I put on some jeans and a polo shirt, slipped into a pair of old Topsiders, and went down to the Volvo. By the time I got on the road most of the rain had stopped, but I kept the top up since the wind was still shoving clouds of fine mist over the city. I got on the expressway and drove west.
I didn’t know that part of town very well and the only place that came readily to mind where I might be able to park and look at the Taksin Bridge was a Marriott that was on the river not far from it. When the Marriott appeared on my left, I turned in. I parked in front of the hotel, got out of the car, and walked around to a sort of garden that was on one side of it. Through a line of bare flagpoles that lined the walkway along the bank of the river, I could look directly at the Taksin Bridge.
I walked slowly over the edge of the river, sat down on a low concrete wall, and stared at the bridge. Now that I was here, I couldn’t imagine why I had come. What did I expect to find? The rope from which Howard had dangled still hanging over the water? A banner draped over the superstructure with the name of Howard’s killer written on it?
A light breeze rose from the water and the empty pulley ropes began to swing against the aluminum flagpole above my head. The impacts clanked out mournful little chords, hollow sounds, like tin drums tapping out a clumsy cadence for Howard’s passage to the other side. The simple truth was that Howard was dead, somebody had killed him, but it had nothing to do with me. That was all there was to it.
Suddenly the only thing I could think about was how hungry I was, which I took to be a pretty good sign, so I stood up, dusted off my pants, and went into the Marriott to find someplace to eat. I wandered around inside for a while until I stumbled on a large, sunny room with big windows overlooking the river where there was a Sunday brunch buffet. The place was only about half full so I settled myself at an empty table by a window and ordered a Heineken. I got a plate and helped myself to some mee krob and peek kai from the salad table, then loaded on a couple of pieces of tuna sashimi and two sticks of chicken satay for good measure. I got back to my table just as a slight young girl in a black uniform and a white apron was pouring my Heineken.
“Korp khun krap,” I said. Thank you.
The girl gave me a shy smile, bobbed her head, and slipped quietly away.
I had polished off most of the plate of salad and was halfway through the Heineken when I glanced up and spotted a familiar face eating alone at a table across the room.
Bar Phillips was a columnist for the Bangkok Post, and probably had been since just after the invention of moveable type. His column was called ‘Bar By Bar’ and it had been a weekly staple in Bangkok for longer than anyone now alive could remember. The kind of stuff Bar wrote about was badly out of style now, even a little distasteful to some people, but that apparently had had no effect on him at all. He merely continued doing what he had done for decades: chronicling his rounds through the city’s go-go bars and massage parlors, reporting the comings and goings of the city’s legion of foreign saloonkeepers, and generally holding forth on anything else that took his fancy about Bangkok’s legendary nightlife.
Bar and I first met not long after I had joined the faculty at Chula. He had apparently come into a bit of money somehow and since we had some friends in common-not surprisingly, since Bar seemed to know everybody in Bangkok-he had approached me for help with setting up and operating a string of bank accounts outside Thailand. I never really knew where his money came from or exactly how much of it there was. Bar offered vague explanations, mostly starring the usual panoply of dead relatives, but I didn’t believe him and I don’t think he expected me to. On the other hand, I didn’t sense anything ominous about his money’s origins either so I had been happy enough to help him out. I hadn’t really see that much of him since then, but I was always happy to run into him. He loved me like a son.
When I walked over to Bar’s table carrying what was left of my Heineken, he glanced up at me without expression.
“What the fuck do you want? Can’t you see I’m trying to eat?”
Loved me like a son, he did.
I sat down anyway and between trips back and forth to the buffet tables over the next hour Bar and I made small talk. After he polished off the last of a large bowl of bread pudding, he bent down and took a package of tobacco and a pipe out of a plastic shopping bag on the floor by his feet. Packing the bowl of the pipe, he tapped the tobacco down with a metal tool, then struck a match and puffed away until he got it going. It all looked like an awful lot of trouble to me. Maybe that’s why I smoked cigars.
Slumping forward on his forearms, Bar took several long draws on his pipe and the aroma of cherry wood blended with the odor of garlic, fish sauce, and chilies. It smelled better than it sounds.
“You got something on your mind other than food, don’t you, Jack?” he said.
Bar drew on his pipe again and exhaled an enormous cloud of smoke. He didn’t appear to care whether I told him what it was or not, but he probably assumed I would anyway. And I did.
“You heard about the man they found hanging under the Taksin Bridge?”
Bar nodded so I told him about my encounter with Jello and the FBI agent at Dollar’s office. He listened without expression.
When I finished, Bar crooked a finger at a passing busboy, muttering something to him that I missed, then folded his arms and went back to puffing on his pipe as if he was sitting all alone at the table. I was just on the verge of asking him what that had all been about when the boy reappeared with a copy of the Bangkok Post and handed it to Bar. He flipped through it until he found what he was looking for, and then he folded the paper over and laid it in front of me.
The story he pointed to was short, not more than six column inches, and it was down at the bottom of an inside page. The headline was ‘American Tourist Found Dead.’ But it was the subheading that got my full attention: ‘Police Call It Suicide.’
“The reporter must have screwed up the story,” I said. “Howard was certainly no tourist, and the FBI agent said it was a murder. He said it would have been impossible for Howard to have hung himself.”
“Who was this guy?” Bar asked. “One of the local legats?”
Most American embassies had at least one FBI agent assigned to them, sometimes more if it was in a country like Thailand where criminal investigators could find a lot to do. To keep from offending the host country, FBI agents were always technically referred to as legal attaches, legats in State Department talk.
“I don’t know. I assumed he was with the embassy. What else would he be doing here?”
“What was the guy’s name?”
“Frank something.” I thought a moment. “Frank Morrissey.”
Bar dipped back down into the plastic shopping bag and produced a mobile phone, one of those old green Motorola’s that was about the size of a World War II walkie-talkie.
“Who are you calling?” I asked him.
“The American Embassy.”
“Isn’t it closed on Sunday?”
“Not to me.”
I watched as Bar finished dialing and hoisted the huge handset to his ear.
“Duty officer, please,” he said after a moment.
There was a wait, apparently first for his call to be switched and then for it to be answered.
“Hey, Barney. It’s Bar Phillips.” Bar listened for a couple of beats. “Uh-huh.”
While Bar listened some more, I studied his expression, but it gave nothing away.