The cockatoos that live in the garden next to my condominium block woke me up bright and early. The house is owned by a Thai plastic surgeon by the name of Khun Banyat and he lives there with his wife, five children and his collection of exotic birds. I like Khun Banyat and I play tennis with him at the Racquet Club in Soi 49 twice a month but sometimes I would happily strangle his parrots.
I lay looking up at the ceiling wondering what cockatoo would taste like in a hot, spicy soup.
Jai yen.
I rolled over and looked at my wife. Noy.
Noy means small.
She is thirty-two but looks a good ten years younger, with her long black hair spread over the pillow like a raven’s wing and long, long eyelashes. She’s way out of my league, and not because she’s younger and better looking. She’s smarter than me, she’s a better person than I am and she’s kinder to animals. She’s fluent in Thai, English, Mandarin and Japanese, she plays the violin and piano like a dream, she has a real estate business that makes twice as much as my antiques shop.
I’m not good enough for my wife. I’m really not. There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t wonder why she chose me, why she wanted to marry me, and why she stays with me.
She’s well connected too, and could have had the pick of any eligible bachelor going. I don’t think there’s a top Thai politician, Army general or movie star who doesn’t know her and usually when we get invited anywhere it’s because they want to see her, not me. Her dad is an Air Force General and her mother is on the boards of half a dozen charities and is a regular visitor to the palace. They’re lovely people, too, I couldn’t ask for better in-laws. To this day I’m still not sure why I’ve been so lucky.
‘I know you’re looking at me,’ she said quietly.
‘How?’ I said. ‘You’ve got your back to me.’
‘I can feel your eyes,’ she said. ‘And I can hear you thinking.’
‘What am I thinking, then?’
She moved her legs a little. She has great legs. Long, shapely, fit. ‘You were wondering if you could get away with killing Khun Banyat’s parrots,’ she murmured.
‘That’s impressive,’ I said.
‘Then you were thinking about pressing yourself against me and kissing the back of my neck and making love to me before I woke up.’
‘But you’re awake already.’
She sighed dreamily. ‘No, I’m still asleep. So was I right?’
‘Honey, you’re always right,’ I said, snuggling up to her and kissing the back of her neck.
Afterwards, she lay in my arms, her hand on my chest. She has perfect hands, the nails beautifully manicured, the fingertips soft, the skin unblemished. ‘Do you want to know what I was really thinking?’ I asked.
‘Oh my Buddha, there’s more? Haven’t you ravaged me enough?’
I smiled. ‘I was wondering why I’m so lucky. Why do you stay with me?’
‘Because I’m your wife, Bob. That’s what wives do. Through thick and thin.’
‘Let me rephrase the question,’ I said. ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘You’re asking me that now?’
‘It’s as good a time as any. The warm afterglow and all.’
She prodded me in the ribs. ‘Because I love you.’
‘It’s as simple as that?’
‘And as complicated,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘And I love the way you make coffee for me first thing in the morning.’
‘You do?’
‘And the way you warm the milk first. And serve it with one of those Italian biscuits we got from the Emporium.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She sighed like a cat making itself comfortable. ‘So what are you waiting for?’
I made her coffee, warming the milk and serving it with a biscuit, and then spent another hour in bed with her during which time I forgot all about next door’s cockatoos.
After I’d showered and dressed I tried Jon Junior’s cellphone again but it was still unavailable. Then I checked my email. There were a dozen or so work-related emails and one from a tourist wanting to know if I could recommend a good hotel near Patpong, but no reply from Jon Junior.
I emailed the two scanned photographs of Jon Junior to half a dozen guys who run Thai-related websites. I asked them to put Jon Junior’s pictures and details online and to get back to me if anyone knew where he was. It was a long shot but some of the sites had upwards of twenty thousand visitors a week. I also put the photographs on my site. I sold antiques online at Bangkokbob. biz and had most of my stock on the website. Over the years I’d expanded the website to include advice on living and working in Thailand, and I’d started a question and answer service, more as a hobby than anything else. Now I was getting a couple of hundred hits a day and a reputation as the man who knew all there was to know about the Land of Smiles. I was selling a lot of antiques, too.
It was the website that had got me started as a part-time private eye. A woman in Seattle who’d bought a couple of Khmer statues from me sent me an email asking if I’d go around to her husband’s hotel and check that he was okay. He’d gone to Thailand on a golfing holiday with half a dozen of his buddies and she hadn’t heard from him for three days.
She’d imagined all sorts of scenarios, most of which involved her husband running off with a sloe-eyed beauty.
There was no great mystery. He’d gone down with food poisoning and was in hospital. His buddies had headed off to Pattaya after the doctors had said that he’d be back on his feet in a day or two. They’d assumed that he’d phone his wife, he’d assumed that they’d done it.
I called her, put her mind at rest, and a week later I received a cheque for five hundred dollars that I hadn’t asked for. I hadn’t even thought about money. The guy ran a computer business and a few months after he got back to Seattle he called me and me to check out a Thai software firm that he was planning to do business with. I made a few calls and discovered that the two guys running the software company had a history of ripping off Western investors. The Seattle guy was so grateful that he sent me a cheque for five thousand dollars and passed on my name to all his friends.
Now I probably got half a dozen requests for help every week. Most are through the website or word of mouth. A few get pointed in my direction from the Western embassies. I don’t take on every case. Just the ones that I find interesting, or where I know that I’ll make a difference. I liked Mr and Mrs Clare and I wanted to help.
I wanted to reunite them with their son.
And I wanted to lose the feeling I had that something bad had happened to him.
I looked at my watch. It was time to visit the Kube.
Or at least what was left of it.