Murder at the Horny Toad Bar - Chapter 4

The next day dawned bright and sunny. Except for the thick clouds and persistent rain. I stopped the tuk tuk on the half-shabby, half-upmarket Sukhumvith Road soi, ignored the come-hither looks of the male and female rambutan sellers, waded through puddles of dark, smelly water and entered the gleaming office tower.

I stepped around the sleeping guard and entered the lift. I pressed number six. The doors opened on the fourth floor. TIT. This is Thailand. The offices of Bangkok-Bali-Bangladesh-Brooklyn Real Estate Developers had taken up the entire building. Whatever they had paid for the smoked glass cubicles and Cubist paintings and perfectly placed clumps of bamboo could have paid my Bangkok living expenses for the next several years.

A lovely Thai secretary with bright black eyes and shoulder-length, raven-black hair looked up at me and smiled in delight. I recognized her as one of the girls I had saved from the clutches of the slave trade when I solved one of the most dangerous cases of my career: the Brothel of the Seven Gables.

She jumped up and threw her arms around me. I liked her warmth and the touch of her silken smooth skin; unfortunately, she wore a kind of perfume which smelled like a cross between a rotten durian and a squished Laotian water snake. It took all I had, but I finally managed to pry her hungry, aching-for-love arms from around my muscular, well-tanned body.

"Happy, I am so hairy to see you!"

Sure, her English wasn't perfect, but whose is? "I'm Harry to see you too, Angelpuss, but I've got to see your boss."

Suddenly, a wave of Hungry-Tigress-on-the-Prowl perfume hit my nostrils. It made me more than a bit dizzy. Never-to-be-repeated bedroom scenes with a gorgeous southern belle overflowed my memory banks like a rapidly rising klong during the rainy season. Without turning around, I said: "Hello, dollface."

Her deep, southern, sensual voice was as raspy as ever. "Mah husband is out of town, Harry. And whatevah made you think he would want to see the lykes of y'all?"

I turned to face her. Betty-lou was as gorgeous as ever. She wore a simple, short emerald green dress with a very low, feast-your-horny-eyes-on-this, neckline, an expensive pearl necklace and very black, very high-heeled shoes. Curls of auburn hair cascaded down to her narrow waist. I couldn't stop thinking of how I had once wallowed in those gorgeous soft strands of red hair as they stretched across my fluffy white pillow.

One of the things Betty-lou wasn't wearing was a bra. And I remembered the tips of her beautiful nipples were so long they stretched into another time zone. I stared into her gorgeous green eyes. "Brothel Billy's been murdered," I said. I wanted to see how she would react to the news. Her beautiful face revealed nothing. She could be cold as a Hoboken hooker's heart when she wanted to be.

Without a word she turned and walked toward her office. I blew a kiss to the secretary and followed Betty-lou. As she walked, her high heels did the job they were supposed to do and her figure swayed back and forth like a snake charmer's flute. And, sure enough, Mr. Johnson awoke from his nap. My shoes squeaked from the water I had waded through and my squeaks seemed timed to alternate with the clicks of Betty-lou's high heels. We could have played a duet for the tourists in the Oriental Lobby.

Betty-lou sat herself down on a corner of her desk, causing her flimsy green dress to rise. She pointed to a chair. At the sight of her gorgeous white gams, Mr Johnson pointed to Betty-lou. Mr. Johnson had a photographic memory and he was remembering it wasn't only Betty-lou's voice that dripped corn-pone and honey. I took a seat and crossed my legs to discourage any further amorous adventures on the part of Mr. Johnson.

Without offering me one, she slipped a cigarette from a silver cigarette case and lit up a cigarette, formed her mouth into an "O" not unlike Lauren Bacall in a movie I had seen, and blew out the smoke. Her voice was steeped in sweet hominy and mint julips. I half expected Robert E. Lee to walk in the door, hand me his sword and surrender. "So y'all think mah husband killed Brothel Billy, is that ryght?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. But-"

The bitterness began to enter her voice. "How farh would you go, Harry? Y'all used to go pretty farh. Every week! Remembah? And then you disappee-ah for over a yee-ah and then just becauze some low-life gets himself killed, you dare show up hee-ah as if nothing happened!? As if you hadn't jilted little ole me!? Or is that jist how y'all go 'bout your bizness?"

Well, technically speaking, I'm not certain the word "jilt" would apply to a married woman getting it on the side but I knew better than to quibble over semantics with an angry southern lady. I did what any man would do in a similar situation. I lied. "I was looking for something more serious than a fling, dollface. I was just your flavor-of-the-week and in time you would have replaced me."

"What did y'all expect little ole me to do, Harry?" She leaned forward in anger, inadvertently revealing her luscious breasts. Mr. Johnson reacted like a champion racehorse just out of the gate: 'And it's Mr. Johnson by a length moving up fast on the inside!' Her green eyes narrowed and her breasts heaved. "Did y'all expect little ole me to dump mah multi-millionaire husband for somebody who didn't have two satang to rub togethah?"

At least now I had the high moral ground. I was leading her to believe she had dumped me instead of the other way around. I glanced out the window. Just as I did, a stealthy figure, the same one I'd noticed skulking about since this case began, raced across a roof and disappeared. Whoever was following me certainly didn't want me out of his sight. This case was beginning to stink. In fact, I hadn't smelled such a stench since Whore House Charlie fell from the roof of a Thonburi brothel into a bin full of durian.

"A man was killed, Betty-lou. A man who was almost as great a legend as Whore House Charlie. And your husband was seen arguing with him."

She knit her perfectly plucked brows. "Brothel Billy was tryin' to git more money for his shares in the Horny Toad and that is no doubt the cause for any unpleasantness between them. Mah husband and ah could tear the Horny Toad down and build a 34-story skyscraper."

"And Brothel Billy wouldn't sell?"

"Sure he would sell. But he wanted too much. You should leave my husband out of this and chase aftah whoever inherited Brothel Billy's shares."

"His shares?"

"Yes, his shares. That person would have the motive for killing him. You're a detective. Y'all must know who that is by now."

"Uh, oh, yeah, sure. But that's confidential." She had me there. This opened up a whole new line of investigation.

Dollface scooted off the desk, walked behind a partition to another desk, fiddled in a drawer and returned. She handed me a package.

"What's this?"

"Pictures of the party at the Horny Toad. My husband's assistant took them. Maybe a trained detective lyke you can fahnd somethin' that others couldn't."

Her voice reeked with sarcasm so I decided any comment would be superfluous.

She ran her fingers along the bulges of my perfectly sculpted chest. "I'll go powder mah nose," she said. Her lips formed a lascivious smile. "Then we'll go to mah place," she purred. "Y'all deserve a reward. Ah've still got the Real Estate Special, yah know."

Ah, yes, the glow-in-the-dark, red-and-black lingerie with the mesh stockings and purple garter belt and frilly white gloves and stiletto-heeled, knee-high, black leather boots. Not that I'm kinky, understand. But Mr. Johnson definitely deserved a treat. And after that I would make a surprise early morning visit to the Horny Toad. That way everyone above the bar would be asleep, allowing me to search for clues.

It didn't take long for Mr. Johnson to satisfy Betty-lou, he'd had experience. 'Nuff said?

After I saw her fall asleep with that special thank-God-for-real-men smile on her face, I killed a few hours downing Singhas and fending off hookers in the Thermae. It was nearly three in the morning by the time I reached the Horny Toad. The yellow moon was full but parallel rows of clouds streaked across it making it look like a set of brass knuckles about to come crashing down on me.

I pried open a small window of a short hallway that led to the storeroom. Once inside, I snapped on my flashlight and began prowling about all the rooms. I wasn't certain what it was I was looking for. I just had that gut feeling that something wasn't right. Like when I barfined that girl from Patpong with a prominent Adam's apple and deep voice and she refused to take off her shorts in bed but was anxious to please in less orthodox ways.

But after searching for hours, I had come up empty. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, before the Horny Toad was a bar it had been an upscale brothel and before that the home of a Chinese-Thai importer. It still bore traces of its elegant past: At the center of the ceiling was a vault-shaped skylight; above the baseboard the walls had raised paneling and the elaborate molding that ran along the walls just below the ceiling was the popular type known as egg-and-dart motif which, considering what went on during the sex shows, was highly appropriate.

I was about to call it a night when something glittered in the light of my beam. I moved closer and saw that it was a bullet in the wall, just beneath a window facing the klong. I shined my flashlight directly onto it. It was the bullet I had used to send the 'fuck you' lizard into eternity. It had gone right through Betty's office wall and lodged into the bar's wall. I felt about the area where it had entered, then noticed how rough the wood was in that section. It was then I realized my gut instinct was correct: I was onto something. Finally, after an hour or so of brilliant induction which would have shamed Sherlock Holmes himself, I made myself some coffee and woke up the girls. I told them to get dressed and come down to the bar area.

They arrived in various stages of dress and undress, a barefoot and braless Lek in a short skirt and T-shirt. Good Pork Betty yawned just as a passing mangda beetle headed her way. I waited for her to stop coughing and swearing and then I announced that I had discovered the identity of the murderer of Brothel Billy. A frisson of shock passed through the room like an electric current. The only sounds were the rhythm of the light rain on the roof, the sound of bugs tapping against the light bulb, and the wall lizards scampering about trying to fuck each other. The room stank of stale beer, garlic, beetle nut and chilies.

Tears spilled from Lek's beautiful dark brown eyes as she stared at me. "Who, Harry? Who killed Brothel Billy?"

I pulled up a chair and straddled it. I stared back at her. "You did, Lek."

Dean Barrett
Copyright 2000
http://www.deanbarrettthailand.com

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