Bangkok Burn (28 page)

“Thanks, although it’s not me who handles that part of the business. Thanks for being straight with me. We don’t have a problem.”

“That’s good, Khun Oh. Again please accept my apologies for the impolite behavior of my man tonight. You can be assured that if he had lived, he would have faced a severe reprimand from me, if not the same fate as your man delivered.”

“Apology accepted. No hard feelings.”

He got up and offered his hand. Maybe because I looked like a Farang or maybe he just wanted to test my grip. I don’t know, but I shook his because we always work with sincerity. He turned to leave and stopped.

“What I heard, it wasn’t only the old man and the girl who got killed. I heard it took out a couple of his guys but one guy miraculously escaped, was that you?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard that the next day a number nine appeared on your chest. That true?”

“No, it was the same day.”

His eyes scanning for a lie. Not finding one. “Can I see it?”

I undid the second button on my shirt and pulled it sideways so he could see the 9.

“Wow – I’ve seen some stuff in my time, but that’s pretty fucking amazing. Could you do me a favor? I don’t forget them. Take care of a loose end for me.”

“Depends.”

His eyes flicked to RCA guy. RCA guy saw it and started to move. Chai put his right hand on his head – code for take out the one on the right. Three bullets smacked into RCA guy. He lay flat on his back, half his head missing, brains on display, blood black in the poor light of the car park. His arm lay across his amulets, hand near the butt of the gun that it hadn’t reached. We hadn’t moved.

“Thanks. I’ll leave the Benz with you as payment for the disposal. Papers are in the car.”

“No need. He’s on the house.” On my earpiece I heard Chai tell the guys to come down and clear the body.

“All the same, here take the keys.”

I took the keys. He gave me a little two-fingered salute and, hands in pockets, walked out of the car park. I watched him in the light of the street lamps, fading in and out of the shadows. He disappeared as I looked. Some trick. One of the boys came out of the 7-11 with four large ten-liter water bottles. The body was loaded onto a pick-up and taken off to the farm. The farm was a slow five minute drive away. Everyone was relaxed. This was our turf. RCA guy’s last stand was washed down with the water.

I sat in the Maserati. Time to go home. An image of Pim on the bed stroking herself and grinning popped into my mind. RCA guy slipped in next, a surprise in his dead eyes, looking at his brains on the floor of the car park.

I wound down the window and lit a joint, exhaling through the window, the purring throb of the V8, a theme tune for the thoughts playing in my head. Late morning call, time enough, but it all ended at the 11
th
Infantry barracks. Getting any information out of there would be unlikely and too dangerous.

Sins of the Fathers

24 May 2010 Pak Nam 1:55 am

Security had been stepped up
because of the Yakuza threat. Until that got resolved we were ‘mobbed up’, as Uncle Mike called it. Coming out of the kitchen with a beer in his hand, he said,
“Wow, you look damn serious
,
dude
.
Everything
okay?”

I had to smile. He’d been saying that to me since I was six. “Yeah, just a heavy night, morning. How are you?”

“I’m cool, man. Want to go sit down by the river?”

“Sure, that’d be cool.”

We went through the French doors, onto the patio, a couple of the boys sitting in chairs by the pool. At the fork of the path to the sala, Uncle Mike suddenly stopped. Held up his hand.

“Shush,” he whispered. I stopped. He turned.

“
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.”
Grinning now, he’d got me. I chuckled. Frost, I should have known. His favorite. He kept walking and reciting over his shoulder, as we weaved our way down to the sala. When we came up the steps, he stopped on the top step and turned, put his hand on his heart and dropping his voice.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by … and that has made all the difference.”

“Bravo, bravo!” I clapped.

He took a bow then we went and sat by the side of the river.
He handed me a Ziploc plastic bag filled with weed and papers. I took out a bit of weed and started stripping the leaves from the stem. I like the night. I like how sound travels differently when there’s less interference. I like how its shadows are never the same. Chai appeared, carrying a tray: Chivas, soda and an ice bucket. He set the tray down near us and went in search of the ‘yaa gan yeung’. As Chai was lighting the coils, Uncle Mike started putting ice in the glasses.

“You know, Chance, why I didn’t bring you to live with me in Phuket? I could have. If I’d insisted I could have laid out all the good reasons why you should be there, but I didn’t. You know why?”

“No. I always just thought it was normal. You had your life.”

“Oh no. We talked about it. You and Chai. Bringing you to both to Phuket and letting you live there, away from this.” He waved a hand at the house, but his wave meant everything in Bangkok. Our life. I looked over at Chai pouring the whiskey into the glasses.

“I’ll tell you why…ah, thanks.” He took the joint I handed him and cupping his hand around my lighter against the slight breeze, sucked in, getting the end glowing. Chai had moved onto popping the tops off the soda bottles. He turned to Chai.

“This is some great weed you got. Can you get more?”

“Can.”

“Cool, we’ll talk.” He took a couple of quick hits and passed me the joint.

“So, where was I? Oh yeah, after your parents were killed, it was a crazy time. I was still a kid, half your age now, your mother was younger than Pim, and Por was young and tough as they come. He already had the aunts by then and, with the exception of Aunt Dao, all were beautiful and young. Thing is, all they’d produced by then were the four daughters. Your parents planned to leave you at their apartment. With money, they said. Shit I can’t believe it, even today. Anyway, Por and I said we’d take you with us. Two days later they left and ten days after we got the news they’d been killed.”

“Por’s told me this before. So have you.”

“Yeah, I know but what I haven’t told you, not because I never thought about it, but, because I felt guilty about it, was what happened after your parents were killed. Por had supplied the boat and the connection to get the smack to your parents. Usually he didn’t deal in smack but times were tough. The farm wasn’t getting visitors, the whole of Pak Nam was at war with each other and every other province – times were tough. You’d be sitting having dinner and someone would fire a couple of shots into the house. That kind of thing. Anyway, I’d already moved to Phuket. It was a real paradise back then. No one knew about it. I was living in a shack of Kata beach, where Club Med is now. Back then it was just a little fishing village.

“Por went after the Germans. Took him eight months to track them all down, but he got them: two in New York and two in West Berlin. He was wounded in West Berlin and came back by ship.”

I took a sip of the whiskey Chai had poured. I had heard all of this before, but if Uncle Mike wanted to talk I was comfortable to listen.

“While Por was away, you lived here. I visited on and off. Joom looked after you. Chai arrived during that time.” He slapped Chai on the knee. “You got here about a month before Por’s return. You were about as tall as my knee then.” Chai smiled, waving off the joint Uncle Mike passed his way. I took it instead. Chai is cool with smoking a joint now and then, but not when things were hot.

“Joom collected Por from Klong Toey. He was still very weak; he’d been badly shot up. Things here in Pak Nam were hot too. The house wasn’t like this back then, just a simple wooden Thai house on stilts. You’ve seen the photos. The crew was a lot smaller back then as well, just a few guys. Bank and Red, of course, they’d been with him since the beginning, but only a couple of others. Por asked me to take you to Phuket. Joom was dead set against it. According to her, you were given to her by Buddha and that was that. But Por was worried. You stuck out like a sore thumb, and were easy to snatch. I didn’t have any jobs planned for a while, waiting for the new crops. Against Joom’s wishes I took you to Phuket.”

I handed him the joint, he took a couple of hits and put it in the ashtray. The lid of the tin the mosquito coils came in.

“When Por came back from Germany. He had a hundred thousand dollars. He took it off the Germans, their payout for the smack. It doesn’t sound like much today, but back then you could buy a good chunk of downtown Sukhumvit for that kind of money. Two months after I took you to Phuket, one of the Germans kidnapped you. Por missed one, the brother of the guy who killed your parents. We still don’t know how he found me or you, but he did. Course we didn’t know that right away. All I knew was that you were gone.”

I had never heard this before, neither had Chai. We’d been smoking and drinking but the buzz fell away. Even the river seemed to pause. Like Uncle Mike’s soft voice was the only sound in the world.

“Joom hated me. I could tell she was going to kill me. Not for the ransom money, that didn’t matter. For losing you. She fucking hated me. Would have killed me but Por ordered her not to. They’d left a ransom note when they took you, for a hundred thousand. Por and Joom brought it with them from Bangkok.

“I was truly freaked out losing you. Only time I ever heard Joom swear, 'fucking useless Farang' she called me. I felt it too. Por, he was my best friend, still is, and he never said a word, just went about the business of finding you. Like I said I was useless, freaked out. You know me and the whole violence thing just never met. I was lucky. And then I’d lost a little kid. It freaked me out. I got stoned, really stoned and dropped some acid. Then I went for a sail. I swam out to my yacht, hauled up the anchor and the sails. I have no idea even now what I was thinking. I’ve tried to remember, but it’s all a bit of a blur. It was past midnight but there was a full moon. I remember the moon perfectly. Lit up the sea like it was day.

“I hadn’t been sailing long but it felt like years, and then I saw another yacht moored off a few bays up. And I don’t know, man, I just got this whole feeling of evil about the boat. I swear the rest of the sea shone silver but the sea around the yacht was all back. I looked for a cloud and saw none. And the sea talked to me, whispering, telling me that you were being held in the yacht. I wasn’t so out of my gourd that I did anything except turn the boat around and sail back to Por and Joom. It turned out a few bays over was Patong beach. They saw the yacht in the morning. The next day we were supposed to deliver the money. Por and Joom went that night. Used a rubber dinghy. Rowed it in after darkness. I held the dinghy steady while Por lifted Joom onto the bow. The fore hatch was cracked halfway open. Joom is small and light. She was in and out with you in less than a minute. She whispered to us that there were two men on board. We guessed the German’s brother and a friend.” Uncle Mike picked the joint up and I relit for him. He took a long drag, holding the smoke in.

“Joom whispered that the guys in the boat seemed to be drunk, Mekhong whiskey bottles over the floor of the yacht. Por climbed back on the boat, put the spinnaker pole over the fore hatch and shoved a screwdriver into the latch of the rear hatch. He called down to Joom in Thai, my Thai wasn’t that good back then, but I knew the words for petrol. I handed Joom the twenty liter spare tank. She passed it up to Por and he doused the boat with it. He climbed off bringing the can with him.

“We could hear someone had woken up inside because the rear hatch rattled. Por lit the ransom note they’d left and tossed it into the cockpit. Within seconds the boat was on fire from bow to stern. I started the outboard and drove off, but Por put his hand on mine and twisted the throttle back down as soon as we were out of the light. He said, ‘no one will come’. I stopped the engine. We could hear banging and then screams. None of us said anything. You were still asleep. We think they’d drugged you to keep you quiet. We watched. Por was right. No one came. After a while the banging stopped, the screams stopped. The flames worked their way into the boat, the deck peeled off. The mast came down and smashed a section of the burning deck and hull open. The fire burnt the yacht to the waterline and she slipped under, stern first.