Stephen Leather - Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye - True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson

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.