“Maybe not,” he said. He took a step back and they looked at each other while waiting for the doors to close.
“Who do you think did it?” he asked at length.
She was still looking at him as the doors slid shut.
24
Wednesday, January 15
In the middle of Jimi’s guitar solo in “All Along the Watchtower” the music suddenly stopped and Jim Love gave a start, then realized someone had removed his headphones.
He turned in the chair, and a tall, blond guy who had definitely been a little lax with his sunscreen towered over him in the cramped car-parking booth. Half of the face was hidden behind a pair of pilot sunglasses of dubious quality. Jim had an eye for that kind of thing; his own had cost him a week’s pay.
“Hello,” the tall man said. “I asked if you spoke English.”
The guy spoke with an indefinable accent and Jim answered with a Brooklyn one.
“Better than I speak Thai anyway. How can I help you? Which company do you want?”
“No company today. I want a chat with you.”
“With me? You’re not the supervisor from the security company, are you? I can explain the Walkman—”
“No, I’m not. I’m from the police. My name’s Hole. My colleague, Nho …”
Harry stepped aside, and behind him in the doorway Jim saw a Thai man with the standard crew cut and freshly ironed white shirt. Which meant that Jim did not doubt for one minute that the badge he held up was genuine. He scrunched up one eye.
“Police, huh? Do you go to the same hairdresser? Ever thought about a new do? Like this?” Jim pointed to his own mop of hair.
The tall man laughed. “Doesn’t look like eighties retro has hit police stations just yet, no.”
“Eighties what?”
“Have you got someone who can take over while we talk?”
Jim explained that he had come to Thailand four years ago on holiday with a few friends. They had hired motorbikes and driven north, and in a little village by the Mekong River on the border with Laos one of them had been foolhardy enough to buy some opium and put it in his backpack. On their way back they were pulled over by the police and searched. On a dusty country road in deepest Thailand they suddenly realized their friend was going to be locked up for an incredibly long time.
“According to the law, they can fucking execute guys smuggling shit. Did you know that? And the three of us who hadn’t done nothing thought, oh fuck, we’re gonna be in trouble too, accessories or something. Shit, I mean, as a black American, I don’t exactly look like a drug smuggler, right? We begged and begged and got nowhere until one of the officers talked about a fine instead. So we scraped together all the dough we had, and they confiscated the opium and let us go. We were so damn happy. The problem was we’d given them the money for our return ticket to the States, right? So …”
Jim described with a mass of words and even more gestures how one thing had led to another, that he’d been working as a guide for American tourists, but he’d had trouble with his residence permit and that he’d been lying low, looked after by a Thai girl he’d met, and that when the others were ready to leave he’d decided to stay. After a lot of toing and froing he’d got a residence permit because he’d been offered a job as a car-park attendant, and they needed people who spoke English for the buildings where international gatherings were held.
Jim was talking so much in the end Harry had to stop him.
“Shit, I hope your Thai friend doesn’t speak English,” Jim said, glancing nervously at Nho. “The guys we paid up north—”
“Relax, Jim. We’re here to ask about something else. A dark blue Mercedes with a diplomatic plate number was supposed to have been here on the seventh of January, at around four. Does that ring any bells?”
Jim burst out laughing. “If you asked me which Jimi Hendrix song I was listening to maybe I could answer you, man, but the cars that come in and out of here …” He pursed his lips.
“When we were here we were given a ticket. You wouldn’t be able to check anything, would you? The registration number or something?”
Jim shook his head. “We don’t worry about that. Most of the parking lot has CCTV, so if anything happens, we can check it out afterward.”
“Afterward? Do you mean you record it?”
“Of course.”
“I haven’t seen any monitors.”
“That’s because there aren’t any. This parking garage has six levels, right, so we can’t sit and watch it all. Shit, most criminals who see a camera just scram, right? So you’re halfway there. And if anyone’s dumb enough to sneak in and steal one of the cars, we’ve got it all on tape for you guys.”