“Who was Werner?”
“From Cologne. I have sex with him two time. Two! Too sad. Gary make me too sad.”
82 Richard Stevenson
“So you had been living with Gary in his condo?”
“Sometime. I keep my place in Sukhumvit. It good I keep. It okay. It cheap.”
I asked Mango if Gary was having any money problems that he knew of.
“No money problems. Gary rich. He good to me. Generous.
Kind. I put money in bank in Chonburi for house build with Donnutt.”
“Did Gary know about Donnutt?”
“He know Donnutt my friend.”
“Some Thai men,” I said, “have longtime, sometimes lifelong, relationships with foreign men. It sounds as if you never wanted that.”
A wilted smile. “Not without Donnutt.”
“How long have you and Donnutt been boyfriends? How old were you when the relationship began?”
“Eleven.”
“You were eleven years old?”
“Yes. In our village. Now we both thirty-two.”
“Didn’t Gary understand that history when you explained it to him?”
“No, he jealous. He want I want him only. I love Gary. He Buddhist. He love the Buddha. I teach him. I teach him pray. I teach him meditate. I teach him make merit. I love Gary, but Gary no understand Thai.”
“Thais are not so sexually possessive, I guess, as farangs tend to be.”
“Possess? Possess just house, motorbike. No possess for sex. Sex for pleasure. Sex for fun. Like food. Like air.”
“Sanuk.”
“Yes, sanuk. But I love Gary. I am sad.”
“Is it possible,” I said, “that Gary was upset about something else, and that affected how he reacted to Werner and your other somewhat-numerous revelations?”
“I don’t think so,” Mango said.
As he spoke, I was working hard now to concentrate on what he was saying, as the two men in the next cubicle were getting up a nice head of steam. It was plainly a Thai and a farang, because one of them was making little cries of oh-oh-oh
— the farang — and the other one was uttering little squeals of oi-oi-oi — the Thai.
Mango seemed unaware of any of this. It was just another feature of the Bangkok atmosphere, like the aroma of jasmine.
He went on. “Gary not angry at other people, just me. Gary happy then. He rich, he say, and he get more rich, and then he make big merit. Gary so happy. But after I go, something happen. He not happy. I hear this from Kawee. Gary leave, he hide.”
“He was going to become more rich?”
Mango thought about this. His towel had shifted a bit, and now another of his numerous excellent attributes was dimly visible. That and the oh-oh-oh-oi-oi-oi racket next door weren’t making my job any easier at what plainly was about to become a critical juncture in the investigation.
Mango said, “Big investment.”
“Investment in what?’
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t talk about it at all?”
“No.”
“How do you know it was an investment?”
“He say he go bank, get money for big investment. Make rich, make merit.”
“What was the merit he was going to make?”
“No say. But for the Buddha. For the Dharma. For the Sangha.”
84 Richard Stevenson
“The Sangha. That’s the monkhood? Was he going to give money to the monks? To a monk?”
“No monk, maybe. Maybe seer. Gary go to seer. Gary like seer. Seer tell Gary many things. He say Gary see blood. Gary people hurt. Then he say Gary make big merit, no blood, no hurt. Make bad luck good luck.”
“Do you know who the seer was, Mango? Do you know his name and where he is?”
“Yes, he is soothsayer Khunathip Chantanapim, and he here in Bangkok.”
I said, “Now we’re getting somewhere,” just as one of the chaps in the next cubicle got somewhere too.
Timmy and Sawee were not by the pool when I came downstairs, so Mango and I stepped into the nearby multi-tenanted labyrinthine steam room for a refreshing bout of heatstroke. Both of us had been feeling a certain amount of tension following our conversation about Griswold, though when we emerged from the busy steam room and headed for the cold showers some minutes later, much of that tension had been dissipated.
Mango told me how to reach him if I needed to talk to him again, and he gave a fairly detailed description of the two men who had threatened him two months earlier and roughed him up when he insisted that he had no idea where Griswold was.
One of the two goons sounded like Yai, the motorcycle assault artist. Mango said he wished I — or somebody — could do something about these two. He needed some more foreign
“friends” to keep his Chonburi house fund going, and keeping such a low profile was crimping his style in that regard.
Timmy reappeared a while later at poolside. “Where’s Kawee?” I asked. “Is he okay?”
“Oh sure. He’s in the shower, I think.”
I told Timmy about my productive talk with Mango and about the news of the soothsayer who apparently talked Griswold into some major Buddhist merit-making venture, probably involving a large amount of cash.
“Wow, this is the breakthrough you needed.”
“I think so.”
“Great,” Timmy said, looking pleased but a little distracted.
“So. Are you having fun? No drive-by shootings? Plenty of smiles.”
“You got it.”
“But nothing worth mentioning?”
“Well. I guess I should tell you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well. It’s this. I just spent a lovely hour and a half in a cubicle with Kawee.” He actually smirked, something I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him do.
“ Kawee? ”
More smirk, though faintly cracked this time.
“You and little katoey Kawee?”
“It was his idea. But it didn’t take much coaxing, and I’m happy I did it because he’s really quite delightful.”
“Timothy. Don’t your tastes generally run to — how shall I put it? — men a bit more butch?”
“Yes, obviously. But in the semidarkness that sweet lad is plenty butch enough, believe you me. Anyway, he’s just so…so nice.”
“I’m…I’m be-dazed.”
“Anyway, while he’s a katoey, he’s not transgendered in the full, clinical sense. He plans, for example, on keeping his dick.
He’s totally happy with it. As well he might be. Anyway, we didn’t do much. Basically we just cuddled and chatted and then enjoyed some pleasant mutual slow self-abuse. He wanted to fuck me. He had four condoms — four, mind you! — stuffed inside his towel. But even with the condoms, that seemed to go well beyond our ground rules on these matters.”
86 Richard Stevenson
“I would say, yes, getting pounded up the butt by a well-hung Thai lady-boy is well outside our agreed-upon parameters.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind. I just assumed that once you and Mango got into a cubicle, nature would run its merry course.”
“Timothy, why would you assume such a thing? On those exceedingly rare occasions when I do anything like that at all I never mix work in with it. Well, once I did and regretted it, as you well know. Really. I’m…I don’t know quite what to say.”
“So you and Mango didn’t do it?”
“Of course not!”
“Weren’t you in the steam room just now? I thought I saw you both come out.”
“Yes, but we didn’t do anything together. Give me some credit.”
“Anyway, I’m just doing what you always say. It’s the Henry James dictum. When in Venice, one must always try the squid in its own ink.”
“Oh, that. I forgot. I hope Kawee wasn’t too squidlike.”
“Not too. Just enough.”
“Well, you do seem to be adjusting to Thai customs and mores nicely. I suppose I should be grateful after all your ambivalence and fretting about coming here.”
“The only question in my mind is, why didn’t we come to Thailand sooner? Don, I have to say, now I do see what the attraction is. The Thais are just so comfortable being who and what they are, and so totally laid-back about life’s simplest pleasures — tasty food, sunshine, flowers and trees, affectionate and playful sex. I see why people come here and…well, fall in love with this gosh-darn place!”