Bangkok Noir

The Lunch That Got Away Eric Stone

“Sorry, no fish today, Khun Ray.” Plaa looks more upset by that than she ought to be.

Maybe she has sold out. I hope so, for her sake. But it is still early, and this would be the first time ever.

“Plaa, is something wrong?”

“No, no problem, Khun Ray, only no fish today.”

She’s a bad liar.

“Come on, what is it?” She bites her lip and looks away. I can barely hear her.

“Robbers, Khun Ray, take fish and all my money. Make big trouble for me.”

I’ve been buying lunch from Plaa for a few years. She makes the absolute best green curry-coated, banana leaf-wrapped baked fish I’ve ever had. And she sells it every day out of her cooler on the street at Sukhumvit Soi 11, across from my hotel, for twenty-five baht.

I’m in town for one hellish day of appointments. Our Bangkok correspondent is mad at the editor of the magazine. I can’t blame him. I am, too. But I don’t see why he had to take it out on me. I guess it’s my fault for letting him arrange my schedule.

My first appointment was an interview at the Central Bank at four-thirty this morning. The guy I met gets into the office at three to avoid traffic. My last interview is set for seven this evening, back next door to the Central Bank. In between I’ve got four more appointments scattered all over town. Those six interviews are going to add up to a total of about three hours of work, for which I’m going to spend at least twelve hours stuck in traffic.

I like Bangkok when I don’t need to get anywhere.

At least the correspondent has loaned me his rolling office, so I can work at the desk in the back of the van as his brother-in-law drives me around town. And, having been the one who introduced me to Plaa’s fish, he didn’t want her to lose out on my business, so he has kindly routed us past her usual spot just before lunch.

“When did this happen, Plaa?”

“I get here ten o’clock, Khun Ray. They waiting for me, push me, take cooler, run away.”

That was an hour ago, and Bangkok is a very big city. I doubt there’s much I can do.

But I like Plaa. She works hard and spends little on herself so she can afford to keep her fifteen-year-old daughter Noi in school and out of the bars. I’m here to write an economic update on the country. My appointments are all with big shots. But it’s Plaa and people like her that actually make this place tick.

“Do you know who it was? Did you recognize them?”

In Bangkok everybody knows who everybody else is, at least within their neighborhoods. And why would anyone come across town to rob a street vendor?

She gets a look on her face that I don’t like. A look that tells me she knows who it was but doesn’t want to say.

I ask again and she pretends she doesn’t understand me. I know she does. Her English isn’t good, but it’s good enough.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. It’s Cho, my driver for the day. He wants to get me back in the van. We’ve only got an hour to get to the next appointment, and it’s a couple of miles away. I’d walk if it wasn’t ninety-nine degrees and ninety — some-odd percent humidity and not likely to rain at any minute, and I’m not in a suit.

Cho wants to be a journalist. I have him sit in on my interviews in case I need any translation. It’s a matter of pride for him that we’re punctual, no matter how bad the traffic.

But I don’t want to let this drop. I’m getting tired of hearing all the glowing reports about the booming Thai economy. I could already write exactly what the next three interviews are going to tell me. “It’s 1992. If the economy keeps growing at eleven percent a year, by 2000 it will be blah blah blah.” I can do the optimistic math as well as the next well-connected mogul or government minister. It all sounds too good to be true, which it is.

Plaa’s got a real problem, maybe one I can do something about.

“Cho, Plaa was robbed. I think she knows who did it, but she won’t tell me. Could you ask her?”

He leads her a few feet away, their backs turned. They talk for a minute before Cho comes back to tell me what he’s found out. Plaa stays where she is but turns toward us. Her face is pointed down, but I can see she’s looking at us through the tops of her eyes.

“I think maybe better we go to your appointment, Khun Ray. This maybe big trouble. Better we not involved.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Man who steal from Plaa work for Big Shrimp.”

The name sounds familiar. “What’s that?”

“Big new restaurant, Sukhumvit 37. Owned by wife of general.”

I’d heard of it. There was a small stink raised when an old apartment building full of working-class people was torn down to clear the land for it. And the general himself has recently been associated with some shady land deals. But wives of generals are well-connected.

“Huh? What would they want with Plaa’s fish? And she couldn’t have had much money.”

“They want know how Plaa cook her fish. They offer her money, but she not want to tell. Her cook same as mother and grandmother. Is family secret. Today they steal fish and money and tell Plaa if she not tell, then she no do business any more.”

It takes some persuasion. At first she doesn’t want help from a farang, but we get Plaa into the van. I call and cancel my next appointment as we make our way in fits and starts the twenty-six blocks to Big Shrimp.

It’s not the world’s biggest restaurant. That’s another twenty or so blocks farther down Sukhumvit. Big Shrimp is too classy for cute waitresses on roller skates, but not by much. It’s over-decorated in the sort of Mekong whisky-fueled, faux Edwardian trompe-l’oeil taste that infected elements of the Thai upper classes in the 1970s. The illuminated walls and ceiling are lousy with 3-D wood nymphs and angels and fat cherubs. There’s a long entryway lined with alcoves, painted to look like aquariums stocked with comely mermaids and muscular mermen. There’s not a molding, frame or edge of anything I can see that isn’t painted gold. I’ve heard the food’s pretty good, but the place doesn’t do much for my appetite.

Neither does the big man at the door to the office. He’s taller than me, really tall for a Thai guy. He’s heavy and thick with muscle, not fat. He’s got scars on his face, and his nose has been broken enough that I know he’s not averse to a scrape. Maybe the scariest thing about him is his suit. It’s shiny black, rich, dense wool, two buttons buttoned. The hallway’s not air-conditioned, and he isn’t sweating.

I am, but I’m always sweating in Bangkok. I can talk to him all day, too, but it soon becomes plain he isn’t going to react to a thing I have to say.

Cho steps up to translate, but the big fella doesn’t react to him either. I’m tempted to snap my fingers in front of his face, but I’m afraid he could snap me in two if I were to irritate him. So I don’t.

I step back and whisper to Plaa, who is keeping her distance.

“Is he one of the guys who robbed you?”

She shakes her head no. That makes sense. There’s no point in wasting a heavy like this on lightweight street work. There are plenty of ambitious teenagers around who a rich woman can find for that sort of thing.

But we’re not going to get anywhere even if we find who actually did it. To fix this thing, we need to talk with the boss. And she’s through the door on the other side of the thug.

She knows we’re here. There’s a security camera above the door, covering the hallway.

I step in front of it, thinking I’ll talk to the camera since I’m not getting anything out of the big guy. But he’s quick. He moves in front of me, blocking me from view.

Maybe there’s sound. I try talking, but the guy smiles at me in a way that I think means I’m talking to myself. We need to figure out another approach.

We start walking away. Out on the street in front, I suggest to Plaa and Cho that we go somewhere. I’ll buy lunch, and we can talk over what to do next.

Plaa’s face lights up. I think she’s happy I’m going to buy lunch, but I’m wrong. She leans into Cho’s ear and whispers to him. His face lights up, too, and they both turn to me, smiling.

“Khun Ray, Plaa has a good idea.” I turn to her and she starts explaining in rapid-fire Thai, gesturing at the Big Fish restaurant.

Cho also points at the restaurant. “We go back in here, sit down, okay?”

No, I don’t think that’s okay. I don’t want to give Big Fish my money. I give the two of them a look.

“No problem, Khun Ray. You do not understand.”

Cho leans in to explain the plan to me. It’s a good one, and as we walk back inside, I hand Plaa my mobile phone. Cho’s already making calls on his.

The lunch crowd hasn’t come in yet, and we have our choice of tables. We sit down in the middle of the restaurant at a table that could comfortably seat six people. I order one large Kloster beer for Cho and me to split. Plaa wants hot tea.

The two of them are making calls on the mobile phones while I leaf through the menu. It actually does look pretty good, and I’m hungry. But that’s not the plan.

The waiter comes up to take our order, and we send him away, saying we’re going to wait for our friends to get here. Plaa hands me back my phone, and I make a few calls of my own.

I’m thirsty, so I lift my glass and take a small sip of my beer. Cho wags a finger at me, and I put the glass back down. He hasn’t touched his, and Plaa is letting her tea get cold.

We’ve been putting off the waiter for almost a half hour when the lunch crowd begin to arrive, taking their places in twos and threes at tables for four or more. I notice Plaa and Cho making very slight nods, little waves of no more than a finger at the people who are coming into the restaurant.

These aren’t the typical, well-heeled patrons of the place. The customers have dressed as nice as they can for the occasion, but their best is a lot lower on the fashion scale than Big Shrimp’s usual lunch crowd of businessmen. The restaurant staff are giving each other looks, wondering, “Who are these people? Can they afford to eat here?”

Our Bangkok correspondent comes in. He’s with the Thai editor of a local trouble-making magazine and his chief reporter, a tiny but solidlooking Thai woman from the country’s dirt-poor northeast. She’s known for her motto, a quote from an American journalist of the early 1900s: “To afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted.” I flash them a smile. They sit down at a table in a corner from where they can observe the whole restaurant.

By the time the restaurant’s full, there are only two tables that appear to actually be ordering lunch. Everyone else has no more than one cooling or warming drink in front of them and can’t make up their mind about what they want to eat. The waiters, maitre d’ and floor managers are in a huddle by the motionless swinging doors to the kitchen. Every so often a busboy or cook’s face appears in one of the windows in the kitchen doors, grins broadly and then disappears.

A crowd of the usual customers gathers at the front desk, wanting their usual tables. They’re increasingly restless, perturbed in their fine summer-weight wools and linens. But too bad. Big Shrimp is full.

The maitre d’ hurries over to try and mollify his customers, but most of them turn and walk away. There are plenty of other places to eat nearby. A few agree to take empty seats at some of the partially filled tables.

A man in one of the most perfectly tailored suits I’ve ever seen with a haircut that no doubt cost as much as Plaa makes in a month or more sits down at our table. He’s with a Miss Universe-class, bejewelled woman of about a third his age. They smile at me and look nervously at my lunch companions.

Cho says something to the beautiful woman that brings out a big smile on Plaa’s face. The woman looks startled and turns to the man, who looks annoyed.

He turns to me and in impeccable, upper-class British English, with just the barest tint of a Thai accent, asks what it is that I “make of all this”? It hasn’t occurred to him that I’m part of it.

I explain what’s going on, and as I do I can see the turmoil going on inside him. Despite his best efforts, it’s emblazoned across his face. The part of him that has spent a lot of time outside Thailand wants to argue with me. But he is Thai, after all, and arguing is either beneath him or just not done.

At first it looks like he might ignore us, order lunch and go about his business. But when the woman tugs on his arm and whispers to him, he gets up, shooting me something uncertain between a smile and a grimace, and they walk out.

Most of the other people who had sat down at already occupied tables get up to leave as well. The maitre d’ tries stopping them at the door, but no one’s listening to him. Finally he gives up and retreats down the hallway toward the office guarded by the big man.

The waiters aren’t even bothering to come around anymore. They know no one’s going to order anything. Once in a while someone will take a very small sip of the drink in front of them, but that’s all any of us are having for lunch.

The big guy and the maitre d’ come back out of the hallway and look the place over. The big guy says something to him, and their eyes focus on our table. The maitre d’ gestures for one of the head waiters to come over and has him take his place by the door as the muscle and he go outside.

The maitre d’ is back in about ten minutes with an impressive looking cop. He’s in a crisp, ironed uniform with polished gold buttons and military insignia. They head down the hallway to the office.

The restaurant is silent. No one is talking at their tables. The staff look on with their mouths firmly shut. There’s no clatter from the kitchen.

In short order the cop, the bruiser and the maitre d’ stream out of the hallway and make a beeline for our table. I stand up, preparing to take the brunt of whatever it is they’ve decided to do with us.

Something moves in the far periphery of my vision. I look over, and it’s the Thai magazine editor and his bulldog reporter getting up from their table and also making quickly toward ours. This is going to be interesting.

Both groups reach us at the same time. Maybe the small cassette recorder in the outstretched arm of the reporter beats out the maitre d’ by a hair. They all stop and look at each other.

The reporter and editor look expectant, enthusiastic. This could be exactly the sort of story that their readers really eat up.

The maitre d’ looks like he’s about to start stomping his feet and spitting. The heavy looks like he just wants to stomp somebody, anybody, bad.

The cop looks nervous. He’s supposed to be there on the side of Big Shrimp, but he’s got higher-ups to answer to and they don’t like publicity. He throws me a look, like maybe I can help him out of this jam.

Plaa and Cho are sitting quietly. They’ve moved their drinks in a little closer and bent their heads over them. Their eyes flick up and back down to look at the six of us standing around the table. Everyone else in the restaurant is looking, too, and not being discreet about it.

There’s a flash of light and then another. We all look around, and there’s the correspondent of my magazine with a camera. I turn back to face the maitre d’ and his posse and paste a big grin on my face.

“Smile, fellas.”

The big guy starts moving in the direction of my correspondent, but he’s by the front door and scurries out. He gives up, steps back and makes a move to snatch the tape recorder from the reporter, but the maitre d’ puts out a hand to stop him.

No one’s got guns out, but it’s beginning to feel like a Mexican standoff.

The maitre d’ steps around the table up to me and speaks low so that no one else can hear.

“You want order lunch now, mister?” Despite the words, it isn’t really a question.

“We might after a while. My friends and I are thirsty. We want to enjoy our drinks first.” I don’t shout, but I make sure I’m loud enough to be heard by the people at nearby tables.

He looks down at Plaa and Cho and then around the whole dining room. He looks back at me with an unhappy smile. He wishes I could help him out, too. It was a mistake speaking to me. If it had been Cho or Plaa, or most of the other Thai people in the restaurant, he could simply have insisted that they leave.

The maitre d’ turns and talks to the cop. I think he’s asking if there’s anything he can do.

But the cop wants no part of it. He raises his hands in what appears to be some form of surrender, smiles, shrugs his shoulders, turns on his heels and walks out as quickly as he can without looking like he’s running.

The big guy’s had enough. He starts toward me, his hands out. Taking apart a farang in front of a whole restaurant and a muckraking reporter and editor is not a smart move. But I don’t think he’s really thought it out. He’s just itching to do something to earn his keep.

The maitre d’ looks horrified. He knows this is not good. But he’s not about to get between me and anybody’s fists or feet.

It’s fight or flight. I don’t have much time to make up my mind.

The pager on the bruiser’s belt makes it up for me. It buzzes, freezing him in his tracks. He takes a look at the display and unclips it to show the maitre d’, and the both of them head back to the office pronto.

I sit back down, wishing I could gulp my beer even if it is warm and flat. Instead, I take a small, awful sip.

In about a minute the maitre d’ has returned by himself. He leans down to whisper in my ear.

“Khunying Preeya ask to have the pleasure of your company in the office.”

It seems unlikely that she’d have the big guy work me over anywhere on the premises, but I’m not sure.

“Please thank Khunying Preeya for me, but I am enjoying the company of my friends and the hospitality of her restaurant. If she would like to come to our table, I will be happy to buy her a drink and make her welcome.”

Once again he looks like he doesn’t know what to do. I almost feel bad for him as he quick-steps back to the office.

The reporter and editor are still standing by the table, and I gesture to them to sit down. The reporter puts her cassette recorder down between us. I cover it with a hand.

“I’m not the one you want to interview.”

“Yeah, but the interview I’m after won’t talk to me.” She’s been to school in the U.S. I can hear it in her voice.

“Who’s that?”

“Who do you think? The General, Khunying’s husband. He’s the real story in this place.”

I’m sure he is. There’ve been rumors swirling around him for weeks, but there’s no way she’s going to get to him.

“Okay, but what’s going on at the moment is about my friend here, Khun Plaa. It’s her you should be talking to.” I explain the situation.

From the look on her face, I can almost see the wheels and cogs begin to spin in her brain. She smiles at me, gets up and moves to sit next to Plaa. They bend their heads together to talk.

The editor looks at me and smiles. Then he says something to Cho, who translates. The editor’s apologized for not speaking English. I apologize in return for not speaking Thai. He and Cho bend their heads together in conversation.

It’s getting late enough that I’ll probably have to cancel my next appointment as well. I’m willing to do that, but I’m not sure how long I can sit here taking the occasional small sip of a beer gone bad.

My notebook sits in front of me like an accusation. I’d got it out thinking I’d at least make some notes about something, anything that I could write an article on for the magazine. My editor makes me crazy, but I don’t want to give him any cause to fire me. How can I relate what’s going on here now to the Thai economy, which is, after all, what I’m supposed to be covering?

I haven’t got anywhere with that train of thought when the maitre d’ reappears with the boss lady herself. The big guy stands back at the entrance to the office hall. I get up as they approach the table. She holds out a surprisingly indelicate, rough hand with three of its fingers bulging on either side of garish, expensive rings. She’s wearing a severe gray silk suit, and her hair is done up in a coif I associate more with Texas than Thailand. She does not look happy.

“I am Khunying Preeya, and you are...?”

“Ray Sharp.”

“Why do you disturb my restaurant’s lunch business, Mister Sharp?”

I invite her to sit down at the table, but she ignores me. I guess she left the standard social graces in her office.

“I have eaten, Mister Sharp. You and your associates have not. I insist that you order meals or that you leave the premises. This is a restaurant, Mister Sharp. It is not a waiting room.”

“I am here, Khunying Preeya, to help my friend, Khun Plaa, recover the money and cooler that were stolen from her.”

The boss lady looks down at Plaa and flutters a hand at her, then me. “Why are the troubles of a common street vendor of any concern to me?”

I smile and gesture to the restaurant around us.

“Apparently they are, or will be.”

“Are you threatening me, Mister Sharp? Do you know who my husband is? I am going to call him.” She lifts a hand with a mobile phone in it.

Everyone knows who her husband is. He’s politically connected, but word on the street lately is that some of his ties might be coming loose. There are more than slight whiffs of scandal. But he hasn’t been talking. Generals who stay out of the public eye tend to last longer than those who don’t. He won’t want publicity.

“Go ahead. Maybe he will want to get mixed up in this. But I’d be surprised. For now, my friends like it here, Khunying Preeya. It is cool and comfortable. They could become regulars. I have a lot of friends, and my friends have friends as well.”

“What do you want, Mister Sharp?”

“It’s not about what I want.” I almost say “lady,” but you never get anywhere in Thailand by not at least pretending to be polite. “If you would be so kind as to speak with my friend Khun Plaa, I am sure you can work something out.”

“She can come to my office.” The boss lady begins to turn and walk away, and it takes a lot of effort for me to sound civil. If Plaa goes back there alone, who knows what might happen?

“I don’t think my friend will feel comfortable in your office. This is such a nice room, and there is an empty table in the corner where you can have some privacy. It would be best if you spoke out here.”

She almost loses her cool but keeps herself in check with no more than a minor harrumph. She crooks one of her heavily weighted fingers at Plaa and walks to the table that my correspondent, the editor and the reporter have left.

Plaa looks up at me, not sure what to do.

“Go, talk to her. Tell her what you want. You’ve got the power here.”

She turns to the reporter, and they whisper to each other.

They get up together and follow the boss lady to the table. Plaa sits next to the khunying, the reporter across the table but still close enough to lend support.

Everyone in the restaurant is trying to look like they aren’t trying to listen. There’s no way to hear anything, but it’s hard to be patient, especially when I’m so thirsty. I take a bigger sip and then a gulp of the terrible beer. There’s still half of it left when I put it down, and it hasn’t helped at all. It was just reminiscent enough of something refreshing to make my thirst worse.

After about five minutes the boss lady makes a call on her mobile phone. She says something, listens and then responds with something shrill, not quite a shriek, but close. She listens again and hands the phone to the reporter.

The reporter speaks briefly and then spends the next few minutes listening, taking notes and not saying anything. When she’s done, she hands the phone back to the khunying, who begins talking but then stops in what is obviously mid-sentence. When she hangs up, she looks around the room frowning. She looks at Plaa and her body sags a little in her chair.

The boss lady gestures to the hallway. The big guy comes out and bends down to her. She whispers something and he hurries away. She stands up and says something that makes Plaa smile and the reporter shrug her shoulders. Then she walks away toward her office.

The two of them return to our table. Plaa sits down, still smiling, and takes a big sip of her now cool tea. The reporter leans in to whisper to her editor. He smiles, then frowns, then smiles again. She sees me watching them, and when she’s done talking to the editor, she looks at me.

“I talked with the General.”

“Get anything interesting?”

“No, just a statement, but it means your friend Khun Plaa gets her cooler back and they’ll leave her alone in the future.”

“Great, but what’s in it for you?”

“We’ll be the only paper that’s got anything at all from the General.”

“Sure, but it’s just him blowing his own horn.”

“It’s a start.”

“How?”

“It raises his profile. That’s not good for a general in this country.”

“Give him enough rope?”

“Hopefully.”

About ten minutes later the big guy walks up to the table looking like he’s about to explode. I begin to get up, not sure what I can do. But all he does is roughly drop Plaa’s cooler onto the table in front of her. The sound booms across the quiet restaurant.

Plaa stands up to look into her cooler. When she closes the lid again, she’s smiling.

The editor waves a waiter over and orders drinks, cold and hot ones, whatever anybody wants, for the whole restaurant.

Cho and I share a tall, frosty Kloster before heading out to the van and back into the traffic. I might even make it to my last two appointments.

I still didn’t get my fish for lunch. Next time.