Carl had lived on his wits all of his life. People generally perceived him as sincere, possibly because he tried to be when life didn’t get in the way. His greatest asset was the ability to turn their trust into tax-free income. He had to live on something and he was a man of expensive tastes.
The Sukhumvit Grande Hotel, a five-star property, had become an important part of Carl’s working life. He used it to run his business from and was there at least two days a week. Carl’s clients were more impressed by him receiving VIP treatment in a five-star hotel than they would have been by a small office down a Bangkok backstreet. So, over the years he had befriended the staff and made the hotel his own.
He had been at the hotel a couple of months earlier, before his financial drought, holding a complicated meeting with four police colonels regarding the Thai police’s legal interpretation and attitude toward shady foreign businessmen, white collar criminals who were happily paying Carl for the information. Carl was in the middle of the meeting when the hotel manager, Fritz Freysinger, tall, Swiss, dressed like an undertaker, relatively new to Bangkok and antiseptically efficient, showed his disapproval of Carl’s influence over the hotel’s staff.
It was Carl’s own fault there was a conflict. He had been at a cocktail party in the ballroom of the hotel when the manager had come over and introduced a friend from Germany. “I want you to meet my friend Graf Felix Von Gorbitz, he is a real Count.” Carl looked him up and down then turned to the manager and said, “Sorry to hear that. I find it commendable that you still put up with him though.”
Since that day the manager disapproved of him and the day Carl was talking to the colonels was an opportunity for revenge so the manager came over and said, “Nice office you have here,” hoping to expose and embarrass.
“Cheap too!” Carl replied.
He knew exactly what Carl meant. Five people drinking coffee under crystal chandeliers would cost the equivalent of forty American dollars. It was far more impressive and a lot less expensive than paying rent on a proper office. Herr Freysinger’s beloved hotel had been called cheap so he chose neutrality and left hurriedly. Carl didn’t need him. As long as he tipped the staff well it was his hotel. A hundred baht handed out to a few key people meant he was in control from the car park to the F amp; B outlets. If the manager didn’t like it there wasn’t a problem. He wasn’t on Carl’s list of people to give a hundred baht to and if his sarcasm didn’t stop Carl would take him off his Christmas list as well.
Carl rolled down the legs of his jeans, put his shoes back on his wet feet, and looked around the lobby. He liked to make a point of identifying the person he was meeting before they gave out any signals. It took them by surprise and gave him the necessary edge. Carl was looking for the tension that comes from the anticipation of making a confession.
Clients contacted him when something had gone seriously wrong in their life. Something they had tried to deal with but had failed to find a solution to on their own. So, before they discuss a course of action, they feel a need to explain how they got to that point whilst avoiding sounding foolish. Therefore it was a confession. So Carl was looking for someone that was tense and probably more than a little nervous.
Carl spotted him immediately. The potential client looked like an oversized schoolboy sitting outside the headmaster’s office. He was at least one hundred and fifty kilos but, like so many foreign visitors to the tropics, he wore shorts and a polo shirt. His belly hung over the belt of his shorts and his huge swollen legs protruded downwards out of the cotton shorts like the creations of a drunken sausage machine. His large cheeks and nose were red from years of drinking and the exertion of breathing in the humid air of the tropics. His hair had receded to leave the top of his head bald but what he had on the sides was left long enough for him to sweep it across the top of his head like a randomly thrown floor rug. He had finished off his artistic creation by dying the hair jet-black. It was not a pretty picture.
Carl thought the man looked like an oversized clown but he had a Rolex watch on his wrist and a diamond ring on his finger so all was not lost. Carl walked over and introduced himself. The man showed his surprise that Carl knew who he was without having been given a description. Carl shrugged his shoulders to give the impression it was merely a magic trick and not to be taken seriously. Carl introduced himself and suggested they move upstairs to the library where it would be more private. They took the ornate stairs in the middle of the lobby.
Carl climbed the stairs slowly so as not to embarrass his whale of a potential client. They eventually reached the library without the fat man needing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which was a good thing as Carl had decided that if he collapsed halfway up the stairs he would wait for help and if no help arrived Carl would let him die. Even Bangkok private investigators have limits to what they will do for a client and this hideous looking fat man was only a potential client.
The client sat his large body in an armchair and after several minutes of heavy breathing he began his story.
“This is a difficult story to tell so I would appreciate it if you don’t interrupt. I will answer any questions afterwards.” He observed him carefully until Carl nodded his agreement.
“As I intend to be totally honest with you, first I will tell you that my name is Victor Inman and I am sixty-seven years old and my story takes place over several decades. To continue in the spirit of truthfulness I must tell you that there was a time when my brother was quite high up in the CIA. He was posted to Vietnam shortly after that commie cocksucker and friend to the Soviet Union was shot by Lee Oswaldin Dallas. No insane conspiracy theory there, my friend. Just a pissed off American alone with his rifle. You do not side with conspiracy theorists I assume. I am counting on you being much more intelligent than that.”
Carl assumed he was referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy who was no friend of Russia but fortunately, a friendly enough man to have averted World War III. Right wing elements on both sides had taken the world to the brink of nuclear war. Kennedy had refused to be influenced by the warmongers and had fortunately chosen a more tempered solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was one of Carl’s favourite historical characters.
The alleged ‘lone’ assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was an enigma, most certainly a villain, and sometime friend of Russia having taken up residence there after denouncing his US citizenship. He later asked for his passport back and returned to the US with a Russian wife. All visa applications for the wife from communist Russia were apparently processed without hindrance suggesting the support of the State Department. Oswald had certainly crossed paths and had dealings with the CIA during his time in Florida prior to that bloody day in Dallas. Carl had always believed a military coup had taken place to take the White House back from uncooperative civilian hands. Carl had seen a few military coups in his time and he knew what one looked like.
There were three good reasons for Carl to hold his tongue: he had agreed not to interrupt, he didn’t like right wing arseholes and had a tendency to get angry around them, and arguing politics was a sure way of walking away from the table with empty pockets. He forced his face to remain expressionless. The fat man saw this as approval and continued.
“In all honesty Lyndon Johnson was what the country needed, a proper president and a good American. Under his administration the CIA were tasked with confronting communism across the globe and my brother was sent to Vietnam. He was immediately put in the Phoenix Program and he served his country honourably.”
He stared at Carl to see if he was able to follow the conversation. The Phoenix Program was a CIA-backed operation to control the civilian support of the Viet Cong by use of assassination, imprisonment and torture. Carl had spent enough time drinking in Patpong bars with Vietnam veterans to know what Phoenix was. He nodded his understanding.
A very attractive fair-skinned waitress carried a tray to their table and smiled at Carl and asked him how he was. Carl assured her that he was well and asked after her mother who had recently been in hospital. The client fumbled with the sugar he was spooning into his coffee and drank some water. He was still sweating profusely. Carl told the pretty girl he was pleased her mother was in better health and home from the hospital. She gave him her biggest smile and flirted a little with her lovely brown eyes. Then she turned and walked away. Carl, having affirmed his status at the hotel, gave his attention back to the fat man in front of him so he could continue his story.
“He returned to the US around 1975, shortly after the fall of Saigon. He was lean and physically fit, not a follower of the family love of good food that, in all honesty, as you can see, I am a victim of. He was married in 1982, and had two children, the usual disaster. He started a real estate company and he lived well. In 1992 he was accused of being a serial killer. Several girls had been murdered around the greater Las Vegas area. The killings were linked by two similarities; the location of the stab wounds, and the fact that all the bodies were found without ears. The most shocking case involved the removal of the nipples and clitoris with a sharp knife. They were later found in the victim’s stomach having been forced to eat them whilst still alive. In all honesty I have never believed my brother was this man but the FBI were relentless and their investigation ruined his business and turned his bitch of a wife against him.”
He stopped talking and looked away. His distress weighed heavy on his shoulders pulling them forward and downward. This was not a happy man. But so few of Carl’s clients were. He looked around the library as if he feared being overheard and then spoke again.
“He came to my house early one Sunday morning, shortly after church. He told me he couldn’t take it anymore. He asked me to go to California and befriend homeless people, ‘Buy them hooch’, he told me. I was to find one that looked as much like him as possible and arrange a meeting. I did this for him and a few weeks later he left Vegas in the middle of the night and I have not seen or heard from him since.”
“How can I help you?” Carl asked him in as bland a voice as possible. He had learnt to avoid letting clients think he had an opinion. Carl had an opinion of course. It was his opinion that he was about to make some serious money.
The client fidgeted in his chair before answering.
“To be honest with you my biggest problem was that the killings stopped. After he left there were no more murders. I began to lose my mind and check the news ten times a day hoping a murder had occurred. Anything that would prove to me that it wasn’t him. I felt terrible, wishing a horrible death on a young girl just so I could sleep better at night.”
He stared at Carl’s face to try to see what he was thinking. But Carl had his poker face and wasn’t giving anything away.
“Recently our mother died and left us both a lot of money. She also left property that requires our mutual agreement before anything can be done with it. So I desperately need him to come to America or I need a death certificate. I have always suspected that he was living in Thailand as he spent a lot of time here during the Vietnam War. I recently searched for him in the archives of the Thai newspapers online. Instead of finding him what I found was a serial killer with an MO exactly like the one I had read about in the Las Vegas papers twenty years earlier. My brother is now seventy years old so I need to know if he is dead or alive and if he is living in Thailand. Most of all, I need to know if my brother is a murderer. Can you do this for me?”
This was the time to close the deal that would get Carl out of his present financial embarrassment. Most of what Carl did was tedious and for relatively small amounts of money. It paid the bills, just about. But a few times a year he struck gold and this appeared to be one of those times. The trick, Carl knew, was finding the balance between getting as much as possible whilst not scaring the client off.
“Before I answer that I need to ask you some questions,” Carl told him.
“Fire away.” He was more confident. The talking cure obviously worked.
“I assume you have a picture but it is almost twenty years old?” Carl asked him as he took paper and pen from his pocket and perched some reading glasses on the end of his nose so he could look at the client over the top of them. It was show time and Carl took on the role of the slightly eccentric yet wise detective.
The client took a picture from his pocket and handed it to Carl. A smiling man in his forties with wife and children in the garden of a very upper middle class suburban home. Not the picture of a murderer but Carl already knew that nobody really knows anybody.
“Good, that will help. Did you bring the name of the homeless man? He may not be using that name after all this time, but I will need it anyway.”
“James Arthur Peabody was the hobo’s name. I have a good memory for names,” the client said. Carl listened, then wrote it down and nodded as if it meant something.
“Was there a male in your family that was close to him in appearance?” Carl asked.
“What is the relevance of the question?”
He was showing impatience so Carl knew he needed to take charge.
“Just answer the question please,” Carl told him looking at him sternly over the top of his glasses.
“He was said to resemble our paternal grandfather.”
“At what age did he die?” Carl asked him still watching him over the lenses.
“Seventy-one.”
“Do you have an old family photograph of him a few years before he died?”
“Yes, yes, I can get one sent here.” His face was lighting up. Part of the show is allowing the client into the process of playing detective. Delivering their childhood fantasy is included in the fee.
“Tell me anything you can about his activities. Was he a golfer, marathon runner, chess fanatic or anything like that?”
“He played poker. Any kind of poker, he would play anywhere. He was said to be good at it. Whatever that means. Not much else I can think of. He went running every morning, he liked to keep fit.”He touched his vast belly self-consciously.
“Did he subscribe to any magazines, clubs, associations or such?”
“Not that I can think of. He did smoke cigars though, big Cuban ones. I once asked him how he got them in the US as they are illegal, but he just smiled and winked at me.”
“Poker and cigars,” Carl repeated to him as he wrote it down. “Any particular brand of Cuban cigars?”
“Bolivar Churchills were his favourite. There were empty boxes everywhere.”
Carl listened and wrote it down. “What about social habits? Did he have lots of friends?”
“Some, but he was more solitary than most people. I believe he occasionally played golf, only for business, not pleasure.”
Carl added solitary and golf to his notes. He was running out of questions.
“Can you remember the day he left?”
“It was sometime in July 1992,” he answered and Carl wrote it down.
“That should do for now.” Carl took his glasses off and put glasses, pen and paper in his pocket. “I will need a running fund of twenty thousand US dollars deposited in my Singapore bank account. When cases are dangerous or controversial I do not accept payment in Thailand. I will message the bank details to your mobile if you are in agreement with this.”
He didn’t say no, so Carl continued.
“I will need to grease the wheels of justice to get things done, especially as I will be looking into an active murder investigation. This is not something that I typically agree to do as it is extremely foolish and draws attention to my activities. There are no licensed foreign investigators in Thailand and what I do would be illegal if they actually understood what it was. Unfortunately, seeking information on the progress of their investigation will be necessary in this case. I will need to provide good financial incentives to the police to accomplish this with any level of safety so I will not proceed until I receive this payment.”
The fat man nodded, so Carl said, “Should further money be needed you will get a full report and be in a situation to judge whether you are satisfied with the progress of the investigation.”
As Carl got up the client said, “Good luck.”Which Carl had not heard a client say before, especially one he had just cornered into parting with twenty thousand dollars. It felt ominous and Carl was uncomfortable. You’re not supposed to feel uncomfortable when you have just made a big score.
“I will be in touch as soon as I have something to report,” Carl said giving him his ‘you are in good hands’ look as he got up to leave.
Once in the street Carl sent the phone message with the bank details. Within two days he would know if he had a client. Carl was confident the fat man would send the money. Carl knew things about people. He figured he had a client, what he didn’t know was if he had a real case or not.
The client called Carl within an hour to let him know that the money had left his bank account and that he had emailed a copy of the confirmation to the email address on Carl’s business card. Carl chose to believe him so he decided to break his own rule about waiting until the money was in his hand and start planning. The story had piqued his interest.
He would not usually take a client’s word when money was involved. Payment was never confirmed until it was actually in his bank account. This was a rule to live by, as clients did not only lie about case information. Carl put his cynicism aside and started to plan how he would begin the investigation. He dropped his poker face and smiled as he waded through the water along Sukhumvit Road. It felt good to be out of the financial woods again.