There were several vans lined up in the road outside Jon Junior’s former hotel. Two were red, one was yellow and one was a green so dark that it was almost black. The drivers were huddled in a tight group at the front of the queue, smoking cigarettes and laughing. One of the saw me walking across the road and waved. ‘Tuk-tuk?’ he asked.
I shook my head and showed him the photograph of Jon Junior. ‘Did you ever pick this boy up at the hotel and take him somewhere? He had two bags with him.’
The driver looked at the photograph and shook his head. I showed the photograph to the rest of the drivers. They blew tight plumes of smoke as they studied Jon Junior’s picture.
‘He went in a red tuk-tuk,’ I said. ‘He probably went to another hotel. Or an apartment block.’
The first driver took back the photograph and looked at it again. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe I took him.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
The driver pointed down the soi. ‘That way.’
Right. Fine.
‘What was the name of the building you went to?’
The driver shrugged.
‘Are you sure it was him?’
The driver scratched his neck with the nail of his little finger that seemed to have been grown extra long specifically for the purpose of scratching.
‘I think so.’
‘Your tuk-tuk is red?’
The driver nodded.
‘Which one is yours?’ I asked, in case he was just telling me what I wanted to hear.
He pointed at one of the two red tuk-tuks. That was a good sign.
‘Was he with anyone?’
‘No, he was alone.’
‘And he went to another hotel?’
‘Condominium,’ he said.
‘Condominium?’ I repeated. ‘Are you sure?’
The driver shrugged and scratched his neck as he frowned at the photograph. ‘Old building,’ he said. ‘Sukhumvit Soi 22.’
‘Can you take me?’ I asked.
‘A hundred baht,’ he said quickly.
‘Let’s go.’
There are two sorts of tuk-tuks. There’s the three-wheeled type that is powered by a two-stroke scooter engine, covered with a canopy and with a seat just large for three people at the back. They’re noisy, smelly and uncomfortable and part of the Thai tourist experience, usually for a vastly-inflated fee. There are also four-wheeled versions with larger engines and with two facing seats at the back. They’re more for locals with too much baggage or shopping to get onto the bus. I’m not a fan of either but sitting in the back with my head jammed against the roof was the only way that I was going to get Jon Junior’s forwarding address.
Getting to Soi 22 from Soi 9 meant braving the traffic on the main Sukhumvit Road, a white-knuckle ride in any vehicle but a near-death experience in the back of a tuk-tuk, no matter how many wheels it has. The air was stifling hot, and every time we stopped it seemed that there was a bus next to us, belching out black smoke.
We shot down Soi 22 past a row of massage parlours and drove by the Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel and then made a quick left turn into one of the side sois. We slowed to a crawl past a woman who cooking at a roadside stall and I got a blast of burning chilli in my eyes. By time the tuk-tuk had stopped there were tears streaming down my face.
I used a handkerchief to wipe my eyes as I looked up at the building. It was hard to tell whether Jon Junior’s new address was a step up or a step down from the cheap hotel in Soi 9. From the look of the outside I’d probably say that he was paying a bit less but getting a bit more for his money. He was a good fifteen minute walk from the nearest Skytrain station, Phrom Pong, but there was a motorcycle taxi rank across from the building so transport wouldn’t be a problem. The building was a soot-stained, grey oblong, eight floors high, with windows that didn’t appear to have been cleaned in decades. There was no sign that I could see, no way of telling if the building was a hotel or an apartment block or an abattoir. Or a combination of all three.
‘You’re sure this is it?’ I asked the tuk-tuk driver as I climbed out of the back of the van. I had to bend my head low, the tiny vans were designed to ferry around slightly-built Thais, not six-foot-tall farangs.
The driver was smoking a roll-up and he took the remnants from between his lips, coughed and spat into the street. ‘I didn’t see him go in, but this is where I dropped him.’
‘With his bags?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just him?’
‘Like I said, him and his bags.’
‘But no one brought him here?’
He frowned, not understanding. ‘I did.’
Jai yen yen. It was my own fault for not phrasing the question properly.
‘You brought him and his bags, but did you bring anyone else?’
The driver took a last drag on his roll-up and flicked it into the gutter. ‘He came alone.’
I gave him a hundred baht note and he sped off in a cloud of black smoke.
There were two double doors at the entrance and I pushed through them into a small reception area. There were two rattan sofas and a glass-topped coffee table at one end of the room and a small booth at the other. There was a woman sitting in the booth watching a Thai soap area on a tiny television.
On the wall behind her were rows of keys on hooks and pigeon holes for mail. ‘Excuse me, is this a hotel or serviced apartments?’ I asked.
‘You want a room?’ she said, not taking her eyes off the TV. A middle-aged woman with hair piled high on her head was bemoaning the fact that her husband had taken a mia noi, a minor wife. The friend she was confiding in was nodding sympathetically and produced a box of tissues as the betrayed wife burst into tears. Heart-rending stuff.
I told the receptionist that I was looking for a friend and showed her Jon Junior’s picture. She glanced at it and handed it back to me.
‘He check out already.’
‘Jonathon Clare,’ I said. ‘From America.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘He check out.’
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘Where did he go?’
She sighed but kept looking at the television. I couldn’t tell if she was sighing because she was bored with my questions or if she was moved by what she was seeing on the television.
‘He didn’t say.’
‘But he paid his bill and left?’
She nodded.
‘He was a teacher,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘Do you know where he was teaching?’
On the television the middle-aged betrayed wife collapsed onto a sofa and dabbed at her cheeks with a handful of tissues. The receptionist put her hands together and clasped them to her chest. She was close to tears. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Did he have any friends?’ I asked. ‘Anyone who came to see him?’
The soap opera hit a commercial break. The receptionist gasped.
I repeated my question.
‘There was a girl,’ she said, looking me in the eye for the first time since I’d walked into the building.
‘A Thai girl?’
The woman nodded. ‘Young.’
‘How young?’
‘A teenager.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘Short hair, hi-so maybe.’
‘She went to his room?’
The woman nodded. ‘Once. Mostly she waited for him here.’
‘She came often?’
‘Three or four times.’
‘Do you think she was a girlfriend? Or a student?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She was dressed like a student.’
‘Do you know which school she went to?’
She shook her head.
‘And this is a hotel, right? Not a condominium block.’
‘Both,’ she said. ‘You can rent rooms by the day or week, or you can stay for a year. Some people buy the rooms.’
‘What about Jonathan Clare? Was he renting by the day or the week?’
She picked up a ledger and flicked through it. ‘By the month,’ she said.
‘So he paid a deposit?’
The woman nodded.
‘And he got that back when he checked out?’
‘Usually we give people their deposits the day after they check out.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘It’s our policy. We have to check for damage and that phone calls and electricity and water bills have been paid.’
‘And he came back for his deposit?’
She looked at the ledger and nodded.
If Jon Junior waited around for his deposit then he probably wasn’t running away from anyone. He’d just moved on. But why? And where?
I asked her if anyone had moved into Jon Junior’s room. She flicked through the ledger and shook her head. ‘It’s still empty,’ she said.
‘Can I look around?’ I asked.
I could see the look of concern flash across her face so before she could say anything I slipped her a five hundred baht note. Probably more than two days wages. She stared at the note, then the adverts ended and the soap opera restarted. She gave me the key to room 31. ‘Second floor,’ she said, her eyes back on the TV set.
There was an elevator but I took the stairs, figuring that I could do with the exercise.
The room was large with a queen size bed, a cheap black plastic sofa and a glass-topped coffee table that was a twin of the one in reception. There was a wardrobe and a dressing table and a door that led to a small bathroom. Western-style toilet, washbasin and a shower stall.
The wardrobe was bare except for a line of pink plastic coathangers.
There as nothing in the dressing table drawers.
I looked under the bed. There was a roach trap and a lot of dust, but nothing else.
I lifted the pillows. Nothing. Lifted the mattress. Nothing.
I went over to the plastic sofa and lifted the cushions. Nothing.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. A map showing where he’d gone? A letter? But whatever I was hoping to find, I was disappointed.
I went back to reception. The woman there was wiping her eyes as the end credits of the soap opera rolled across the television screen.
I gave her back the key.
‘And he definitely didn’t leave a forwarding address?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘Did he take a taxi or a tuk-tuk when he left?’
‘I didn’t see him leave,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘He must have checked out at night,’ she said.
‘Who was here then?’
‘The night man,’ she said. ‘Gung.’
Gung. It means prawn.
‘Does he work every night?’
‘He’s the night man,’ she said patiently.
Stupid question.
Jai yen.
‘How did he pay his bills?’ I asked.
‘Cash.’
‘No credit card?’
‘Just cash.’
‘And the only visitor he had was this girl?’
‘She was the only one I saw.’
I’d have to talk to Gung to find out if Jon Junior had had any nocturnal visitors. I was running out of questions for the receptionist. It looked like a dead end. Jon Junior had been here. Now he wasn’t. End of story.
The receptionist looked at me blankly. I felt that I was missing something. That if I asked her the right question then the puzzle would be solved. I looked at the mailboxes.
‘Did he get any mail while he was here?’
‘No.’
Okay, so that wasn’t the magic question.
‘Any phone calls? Did anyone call here asking for him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘But any calls would come through reception, right?’
There was a small switchboard on the desk. The receptionist nodded.
‘So, did anyone call for him?’
‘Maybe. I don’t remember.’
I figured that it was unfair of me to expect her to remember every call she answered.
‘He did make some calls, though.’
I stared at her in surprise. ‘Really?’
She twisted around and opened the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and pulled out a sheaf of papers. She licked her index finer and flicked through them. They were receipts. She smiled triumphantly and pulled out a sheet and handed it to me.
It was dated three weeks earlier and was a computer print-out of half a dozen phone calls, the time and date of each call and how long the call lasted. I wanted to reach over and plant a kiss on her cheek but I slipped her another five hundred baht note.
‘Can I keep this?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘It’s for our records,’ she said.
I quickly copied down the numbers, dates and times and gave the receipt back to her. Another soap opera was starting and she hurried to put the receipt back into the filing cabinet drawer as I left.
I found a Starbucks, ordered a low-fat latte and sat down at a corner table. There were two numbers on the receipt. One was a cellphone. Jon Junior had called it five times on three different days. Two of the calls had been short, just a few seconds so I figured he’d left a message, and the three others had all been over half an hour.
Interesting. Half an hour was a long time to be talking on the phone.
I took out my cellphone and tapped out the number. I went straight through to the answering service which suggested that the phone was switched off. It was the standard recorded message and it gave no clue as to who owned the phone. I thought about leaving a message but then decided against it.
The other number had the prefix 02 which meant that it was a Bangkok landline. Jon Junior had made a two-minute call. I tapped out the number.
A Thai woman answered, speaking English. ‘Betta English Language School,’ she said briskly.
Interesting.
I asked her for the address of the school and scribbled it down in my notebook. It was a short walk away from Jon Junior’s apartment. I cut the connection.
Very interesting.
The fact that Jon Junior had switched rooms suggested that he’d wanted to move closer to the Betta English Language School. But the Betta English Language School had been on the list that Stickman had given me. And they’d denied all knowledge of Jon Clare Junior.