Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson by Stephen Leather, Warren Olson Read Free Book Online Page A

without being able to speak a word of Thai and a cheque from the US Government in his back pocket. He found a decent hotel, decent beer, but couldn’t find a decent burger despite looking the length and breadth of the city. He figured the only way he was going to get the sort of food he wanted was to cook it himself, so he set up a small burger joint in a soi close to Patpong. He never looked back and now he owns a huge house in one of the more heavily fortified areas of town and flies himself to Hong Kong to watch his racehorses run.
    He didn’t tell me who he was when he phoned. He just said that he needed a private detective and asked me to meet him at Starbucks in Soi Thonglor. He said he’d be reading a copy of the Asian Wall Street Journal but his choice of reading material wasn’t important because he was the only farang in the place. I recognised him immediately from photographs in the glossy magazines they leave around in my dentist’s. Usually he was holding court at the opening of one of his restaurants, or attending a function to honour some visiting American dignitary or other, standing with his arm around a leggy Thai beauty queen or a gay DJ raising a glass of champagne to the camera, grinning with a set of teeth so white that they had to have been capped. He was well over six foot tall, greying at the temples with flint-grey eyes that looked at me inquisitively as I walked over to his table. He unwound himself from his chair. He was thin with a runner’s build, and as I knew for a fact that he ate in one of his own restaurants every night, he must have had the metabolism of a humming bird.
    ‘Greig Knight,’ he said. He nodded at the muscular Thai man who was sitting in the armchair opposite his. ‘This is Gung. My driver.’
    Gung stood up and waied me with a cold smile. He didn’t look like a driver. He looked more like a bodyguard and from the way he held himself I figured he was former military or police.
    Knight wound himself back into his armchair and waved for me to take Gung’s place. Gung stood slightly to the left of Knight, his arms crossed. He didn’t look like the sort of man you’d want to meet in a dark alley.
    ‘As you’ve probably guessed, it’s a woman,’ said Knight.
    ‘It usually is.’ I said.
    ‘Do you want a coffee?’
    ‘Black.’
    ‘You don’t want a cappuccino or a latte?’
    ‘I’m a traditional sort of guy,’ I said.’
    ‘Cappuccino is for wimps?’
    ‘My thoughts exactly.’
    Knight grinned and nodded at Gung. ‘Mr Olson will have the same as me,’ he said. ‘Same as we like our heavyweight boxers.’
    Gung frowned.
    ‘Strong and black,’ said Knight, and he tapped the table in front of him with a large ring on his left hand.
    I chuckled but Gung’s frown just deepened. He nodded and walked over to the counter.
    ‘He’s been with me for ten years,’ said Knight. ‘Just so you know, I trust him completely.’
    ‘Former army?’
    Knight nodded. ‘Captain in the Thahan Phran.’
    I raised an eyebrow. The Thahan Phran are Thailand’s paramilitary border guards. Hard bastards. You wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of one, dark alley or not.
    He steepled his fingers under his chin and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve got a live-in girlfriend. Ying.’ He smiled. ‘Beautiful girl. Sexy as hell.’
    ‘You’re a very lucky man,’ I said.
    ‘If I thought that, I wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ he said. He sighed. ‘I was in a Humvee, a few years back. Had a sergeant who thought he was Michael Schumacher. Took it as an insult to his manhood if he had to put his foot on the brake. We were heading into Kuwait City, full-pelt. I don’t know what it was, but I just had a feeling that something was wrong. I told the sergeant to stop. He moaned like hell but he pulled over. I went ahead on foot. Fifty feet in front of where we stopped was a landmine. A biggie.’
    ‘Wow.’
    ‘Wow is right. Humvees are damn big vehicles but the