Noble Lies (4 page)

Chapter Six

   

With a pearly-white smile and a deferential bow, the waitress set the plate on the table, backing away as she wished him a goodly breaking fast time. Mark poked at the pile of noodles, moving the tiny legs on the freakishly large prawns with the tips of his fork. Spicy pad thai shrimp at seven a.m., the chef's special, highlighted on the breakfast menu.

“Your friend not a morning person?” JJ said as he sipped his tea. Other than a Swedish couple, a round German retiree plowing through a second bowl of white rice, and a Thai security guard—his forehead resting on the napkin dispenser as he got an early jump on his first nap—Mark and JJ were the only people at the restaurant, the empty beach visible over JJ's shoulder, just beyond Thawlwong Road.

Mark considered the little he knew about Robin before shrugging his shoulders.

“I always liked mornings,” JJ said. “Everything seems possible in the morning. But then the next thing you know it's noon and you start to wonder if you'll get anything done, and before you know it it's like five-o'clock and you're like, fuck it, I'll worry about it tomorrow.” He poured himself a second cup from the teapot the waitress left at the table. “Wasn't always like that. I used to own my own business. A construction company. Not some nickel and dime thing either, a real construction company with bids and contracts and out-of-state jobs, all that shit. It's true,” he said, reading Mark's mind. “It was great for a while, maybe ten years. Then one night I'm watching the Travel Channel, an eight-minute piece on Phuket comes on. A month later I'm signing the whole thing away, a dime on the dollar. A month after that I'm buying a hotel.” He shrugged his shoulders, a gesture that could mean a thousand things. “That's Phuket for you.”

Mark wasn't sure what he had expected to find in Phuket. What he didn't expect was for it to look as developed as most second-tier beach towns he'd seen in the states, with souvenir shops shoulder to shoulder down the main strip, interspaced with McDonalds, KFCs, and 7-Elevens. The beach road hotels peaked at four-stories, but away from the sand twenty-story chain hotels rose up, oddly angled on oversized lots to assure every balcony a sunset vista.

And he didn't expect so many tourists: college kids from Europe, lugging backpacks heavier than anything he had to carry in the corps, their matted hair twisted into dirty-blond dreads; retirees from Australia with sagging folds of skin as rich-hued as the leather purses that hung on racks outside the designer knock-off shops; and bands of Japanese tourists, sticking close behind the tour director's yellow umbrella.

There were Thais, of course, but none looked as if they were on vacation. Their English was good—their survival depending on it—and by the time he and Robin had walked a mile they had heard ten variations of the what-is-your-name-where-are-you-from-please-come-to-my-shop monologue from the gentlemen, and the piercing, drawn-out offers of something called a Thai massage from girls not old enough to order a beer.

But more numerous than the backpackers and the retirees and honeymooners and the souvenir shop touts and the scantily clad masseuses were the legions of single white men, nursing hangovers as they slept in deck chairs that lined the beach or, sunburnt and peeling, lounging in hotel bars, waiting for the tropical sun to set. There were some in their twenties and some pushing eighty, but most were what would generously be called middle-aged, with middle-aged paunches and middle-aged hairlines and middle-aged fashions, and girls young enough to be their daughters on their arms. And at night they crowded three deep into the open-front bars of Bang-la Road, packed tight with giggling Thai girls whom they ogled, and pounding techno that they pretended to like.

He had planned on starting with the hotel Robin's brother had worked at, checking with the dive shop to see if anyone had seen Shawn Keller since the tsunami; but although it was still marked on the tourist maps, there was only a vacant lot where the beachfront hotel had stood, a rare empty space as conspicuous as a missing tooth. He showed Shawn's picture around the shops along the main drag, the employees glancing at the photo for a full second before launching into their sales pitches. By seven p.m. they had run out of shops and hotels and headed to Bang-la Road.

“So if you came in on the beach end you probably started with the Free Bird,” JJ said, eyes closed, mentally building a map of the street. “The Pussy Cat bar-beer used to be there on the right hand side, but the tsunami took that out. Was the bartender's name Nitaya? A short Thai girl with long black hair, parted in the middle, small tits but really pretty?”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “That sort of describes every Thai woman I've seen since I got here.”

“You'd remember Nitaya. Sweet kid. Great smile. A real high-pitched laugh though, like somebody cleaning glass.”

“Like I said…”

JJ swirled the tea in the cup, bits of tea leaves rising to the surface to cling to the white ceramic rim. “Nitaya might know where to look for your brother.”

“It's Robin's brother. And I asked at the bar, passed the picture around, told the bartender I was looking for this guy. She told us I should check over by the Royal Paradise Hotel.”

“I'm sure she did,” JJ said with a laugh. “The Thais call ‘em katoey—sort of means lady-boy. Transvestites.”

“Some of them, yeah,” Mark said, recalling the short skirts, broad shoulders, and the bouncing Adam's apples, “but not all of them.”

JJ shook his head and smiled.

“I'm telling you, JJ, there were some really hot looking women there. Models, most likely.”

“Katoey. Trust me. Just be glad you didn't learn the hard way. Okay, so I assume you went back to the bar-beers on Bang-la.”

Mark skewered a tamarind-coated prawn and pulled off its crispy tail. “Are you sure?” he said, his fork bobbing in time with the words. “I mean, a couple of those women…”

“Positive. So, you're back on Bang-la.”

“Right. Back on Bang-la,” Mark said, shaking his head. “There was this huge place, open air, big fiberglass crocodile with a guitar out front.”

“Ah yes. Know it well.”

“We go inside, Robin's like the only blonde in the place. Well, natural blonde,” Mark said, wondering now if she really was. “It was crowded but we found a seat. Next thing you know there's like a dozen women hanging all around our table, rubbing my shoulders and giving Robin these dirty looks.”

“Unfair competition,” JJ said. “They think all Western women give it away. Obviously they didn't know my wife.”

“Anyway, I buy them a round of drinks and I show them the picture of Robin's brother. One of the girls spoke English pretty good so I told her why we were here, how her brother was supposed to have been killed in the tsunami but how he may be alive.” Mark paused, letting the moment build, a confident smile growing. “The girl explains to her friends what I was saying and the next thing you know, they're all talking at once, pointing at the picture and nodding. Every one of them said they've seen this guy since the tsunami. Apparently he comes in that bar all the time,” Mark said, biting off half of the giant prawn.

“Sure they have. And I bet they all said that it would be easy to find him, and that he's healthy and safe and doing really well…”

Mark looked across the table as he chewed on the prawn, JJ waiting as he washed it down with a short glass of pineapple juice. “So they all lied?”

“See, now that's a typical Western reaction,” JJ said. “A Thai told me something that's not true, therefore she lied to me. Maybe, but it's not that simple.”

“Seems pretty simple to me.”

“That's because you're not Thai. If you were, you'd understand. Thais call it ruksaa naa,” JJ said and even Mark knew that he had butchered the pronunciation. “The Noble Lie. It's better to have a wrong answer than no answer at all.”

“Better for who?”

“For everybody. You get an answer—which, if you know Thais, you realize may or may not be true—and they save face by not looking stupid.”

“They save face with a wrong answer? Doesn't that make them look stupid?”

“You asked a question, they had an answer. Believing everything you hear, now that's stupid.”

Mark stabbed his fork into a second prawn, the tiny legs splaying out flat on the plate. The waitress shuffled over to their table, her flip-flops sliding across the sand-covered concrete floor. JJ said something to her in Thai that made her laugh, Mark guessing it was more the way he said it than what he said. They both watched as she shuffled back to the open-air kitchen, her long black ponytail swaying in time with her hips. Mark waited until she stepped behind the counter before breaking the reverent silence. “If everyone's worried about saving face, how will I know if someone is telling me the truth?”

“Simple. You move here, immerse yourself in the culture, master the language—a tonal language by the way—unravel the social norms, become one with the ways of the Buddha, learn to read the gestures and body language, gain the trust and respect of the locals and, if you are so inclined, marry a wonderful Thai girl and willingly take on the burden of supporting her and her entire extended family for the rest of your life.”

Mark nodded. “I'm a bit pressed for time.”

JJ sighed and shook his head, his dreadlocks swinging back and forth. “See? That's what I had to get away from. You're a slave to time, man. You get one life; live it. Just let go and let God.” Mark waited, winding the thin rice noodles around his fork like it was spaghetti.

JJ sighed again, a louder, disappointed sigh. “I've got some friends, Sailor Bill and Chao. They know everything that's going on in Phuket. I'll give ‘em a call, tell ‘em about your brother. Right, Robin's brother. I'll see if I can get some answers for you.”

“Answers I got,” Mark said, helping himself to some of JJ's tea, the hot liquid steaming up the sides of his juice glass. “What I need is the truth.”

JJ closed his eyes and tilted his head back, his bronzed face welcoming the morning sun. “You want everything, don't you?”

 

Chapter Seven

  

“I can't believe we're back here two nights in a row.”

Mark stepped off the sidewalk and through the wall-sized opening that served as the doorway of the Super Queen. Even with Robin at his side, he noticed a quartet of bar-beer girls peel off from the mob of British divorcees cheering on some rebroadcast of a Premier League match-up. They clomped across the hardwood floor, the unsteady gait of teenaged legs on eight-inch spiked heels, high-pitched voices giggling a welcome at once both grating and erotic.

“We were in a different bar,” he said. “We've never been here before.”

“Seen one testosterone-soaked, techno-blasting beer garden loaded with fat old men and petite size-two Thai hookers,” Robin said, glancing from side to side, “seen ‘em all.”

Jet lag had caught up with her shortly before noon, heading up to her room “just for a few minutes,” coming back down after the sun had set, asking JJ if there was a place nearby that was still serving breakfast. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and ate a bowl of noodles and shrimp at a beachside restaurant, she kept checking the clock by the cash register, debating which clock to trust.

“I talked to Sailor Bill,” JJ had said when they returned to the hotel, shaking his head as he spoke. “The stories that guy's got. Anyhow, he tells me you gotta see Won at the Super Queen.”

“Which one?”

“Won,” JJ said. “Not one. She's a bar-beer girl from way, way back. Hangs out at the Queen. Part housemother, part madam. Bill says that she's the person to ask.”

“So Won's the one,” Mark had said as he and Robin turned to leave.

“Yeah,” JJ had yelled to them as they stepped outside, “but who's on first?”

Even with a hundred people in the bar—one-part tourists, three-parts hostesses—the Super Queen was too cavernous to seem crowded. The white-skirted bar-beer girls wore yellow and black rugby tops, knotted high to the side to reveal flat stomachs, silver bellybutton rings, and the occasional Disney character tattoo.

“Hello sir, hello m'am,” the quartet said. “You party with us?”

“Sorry ladies, we're on our honeymoon.” Mark swung his arm around Robin's shoulder and he could feel her step away from his embrace.

“Not true,” one of the girls said, poking him playfully on the arm. She smiled up at him with her tiny white teeth and he could feel himself smiling back. “Not married. No ring.”

“Rings are old fashioned,” he said, waggling his fingers. “We're a modern couple.”

“Ooohhh,” the girl said, translating for the rest of the quartet, each nodding, repeating the rapid-fire Thai words, shouting back a high-pitched response.

“You modern. That's okay for us. We give you discount.”

Mark rubbed his chin with his free hand. “It's tempting,” he managed to say before Robin ducked out from under his arm.

“We're looking for Won,” Robin said to the girl.

The girl's eyes widened. “Just one? Okay for me.”

Mark tried not to laugh as he listened to Robin draw in a deep breath.

“There's a woman who works here, her name is Won. Do you know her?”

The girl smiled a real smile, brighter and more attractive than the first. “Sure. Everyone know Won. She the best.” She reached out and took Robin's hand, her fingers lost in Robin's small palm. “Come.”

The girl led them past the football fans and around the chain of island bars that dotted the dance floor to a large booth in the back, too brightly lit to interest the bar's customers. Crowded on one side of the booth, three uniformed bar-beer girls held plastic bowls up to their chins, shoveling in wads of noodles with blurred chopsticks while crushed in next to them two more girls tapped out text messages on their mobile phones with electric-blue nails; a final girl, balancing a butt-cheek on the rattan bench, bobbed her head to the synthetic beat.

Alone on her side of the booth, an old woman took a long drag on an American cigarette.

She was thin and small, smaller than the tiniest girl in the bar, with skin as lined and wrinkled as a balledup roadmap. She wore her hair—or her wig—short and fire-red. She blew the smoke straight up out of the corner of her mouth, her cracked lips pressed tight together; and Mark noticed Robin staring at the woman's long earlobes, dangling down like flattened fingers, heavy gold hoops hardly noticeable.

“Excuse me,” Robin said, stepping into the light that pointed down from the ceiling to the center of the table. “We're looking for Won. I mean we're looking for a person named Won, not…”

“Stop,” the old woman said, holding up her hand, her cigarette pointing back at her nicotine-weathered face. “I hear every Won joke in the world, the last time I hear original it by Marine heading to Vietnam, so do not try.”

“Sailor Bill sends his regards,” Mark said.

The old woman looked at him as she inhaled, the end of her cigarette glowing hot, then blew the smoke out toward the dangling light. She knocked a knuckle on the tabletop and shouted something at the row of girls as if they were a block away. They slid out of the booth and wandered toward the bar, noodle bowls and phones still in place. Won gave her wrist a flick, inviting them to sit, Robin sliding in, Mark taking the end.

“Sailor Bill, huh?” Won gave a smoky snort. “When he first got here he was Ski Bum Bill, then he was California Bill. One girl called him Big Dick Bill but she was new and she want him to buy her things. The best when we call him Dollar Bill. He spend the whole night talking some poor girl down ten bhat.” She laughed, somehow puffing on her cigarette at the same time. “He was fun. Then he got married.” She paused and took another puff. “Bastard.”

Mark smiled. “My name's Mark. This is Robin.” He reached across the table and shook her hand, her skin like warm leather. She smiled up at him as she ignored Robin's outstretched arm. “Your English is better than mine,” he said. “Accent's a bit heavy…”

“I gotta brush up on my English. Gotta brush up on my German, too,” she said, pausing a beat before adding, “just as soon as he gets here.” She laughed again, and her face disappeared behind a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “This how you tell how long a girl's been here. The better her English the longer she's been bar-beer girl. I tell girls, don't let on how much you know. Guys come in looking for sweet, farm-fresh virgin. They don't want some worn out whore.”

“Interesting. I was wondering if you can help me. I'm looking for my brother.” Robin pulled a photograph from her purse. “This is his picture.”

Won looked across at Mark and raised an eyebrow. “She your wife, Mark?” Won gave her head a slight nod in Robin's direction.

“No.”

“Smart man.” Won pulled a fresh cigarette from behind her ear, offering it first to Mark before lighting it off the stub of the old one. “So what your friend's problem?”

Mark chose the simple answer. “Her brother went missing during the tsunami.”

“Lot of people went missing that day,” Won said.

“She's got reason to think he's still alive.”

“What you think, Mark?” Won flicked the dead butt out to the dark dance floor. “You think he alive?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Won kept her eyes on Mark as she drew on her cigarette, blowing the smoke out through her nose this time. “No you don't. Besides, been over a year. If he alive you would know by now.”

“Possibly. But Robin here thinks he could still be in shock.”

“I don't suppose you've ever heard of Post Traumatic Stress,” Robin said, trying to hide her impatience as Won watched a smoke ring float up past the hanging lamp to the dark rafters twenty feet overhead. “He might still be in shock and not thinking clearly. His brain may not be working right. I'm sure you understand that.”

“Shock, huh?” Won wrinkled her lips, exaggerating her smirk. “Sound like bullshit to me. If he alive you know it. Unless he don't want to be found.”

Mark could sense Robin tense up and he reached over to pick up the photograph before she could say something stupid. “Ever see this guy before?”

Mark held the photograph out, Won making him wait as she took another long drag, holding it in as she propped her cigarette in an ashtray, exhaling slowly as she reached for the picture. She glanced at the photo then handed it back to Mark. “I not seen him.”

“That's it?” Robin said, her voice rising. “You didn't even look at it.”

Won looked at Mark and gave a slow-motion shrug. “He not been in.”

“This was a waste of time,” Robin said, turning, pushing on Mark's arm to move him out of the booth. Mark reached over and put a hand on Robin's leg, shoving her back down.

“He hasn't been in,” Mark said, and he mirrored Won's smirk. “But you know who he is.”

Robin stopped squriming. She looked first at Mark, then across the table at Won, easing back down as the old woman's smirk slid into a grin. Won forced another drag out of her cigarette, keeping her eyes on Mark. “I think I let Pim explain to you.”

“Who's Pim?” Mark said.

Won paused, an eyebrow arching up. “Let's say she a bar-beer girl.”

“One of the girls here?”

“No. Over at Horny Monkey. Not on Bang-la, but not far.”

“A real girl, right? Not some lady-boy.”

She clicked her tongue as she shook her head, her earlobes flapping like JJ's dreads. “Pim all girl. Just like me.”

Mark smiled and leaned forward. “A sweet thing like you, you wouldn't tell me a story just to save face now, would you Won?”

“Sweetie, after fifty years in this business, I not have any face left to save,” she said, and gave him a wrinkled wink.

“Excuse me,” Robin cut in, the irritation clear in her voice. “This Pim person, what can she tell me about my brother?”

Won's smile dropped as she turned to face Robin. “More than you want to know.”