“Ah, there’s my observant Georgetown grad.”
72 Richard Stevenson
“What do you think Pugh meant when he said he needed to help you survive? That certainly got my attention.”
“He meant survive in the professional sense, would be my guess,” I said, apparently unconvincingly, given the look I got back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The word voluptuous when used about a person suggests amplitude, and yet here was maybe the most voluptuous human being I had ever met, and he was quite small. Kawee Thaikhiew was Lolita, he was a Caravaggio boy siren, he was the twentyyear-old Truman Capote draped over that recamier in the 1948 dust jacket photo for Other Voices, Other Rooms. And all of the above weighed in at no more than a hundred twenty pounds.
Kawee wore ironed jeans and a pristine white tank top over his delicate brown chest. Around his neck, an amulet dangled on a gold chain with what looked like the image of an aged monk. He had flip-flops on his feet, so all could see and admire his toenails, carefully painted a resplendent fuchsia. His face was finely crafted and his luminous black eyes lightly mascaraed, his lips perceptibly glossier than most Thai lips, male or female.
Kawee was the living, breathing embodiment of ambigenderal sensuality, and yet it was impossible to imagine any actual sex with this person who looked as if, during the act, he might easily snap in half.
Timmy and I had gone over to Griswold’s condo to make a deal with Mr. Thomsatai on notifying us if Kawee turned up.
After pocketing another thousand baht, Mr. Thomsatai said,
“This is lucky for you. Kawee is upstairs now.”
At first the boy — or boy-girl-man-woman; katoey is the nonjudgmental Thai term — tried to make a quick exit. We had badly frightened him. I tried to reassure him by brandishing my New York State PI license — he stared at it as if its script were in ancient Pali — and I also produced a letter from Ellen Griswold attesting that I represented her in a search for her missing brother-in-law.
“I don’t know where Mr. Gary go,” Kawee told us in a breathy voice, his eyes fixed not on Timmy and me but on the exit. We had found him placing offerings at Griswold’s shrine.
74 Richard Stevenson
He had left one marigold garland, a lotus bud, and an open can of Pepsi with a straw sticking out of it.
I said, “Mr. Gary may be in trouble — we know that — but we are not the trouble. We need to let him know that we can help him with his trouble. You can help him by helping us do that. Don’t you want to help Mr. Gary? Isn’t he your friend?”
“Yes, he my friend.”
“How do you talk to him? By telephone?”
“No, no telephone. He tell me no telephone.”
“When did he tell you this? Have you seen him?”
“He just phone me. On my mobile. But he doesn’t have phone. He call from Internet shop.”
“In Bangkok?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was the last time?”
“Before two days.”
I asked Kawee if Mr. Gary was his boyfriend.
“No, no boyfriend. Friend friend. Mr. Gary help me so much. He is kind man.”
“Where did you meet Mr. Gary?”
“At Paradisio. That gay sauna for meet people for sex. Most farang just want to fuck Thai boy. But Mr. Gary, he love the Buddha. He is kind. I help him, and he help me. I take care of flowers and I make offerings until he come back.”
“When will he come back? Did he say?”
“No. Maybe long time. He send me money for offerings — and for me. He help me very much.”
“But he does come here sometimes, late at night. Do you know why?”
“No. Mr. Gary no say.”
I asked Kawee how money from Mr. Gary was sent to him.
In an envelope via motorbike messenger, he said. Once a week, to the room he shared with three others in Sukhumvit. Then the messenger picked up Griswold’s mail, which Kawee had collected from his friend’s mailbox. Here was a direct link to Griswold that looked as if it would be not too difficult to follow.
I said, “Did Mr. Gary tell you why he is not living here at home?”
“No. He not tell me. Maybe Mango know.”
At last. “Who is Mango?”
“He was Mr. Gary’s boyfriend. But he hiding, I think.”
“They are no longer boyfriends?”
“They fight.”
“Fight?”
“Big argue. Mango angry Mr. Gary.”
“Mango made Mr. Gary angry? What did he do?”
“No, Mango angry. He say Mr. Gary bring bad luck. Mango make merit, he say, but Mr. Gary bad luck. Bad men try hurt Mango. He must hide.”
“In Bangkok?”
“I think so. I saw him many time.”
“Where did you see him?”
“Paradisio.”
“How can he hide in a public place?”
“No, Paradisio safe for him. The bad men he hiding, they no go there. They not gay, he don’t think.”
“When did you last see Mango at Paradisio?”
“Last Sunday. He like go Sunday. Me also. Sunday busy.”
“Today is Sunday. Will you be going today?”
“I think so.”
“Would you mind if Timmy and I tagged along?”
“Tagalog?”
76 Richard Stevenson
“Came with you. Maybe Mango will be there and you can point him out to us.”
Kawee thought about this. “Are you gay?”
“Yes, we are. Timothy and I are partners.”
He smiled for the first time. “Which one top?”
Timmy said, “Oh, really.”
“It depends on the phases of the moon,” I said.
“Ahh.”
We made a plan to meet at the entrance to Paradisio at two.
“Maybe you meet Mango,” Kawee said. “Anyway, you have too much fun!”
Timmy said, “Too much fun is just barely enough for us,” and Kawee looked over at him and smiled coyly.
“The motorbike guy is a bad actor,” Pugh said. “I don’t mean a bad actor like Jean-Claude Van Damme is a bad actor, or Adam Sandler. I mean he’s a mean and dangerous man with a criminal history that you want to be very, very careful of.”
We were back at the hotel and about to head out for lunch when Pugh phoned me.
“Rufus, you’re obviously well connected with the police you think so poorly of.”
“The police are still the police. But this man’s name I obtained from a friend at AIS, the mobile phone service. A police official, did, however, run the name for me. The information is reliable too. This helpful acquaintance is a captain to whom I send a case of Johnny Walker once a month on his birthday.”
“He sounds old.”
“And wise. And often informative. As today. I won’t recite the motorbike man’s full Thai name. You’ll never remember it.
He goes by the nickname Yai. That means large. Perhaps his name should be Yai Leou, big and bad.”
“I’m making a linguistic note.”
“Yai served two years on an assault charge. He ran his motorbike over an Austrian man who chastised Yai for driving on the sidewalk. Yai turned the bike around and drove into the man, knocking him to the ground. Then he turned around and drove over the man a second time, causing serious injuries. It was lucky for Yai that the victim was a tourist. If he had done the same thing to a Thai of any consequence, he might have been facing considerable hard time.”
“And what are Yai’s current pastimes?”
“This is unclear. Some of his associates are people with likely narcotics connections and others have probably been involved with the trafficking of human beings — sex slaves for our pious Muslim brothers in Riyadh and certain C of E chappies in Belgravia. Yai, my sources believe, is at this time freelancing. So we must learn more about Yai, but we must take great care in doing so.”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
“Yes, for now.”
Rufus had made a number of calls to gay bar owners and the bars’ habitues to get a bead on Mango. I told him we might not need any of that, for I had found and spoken with Kawee, who not only knew who Mango was but where he sometimes could be found.