Crackdown

by Christopher G. Moore

  “He’d been fighting something, he told me. Something he couldn’t quite acknowledge for a long time. You know what that was?”

  Glover shook his head, biting into his Monster Hawaiian Burger with grease, mustard and ketchup oozing through his fingers like the special effects in a contagion movie.

  “What’d he say?”

  “Chuck wished he could wave a magic wand and trade his life for mine.”

  “He said that? He’d like to be eating out of a food truck called Road Kill in the middle of a reforested demolition site?”

  McPhail drank his Jack Daniel’s and said, “Maybe not every detail.”

  “Life’s in the details, but that’s where we also find the devil. Remember?”

  “Let me finish,” said McPhail. “Man, I’m opening up my heart here, and you want to talk about the devil.”

  “Sorry, what else did your brother say?”

  “That he’d have given anything to have had my life. He’d never lived any life other than his own, and it had been on a narrow-gauge track that only went a few miles in either direction. He wished he’d built tracks to the outer world and taken them.

  “After that walk on the beach, we didn’t talk about it again. He left the conversation as something he’d said when he’d been drinking and feeling the blues. I could tell he was glad I didn’t bring it up again. For the rest of the visit I never asked him about his life. I understood. I floated into their world as a mystery, and floated back out with them no more the wiser. But that’s not the end of it.”

  McPhail watched Jack carry a plate with a Montana Mountain Man’s Burger and onion rings back to the table. Arnie had already ordered his burger, and Jerry, leaning on a cane, still hadn’t made up his mind.

  “You’ve done good, Ed,” said Glover. “Look at them. They’re having the time of their lives.”

  “It’s all in the attitude,” said McPhail. “A year ago my brother began posting on Facebook stories about winning cups and medals in the sixty-five to seventy age group for marathons. He put up dozens of photographs of himself at the starting line or the finishing line, accepting a medal and smiling like he’d eaten the whole cookie jar. In the senior iron-man marathon, he’s ranked third overall in the whole country. It’s long-distance running, ten kilometers on a bike, ten kilometers swimming, then another five kilometers to the finish line.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Sixty-seven in a few months,” said McPhail. “He’s found a new self. I was happy for him because the old self that he lost on retirement had nearly killed him. Now he’s back, as a track and field champion. It’s enough for him. That’ll take him to the end. I don’t think he wants to change places with me now. Of course, he never gets laid. He runs instead.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “What do you think? You can’t tell anyone in the States there’s a sex life after forty, but you gotta get off your ass and go to those other places. They’d lynch you. You’re going back there soon. You’ll find out. Hopefully you’ll be lucky like Chuck and find something that makes you feel like you’re alive, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

  “I’ve got no choice, Ed. I’ve been threatened. I could be arrested.”

  McPhail’s second Johnny Cash Burger came with a large dill pickle and hammer-sized French fries. He dipped one of the fries into a bowl of ketchup and took a bite. He chewed and sighed.

  “Great fries. I have to tell a friend who runs the Happy Bar to add French fries to the menu. I told you about Noi?”

  “Only that he was arrested.”

  “Calvino and me watched as soldiers dragged him off to a camp for some attitude adjustment. He’d had a pack of katoeys working for him, and they’d turned on him. One of the officers who interrogated him had a younger brother who’d had the chop. The officer had some personal issues about dealing with his katoey brother. The officer and Noi talked for hours, trying to figure out what made a man decide he wanted to be a woman. There were no more questions about Noi’s politics, whether he supported the Junta, whether he was against the coup.

  “After they took Noi back to the Happy Bar, the officer’s katoey brother—or his new sister, or whatever she or he is—rounded up her katoey friends and pitched in to help Noi reopen the bar. When the old gang of katoeys found out from the bamboo telegraph that Noi had totally replaced them and reopened, they were truly pissed off and returned like a bad case of diarrhea, spitting, shouting, clawing and screaming. Silly bitches, they never bothered to ask who these new katoeys were connected to. Talk about a career-crashing mistake. The katoey with the army captain brother phones him, and a black, unmarked van with a half-dozen combat-ready soldiers pulls up. The old gang cheers, thinking history is about to repeat itself and Noi is going back for more adjustments to his mindset. Instead the soldiers handcuff and march the old gang into the back of the van and haul them off for an attitude adjustment of their own. Your readers might be interested in the story.”

  “I avoid politics,” said Glover.

  “It’s about katoeys, for fuck’s sake,” said McPhail.

  Jack, standing near the van, pulled off his reading glasses and turned his back to talk to McPhail.

  “McPhail, did you read this?”

  “What’s that, Jack?”

  Jack pointed at a separate menu beside the food menu painted on the side of the van.

  “It says they offer tattoos. Inquire inside.”

  A moment later two Australians scampered out of the back of the Road Kill van, smiling and laughing. Munny stood in the door counting money, looking out at the Aussies, McPhail, Glover and the other old-timers. Next to him was a young dark-skinned boy with a large head and an Angkor Wat-style nose, who McPhail figured was around seven or eight years old.

  “This man is a tattoo artist,” said Roger. “A fucking genius.”

  Jack blinked and put on his regular glasses.

  “I don’t see any tattoo.”

  Roger turned and dropped his pants. Beneath the map were Ned Kelly’s last words—Such is life.

  “That’s England in her full glory,” said Jack.

  The Lonesome Hawk regulars leaned forward for a closer look. It certainly looked like England. But none of them had ever been to that country, so they had to take Roger’s word for it about the genius.

  “Too bad Old George wasn’t here to see this,” one of them said.

  A steady stream of backpackers had been walking in. The queue in front of the Road Kill van now stretched out to Soi 22.

  “I didn’t tell this many people,” said McPhail. “How did they find out?”

  Glover shook his head. McPhail hadn’t concentrated on Glover’s cell phone work during the time he was talking about his brother.

  “While you were taking a walk down memory lane, I posted a few photos,” said Glover. “The Montana Mountain Man Burger went viral. And the Road Kill truck has—hold on—on Facebook, 312 ‘likes’ and on Twitter... Right, 73 favorites, and 456 retweets in an hour. Too bad Calvino missed a classic Bangkok moment.”

  “He can always relive it online,” said McPhail, as he picked up his bottle and went over to the old-timers’ table to pour each of them a shot.

  The old men raised their glasses to departed friends and gazed about them at what looked more and more like a cemetery.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”—José Saramago, Blindness

  WHEN MUNNY HAD wandered along Khao San Road searching for his friend, he’d been looking in the wrong place. It turned out that Gop wasn’t in a tattoo parlor. He’d moved into a converted van, selling hamburgers to foreigners. The name, Road Kill, painted on the side of the van, had come from an American customer from Missouri who had a striped tiger tattooed on his chest. Gop found out that the tiger was a sports mascot, and road kill was what happened after people got drunk and ran over wildli
fe on the road after a game. Gop liked the look and the sound of the words “road” and “kill” together. Gop had searched “hot and cool tattoos” and stumbled upon a photo of a hot young thing with “Road Kill” in blue ink tattooed on the small of her back.

  He told Munny that he’d decided it made a lot of sense to buy a secondhand van, even though it needed some engine work. Since the curfews, crackdowns and squads of soldiers and police were freaking out the tourists in the usual areas, it was a good idea to be mobile. Gop saw no future in tattoos, preferring the food business, but brick-and-mortar restaurants were a problem, too. The thing was to be able to move quickly. Come trouble, you could drive away. If your business was set in concrete, it was a sitting target for the police and their street informants, who had only to walk through the door, sit down and ask for a bag of money.

  Gop’s old boss had given Munny his phone number, and Munny had given the man a hundred baht in return. Munny had phoned Gop and asked the hundred-baht question straight out: did he have any work for him? Gop had always had something for Munny when he needed help. Munny was counting on the coup increasing Gop’s need for a talented tattoo artist. He hadn’t thought much about the details.

  Gop wasn’t surprised to hear from him.

  “Sure, I have a job. Always have work for you, Munny. When can you start?”

  No questions about what Munny was still doing in Thailand. Gop didn’t much care for “why” questions.

  Munny served a three-day probation period of working in the food van—flipping burgers, washing dishes, setting up and clearing tables. Even the boy served drinks with the understanding that he could pocket the tips. After his probation period, as Gop called it, Munny was allowed to use the tattoo equipment and inks in the back of the van, and they split the tattoo money seventy-thirty with Munny on the short end. It was a shitty deal but a temporary solution to his problem, so Munny agreed.

  Munny had told the Aussies he’d need three days before he could tattoo the map of England on Clive’s buttock. He suggested they go to Koh Samet for that period, lie on the beach, get a good tan, chase women and come back to Bangkok for the artwork. Three days later the Aussies showed up again and said that Roger still wanted the tattoo. The next afternoon they climbed into the back of the van in Washington Square, and Clive emerged with a brilliant ink-work that would have made any Englishman proud. Only Roger wasn’t English; he was an Aussie who wanted to moon the English. It was a distinction that Munny took for one of those differences that really wasn’t a difference at all.

  Other than Roger, no one had ever phoned Munny on Fah’s old iPhone. No one, as far as he knew, had the number. The only reason he had Roger’s number was that he had used Munny’s phone to call his own phone, and then he’d saved the number. That’s why Munny was surprised when the phone rang and the voice on the other side didn’t belong to Roger and didn’t sound Australian. It was a woman, and she spoke Thai.

  “You did good, Munny. Thanks,” Fah said.

  He felt in his bones that his luck had changed, breaking the spell of bad luck over the last couple of weeks. Like a flat-lined brainwave of a dead man, Munny’s luck was spiking, making him feel alive with the world and himself. He asked if she could pay him the last of the money she’d promised.

  “That’s why I’m calling. I want to get you the money. You got a pen?”

  “Hold on,” he said.

  Munny felt his knees buckle from excitement as he slipped into the kitchen section of the van, wiping down a spot on the counter and out of the corner of his eye catching Gop flipping a burger. He pulled out a piece of paper and a cheap ballpoint pen. Fah gave him the details about Vincent Calvino and said goodbye.

  Leaning over, Munny’s lips moved as he wrote out a new number and multiplied it, added another number, and multiplied again.

  Gop’s curiosity got the best of him as he watched him writing. He didn’t know that Munny could write.

  “What are you writing on that paper, Munny?”

  “Some numbers.”

  Munny looked up and saw that he had Gop where he wanted him.

  “What kind of numbers? You thinking of buying a lottery ticket?”

  Gop smiled. He had bought lottery tickets every week following the tradition set by his father, who had a food stall and then a restaurant in Yaowarat Road.

  “It’s not a lottery ticket I’m thinking about.”

  “What are you thinking about, Munny?”

  “How to make you some money.”

  Gop wiped the grease off his hands and stepped closer to Munny.

  “I like that kind of thinking. Tell me more.”

  “We can make money at the border. It’s only a six-hour drive.”

  Gop’s smile vanished, his eyes narrowed.

  “You’re fucking crazy. The border’s full of refugees. They got no money. Besides, they don’t eat hamburgers.”

  “I’ve done the numbers. Don’t you want to hear about the money?”

  Gop’s father, Wang Tao, who had immigrated from Yunnan, had taught him to always listen to a man who wants to tell you how he’s going to make you rich and then throw him out. But listen first. It could be a lottery win, but the odds were very poor.

  “The money’s in Bangkok,” said Gop.

  “The money’s wherever there are customers. You see any customers on Khao San Road?” asked Munny. “Look out the window. Who do you see? A few old men, and you won’t get rich feeding them. You know what your problem is, Gop?”

  “What’s my problem?”

  “Competition. You’re not the only one looking to get rich. How many restaurants and other food vans are there? Thousands of owners just like you, Gop, all waiting for the same customers. Like Bangkok taxi drivers chasing the same five customers. You gotta think different. On the border you’d have the only burger joint for a hundred kilometers. No competition. That’s how you get rich.”

  “Where’s the money to make the trip?”

  Munny put an arm around Gop’s shoulder.

  “I’ll advance you eight thousand baht for the meat and buns,” said Munny.

  He guessed Gop would demand a higher price, but he’d found in the past that Thais always started negotiations with a low but not too insulting amount.

  “Cut the shit, Munny,” Gop said, taking Munny’s arm off his shoulder. “You want me to drive you to Cambodia, right?”

  Munny looked sheepishly at his hands.

  “Seeing as I’d be at the border, sure I’d go on home. But only after we sold out the burgers.”

  “Twenty thousand baht,” said Gop with fire in his eyes.

  That was an insulting amount. The upside was it meant all that remained was coming to a negotiated price.

  “You saw those farang backpackers who crowded around the van? They bought out all the food. It got me thinking. There are hundreds of foreigners coming in and out of the country through Aranyaprathet. They all want a decent burger, but there’s no place to buy one. Stock up on ground meat and plan on selling two hundred burgers a day. That’s thirty thousand baht from food. That’s not counting the drink sales. What do you say? The boy and me work for you until you make twenty thousand baht, you pay me back the loan and we call it square. It’s fair, Gop. After we’re gone, I can see you making fifty thousand baht a day. How many days driving around Bangkok to make that kind of money?”

  Gop stared at the paper. The figures looked solid. Something in the back of Gop’s mind, though, told him that Munny wasn’t doing this for Gop; he was doing this for Munny.

  “What do you say, Gop?”

  Gop scratched his head, wondering how a Khmer was so quick with numbers, playing the angles and giving him exactly what he’d asked for and thought he’d never get. There it was, just in a slightly different package than he’d expected, but twenty big ones was all that mattered. Munny was right, Gop thought. There would be huge numbers of farangs at the border. He saw them lining up at Washington Square.

  �
�Only I don’t pay back the float. You got that, Munny? As far as I’m concerned, I’m driving you home and that’s it.”

  “Deal,” said Munny.

  “When do you want to leave?” said Gop.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

  IT WAS NEARLY nine at night when Gop and Munny finished shopping and loading up on supplies. They’d gone to a market in Chinatown, and Gop had executed the shopping spree with the efficiency and confidence of a serial killer in an armored suit. Wang Tao, Gop’s old man, was a local celebrity among the merchants and vendors—a Chinese street vendor who had broken into the big time. They’d known Gop since he was a boy. Gop walked from stall to stall, waiing and shaking hands like the son of a famous politician, while Munny and the boy trailed behind as his entourage.

  They bought nearly a hundred kilos of ground beef and packed it in ice chests. Four workers loaded it into the Road Kill van. They pushed the meat lockers next to a wall of stacked packages of hamburger buns and Styrofoam ice chests. Gop paid for five cases of Singha beer, five cases of Coke, two cases of mixers and ten bottles of whiskey, and put it on his father’s running tab. After all, Gop’s old man was good for it; he’d pay him back. Later.

  That reminded Gop of his unfinished business with Munny. He turned to him and asked, “Munny where’s my money? Don’t look all surprised on me. It was your idea. Hand it over.”

  Munny smiled. He knew Gop had transferred all of his expenses to his old man and figured they way Gop burnt through money that he would soon be demanding the cash Munny had promised. He nearly raised the obvious point that Gop had plenty of capital from the lunch take. Why the huge rush to get more money? Just to walk around with it in his trousers?