Off the Beaten Track: I Came to Casablanca for the Waters

We're pleased to have writer Jake Needham as our guest blogger this week. Jake is an American crime novelist who lives in Bangkok. His crime novels set in contemporary Asia include: THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE, A WORLD OF TROUBLE, KILLING PLATO, LAUNDRY MAN, and THE BIG MANGO. His latest Inspector Tay novel, THE UMBRELLA MAN, will be released next month. The print editions of Jake's novels are distributed only in Europe, Asia, and the UK, where they have all been bestsellers. Happily, the e-book editions of his novels are available worldwide. Jake has lived and worked in Asia for over twenty-five years. Read more about Jake's books at his website, http://jakeneedham.com.

            

When I am in the United States and my city of residence comes up in conversation, I am usually asked — and almost always in a tone laden with wariness and suspicion — why in the world I am living in a place like Bangkok.

Bangkok. All photos courtesy Jake Needham.

Sadly, I cannot simply reply with Humphrey Bogart's famous line when he was asked how he came to be in Casablanca. I can make no claim to being misinformed. I had lived in Asian cities for a long time before I took up residence in Bangkok, and I knew exactly what I was getting into.

I have come in a perverse way to look forward to this track conversations with my fellow Americans seem to take whenever they learn that I am living in Bangkok. Instead of expressing curiosity about my life in the distant and exotic city that I call my home, my interlocutors seem far more intent on telling me what they think of the place.

Of course, very few Americans seemed to know much of anything about any place that is not America, but still it surprised me that I hardly ever meet anyone back in the United States who has anything at all to say about Bangkok, other than on one of two topics.

Food is one of those topics, naturally. Everyone claims to love Thai food. Going out for Chinese is cheap. Going out for Thai seems somehow hipper. Of course, most Westerners have no real idea what they are actually eating in either case, but Thai food is both cheap and hip, so how can you beat that?

The other topic, as you might guess, is sex. Bangkok is inexorably linked in most people’s minds with stories they have heard somewhere -- although I notice few people admit to remembering exactly where -- of an unabashedly dissolute life and the ready availability of free sex. Well, perhaps not exactly free, but certainly pretty inexpensive sex, at least by world standards. Thai sex is a little like Thai food, cheap but with a kind of exotic style to it. Can’t beat that combination in any context, can you?

With all that going for it, you might think that the idea of me actually living in Bangkok would be pretty interesting to most people, wouldn’t you? You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

A couple of times I tried joking that, well, a man could sure make a lot worse choice than taking up residence in a city that is internationally famed for food and sex. But when I saw the solemn expressions that crack generally engendered in most Americans, I swiftly eliminated it from my repertoire. Maybe the suggestion that food and sex are important parts of life makes Americans uncomfortable. Maybe I ought to have more friends from France.

Anyway, the inevitable view people express when they find out that I live in Bangkok is something I have learned to live with. Oh, the place is no doubt interesting, people murmured, but yet . . . somehow it's still a city where a lot of people go who aren’t particularly…well, nice.

To be absolutely honest with you here, I have to admit that perception isn't really too far off the mark.

I have often thought there has to be some kind of international network devoted to coaxing social rejects and dropout cases worldwide into coming to Bangkok, because come they do. By the thousands, they walk away from third-shift jobs in places like Los Angeles, London, Berlin, and Toronto, pack what they have, buy a cheap airline ticket, and make their way to the Land of Smiles.

Some are looking for a cheap tropical paradise; others hope they’ve joined a nonstop orgy; but almost every one of them is intending in some way to make a fresh start on a life that until then had very little to recommend it. Many of these refugees from reality probably couldn’t have located Bangkok on a map before they decided it was the place for them, maybe they still can’t, but now Bangkok had become their last, maybe their only hope.

In the empty hours, this army of the dispossessed takes control of the part of the city where most foreigners live. Tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, fly back and forth most of the night ferrying carousers between the two clumps of bars that anchor the neighborhood: Nana Plaza on the west and Soi Cowboy about a mile to the east.

They are all there. The lonely, the frightened, the guilty, the lost, the vulnerable, the depressed, and the psychotic. Soaked with sweat, they rush back and forth from one bar to another, reeking of that peculiarly sour, metallic odor habitually given off by the emotionally overmatched and underachieving.

So, I hear you ask, how in the world did you end up in Bangkok?

It happened this way…

Back a couple of decades ago now, HBO hired me to produce a movie they were making from a screenplay I had sold them. It was to be filmed in Bangkok and, since I lived in Asia and presumably knew something about it, they thought it sensible to add me to the corps of so-called producers that every movie drags around behind it like a modern version of the old time camp followers that every army attracted.

Regardless of HBO’s wisdom in putting me on the payroll, I must tell you now that I am grateful beyond measure that they did.

The woman who is now my wife was born in Thailand and educated in England (thank heaven it wasn’t the other way around). She was doing a stint at the time as the editor of the Thai edition of the UK magazine, Tatler, and she came out to the set one day to interview me. A year later we were married. Twenty years later, we have two sons and are still living in Bangkok .

So there you have it. That is how I came to be resident in a city that most Americans seem to think of as little more than adult Disneyland for the dodgy and the disreputable. Only with better food.

Admit it. You're actually a bit disappointed, aren't you? Maybe you expected something a little more…well, spicy?

I rest my case.

A Twentieth Century Warrior

By Patricia Winton

In May 1992, I visited Florence as an American tourist. As I left my hotel at dusk on May 23, I encountered a march through the streets. It was eerily silent. No chants. No music. Flaming torches and somber faces snaked through the Florentine streets. It turns out that similar marches wove their way across Italy to show respect for an anti-Mafia judge who died earlier that day in Palermo, Sicily. Giovanni Falcone is a modern-day warrior who relentlessly pursued the Mafia and was blown to bits by a roadside bomb for his trouble.

Born in Palermo in 1939, Falcone grew up with future mafiosi and at least one other future judge as playmates. Educated in the local classical high school before studying law, he was appointed magistrate in 1964. Falcone played a key role in investigating some of most famous Mafia-related cases of the time.

In the early years of his career, he worked on bankruptcy cases, eventually linking Mafia criminal actions with payouts and bribes to politicians and high-ranking government officials. He was known for his attention to detail and copious notes; working without a computer, he detailed data retrieved from studying multiple bank records. This work led to numerous prosecutions and convictions, putting Falcone in the crosshairs of the Mafia for the first time. He is credited with pulling together various arms of the Italian criminal justice system which, prior to Falcone, had operated independently of each other.

Using the “follow the money” skills he had honed on the bankruptcy cases, he traced the Marseilles heroin labs uncovered in the “French Connection” to their new locations in Sicily. The web of crime touched Turkey, Switzerland, and Naples. The money trail led him to Mafia connections in New York. Soon, Falcone began working with U.S. law enforcement, first with Rudy Giuliani (then U.S. attorney, and later New York City mayor) and Louis Freeh (then a New York prosecutor who later became director of the FBI). This work led to uncovering the famously complex “Pizza Connection,” whereby drug and other Mafia money was being laundered in New York pizza restaurants. Here, too, his focus on cooperation led to increased international crime solving.

Falcone and Borsellino

This period saw intense Mafia violence in Sicily. Various judges and police commanders were assassinated, and Falcone—a long-time member of a crack anti-Mafia pool of judges and prosecutors—rose to lead the squad. The team’s membership included Falcone’s life-long friend, Paolo Borsellino, who had kicked soccer balls with him and the future mafiosi in Palermo' Piazza Mangione decades earlier.

Because the death threats were frequent and credible, Falcone and his team worked in a bunker-like space beneath the judicial offices in Palermo. He was accompanied by bodyguards wherever he went, and his home was equally secure. Borsellino lived and worked in the same conditions. Falcone often said, "My life is mapped out: it is my destiny to take a bullet by the Mafia someday. The only thing I don't know is when." Borsellino was equally fatalistic. “Giovanni's my shield against the Mafia,” he said. “They'll kill him first, then they'll kill me.”

Together with the team, Falcone and Borsellino pursued their investigations which led to the “Maxi Trial” of 1986–87. In this trial, 400 defendants and 8000 pages of indictment yielded 342 convictions totaling 2,665 years in prison. The case hinged on testimony by informants. Perhaps because he kicked soccer balls with some players as a child or perhaps because their shared background meant he spoke their language, Falcone was able to wrench testimony from many. One of these, Tommaso Buscetta, had fled to Brazil where Falcone pursued and interviewed him. After giving Falcone valuable information, Bruscetta told him, “This will make you famous—and bring your death.” Buscetta later went into witness protection in the United States.

Remains of Falcone's bombed car

The strength of his security team made assassination difficult for his foes, but as Falcone had predicted, the Mafia got him in the end. They planted a half-ton of explosives under a bridge to the airport that he would drive over. Detonated by remote control, the bomb killed Falcone, his wife, and three bodyguards. And true to his prediction, Borsellino, along with five police officers, was taken out by another car bomb 57 days later on July 19.

Both men have been awarded Italy’s highest civilian honor, the Medaglia d’oro al valore civile (Gold Medal for Civil Valor). Streets and piazzas throughout Italy bear their names. For the tenth anniversary of Falcone’s murder, Nicola Piovanni, winner of the Academy Award for the musical score of La Vita È Bella, Life is Beautiful, wrote a commemorative piece performed at a memorial service in Palermo. In this, the twentieth-anniversary year, both Falcone and Borsellino have been honored across the country. And I remember those flaming torches and silent, somber faces in Florence.

I blog on alternate Thursdays on Italian Intrigues. Next week, I’m blogging about rosemary.

Lina’s Story: Every Book Holds an Adventure

I read since I was able to recognize letters. I wrote since I was able to join Russian syllables into words. And I traveled since I was old enough to imagine.

I was one of those kids who read a book a day and even more, if my parents forgot to turn the lights off for the night. I read at dinner, covering the book with the tablecloth. I read with a flashlight under the blanket, and I read underneath my school desk while the rest of the class listened to the teacher. I was already ahead of the game, so while my classmates recited the Russian alphabet, I devoured The Adventures of Thomas Sawyer in translation, hiding it beneath my fat ABC hardcover – without the slightest idea that one day I would be able to read the original in English. 
When my grade moved onto three-word sentences, I moved onto The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

To me, the books and adventures were one and the same. Every book held an adventure, a travel to foreign lands, a journey to the alternate universe, a voyage to a magical land that could only exist between the covers worn out from use – and inside my imagination. The best books were always those that kidnapped me entirely and left me nostalgic after ending too soon. The characters with whom I had just flown through time and space, escaped narrow deaths, and discovered life in parallel galaxies, were gone once the story was over. Then I would pick up a pen and think up new adventures for them – all by myself. 

Growing up in an oppressive society caused many fears, but there was one thing that never intimidated me: a blank piece of paper. Winters were long and time was plenty in the cold snowy city of Kazan, four hundred miles northeast of Moscow. Founded by Tatars – the descendants of Mongolians who shared Turkish roots and language, and later conquered by Ivan the Terrible, my city nested in a cultural niche of its own.

A trip from Russia to New York amounted to twenty hours. A journey into the American culture took twenty years. Somehow, somewhere, I realized that besides writing literature and poetry, I also liked writing crime stories. Maybe it was my childhood desire to see evil being punished or maybe it was because my first English books were mysteries. And since many of them finished too soon, I picked up my computer and started typing my own stories in the language I couldn’t quite speak at the time.

My first novel, Inescapable Presence, set partly in Russia and partly in United States, is an international suspense, set in the early nineties during the failed KGB putsch. The second one, Painstalker, a medical and forensic murder mystery, features Dave Higgins, a half-Irish, half-Jewish, Brooklyn NYPD detective, on the search for a deranged lunatic, killing young women for their ovaries. Dave retires and becomes a private investigator in E-Predators, a sequel and a Clockwork Orange-like thriller for the Internet age. In it, Dave must trace a web-based gang of four sociopathic young men who break into one community’s homes. Lastly, Death by Scheherazade’s Veil, is a bellydance mystery set in Astoria, New York, in which Sasha, a young aspiring dancer, and her two friends embark on solving a murder of their beloved bellydance teacher, a crime deeply rooted in the Turkish cultures and traditions.

Where do I get my ideas? I haven’t quite figured that out. I hear voices in my head. They tell me stories. I write them down. Do you? Tell me!