“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.
“Ah, Paradisio. One of the few revered institutions of Bangkok I have not had the privilege of setting foot in.”
“They would let you in even if you’re not gay. I’ll bet you could fake it.”
He laughed. “Could, and after a beer or two, have done.
Was Kawee otherwise helpful in our search for Mr. Gary?”
I told Pugh what little I had learned from Kawee. I said that since Griswold phoned Kawee from time to time, I had urged him to tell Griswold that friendly people were looking for him and wanted to help him out of whatever trouble he was in. I dictated Kawee’s multi-syllabic full name, which the young katoey had somewhat reluctantly provided me, so that Pugh 78 Richard Stevenson could check Kawee’s mobile phone records and try to ascertain which Internet cafe Griswold had been phoning from. This could help locate him in a particular Bangkok neighborhood, if he was in the city.
Pugh said he would do this, and he asked me to alert him if I was able to track down Mango. “I’m thinking,” Pugh said, “that we should stake out Paradisio and, if Mango appears, tail him. I have staff who can do this, and quite expertly.”
I said that sounded good. “If I meet Mango, I’ll follow him outside when he leaves and pass him off to your team. But how will your guys recognize me?”
“I have already seen to that.”
“You photographed me? I missed that, Rufus.”
“No, your photo appeared in the Albany Times Union on July twelfth, two years ago. This was after you got into what the newspaper said was a sarcastic back-and-forth with a gay-baiting judge while you were testifying at a client’s trial, and you were cited for contempt of court.”
“Yes, I did get my picture in the paper that time. That fine cost me, too. It was twice what my fee was with that putz of a client. Anyway, the guy never paid me.”
Pugh chuckled. “I wish I had been there to see it. Keep in mind, however, that in Thailand, the fine would have been even higher for causing a man of high office to lose face. You might have had to pay with your profession. Or an organ or two.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Here we have other ways of getting a job done. We don’t ride an elephant to catch a
