Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May 2005 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors [Authors, Dell Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, 2012
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2008-08-29T14:24:31+00:00

* * * *Her apartment was in Bangmod. I took a bus out there, and on the ride, studied the photo Baines had given me. It showed the two of them in front of the red crumbling wall of a Khmer temple. Ging wore jeans and a tight white T-shirt with pink polka dots. He was right, she was a looker. She had that classic Thai heart-shaped face and wide brown eyes.

The ride was a long one. I thought of Ging making the same journey behind the wheel of her 220 series Mercedes. I couldn't help noticing it was the classic minor wife car. I had Thai friends who even called it that, the rot mia noi. I thought about Baines. He'd told me once, “When a Thai woman looks at a well-dressed white guy, she sees money and respectability. When she looks at me, she sees an African without a work permit."

From the bus stop, Ging's soi split into sub-sois, all of the same cheap accommodation: five stories above shopfronts. Clothes hung out to dry on narrow balconies, and through wire-mesh windows I could see overhead fans and the clutter of small rooms. At street level there were the usual food stalls and steaming noodle carts and stray dogs with diseased skin. The sub-sois were all dead ends, so there wasn't much traffic, just the occasional motorbike winding around the pools left by last night's rain.

It was three in the afternoon, and I was here because I knew Ging was at work.

Under her block was a shop selling bedspreads and bolts of cloth. There were no customers. Behind a small glass counter sat a placid middle-aged Thai woman, arms folded under her ample bosom. I described Ging and told her I was a friend. Which apartment was hers?

"Ging doesn't live here anymore. She went away.” Pai laoew.

"Really! She didn't say anything to me."

"Ging's very rich now,” said the woman, smiling with genuine pleasure at Ging's good fortune. “She went to live in a condo on Sukumvit Road."

"So has she changed jobs? Last time I spoke to her she was working for the U.S. Embassy."

"Still there, but I think she has a rich boyfriend.” She laughed and said, “It's good isn't it? I should find a rich man to marry me."

"No problem,” I told her. “I would marry you myself, but I'm poor.” That brought another peal of laughter. I asked about the boyfriend, but she didn't know him.

As I was walking away, I passed a couple of men sitting at a metal table by a noodle cart. One of them called out, “You looking for Ging?” He had bloodshot eyes and a T-shirt with “Beck's Beer” written on it.

"That's right. I heard she moved."

"Why do you want her?” There was a slur to his words that made me think he'd been drinking.

"I'm a friend. We haven't been in touch for a while."

"A friend from where? How do you know her?"

"Calm down,” the other guy told him. Jai yen yen.

"I know her from work.

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