them through university. Who was being exploited there? Susie just had no idea. He had recently heard of an ex-flame, Pinky. Bob had become quite obsessed with her at one time, but she had never been interested in allowing him to hire her for a second night. Word was she had opened up a hotel in the north-east. He didn’t ask for details but it was obvious there was a husband involved, or some other way that her bar customers were funding her new life. Bob once had an old mate who bought a bar business for a girl in Phuket. He was under no illusions about them being together, but he explained it to Lowe simply. “If you saw her, you’d have bought her a bar too.” What he got in return was a couple of nice weeks with her each year down in Phuket. New Lowe was trying to have a more balanced view, and he had noticed some of the more misogynistic behaviour of the men, and was appalled. He had recently seen a heavily pregnant woman trying to pick up in the early hours from a street bar and being mocked by a couple of British guys. He was disgusted, but that was only one side of it. Like many things in Bangkok the reality was a lot more complex.
He continued to explain his BGM plans to Susie. In short, while Bob drank his way down Soi Nana and its sub sois, he would leave his business cards on the wall or on tables in the bars. The cards were simple:
BOB LOWE PI (Private Investigator)
Bangkok’s finest PI
NO JOB TOO SMALL!!
“But you were saying you need to go beyond BGM, Bob.”
“Correct, Suze! I’ve started leaving my card in tuk-tuks, hotels, apartment blocks. Wherever I can basically.”
Business was still slow to pick up and Bob suspected, rightly so, that many of his cards were simply discarded.
“I don’t ignore the old face-to-face marketing either, Suze; engage with the customers. The personal touch. Bob Lowe can go a long way on this personality. Watch!”
At this point Bob stood up and pulled a pile of business cards from his shirt pocket. Susie chuckled. The cards were all slightly different sizes and it was clear Bob had photocopied onto paper just about thick enough to be considered card, and then cut with scissors. Bob began to circle the small café.
“Bob Lowe PI. No job too small. Don’t be shy, give me call.” Bob liked his nice little rhyming ditty, but Bob didn’t end there and the poetic delight was slightly diminished when he added, “Or email, Facebook, or even LINE text message. Well you got to these days. Thailand, eh? Contacts all on the back.”
He’d usually get some sort of reaction. After all, this was not the sort of thing one expected to encounter even in the wacky and bizarre nature of Bangkok.
“Could be some clients in this bunch.” Bob sat down again, satisfied.
“In fact, Suze, I’ve just had a fascinating chat with a tuk-tuk driver called Daeng. He may have a case for me, but more importantly I’ve already hatched plans for him to spread the word about town. I’ve found my calling, Susie.”
Susie looked intently at Bob. She wondered if he might actually be rather attractive, in a shabby sort of way. She was genuinely pleased to see him in such good spirits, but was a tad concerned that maybe he was flipping too far. Susie had battled with her own bipolar disorder for years, and had slowly become aware of the signs. Bob had quickly gone from a deep depression to a bustling positivity and a new project. Was he becoming delusional with this whole PI thing?
Much as Susie enjoyed her newfound friendship with Bob it did frustrate her that he so rarely enquired about her life and her problems. Their conversations always seemed to be very one way. Bob’s new business, Bob’s depression, and Susie’s unstinting support to help him through it. He had even started to open up about his battles trying to wean himself off an addiction to Bangkok’s bar girls.
She wondered if Bob even remembered how depressed she had been herself over the previous year. She was determined to try and turn the tables on him during this lunch.
“So, I texted Tong yesterday. I don’t know why really.” Susie opened the conversation. Tong was her ex-husband – well technically they were still married. She hadn’t seen him since that incident when she caught him with the Aussie guy. Her world had crumbled.
“Oh good Lord, Susie. What did he say?” Bob wasn’t sure how one was meant to respond in these situations, but he knew it was important to try and demonstrate to Susie that he did care.
“Well, he ignored the message for hours. Which hurt even more. Finally he just replied to say he was fine and back up in Nong Khai. I felt so stupid.”
“Matters of the heart, eh, Susie? They never do run smooth. Lord I’d know about that!” Bob tried to lighten the mood and laughed.
“We should have one of those pacts, and get married if we are still single in a few years!” Susie let out a ludicrously over the top laugh. It took Bob a moment to compose himself.
“Good one, Suze. Very droll. You see laughter really is the best medicine.”
Susie could see in that split second a look of utter terror in Bob’s eyes at the prospect. One night, years earlier, when both
Bob and Susie were very drunk and, unknown to Susie, Bob had been unable to pick up the hooker he wanted, they spent a dreadful fumbling ten minutes in bed together. The humiliation complete when out of habit Bob left one thousand baht on the bed as he left.
“So TTM, tuk-tuk marketing and the like must go hand in hand with BGM.”
And with that, Susie’s feeble attempt to talk through her own issues and problems, was over.
Bob didn’t notice the disappointment in Susie’s eyes and took her at face value when she said, “Got to dash, Bob, I totally forgot I have a dentist appointment.” She flashed another of her big, and this time slightly forced, toothy grins.
“Oh I see! Off you go, run along, Suze!”
The waiter came to clear Susie’s coffee cup. Bob looked up at him and chuckled “Women, eh? Incorrigible beasts!” .
SIX
Avi Shielmann sat in one of his regular bars, nursing his second beer of the night. He tended to avoid the Thai beer brands as he found they had a tendency to give him a nagging headache or at least feel somewhat groggy in the morning. He stuck to Heineken, or San Miguel Light if he was concerned about calories. He was fascinated by Nana’s bars and tended to drink there at least three nights a week as he pondered what he was doing with his life. On a wave of spontaneity he had quit his accountancy job in Stockholm for travel and retirement, or perhaps semi-retirement. Given that he hadn’t worked since leaving the job, he was leaning towards thinking he was already properly retired. Financially, he’d done pretty well over the years, and had sold the small apartment in Tel Aviv that he’d inherited from his parents. He probably had enough to fund a simple enough retirement. But something was missing. He’d never married or had kids and one day he was sat in his Stockholm office looking out over the stunning vista of Stockholm’s islands when he had a moment of clarity, an epiphany perhaps. He’d been staring at an email from a client concerning an unusual situation relating to business taxes. He was day dreaming, thinking about all the things he had done with his life; the glamour of the disco days, life in Tel Aviv, battles in Israel as a citizen strongly opposed to his own government, then moving to Sweden and taking up Swedish citizenship. What did he have to show for it? Memories, a comfortable life, and a lovely view from his office. Is that it? He wondered and then made an instant decision, something he had been grappling with for years. He replied to the email.
Dear Magnus,
Let me look into this matter this week. Then I will have to hand this to a colleague as I have decided to take retirement.
Yours,
Avi S.
Given that he was the only Avi working for Stockholm Finance Services, it amused many that he always signed off as Avi S.
He then got up, packed his small satchel-style briefcase with his empty flask (Avi always made his own coffee at home and brought it to work) and the plastic container that he’d brought his lunch in; a smoked salmon sandwich on rye with a smearing of horseradish. He told his secretary in broken Swedish that he was leaving early then went to speak to his boss Filip Nilsson. He’d expected Filip to try and persuade him to stay, but to his surprise Filip stood up, shook Avi’s hand, and gave him a warm bear hug.
“You have my immense admiration, Avi.”
Avi had never seen such warmth from the dour Swede.
Avi had visited Thailand many times over the years, regularly taking a two-week holiday during the Swedish winter. The decision to base himself in Thailand during his retirement was perhaps something of a cliché. Many Swedes visited and indeed also retired in Thailand and he had known many to come back waxing lyrical about the place and its people; this had triggered his first trip about five years earlier. On this day he felt fate was telling him to go back to Thailand, long-term. His client, Magnus, whose email he had been reading when he came to this momentous decision was married to a Thai woman and had three delightful children. Avi was always invited to their annual Christmas drinks and he’d always seen them as the perfect family. Then as he walked home he felt a craving for his favourite restaurant, a small café in Gamla Stan called ‘Bangkok Kitchen’. As he approached, the owner Mr Wattana was putting up a new board with a special early evening offer.
“Mr Avi, new special offer, perfect for you I think.” Wattana always spoke to Avi in English, they were both more comfortable in English than Swedish.
“Wattana, it might be just that.” A light wind ruffled Avi’s thinning hair and he grappled with it in a forlorn attempt to keep it looking neat and tidy.
He strolled in and sat at his usual table, where one of Wattana’s many nieces came to take his order. He’d been a regular at Bangkok Kitchen for the last few years. It was his favourite eatery in Stockholm. There was a laid back, almost shabby charm to the place. Handwritten table numbers were taped to each table which were decorated with slightly old and faded plastic flowers. The food was fantastic, everyone who worked there was Thai, or at least Thai-Swedish, and most were part of Wattana’s extended family. Avi could never remember who was the son or daughter of which of Wattana’s relatives. It was genuinely authentic. Other so-called Thai restaurants were smarter and more expensive and when you investigated you’d often find the staff were Chinese or Malaysian; and the food was a bad stereotypical notion of Thai food.
He ordered his usual; crab cakes, green curry with steamed rice, and a pot of jasmine tea. Sometimes he’d finish off with mango and sticky rice and a couple of beers. He sat drinking his beer and looked at the stunning photos that adorned the walls, idyllic beaches, amazing temples, and the glory of His Majesty the King. He decided that yes, retirement in Thailand was surely the correct path. When he arrived in the kingdom some months later, it instantly felt like the right decision and Bangkok had become his base to explore the region.
“You thinking maak maak, Khun Avi?” Mint brought him out of his daydream.
“Life, Mint, life. How are you?”
“Always same, Avi. Happy happy!”
Mint always did seem happy. Avi often wondered if she really was. There was a real energy and buzz to these bars, and yes the girls did seem to enjoy themselves; often laughing and joking. Could they really be happy in such a career? Avi had long pondered this question on his visits to Bangkok.
At that moment his ears were alerted to a song that began to play. Just an Illusion by Imagination. Avi had often described it as the last great disco tune. It was also the last song Avi had danced competitively to. He stood up, and the muscle memory kicked in. For the next four or so minutes he was transported back to Tokyo ’83 when he danced for the last time in tandem with his disco buddy – Mohammed Razzaq. The sixty-year-old version of Avi was a bit rusty but he still had all the moves. People in the bar began to cheer and whoop, some were genuinely impressed, others just amazed at the sight of an old geezer dancing to himself in a moderately busy Nana bar. In the great scheme of things, a sixty-year-old Israeli with Swedish citizenship disco dancing in a Nana bar was just another run of the mill event for this part of town.
Avi sat back in his chair, utterly exhausted, sweat dripping down his face, yet exhilarated. He took a long swig from his beer that was just about still cold enough. A business card caught his eye. It was attached to the plastic container that housed his beer orders, with a flimsy piece of tape. Avi examined it carefully, Bob Lowe PI.
SEVEN
The Bangkok Women's Bridge and Lunch Society met weekly, on a rota of different locations. One week it was the Marriott hotel, another they had rented a function room at the Sukhumvit Prestige Hotel, or occasionally just in a pleasant café in one of the city’s classier shopping malls. Wherever it was there was some planning required. There would usually be fifteen to twenty members coming on any one Wednesday. Officially there were over fifty signed up to the society, but some of those were actually working and so only came to monthly weekend functions.
Like any good society the BWBLS was heavily administered, with a treasurer, a club secretary, an events’ organiser, a weekly
bridge meet planner and a chairperson; their spiritual and actual leader so to speak. Marjorie Dubshott had been chair of the BWBLS since its inception back in the late 1990s when Marjorie arrived in Bangkok with her husband – Humphrey who was at the time, British Ambassador. Officially there was an annual election of all those positions, but Marjorie had stood unopposed almost every year – there was one ugly business back in 2008 when a young trendy type, Sally Bamton, tried to join the society and modernise it. Marjorie saw off the challenge.
This Wednesday was a busy one, with twenty-three members attending and bridge starting at 10am in the lobby café of the Sukhumvit Prestige. Marjorie was a big supporter of this venue, as they always provided delicious biscuits with the coffee and the staff there were quick to replenish stocks. The lunch buffet was also very acceptable and excellent value, and they were happy to set up a mini buffet station in the lobby lounge exclusively for the BWBLS.
"Splendid as ever, Khun Suwit," Marjorie greeted the duty manager as she arrived, thirty minutes early as always. She felt it important to be there when the women arrived and also it was useful to check the tea and coffee station was all in order. She would then lay out the cards and notepads and pencils with her trusty driver Sapong.
"Oh, Suwit, you are an absolute gem, coconut delights! My very favourite." She slipped Suwit a five hundred baht tip.
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk Page 3