Big Mango (9786167611037) (17 page)

And with that Eddie heard the telephone
receiver clatter onto a tabletop. Okay, so much for the father-son
crap. He fidgeted for what felt like a minute or more, waiting for
Jennifer to pick up. Feeling defeated and subdued by Mike’s
complete disinterest in him, he had just decided to hang up when a
male voice came on the line.

“Eddie, it’s Franklin. Jennifer can’t come to
the phone right now. Could she call you back?”

“I’m calling from Bangkok, Franklin.”

“Where?”

“Bangkok.”

“Oh…” He seemed to think about that. “Then
maybe you should call her back, huh?”

“Fine, Franklin. Tell her I’ll do that.”

Eddie hung up quickly, before he said
anything he might be sorry for later, and leaned back in the
chair.

Man, oh man. Was that it? Michael was his
son, and Jennifer was…well, she was his ex-wife, of course, and
married to someone else now, but Eddie still thought of Jennifer
and Michael as his family anyway since it was the only one he had.
On the other hand, maybe the time had come to rethink that. If that
was the extent of his family’s interest in him, maybe he had things
all wrong.

With a long sigh, Eddie pushed himself to his
feet. Of course he had things all wrong. Jennifer and Michael both
had new lives now and he wasn’t a part of them. He was an
ex-husband—twice, he reluctantly reminded himself—and now it looked
like he might be well on his way to becoming an ex-father, too.
Eddie had gone into the bedroom with some vague idea that he was
calling home, not that anyone else apparently thought of it that
way. When was he going to stop being so surprised about that?
Clearly his whole concept of home required some serious
reappraisal.

With a shake of his head, he jammed his hands
in his pockets and went out to the living room to wait for
Winnebago.

THE
Thonglor police station
was on soi 55, out Sukhumvit Road past the Sheraton Hotel. On the
way from the Oriental, Winnebago spotted a McDonald’s just opening
up and Eddie waved the taxi driver to a stop.

Splashing through the rain that had been
falling steadily all morning, he and Winnebago ran inside and had
some surprisingly passable coffee and a couple of Big Macs.
Winnebago bought a second round and carried it back outside where
they flagged down another cab. Eddie gathered Winnebago was slowly
returning to a state that was reasonably close to normal, at least
for Winnebago.

“I didn’t remember these were so good,”
Winnebago said, wiping mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t get carried away. You’re probably
still in shock from last night.”

“Damn, man,” Winnebago shook his head,
thinking back. “Too much of that shit could put you off pussy
forever, couldn’t it?”

By the time their driver pointed out a
nondescript, two-story building composed primarily of cracked, gray
concrete, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. They got out and paid
off the taxi.

Eddie put a hand on Winnebago’s arm. “Let’s
double-check how this conversation is going to go. I want to make
sure we’ve got our stories straight.”

“It’ll go like always, won’t it? You’ll do
all the talking and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“That’s pretty much what I had in mind.”

“What do you think this cop’s going to tell
you anyway?”

“Maybe nothing. But if someone identified
Austin’s body or claimed it for burial, and he’ll give us a name,
we’ll have a place to start.”

“You really think he’s going to do that?”

“I don’t know, but whatever he says, just
keep smiling. Being a hardass doesn’t play well with Thais. Smile
even if it’s killing you. Got that?”

Winnebago made a noise of some kind, but
Eddie wasn’t sure what it meant.

Inside the station, three scarred wooden
desks were scattered around in no apparent order. In one corner a
bored-looking young policeman sat pecking slowly at an old manual
typewriter, one key at a time. A second cop was leaning against the
wall across the room reading a newspaper with one hand while the
other rested on the wooden grips of a .45 automatic riding high up
on his hip in a holster with no safety strap. Both men wore their
brown uniforms stretched over their bodies as tightly as spandex.
The color of the fabric reminded Eddie of the inside of a baby’s
diaper.

As the two cops registered Eddie and
Winnebago’s presence, they shifted dark eyes in their direction and
regarded them both with a degree of curiosity. The appearance of
two
farangs
in the Thonglor police station, on a purely
voluntary basis at least, was unusual.

“I’m looking for Lieutenant Sirapop,” Eddie
smiled, taking his own advice.

Neither policeman moved or gave any hint that
they knew Eddie had spoken.

“Lieutenant Sirapop?” Eddie repeated
slowly.

“Why you want him?” the cop with the
newspaper asked in a toneless voice.

“I have some questions for him. Bar Phillips
told me to see him. Lieutenant Sirapop is a friend of his.”

The sound of a throat being cleared drifted
out of an open door to their left and shortly a voice followed
it.

“I know him, yes, but friend? Not so
sure.”

The two policemen returned to what they’d
been doing before as if Eddie and Winnebago had suddenly ceased to
exist.

“Who are you?” the voice continued.

“My name is Eddie Dare. I need some
information about an accident that happened near here.”

“Information?”

The voice toyed with the word as if it were
entirely novel, suggesting delights heretofore unimagined.

“Look, may we come into your office?” Eddie
called out.

He was still smiling, but he felt ridiculous
talking to a disembodied voice.

“We?”

“I have a friend with me. Mr. Jones.”

Winnebago raised his right hand to shoulder
level and gave the room at large a little wave. Neither of the
policemen paid any attention.

“I am very busy.” There was a short silence
before the voice came again. “Okay, okay. Quick, quick.”

The first thing Eddie noticed when they
entered the office was the posture of the man in the chair behind
the plain, metal desk. It was a slump that made his attitude
unmistakable, although whether it was an attitude about
farangs
in particular or about the world in general Eddie
couldn’t guess.

The man’s face was long and narrow for a
Thai, with a nose that looked like it had been broken several
times. He wore the same tight brown uniform the other two cops did,
but his version was embellished with a white plastic Sam Browne
belt.

“Lieutenant Sirapop?” Eddie asked.

The man nodded and Eddie looked him over
carefully. He was very short, probably not much over five feet
tall, although Eddie couldn’t tell exactly since the man didn’t
stand up or even offer his hand. In spite of being indoors, he wore
sunglasses so dark he looked like a tiny, blind man.

Still smiling, Eddie nudged the office door
closed behind him, and he and Winnebago sat down in the two
straight chairs that faced the desk. Eddie pulled a stack of 500
baht notes from his trouser pocket and fanned ten of the purple
bills out on the desk, keeping his hand on them.

“I’m very grateful for your time, Lieutenant.
I need some information about a man I knew. Bar Phillips says he
thinks you can help me.”

The lieutenant’s head remained stationary,
but Eddie got the impression that his eyes flicked down to the
money spread out over the desk even though Eddie couldn’t see them
through the dark glasses.

“Who is this man?” the lieutenant asked after
a moment, still not moving.

“His name was Harry Austin. He was killed in
an accident near here about a month ago.”

The lieutenant said nothing for a few
seconds. Then he pushed back in his chair slightly and folded his
arms.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“Maybe.”

So this was how it was going to be.

“I’ve been hired by this man’s family in
America to find out about his death,” Eddie ad-libbed. “They wonder
if the newspaper reports they have seen might not be correct.”

“Not correct? How?”

“Not correct in calling his death an
accident.”

The lieutenant nodded slightly and then
tilted his head unmistakably toward the stack of notes under
Eddie’s right hand. Eddie lifted his hand away and folded his arms,
mirroring the lieutenant.

“
Aow fam kong farang tee tuk kaa tee
Little Princess
maa si
!” the lieutenant called to one of the
policeman in the outer room.

The young policeman who had been typing in
the outer office came in so quickly that Eddie wondered for a
moment if he’d been waiting right outside the door the whole time.
He handed the lieutenant a thin, green file folder, shooting
expressionless looks at both Eddie and Winnebago as he did.

“
I puak nee pen krai
?” he asked.

“
Kae farang
,” the lieutenant
answered.

Eddie didn’t much like the short, barking
laugh the young cop gave as he left the office.

The lieutenant slowly flipped through the
file without removing his dark glasses. Eddie wondered if the man
could actually see anything that was in it.

“Death certificate here. Say heart stop.”

“By accident?” Eddie kept smiling, “Or did
somebody stop it for him?”

The lieutenant lifted his head sharply. “He
dead anyway. Why you care?”

Eddie noticed that the man’s English seemed
to be growing distinctly worse. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

“He killed by truck, I think.” The lieutenant
seemed to consider for a moment. “Maybe bus. I not remember.”

“Then you’re saying it was an accident.”

The lieutenant stabbed with one finger at the
open file. “Heart stop.”

“Who claimed the body?”

Sirapop consulted the file again.
“Friend.”

Eddie’s patience was running out, but he kept
smiling.

“A man or a woman?”

“Man.”

“A Thai?”

“No,
farang
.”

“What was his name?”

“This name.”

The lieutenant pulled out a sheet of paper
from the file and pushed it across the table toward Eddie. He
leaned forward and pointed with his forefinger to the last line on
a page of incomprehensible Thai characters below which an illegible
signature was scrawled.

Eddie had little real hope of learning
anything else, but he had paid for it, so he tossed out one more
question anyway.

“Did you see this friend?”

To Eddie’s surprise, the lieutenant nodded
and he felt his hopes rise.

“He come here.” Sirapop pointed to the chair
where Winnebago, not knowing what else to do, was grinning
maniacally. “He sit there.”

“What did he look like?”

The lieutenant thought about that for a long
time as Eddie studied his own reflection in the man’s dark
glasses.

“Like you,” he eventually said with a shrug.
“Like
farang
.”

“Young? Old? Tall? Short?”

The lieutenant thought some more.

“Like
farang
,” he repeated, and this
time Eddie saw the smile flickering at the corners of Sirapop’s
mouth.

“Where is the body buried?”

“Buried?” The lieutenant seemed genuinely
puzzled. “What you mean?”

“Didn’t this friend take the body and arrange
for burial?”

Eddie gestured at the floor, miming a man
digging.

“Ah.” The lieutenant nodded in understanding.
“No bury, burn. This Thailand. We burn.”

“You mean the body was cremated?”

“Cremated. Yes.”

The lieutenant stood and with his right hand
he swept the stack of purple bills off the desktop and into a
drawer in one smooth motion. Eddie got the impression that he’d had
a lot of practice doing it.

“Okay. Finish now. You want any more question
you ask Little Princess.”

Eddie didn’t know whether he was supposed to
laugh or not.

“Who’s the Little Princess?” he asked as he
pushed himself to his feet.

“Not who,” the lieutenant answered.

He walked around his desk and opened the door
for Eddie and Winnebago to encourage their departure. Winnebago
tilted his head toward Eddie and lifted his eyebrows, but he was
still smiling.

“Little Princess is massage parlor on soi 31.
Big place. Many room. Many girl. Thai not go, only
farang
.”

The lieutenant held his open hands about a
foot apart as if to illustrate something. Eddie couldn’t imagine
what it was, but surely, he told himself, it couldn’t be what he
was thinking.

“What’s the Little Princess got to do with
Harry Austin?”

“Body in street there. Outside Little
Princess. Maybe he go there sometime. Maybe
farang
friend go
there.”

As Lieutenant Sirapop ushered Eddie and
Winnebago out of his office, Eddie decided that the visit had been
about as much fun as a root canal, but he’d probably gotten his
5,000 baht worth anyway. Now he might be able to begin putting
together a picture of Harry Austin’s life in Bangkok.

At least he had a place to start.

The Little Princess massage parlor. On soi
31.

IT
had been hot when they
went into the Thonglor police station, but when they came out it
was hotter still and the air was so humid it was almost solid. As
they walked toward soi 31, sweat rolled down their faces.

Eddie doubted there would be anyone at the
Little Princess so early in the day, but he figured it wouldn’t
hurt to go by and at least check the place out. Soi 31 wasn’t far,
and ten minutes with Sirapop had left him longing for fresh air,
even Bangkok’s peculiar version of it, so he thought they might as
well walk it regardless of the heat and humidity.