Harlan Wolff - Bangkok Rules

“You’re well known for never throwing anything away. Do you still have your mailing lists from that direct mail company you ran with your ex-wife?”

“They’ll be somewhere in the garage.”

Carl knew the Dutchman had never owned a car so the garage had always been his warehouse.“Standard stuff I assume. Sports Club, Polo Club, credit card holders, golf societies, chambers of commerce and such?”

“Yeah, that sort of thing. Why are you asking?”

“I have one of those silly clients. The ones that think life is a movie and they are starring in it. Thinks his wife cheated on him when she was first married to him. Mad as a hatter I’m afraid.”

“So why the interest?”

“Someone pays you ten thousand baht for nothing it would be impolite not to take it.”

“He gave you ten thousand baht? That’s not much.”

“Oh, not for a case. Just to find out if the name he heard back then was a real person. Anyway, if someone gives me ten thousand baht to come and visit an old friend it seems like a good day to me.”

“I suppose it is,” he said without a smile.

“So we look at your lists and split the money.”

Suddenly the Dutchman was smiling from ear to ear. If Carl could read minds he would have known the Dutchman was making a mental list of all the girlie bars he was going to spend the money in.

“Wait here,” he said and shot out the backdoor.

The sounds of Monk and the boys playing ‘Well you needn’t’ from the record player washed over Carl. Don’t listen to it Dutchman, he was thinking, yes you need to!

By the time the Dutchman came back the record had finished playing. The Dutchman was bringing endless plastic bags into the house, wheezing with the effort. It took him ten minutes of sweating and puffing before he could speak.

“So what’s the name we are looking for?” he asked still out of breath.

“James Peabody, somewhere between 1993 and 1996.”

He was pulling out A4 size soft files that resembled manuscripts. They were lists of everything imaginable and most importantly the names were in alphabetical order.

“You start with this lot,” he told Carl as he started making a pile in front of him and another in front of himself.

Pim came back, clanking beer bottles. She brought beer and noodles in on another tray. She had lots of trays. Fortunately the Dutchman was too busy to care whether or not Carl drank his beer so didn’t notice that the bottle remained full. The noodles with pork were good and the chili peppers did wonders for his hangover. They both pushed the empty bowls and chopsticks into the middle of the table and got back to the task ahead.

The first file Carl picked up was marked with big letters on the front, ‘The Scandinavian Society’. No chance, but he still went through the Ps diligently. It was never a good idea to give the other person an excuse to be sloppy so Carl made sure the Dutchman saw how carefully he studied the pages. Getting people to the racetrack is one thing but spend too much time patting yourself on the back and they’ll never reach the finish line. The next file Carl picked up was a list of subscribers to Bangkok Shuho, a Japanese language newspaper. It was getting ridiculous but he went through it anyway.

An hour later brought the ‘eureka’ moment. The thinnest file of course, the least likely to succeed, the runt of the litter. It was no more than ten pages.

“What’s this?” Carl asked the Dutchman.

“Let me see.” He grabbed it from Carl’s hand. He studied it and started laughing.

Carl was in mild shock. There it was, the name he was looking for on a yellowing page, shouting at him from the analogue past. He hadn’t expected to find it. It was a case to go through the motions; it’s not like he took such an eccentric client seriously. A private detective may start his career with belief in his fellow man but life will get the better of faith and eventually make him cynical. The industry jargon is ‘paranoid survival’. Meanwhile, Carl was having a Hollywood moment. Fan-bloody-tastic!

“I had this mistress. The wife never knew,” The Dutchman said with a huge grin. “She was cute, from the North, Loei up by the border. Only Thai girl I ever knew with pink nipples. Can you believe it? Pink nipples.”

He started rolling a joint from another box, Nepali hashish this time. When he was puffing the pungent smoke he continued. Not smiling but content in that no man’s land of a happy memory.

“She worked for a travel company in the business district. A very small travel company, she was the secretary. They organized gambling tours to Macau for rich Thai-Chinese, the kind of people that could lose a million dollars in a weekend without having to commit suicide. The company made most of their real money by arranging cash when the clients gambled themselves broke. The currency control regulations in those days made it almost impossible to get large amounts out of Thailand. The company gave a horrible exchange rate and charged interest, all arranged through our old money changer in Chinatown. It took me forever to get her to make me a copy of their client list but I wasn’t going to miss out on having a list of people like that. Last time I sold it was around 1995, to a yacht marina with two million dollar houses for sale. There is a code after the names and information on the back page. Ah, here it is; high stakes poker it says. And here it says a private game on the top floor of the Lisboa casino. Not on public floors, no poker on public floors in those days. Must be rich to have been in a big private game like that.”

“What about contact details?” Carl asked him.

“Just an address and phone number.”

Just an address and phone number! It was all Carl could do to stay calm. He was having a good day, a special day. Like getting a Christmas card from Easter Island that said Happy Birthday.

“Let me write that down,” Carl said reaching for pen and paper while handing the Dutchman five thousand baht with the other hand.

Carl was in a hurry to leave. Not that he felt bad; the Dutchman had got five thousand baht for an hour’s work and was more than happy. It would not have been right to tell him the truth. It was necessary for Carl to tell lies for a living but he knew that if it became a lifestyle he would get lost. He understood the fine line between light and darkness because he walked it every day. He liked the light but was drawn to the dark side so he knew that he needed to be careful. Once he let the devil out, the party went on for days. The trouble was Carl liked it.

Carl sent an SMS to the client to remind him he needed the photograph of the grandfather that the target was said to resemble. He also asked for the target’s full real name and date of birth. He told the client he could arrange for the picture to be collected from the client’s hotel whenever it was convenient.

Carl chose not to mention the morning’s findings. He believed that delivering information in bits diluted the magic and invited interference from the client. The purpose of the message was to let the client know that Carl was already on the case and to put his mind at ease.

The client messaged back almost immediately; the picture was being couriered from the US and was expected in a couple of days. The full name of his brother was Anthony Andrew Inman, born 12 March 1943. Carl used his Blackberry to send an email to a contact he had in Las Vegas requesting a full background check on an Anthony Andrew Inman.

The address Carl had got from the Dutchman’s records was, by Carl’s calculations, somewhere around the middle of Phetchburi Road, which was not far from Sukhumvit, almost as long, running parallel to it. Carl had driven there in the unusually light Bangkok traffic without seeing any evidence of floods or coup. Thailand made him doubt his sanity and memory at times. If these major events really happened why couldn’t he see them? Because the veneer was back and the woodworms were asleep.