The Thai Amulet (5 page)

What it wasn’t, was the six-story concrete apartment building I found myself standing in front of, checking the address several times to make sure I’d made no mistake. The building was supremely unattractive, sitting stolidly on its footings in a neighborhood that had lovely temples, markets, and gardens, and poor but at least interesting houses on stilts.

Next to it was a shell of a building, similar in design. It looked as if construction had halted in an instant, and the workers had dropped their tools and walked away, which is probably exactly what had happened a few years earlier when the white-hot Asian economy had abruptly hit the brakes. There were steel rods exposed in several places, including the top, and no glass in any windows. A couple of the units had some sheets hung up, some squatters presumably having taken up residence. It was a very depressing sight, a blight really. My shattered visions, totally without foundation and inappropriate as they had been, had been considerably more romantic than the reality.

The building did, however, boast a view of the river, which is not inconsequential. The Chao Phyra is a fascinating waterway. The heart of the city, it functions as a major roadway. On it, rice barges ply their trade alongside speeding longtail boats that serve as water taxis, and ferries that work much like buses, stopping every few hundred yards at jetties along the river’s banks. From the river one can see beautiful temples, spires of gold and tile, thousands of little businesses, and even tiny houses almost falling into the water. Will’s building towered over a group of these houses where children played in the water, while their mothers cooked and cleaned. If he lived on the river side of the building, Will would have a rather splendid view.

I went into the building foyer and found a letterbox with Will’s name on it, and, lo and behold, an apartment number. Obviously they were not as obsessed about security as we are. Even the front door was unlocked.

Will’s apartment was on the top floor, arrived at on a creaking elevator, off a dreary hallway that may have been somebody’s idea of American modern. I pounded on the door but received no answer. I listened for a time, just standing in the hallway, but I had no sense there was anyone moving about inside.

Having interpreted the letter from Mr. PPKK—the part about Mrs. Praneet live beside—as the apartment next door, I knocked on the door to each side of Beauchamp’s as well.

There was no answer at either one. The place was as still as a tomb. No doors opened in response to all the pounding I was doing, nor did anyone come in or out. It was almost as if no one lived there.

I bought a bottle of water in a little greengrocers just down the lane, with a clear view of the apartment building, and they offered me a chair in the shade outside. It was the time of day when the heat, noticeable but bearable to this point, suddenly becomes oppressive. It’s as if everything, the streets, the buildings, even the chair I was sitting on, has soaked up the heat in the early hours, and then starts to radiate it back into the air. The humidity seemed to have reached saturation point. I must have dozed off, a combination of jet lag and heat, because I had a rather grotesque dream in which Natalie Beauchamp cried, as a man in a referee’s striped uniform blew his whistle in a most annoying way, and Will sank beneath the waters of a lagoon. It was a watery kind of dream, perhaps because it had started raining while I was still asleep. I awoke to find the shop proprietor staring at me as if I was some kind of lunatic, as drops began to seep through the awning onto my head.

On the street, the gutters, such as they were, rushed with water as the rain came down in sheets.

As I pulled myself together, I heard several sharp blasts of a whistle, and a ferry pulled up to a pier a hundred yards or so away. That at least explained the referee, the ferry conductor, if that’s the right term, signaling its arrival and departure. A stream of people disembarked and dashed through the rain, several of them running into the building I was supposed to be watching. Not one of them, however, bore the slightest resemblance to Will.

Given that at least two ferries had come and gone while I dozed away, if my dream was anything to go by, it seemed pretty clear I wasn’t in any shape for a stakeout, and having learned next to nothing so far, except that another
farang
had also been inquiring about William, I decided I needed some official help. I made my way to the American Embassy on Wireless Road and asked to speak to a consular officer about a missing American.

I can certainly understand why everyone visiting the embassy would be carefully screened before being permitted in, but after being treated like a terrorist and made to wait for an hour and a half before seeing anyone, I was in rather bad mood by the time I was finally ushered into a small office.

“I’m David Ferguson,” the man said, standing up to shake my hand. He was an attractive man, very tall and thin, with dark hair peppered with gray. “How may I be of assistance?”

“I am looking for an American citizen who has been living in Bangkok for some time, but who has been missing for about three months.”

“Name?” he said.

“William Beauchamp,” I replied.

“Not Will Beauchamp, the antique dealer?”

“Yes,” I said. “You know him?”

“I do,” he said. “Good fellow. I didn’t know he was missing. Was a report ever filed?”

“His wife reported it to the U.S. Consulate in Toronto,” I said. “They told her it would be passed along to Bangkok.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, rising from his seat and then heading down the hall. It was considerably more than a minute, but he did return with a document in his hand. “Found this in the pile,” he said. “We would have got to it eventually. It’s just we have all these congressmen and senators asking us to look at their constituents’ files first. Okay, fill me in.”

I told him what I knew, which wasn’t much.

“He was still here July fourth,” he said. “I saw him at a party he threw to mark the occasion. I think that’s how I actually met him, last year, at a party at his apartment. A lot of us Americans throw parties on the Fourth of July. That and Thanksgiving. Lots of drinks and nostalgia, and sometimes even fireworks. There’s always a party here, of course, but people just go from place to place pretty much the whole day.”

“I’ve been to his apartment,” I said.

“Fabulous, isn’t it?” he said.

“You think so?” I said.

“I do,” he said. “Not much on the outside, but inside— I’d kill for that place.”

“I only saw the outside,” I said. “And the hallway.”

“Too bad,” he said. “Great view of the river, and he had really wonderful stuff there. He made me start getting serious about finding myself a decent place to live. I was quite envious of his place when I first saw it. I’d been posted here for a couple of years, and was still living in a bachelor apartment that looked as if I was still in college. Hot plate, bed with an Indian cotton throw, nothing on the walls, except a poster of the Stones. You get the idea. And here’s this guy Will who has made the place really nice. He had a balcony with a great view, small and there wasn’t much room on it because he had two huge pots filled with those flowers, whatever they are, that girls strap on their wrists for the school dance—purple things.”

“Orchids?” I said.

“Right. Orchids. But the view! And his furniture! He’d really got into Thai style. Every piece looked like a treasure to me. I don’t know antiques at all, but he had a stone Buddha head that looked pretty authentic. And he had framed paintings, Jataka tales, if you know what those are: stories about the Buddha in previous lives. The walls were covered with paintings and carvings. It was a guy kind of place, though. The furniture was solid, not that flimsy stuff that often passes as valuable as long as you don’t want to sit on it. He had a real dining room table, carved jade, with lots of chairs. No standing up at the kitchen counter to eat for our Will. The only thing I didn’t take to was a painting he kept in the bedroom. It was of a beautiful woman, but it had those eyes, you know, the kind that follow you around the room. I mean who wants someone watching everything you do in your bedroom even if it is only a painting? Otherwise, I was quite envious of everything and in fact set out almost immediately to find myself a decent home. Even the coffee table was something—it’s one of those jobs that has a glass top but a drawer underneath where you can put stuff, and see them through the top, if you know what I mean. He had these terra-cotta amulets, several of them, all different, arranged there.”

“Sort of like this?” I said, reaching into my bag and handing him the amulet Natalie had given me.

“Exactly like that,” he said, looking at it carefully. “How did you get this one?”

I told him.

“Weird,” he said.

I couldn’t disagree.

“Did his wife report this to the local police here?”

“No,” I said. “I think she thought you would do that. I don’t mean you personally…”

“And I don’t take it personally. We would have eventually, as I said.”

“Did he have a companion, a lady friend?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We didn’t know each other very well. We got together for drinks a couple of times, in addition to the July fourth events. We didn’t talk about our personal lives, though. But as for girls, a lot of guys who come to Thailand… how should I put this?”

“Rent one for the weekend?” I said.

“I’d have preferred ‘play the field.” But there is no question that it’s a great place for an unattached guy.“

“Except he wasn’t unattached,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “I see. I’m not attached. Not anymore, anyway. Are you?”

“Yes, I am, and I don’t forget it just because I’m in Thailand,” I said rather primly. I couldn’t believe my school-marmish tone. Maybe Clive was right. I was turning into an old prune in my dotage.

“Ooooo-kay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back to the apartment,” he said. “You see, once you get our attention, we get right down to work. Do you have a rental car?”

“Are you kidding? Drive in this traffic?”

He laughed. “Are you prepared to risk coming with me?”

“I guess,” I said.

“Well, here we are,” he said about an hour later. “You can loosen your death grip on the armrest now. We could have done it in about a third the time if we’d taken the ferry, but I just like to prove I can drive in Bangkok.”

“You’re a brave and possibly foolhardy man,” I said.

The heat made me gasp as I got out of the air-conditioned car, and my sunglasses fogged over instantly. Ferguson repeated my door knocking of earlier that day and then said, “Wait here,” before disappearing down the stairs. He returned a few minutes later with a man introduced to me as Mr. Poon, the building superintendent.

“Mr. Poon here has informed me, several times, in fact, that he is unable to let us into the apartment. However, he has been persuaded for a small monetary consideration.”

I looked over at Mr. Poon.

“It’s all right,” Ferguson went on. “He doesn’t speak English. He has been persuaded to open the door and let us look in from the hallway.”

Mr. Poon turned out to be one of those people for whom even the smallest task is an effort. He fussed around with the keys, decided he had the wrong ones, went away for what seemed a long time, and fussed again on his return, trying first one key, then another.

“I’m starting to feel like Howard Carter waiting for his workers to break through into what was to be King Tut’s tomb.” I whispered. “Sorry. That was a poor choice of metaphor.”

Ferguson laughed. “Let’s not rush to conclusions,” he said. “Here we go.” Poon turned the key at last, and the door swung open.

I was surprised how quiet it was in the apartment. Outside there was the sound of traffic, the boats on the river, the din of a large city. Inside, the place had an airless quality to it, along with a certain dankness, like a summer home that’s been abandoned all winter, closed and silent. “I’m going in,” I said.

“I’m right behind you,” Ferguson said, as Poon started to protest. “I’ll claim diplomatic immunity for us both.”

It was, as Ferguson had said, a lovely apartment. The orchids on the balcony had definitely seen better days, but the view was fabulous, as were the furniture and the art. The teak dining room table was all that Ferguson had said it was, and the Jataka paintings were really lovely.

“Does it look to you as if some amulets are missing?” I said, pointing to the display beneath the glass coffee table top. “There are some spaces. It doesn’t look symmetrical somehow.”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “I can’t recall exactly.”

“I wonder if they’re the ones he sent Natalie,” I said.

“Could be.”

“Kitchen next,” I said. The kitchen, off the dining area was spotless, with not so much as a crumb on the counter or the floor. I opened a couple of cupboards. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Ferguson had a look in a small pantry, and shrugged. We both eyed the refrigerator. “Women’s work,” he said, pointing to it.

I opened it carefully. “Yuck,” I said as the odor of rotting food reached me. “Green slime and sour milk,” I said, closing it firmly.

This way,“ he said, gesturing down a short hall. Mr. Poon followed us, jabbering away. There was a bathroom at the end of it, spotlessly clean, towels folded and hung just so, medicine cabinet filled with perfectly normal stuff.

“That’s the bedroom,” Ferguson said, pointing to a closed door.

“Your turn,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. He put his hand on the door handle and paused for a second. Then, giving me a mock terrified expression, he pushed the door open and peered inside. “I think it’s okay,” he said.

The bed was neatly made. I opened a couple of drawers. Will Beauchamp was a meticulous man. His socks and underwear were sorted by color and carefully folded. The only thing in the room that wasn’t just so was the closet, the door having been left open. Inside, though, shoes lined up nicely and there were a couple of suits and carefully ironed shirts and jeans all in a row.

“Hmmm,” Ferguson said.