Adventure of the Blue Carbuncles 2

Note to readers:  I apologise for the words missing from the original draft of this story’s first instalment.  Originally, the word ‘Thailland’ was omitted in several places.  The problem has since been fixed (as you can see I've had to alter the spelling) and the first instalment now reads correctly.

Now back to our story: private investigator and mental midget, Rich Spanner, has been hired by the jealous Ruth Tonnage to follow her husband, Jerry, to Thailland and spy on him…

A week after meeting with Ruth, I boarded a plane to Bangkok. I was drunk with excitement.  Not for my forthcoming assignment mind you—I still didn’t expect much from that—but rather the enthusiasm a child might feel on their first trip to Disney Land.

We arrived early in the morning.  Jerry got straight to business with a fervour that suggested he was eager to get it out of the way.  I followed determinedly, gaping the whole time at the confusing human hive they call Bangkok. The smells, the buildings, the people; everything was so alien to me, I felt like I was on another planet.  In the course of keeping up with Jerry, I used so many hair-raising forms of transportation that I started to feel rather daring.  Suicidal cab drivers, death defying rides on the backs of motorcycle taxis, and thundering riverboats; tailing a subject back home had never been this much fun.  I was starting to like Thailland already!  Jerry flitted between a countless number of Bangkok’s gem shops in every corner of the city from river-side slums to upscale shopping malls.

Finally after an exhausting fourteen-hour day—not to mention the twenty hours of flying just to get there—Jerry hired a car and headed down to Pattaya.  Naturally I followed, and let me tell you friend, you ain’t seen nothin’, until you’ve seen this place!

It’s important to note here, that my driver had a copy of a Thai newspaper laying upon the dash of his little car.  From my seat in the rear, I couldn’t read the curly-que Thai writing but I did see fantastic photos of two of those barbequed guys I mentioned earlier.  In truth, they were so unbelievably gross that I wrote them off as some made-up story about alien abduction or something by a Thai version of a supermarket tabloid.

We arrived, first his car then mine, at about three in the morning.  The whole town looked like a party that was in full swing!  There was hoopin ‘n’ hollerin’ in every direction!  Jerry checked into his hotel and I staked out a good room for myself at the hotel across the street to watch his comings and goings from.  Also from my window I could see the bars and the girls down in the street.

Bars and girls, that’s what Pattaya is.  Miles and miles of them!  We must have passed a hundred of them on the way into town—bars I mean, hell the girls numbered in the thousands!  They were all young and pretty.  They waved and smiled to every passer-by with an irresistible combo of innocence and sensuality.  I recalled hearing stories about Thailland that had given me the impression that the bar scene was dirty, you know ‘sorted’.  Somehow in real life, it didn’t strike me that way.  It seemed so normal; there was no sense of disgust toward it among the Thais.  Their quiet grace lent it—how would Sherlock Holmes put it?—a ‘hair’ of casual innocence that seemed contrary to all the gaudy lights and excitement.  The notion that all those girls were there for the taking was enough to arouse my, you know, curiosity.

Through my telephoto lens I watched Jerry go to bed.  Which is precisely what my better-judgement was telling me to do, after all it had been a long day.  But the flashing lights and sexual charge down in the street was calling to me.

Maybe I should go for a little walk before bed, I thought to myself.  How was I to know what a tangle of shit my decision would draw me into?

I struck off down a street that was packed with bars!  The night air was muggy; thick, in fact, with the promise of mystery and love.  Out of every doorway beckoned pretty girls offering cold refreshments among other things.  In honesty I kinda shied from them as my desire fought with my shyness.  But the movie sleuths always end up inside dark smoky bars, so I decided to pick one, and go in for a little night-cap.  One beer won’t hurt, I told myself.

They were all so tempting.  (I’m talking about the bars now.)  One after the other; German bars, English bars, …Belgian, French… and even a few American places!  But one in particular caught my eye.

The ‘Ugly Parrot’ it was called.  Something about the cartoon on the sign appealed to me in a Benny Hill sort of way.  It was a fat, drunk parrot with an eye-patch and bandanna fondling the backside of a surprised and rather large-breasted female cockatiel.

With a shake of my head and a chuckle, I bravely pushed my way past the cluster of babes who sat near the entrance.

A Union Jack hung behind the bar where a grizzly wall-eyed bartender gazed at me distrustfully with one eye, while the other focused somewhere over my left shoulder.

“Wattle it be, mate?”  The stubbly flesh around his mouth pulled back to reveal a random patchwork of yellow tusks as he spoke.

“Beer please,” I said as I looked around nervously.  There was a handful of other Englishmen there (some freaky detective’s instinct told me they were English) and each was being fussed over by a scantily clad Thai woman.  There was a pool table near the back and soccer jerseys hung on the walls.  Above the bar hung a collection of British WWII paraphernalia including an old helmet, bayonet, mess kit, and insignia.

“You’re a yank,” he said accusingly.

I was speechless.

He sized me up pretty good with at least one of those wide-set eyes before reaching into the cooler.  “This ‘ere’s an English bar for the most part…” he said, looking around at the other customers with the lazy eye, “…but you’ll be okay.  At least you ain’t a German.”  He plopped my beer down with a chuckle and I felt that I had passed some manner of test.

The beer was a Thai brand.  Singha, read the artful label.  The words were set against a backdrop of decorative swirls and blossoms, making a commonplace beer bottle look like an ancient buried treasure.  A bold-looking creature of gold—half lion, half dragon—was framed by a wreath of barley and hops.  It was a little heavier than American beer, and I can tell you now, is much stronger.  I was exhausted from dogging Jerry over three thousand miles and that beer was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.

My tiredness was just starting to wash away when I saw him.  I don’t know how I could have missed him originally.  He was at the end of the bar.  He stood out as much because of his solitude as because of the colour of his skin.  I can’t over-emphasise the importance of that moment.  Not only was he the guy who was going to throw me into the middle of all my recent adventures, but he’s the man I now see as my detective mentor.

He was distinctly out of place there; a skinny Thai guy in that pit of fat white tourists.  Like a snake, the muscles in his arms were hard and ropy.  He looked a lot like a snake, come to think of it; long and thin.  Not a slimey type snake like the ones in Indiana Jones but a cool looking snake like the ones airbrushed on motorcycles and album covers. His hollow cheeks arched up to sharp cheekbones that protruded severely like the sides of a cobra’s neck.  But it was his movements that were particularly snake-like.  They came in small bursts.  His hand would hang perfectly still, his muscles coiled, before striking out at his glass, as though it were a mouse, snatching it off the bar with rattlesnake quickness.

He caught me watching him and gave me a friendly smile that revealed tobacco-stained fangs.  His eyes were tinged glassy-red as though he’d just come off a fierce drunk.

“At’s the local constable,” said the barman.  “Ee’s a handy fellow to know if ya got jewellery an’ the like, with insurance.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Ee’ll do up a stolen property report for ya so you can collect on the insurance money like.  All the forms signed and stamped, real official like, police reports an’ everything.  ‘Ee’ll do it all fer the low low price of only one thousand Baht.”  He grinned and winked.

The noble-serpent-guy was watching us as we spoke.  He leaned in my direction and offered me his hand.

As I moved toward him I sensed a strange smell drifting up from his cigarette.

“Welcome to Thailland, my friend,” he said in perfect English, his cool, exact pronouncing made him sound like a university teacher or the host from a TV science show, “My name is Captain Sorkan of the Chon Buri Provincial Police.”

“Aye,” said the barman, “but his friends jus’ call ‘im Sorkan.”

“My friends call me Sorkan,” he repeated with a grin.

“Pleased to meet you…ah, Captain Sorkan.  My name is Rich Spanner.”  We shook.  His hand had a firm yet boneless feel to it.  “I guess you and I are sort of in the same line of work,” I said, trying to be friendly.

“You are a policeman?” he asked, that weird smelling smoke making him seem all the more like an exotic zoo creature.

“No, a private investigator.”  The kind insurance companies hire to nab guys like you, I thought.  But still…I couldn’t help being fascinated by this guy just the same.

His eyes lit up instantly.  “Like Magnum P.I.,” he exclaimed.

“Huh?”

“You said you were an investigator.”

“Oh yeah,” I chuckled, “But not like Magnum…well, maybe without the car and the good looks.”

“Colombo then?”

“No.  A little better car, and a little better looking I hope.”

He laughed with me in a wheezy manner that sort of sounded like hissing.

“Well I can see we share a love of detective work at least.  Real detective work that is, not the usual tedium I endure, running license plates and filling out forms.  I imagine for you it’s following cheating spouses, eh?”

“Oh, did you hit the nail on the head!  Private investigation work back in the States ain’t what it used to be.”  Somehow, he knew what my favourite beef was and served it up for me.  “There’s just not enough work for an independent like me.  Most customers in my business are big companies now, like insurance outfits.  They either have their own people, or contract only to the big well-established security firms.  I guess, just like everything else, the private eye business is going corporate.”  I was tired and the beer was hitting me I guess, but I caught myself and managed to put the brakes on my rambling for a moment at least.

“No please, Mr. Spanner, go on.  I have a professional interest in how things are done in other countries.”

“Well, the trouble is, it’s the guys who have signed on with the big firms that are doing all the watching and recording these days.  Hell, they got every sneaky little peeping-tom gizmo and eavesdropping gadget imaginable!  How can I compete?  I’m relegated to picking up their scraps and working for a cut rate.”  I shook my head to stop from talking.

“You two is tha’ same that way, you is,” said the barman.

Sorkan nodded grimly.  “As a boy I used to read the fanciful detective magazines that my father sold in his little store.  I used to scour through trash the tourists discarded hoping to find English mystery novels, or the ultimate prize, a volume of Sherlock Holmes adventures.”

“An’ then ‘ee started usin’ what ‘ee learnt from them books, when ‘ee was older, like,” interrupted the barman again, “An’ then everyone could see wa’ a corker ‘ee was, eh?”

The Captain frowned at him as he hissed a sigh.  “That’s true to a certain extent.  Opportunities to apply the methods I learned, came as I grew older.   By the time I was a young man, I showed something of an aptitude for solving puzzles of a criminal nature.  Although it wasn’t all as exciting, as good William here, would have you believe.  Nevertheless, I knew where my heart would lead me.  I wanted to be a policeman.

“There was no compelling desire for justice in me.  Neither was it any sense of policeman’s machismo that drove me.  Rather it was the exhilarating rapture that consumed me in the very act of pondering a case.  This was the drug that I craved.”

This enthusiasm for detective work filled my mind with the heady dreams I had when I was a kid.  “I know!  I know!” I cried.  “The case is its own reward!”

“Precisely Mr. Spanner.  However…” he said, “I have discovered woefully, that my job now permits me only minutiae measures of my remedy amid stacks of paperwork and mundane assignments.  It taunts my weakness more than satisfying it.”

I couldn’t help feel for him.  He too had followed a career in this crazy business, and he’d been disillusioned by it too. It was like his green eyes were peering out from beneath those heavy lids straight into my soul.

“So what manner of case,” he said, “brings a private eye all the way from California?”

“How can you be so sure I’m on a case?” I asked, with what I thought was a sly smile to mask my sudden uneasiness.  Had I mentioned I was from California?

His eyes locked on mine in a momentarily piercing stare that gave me the sense that he was weighing his options.

“Because we share the same field of interest,” he said, “I will tell you.  And it is my hope that you will recognise my humble speculations as the ungovernable instinct that it is, and not mistake it for rudeness or an attempt at some crude parlour trick.”

That was weird.  I wasn’t sure what he’d just said but the words sure sounded cool.

“You have spent time recently in Bangkok,” he began with quiet certainty.  “The gritty road dust produced from the oily riverbanks of the Chao Phraya River, has a distinctive colour and unmistakable ‘clinging’ quality to it.  That you have roamed the streets of our capitol city is a certainty.  The generous coating on your shoes and trousers might suggest that, while in Bangkok, you wore the same clothes for several consecutive days, but I suspect it more probable that earlier today you spent some considerable time in the more dingy commercial districts of the city.  For despite the presently sordid state of your hair and unchecked growth of your whiskers—which in itself suggests that you’ve had an arduous day—your fingernails are neatly, but not professionally, trimmed which credits you as a normally tidy and well-kept man.  Such a man would be loathe to wearing the same trousers day in and day out without wash, or the same shoes for that matter, without setting a brush to them.  Nay, I believe you recently arrived to Bangkok.  The minutia crumbs on your shirt, you see, I recognise as the type of dry-roasted rice snack they now serve on aeroplanes in lieu of peanuts.”

I was held there, as though by some force.  He was right of course, I like peanuts.  His unwavering gaze seemed to probe my being as he spoke.

“Furthermore,” he continued, “you walked in here at precisely 3:05 A.M.—a late hour indeed.  Now, nocturnal quests to houses of ill-repute such as this are certainly not unusual in Pattaya…”  He grinned just then.  “…In fact I daresay, they are the norm, however I am pleased to find you completely sober without a hint of alcohol, marijuana, women, or any other vice on you.  As you entered, you walked with a sense of wide-eyed wonderment at the strangeness (to you) of this place.  I daresay, this is likely the first Thai bar you’ve ever set foot in.”  Then he leaned toward me as though sharing a guilty secret.  “Although my friend, that last point was as obvious to every bar-girl on this street as it was to me.  Nevertheless, I would conjecture that this is your first trip to Thailland, that you arrived in Bangkok this very morning and spent a long toiling day there, frequenting quarters of the city which tourists normally never see.  You probably arrived in Pattaya only a short time ago, having left Bangkok without even changing your clothes, and despite the late hour and your obvious weariness, you are out roaming the streets with an unmistakable sense of having been released from your duties.”

He blinked just then, and I felt his invisible grip on me relax.

“Now, Mr. Spanner, I have no reason to doubt you when you tell me that you are a private investigator, so, given all this evidence, wouldn’t you agree that it’s plainly obvious that you are working on a case?”

I was flabbergasted!  I leaned back on my barstool and clapped my hands together in applause.  “Fuckin’ eh!” I cheered, then irresistibly, and without any thought of it, I fell into his formal pattern of speech.  “As fine a piece of deductionism as I have ever witnessed!” 

“I thank you, Mr. Spanner.  A compliment like that from a professional peer is truly heart felt.”

“You deserve it.  You are a master.”

“Hardly a master, Mr. Spanner.  ‘The ideal reasoner,” he quoted with a wink, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it, but also all the results which would follow from it.’  I, on the other hand, was presented with several facts to draw from.”

This was a man after my own heart!  “Sherlock Holmes!” I cried, “The Five Orange Pips!”

“Touché, Mr. Spanner.”

“Please, call me Rich.”

“Fair enough,” he replied, “Please, call me Sorkan.”

Suddenly I felt the gentle touch of tiny fingers kneading my neck.  Startled, I turned to find one of the girls from the front who had followed me in.  She was short but well proportioned and she smiled at me with a pretty elfin face.  She told me her name was Lek and she fussed with the foil on my beer bottle so that I wouldn’t swallow any as I drank.  Not that there was a great danger of this, but this odd little service endeared her to me as much as the warmth of her body pressed against my thigh.

“It’s late so you can ‘ave the bird all night for the short-time price,” said the barman as he drifted back down the bar, “Only three hundred baht.”

I nodded and stared into my beer bottle with an odd mixture of shock, horniness, and embarrassment.  I turned and sought refuge with my snakey new friend.  “So you study dirt,” I said.  “Just like Sherlock Holmes did.”

“One can learn a lot from Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Spanner.  For he was the greatest detective of all time.”  He smiled.  “Even if he only existed in stories.”

“Only in stories?  What do you mean?”

“W—well, Mr. Spanner…”  For the first time Sorkan showed some uncertainty as he spoke.  “…you do know that Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle—”

“Yeah, I know that guy,” I was eager to set my new friend straight.  Felt sorry for him.  How could a Thai guy know anything about American history, right?  “He was Dr. Watson’s boss.  You know, at that magazine.”

Sorkan blinked and shook his head.  “You mean the Strand?”

“Strand of what?”

Sorkan closed his eyes and looked a little confused.  Finally he said, “Well, in a way, you’re right I suppose.  In the abstract, Conan-Doyle was Dr. Watson’s boss.  I just hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

“No problem,” I said, “If there’s anything else you need straightened out, let me know.”  Weird heh?  How such a good detective could be so crappy at other subjects.  Then I remembered something he’d said.  “Just one thing puzzles me,” I asked, “How did you know I was from California?”

“Oh come now, Mr. Spanner.  Now I know that you’re pulling my leg.”

I just smiled at this politely and wondered at it self-consciously.

A far away look came into his eye just then.  “Oh to be a great detective,” he said, gazing dreamily at the scantily stocked shelves of liquor behind the bar.  “To solve just one big case, that, has been my life long dream!”  He hissed a dejected sigh.  “But I’m afraid I’ll never get the chance here in Pattaya.”

“No crime here?” I asked.

The barman burst out laughing from down the bar.

“Oh, Mr. Spanner,” said Captain Sorkan, “I’m sorry to say, there is far too much.  Thugs and criminals from Europe move here in droves to escape justice in their own countries.  They buy businesses, bars, hotels and such…and often they come into conflict with each other.  Pattaya, my friend, can be a terribly violent place at times.”

“Then, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“The problem is that it’s usually falong (foreigner that is) killing falong, or falong stealing from falong.”

“They don’t give a spit about us like,” chuckled the barman.  “They just assume we kill each other all off!”

“My friend exaggerates,” said Captain Sorkan with a smile, “But it’s true that the kind of case that makes headlines in Thai newspapers involve Thai criminals.”  He motioned to a newspaper set on the bar.  “But I’m afraid most of my cases do involve foreigners—which, mind you, brings a different set of rewards...”  I guess he was talking about the insurance scams.  “...but when serious crimes like murder are committed, that involve foreign nationals, the Bangkok National Bureau of Police step in to ‘assist’ the investigation of the regional departments, like mine.”

“It’s always that fool Lastradisomp,” the barman said indignantly.  “Attracted to tha’ bloody media spotlight, like.”

Sorkan silenced him with a scornful look.

“Lastradisomp?” I asked.  Something in the picture on the front page of the newspaper distracted me.

“That puffed-up little—” the barman began to seethe.

“Wil,” said Sorkan sharply.

I gazed back toward the newspaper.  It was printed entirely in those funny Thai letters that I could make no head nor tail of.  (One looked like a ‘J’ though.)  Amid the headlines was a photograph of a man, his head totally mutilated.

“Fuck, look-it that!  What happened to that poor bastard?”

“Hummm, dreadful isn’t it,” Sorkan said.  “He’s the second one they’ve found like that now.  Just last night his body was discovered.  The first one was four weeks ago.  The flesh was burnt right off both victims’ skulls, starting with the face.  By the signs of struggle around the bodies, it would appear that it was done while they were still alive. It is, in fact, the cause of death.”

“Good God!” I muttered.  My tongue bunched up in the back of my throat at the horror of such a killing.

 “A welder’s acetylene blow-torch was found at the first murder scene and it was initially thought that it had been used in the abominable act—hence the sensational name they have dubbed the crimes: the Blow-Torch Murders.  However, ample traces of burnt propane were found on the flesh that remained, yet not a trace of the other elements one would expect to find in the wake of an acetylene torch.”

“You think they did it on a stove top?” I suggested.

“A worthy thought Mr. Spanner, for in fact there were propane stoves present at both murder scenes, but I alone favour the possibility of a small, portable propane torch.  Like the ones plumbers use for soldering.”

“You alone?”

“Yes.”  His eyes drifted sadly.  “The Chief Inspector at the Bangkok National Bureau is convinced that it was done on the stove-tops.  It ties in, you see, with a culinary theory he has concocted.”  His hand slithered over the newspaper.  “Unless they come up with something quickly, I fear this will not be the last of the murders.  Greed, you see, is inherent in some men’s souls.”

“Greed?  I don’t understand.  Is that the connection between the two victims?”

“They were both customs officers, curiously enough.  They both worked at the custom’s yards at the Krung Toey container port up in Bangkok.”

“Really?  Well I’d love to have a look around that place!” I said.  “There’s bound to be some hints there as to the motive of the killings.”

“I have been there, in fact,” said Captain Sorkan.  “An expansive place with acres of locked-up holding areas for cargo earmarked for customs inspection.”

“Is that where the bodies were found?”

“No.  Both victims were killed in their own homes and the bodies left there.”

“Really!  I don’t suppose…you ahh…?”

“I tried, Mr. Spanner.  Believe me I tried.  But as both victims lived up in Bangkok, the murder scenes were the out of my jurisdiction.”

“That’s not it!” interjected the barman, “It’s that damned Lastradisomp init’ it?”

Their eyes locked together—the barman’s in righteous indignation, Sorkan’s a stern reproach that slowly wavered.

“Yes,” admitted Sorkan, “It would seem the Bangkok National Bureau is conscious of the sensational aspects of this case, and have taken a rather extraordinary interest in it.”

“All over the case, ‘ee is!” exclaimed the barman, “That smarmy bastard’s so greedy for the spotlight, he closed the murder scenes off and is stoppin’ everyone, includin’ tha’ Captain ‘ere, from enterin’.  Only tha’ fat lil’ bastard ‘imself and his staff have been permitted access!”

“William...” chided Sorkan.

“Well why do you always defend ‘im?”

Adventure of the Blue Carbuncles will continue next week (week of 6/3/06).

jim_blossom2001@yahoo.com