Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

considerations.”
    “Considerations?” echoed Mrs Clare.
    “If Jon Junior had been living in Bangkok and had been in the nightclub, his friends would have noticed. Or the people he lived with. Or the people he worked with. Some one would have realised that he wasn’t around.”
    “That’s what I said,” said Mr Clare, nodding. He patted his wife’s hand. “That’s exactly what I said.” He flashed a tight smile at me as if to thank me for the reassurance. “But you will check, right?”
    “Of course I will.”
    “And how much do you charge?” asked Mr Clare.
    “That’s difficult to say,” I said.   “I’m not a private detective, I don’t charge by the hour.”
    “You sell antiques, Mr Richards said,” said Mrs Clare.
    “That’s my main business, but I’ve been here for almost fifteen years so I have a fair idea of how the place works.   I’ll ask around and I can try a few leads that the police wouldn’t necessarily think of.”
    “He said you used to be a police officer.”
    “In another life,” I said.
    “In the States?”
    I smiled thinly. “It’s not something I talk about, much.”
    Hardly at all, in fact. Too many bad memories.
    “I understand,” said Mr Clare. “Mr Richards said you were a good man. And reliable.”
    “That was nice of him,” I said, though I figured what Matt Richards was really doing was getting the Clares out of his hair as quickly as possible.   “I’ll start by making a few calls, see if I can find out where he was planning to live and work, and take it from there. I’d expect you to cover any expenses, and then when I’ve finished I’ll let you know how much work I’ve done and you can pay me what you think that’s worth.”
    “That’s a strange way of doing business, Mr Turtledove.”
    “It’s a strange country, Mr Clare. But things have a way of working out for the best here.”
    * * * * *
    CHAPTER 3
    So, all I had to do was to find one lost American in the Village of Olives.   That’s how Bangkok translates , I kid you not . Bang means “village’ and kok is an olive-like fruit.   Doesn’t have much of a ring to it, so the Thais prefer to call their capital Krung Thep, or City of Angels. Actually, the full Thai name gets a place in the Guinness World Records book as the world’s longest place name. Krungthep, Maha Nakorn, Amorn Ratanakosindra, Mahindrayudhya, Mahadilokpop Noparatana Rajdhani, Burirom, Udom Rajnivet Mahastan, Amorn Pimarm Avatarn Satit, Sakkatuttiya, Vishnukarm Prasit.
    Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
    It translates as “The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with the nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in enormous royal palaces which resemble the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated God, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm.”
    Bangkok is shorter.   But it is still one hell of a big city.   Officially It’s home to twelve million people but at any one time there could be up to twenty million trying to make a living there.   The vast majority are Thais so finding Jon Junior would be difficult, but not impossible.
    So, what to do?
    First, try the easy options.
    I picked up a phone and tapped out the number of Jon Junior’s cellphone. It went straight through to a recorded message in Thai that said that the number wasn’t available and that I should try later. It didn’t give me the option of leaving a message or of using a call-back service which would notify me when the phone was available. I used my cellphone to send a text message in Thai, asking for whoever had the phone to give me a call and I’d make it worth their while.
    I reached for my MacBook and switched it on, then sent an email to the address that Mr Clare had given me. While I waited to see if the email bounced back I looked through the letters that Jon Junior had written.   There were three letters, mainly