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decrease“Sorry I’m late,” I muttered to Sorkan as I pulled up a bar stool. Lek spotted me and rushed over. “I had to change hotels.”
“Oh?”
“Trouble with the guy I’m tailing.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“Ah…never mind. I’m gonna sort it out later tonight…while he’s out with the boys,” I said sarcastically. “The good news is that I have a theory about what the murderers are smuggling.”
“Oh?”
“Sapphires. It’s possible they are sticking them inside those glass baseballs.”
“Yes…the baseballs,” Sorkan smiled in bemusement.
“You know. Those glass…things. Baseballs. The ones in the fragile glass shipments.” (Wait a minute, what am I saying?) I sounded lame even to myself! “They’re all glittery and sparkly on the inside.” (Boy am I reaching here!) “Could be that they’re hiding...sapphires...in them...” My voice tailed off to humiliating silence as I realised how stupid I must sound. (In my enthusiasm, I was weighing too much on the gem dealer list. Wild theories about smuggled sapphires without a stitch of proof. Comic book stuff!)
“Very intuitive, Mr. Spanner. ‘I do concur’…as it were,” he said, teasing me.
“You do!”
“Yes. They are geuda sapphires from to be precise.”
I looked up like a schoolboy surprised he’d given the teacher the correct answer. “Geuda? I saw that word in the missing book before my friend with the knife showed up. What on earth does it mean?”
“Well,” Sorkan grinned grimly, “it’s the name given to the colourless sapphires mined in .”
“Colourless sapphires?”
“Yes. Geuda sapphires. Crystal clear but sapphires just the same. How so many of them end up in Thailand is rather a sordid tale. You see Thailand used to be rich in sapphires of its own.”
“Yes. So I’m told. From mines down near Chantaburi.”
“Precisely, Mr. Spanner. But in the early seventies, the supply was starting to dry up. Certainly all the best stones had been harvested -- those of the most desired ‘cornflour blue’ colour -- and these had all been sold to overseas buyers.”
“Cornflour blue?”
“Yes, Mr. Spanner. The stones that remained kicking around Thai gem markets or passed over in Chantaburi mining pits were of the paler, infinitely less valuable colour. Fortunately, for the Thai gem trade -- unfortunately for unsuspecting overseas buyers -- about that same time, someone discovered you could permanently darken the colour of a sapphire by heating it to approximately 1500 degrees Celsius. Suddenly gem dealers all over were buying kilns to enhance their otherwise relatively worthless inventories. The gem trade eventually became wise to all this but not before many fortunes were made.”
“Amazing!”
“Thing is, although savvy dealers now know how to tell when a stone has been ‘heat treated’, the practice became so overwhelmingly popular that it is now a stone that has not been heat treated (to at least a certain extent) that is extremely rare. By the mid eighties, colourless stones from the vast (and cheaply operated) mines in were pouring into . Here, they were heat treated by dealers who have both the trade expertise and the connections to buyers overseas.”
“Amazing. How did you find all this out?”
“The path first opened up for me just two hours ago when I contacted a couple of the Bangkok dealers on that list we found. Of those I spoke to, all recalled receiving inquiries from a man in Chon Buri who claimed to have geuda sapphires to sell.”
“The third victim!”
“Precisely. Your instincts do you credit, Mr. Spanner. Learn to trust them.”
“It all fits!” My wild theory seemed now quite possible...even probable! “They are paying off these customs guys to break into shipments containing these glass balls and switch the regular balls for balls that are loaded with sapphires inside! It’s ingenious! The exporters don’t even know that they are being used as smugglers. They vary the exporters so that there is no consistent pattern that might alert American customs officers should they lose a shipment States-side!” I paused. “But who receives the shipments? Isn’t the American importer putting himself at risk of being caught?”
“A good question, Mr. Spanner. But I would speculate that in the same way that they use a variety of Thai exporters, they likely use a variety of American importers. I doubt if the importers have any idea they are being used either. I believe that the stones’ voyage all end with a single American buyer who -- by co-ordinating with our murderers here in Thailand and possibly with a co-operative employee or two at each of the import companies -- sees that they purchase the appropriate case-lots of glass orbs.”
“That’s it!” I cried. “Case closed!”
“Not quite, Mr. Spanner. There are still points that trouble me. Not least of which is the curious amount of bribe-money found inside that envelope at the first murder.”
“Too much or too little?”
“Too much. From my knowledge of these custom officer deals it was well in excess of the ‘going rate’.”
“Sapphires pay well I guess.”
Sorkan frowned. “Not that well.”
“But we don’t know how many sapphires are being smuggled at a time. It could be a lot more than we suspect. And you pointed out yourself how the murderers seem determined to keep their customs men in line by the grisly nature of their punishment, perhaps they look to gain loyalty also by paying them well.”
“Possible,” said Sorkan, though I could tell that it still troubled him. “Nevertheless, all we have so far is a good theory and no proof.”
“Yeah. Good point.”
“Don’t worry Mr. Spanner, I will do my best to rectify that tonight. I got a call earlier from a man who, evidently, learned of my inquiries after our friend the ‘leper’. He owns the Talisman Warehouse Company and told me that a leper has recently set up vigil on the street, not far from his Laem Chebang warehouse. After all of the killing that has gone on, he is dreadfully nervous about the whole affair and would just assume I drop by and take a look. Would you care to join me?”
I glanced at my watch. “No thank you, Captain Sorkan. I better make sure I get something on Jerry before I go home or I won’t get paid. If he’s true to form, he should just now be striking off for a charming little place called ‘Leather Chaps’.”
“ ‘Leather Chaps’?” repeated Sorkan with a grin.
“Yeah,” I shook my head, “They play Village People music all night long.”
Sorkan just chuckled as I left.
* * *
Of course I had no intention of following Jerry to any more gay bars. My only purpose for finding him was to confirm his whereabouts. And I did find him, but not where I had expected. It was near his hotel -- some distance from the gay section -- at one of the little out door beer bars.
He looked like a man who was trying to drown a demon. He hunkered over a glass of straight Mehkon whiskey as his rheumy bloodshot eyes darted around at the teasing bar girls.
Whatever, I shrugged. Must have had a fight with one of his boy friends, I guess. He was drinking like a country song and that suited me just fine. Looked like he was going to be there for awhile.
I slipped through his hotel lobby unnoticed, and went up to his room.
“Two can play at your little ‘hide the video tape’ game, Jerry,” I muttered as I produced a professional set of lock-picks and set to work on his door. The only ‘A’ I ever got was in lock picking at private investigator school and I through Jerry’s door in less than a minute with no one the wiser.
“Time to get my tapes back,” I declared and I scanned the room for my stolen property. “Not very imaginative Jerry.” I spotted them in a plastic bag next to the desk. “Hold on! What’s this?”
The sight of my own name drew my eyes to a small piece of note paper on the bed. ‘SPANNER HAS FOOTAGE OF US TOGETHER’, it read.
The fact that Jerry had found out my name kind of gave me a chill. I was supposed to know about him, but not him about me. It wasn’t a big deal I guess, but it kinda felt like I had gone from being the hunter to the hunted.
“What would Captain Sorkan do?” I said aloud to calm myself.
I reappraise the clues around me and they began to tell me a larger story of Jerry’s last moments in his room than what I had expected to find. The note itself had been kneaded into a permanent curve where Jerry’s left thumb had pressed against it tightly and his nervous fingers had softened the edges to the consistency of tissue. The foot of the bed bore a depression where Jerry had been anxiously perched as he fiddled with the television. He’d ran out and bought a camera that used the same format of tapes as mine so that he could play them back on his television.
“Why didn’t he just burn them all?” I asked myself. “Why go through them all? Watching them? Certainly one is just as damning as another.”
The answer lay in the curious note: ‘SPANNER HAS FOOTAGE OF US TOGETHER’. Could it be that despite Jerry carrying-on like a rabbit on viagra, he honestly thought I’d only caught him on tape once? I had to chuckle. What a surprise for old Jerry when he watched all these tapes!
“Well, I wonder which ones he liked best?” I snickered to myself as I noted that two tapes had been separated from the rest: one sitting on top of the TV, the other still in the player. I pushed play and perched myself on Jerry’s spot on the edge of the bed.
To my surprise what appeared on the screen was Jerry entering the gem shop down in Chantaburi. “But that tape hasn’t got Jerry doing anything wrong on it! I was going to tape over that one,” I muttered in confusion. “What the hell is going on here?”
A cold chill ran up my spine.
I sprang to the desk and started sorting through Jerry’s papers. The first thing I found was a business card for a glass shop in Ban Phe. Something told me that Jerry was messed up in something far more sinister than buggery. Then I found the second note!
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