by Simon Royle
“Chance has come to see Por.”
The door opened. Beckham stood in the doorway. Not David, Opart. But David was his favorite football player, so he’d changed his name to Beckham. Five foot tall and about the same wide, no neck, he filled the doorway, a sawn-off pump action shot-gun swallowed in his hand. Beckham opened the door, and stepped aside. I shuffled in, walking carefully, keeping an eye on my tether to the IV drip. When I finally reached it, I sat down in the chair next to the bed.
Khun Por had a tube stuffed down his throat and little white pads with wires leading off them stuck on his chest. A machine, with a large black accordion trapped inside a glass case, thumped down and sucked up with a hiss. He looked so small, this huge man. His energy was his size. The energy inert, he’d shrunk. Mother lay asleep on the sofa next to him, her long barrel .357 Ruger Blackhawk on the coffee table within reach.
His usually neat hair was tussled from sleep. I reached out and smoothed it into place. Normally I could never touch my father’s head. Us Buddhists are particular about such things. I stroked his head, smoothing his hair into place, quiet tears rolling down my face.
“Boss,” I turned at Beckham’s whisper. He was pointing at a flat screen monitor on the sideboard near the sink: CCTV split in two, the right and left views of the corridor. I wiped the tears off my face and, getting up from the chair, shuffled over to the sideboard. Three men in the picture in the corridor to the right, standing at the end of the corridor. All were dressed in black.
Men in black, there’d been a lot of speculation and talk about MIB over the past few weeks, but these guys didn’t have anything to do with politics. Chai reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the fat tube of a silencer. Moving with a speed and efficiency born of practice, he screwed it onto the end of the Uzi, doubling its barrel length. Beckham put the shotgun on the sideboard, nodding at it, and looking me in the same motion. I picked it up in my right hand, the left still occupied with the IV drip. Beckham took out a gun from behind his back and screwed a silencer onto it.
I heard a noise behind me and turned to see Mother coming around the coffee table, the Blackhawk in a two-handed grip. It looked ridiculously large in her dainty hands, but she knew how to use it. The phrase “nuts off a gnat” springs to mind. Chai spoke rapidly into his hands-free mike, telling Tum, identifying the guy sleeping with the AK in my room, what was happening.
Beckham and Chai moved quietly to the door.
Kill Them All
13 May 2010 Bangkok 2 am
The three men in black were still at the end of the corridor. Judging by the amount of hand waving going on they were arguing. There’s a tip for you: get the details sorted before you go to assassinate someone; it’s a lot simpler that way. One of them turned away, his back to the camera. He got hit on the arm by one of the others. He turned, tall, with a thin face and a moustache. I didn’t recognize him. The fat one doing the waving, his black t-shirt exposing his belly, a desert plate sized amulet hanging from his neck, grabbed Skinny and pushed him down the corridor towards us. Skinny walked a few steps then, looking back, flicked the bird at the other two.
“Only one is coming. The other two are staying down the hall,” I said. Chai nodded at my whisper, and told Tum next door. Skinny was getting closer. Chai made hand signals. Wait- one - go in - open door. Good at charades. I watched the monitor. One of the waiting two men lit a cigarette - smoking in a hospital. Skinny reached the door to my room and stopped. That really pissed me off and set my mind off in a hundred different directions.
Skinny reached behind his back, his gun snagging on his belt as he tried to tug it free. Standing next to me, Joom said into my ear, “Amateur”. Skinny’s tongue curled over his upper lip as he turned the handle and pushed in. Beckham, his hand on the door handle of our room, was waiting on me.
Skinny disappeared from sight. I nodded. Beckham quickly pulled the door open. Chai went into the corridor and dropped onto one knee, Uzi pointed down the hall. The monitor showed Beckham disappearing into my room. The Uzi made clacking sounds, an echo of the spent cartridges rattling on the door. Five bursts and amateur minute was over. The two bodies hadn’t even pulled their weapons.
I watched as Chai walked down the corridor. He looked into my room, but didn’t stop. Reaching the fallen bodies he knelt down. I couldn’t really tell what he was doing, and I felt dizzy. I went and sat on the sofa. Mother got on her iPhone, beginning the cleanup.
Chai and Beckham stashed the bodies in my room and brought bedding over to make up the sofa proper. I needed to get some sleep. Just as I was nodding off to the muted conversations Mother was having on her phone, Dr. Tom showed up, jeans and t-shirt replacing his usual hospital garb.
His very round blinking eyes were evidence that Chai had taken him next door. He looked paler than usual, which made him seem ghostlike. He gave Mother a wai, his hands settling on his well-fed paunch with a nervous wringing. He pulled the chair over and, pretending to listen to my heart, whispered.
“Chance, please, this is a hospital. What am I going to say?”
Joom put her hand over the mouthpiece on the phone.
“Thomas, this is a hospital, it’s filled with dead people. You don’t have room for three more?” The arched eyebrows above the fierce glare nearly made me crap myself.
“I’m sorry Mere Joom but...”
“Thomas. Nothing will happen. Nothing has happened. I’ve spoken with the Police District Commander. One new Range Rover, okay? The police are not interested. Stop worrying. They were Khmer. No one will miss them.” Mere Joom did not have the same sense of awe for doctors and teachers as most Thais.
“Mother, we should use them. Someone wants us dead. Let them think they succeeded. Start the funeral day after tomorrow. Give it the full works. Cremate two of them. Feed the other one to the Crocs.” The famous Pak Nam Crocodile Farm, largest in the world with 60,000 hungry crocs every night. It’s a service we provide to other families. Tourists often comment on how lazy our crocs are. Equivalent to your mobs funeral homes. Ours is a more environmentally friendly concept.
“That’s not bad thinking, Chance. I’ve been asking Khun Por to retire for a while now. Maybe now he’ll agree. Yes,” she nodded briskly, “That’s what we’ll do. Thomas, you’ll sign the death certificates for Chance and Khun Por, and get those bodies next door sealed in body bags. And I mean sealed, padlock them. I don’t want anyone peeking inside. Say it’s because of disfiguration from the bomb if anyone asks why.”
Thomas remained sitting by the sofa.
“Go. Go.” Mother with the iPhone in one hand and the Blackhawk in the other shooed him towards the door. Thomas jumped up and backed out.
There’s a villager’s joke, which goes something like this. The Poo Yai, Mayor, of a small town heard that the men of his town were all afraid of their wives. The Poo Yai’s wife ordered him to solve the problem. So he called the men of the town together for a secret male-only meeting. And he asked them, “Who among you, that is afraid of your wife, raise your hand.” Everyone in the meeting raised their hand, except one little old guy, sitting in the far right corner at the back of the meeting hall, his hands clasped firmly together in his lap, his shoulders shrunken inwards trying to make himself as small as possible.
The Poo Yai noticed the little old man and asked him to come out to the front and explain to everyone how it is that he alone is not afraid of his wife. The little old man shuffled to the front, his eyes darting left, right, and back to the door. The mayor lowered the microphone a little and said, “So come on tell us the secret.”
The little old man took the microphone, and in a quavery voice said, “Well, this morning when I got up. My wife said, there’s a secret male-only meeting being held at the town hall today and every male in the town will be asked by that fool of a mayor.” At saying this he shrugged apologetically towards the mayor, who in return shrugged his shoulders, nodding his understanding, and waving at him to continue speaking. The old man
continued, “So my wife told me, that when that fool of a mayor asks you to raise your hand, if you’re afraid of your wife. I do not want you to raise your hand. So that was why I didn’t raise my hand.”
Thai women have carefully cultivated and crafted a legend around their being innocent demure females. They get together for card games and laugh about it.
An ice cold fear went through me. Uncle Mike. He wasn’t involved, well, not directly, in the family business but he was known, in certain circles, to be “family”. Chai looked at me; we had that kind of understanding. Por had put us together when I was six. We’ve been on the street together since then. I raised a fist with my thumb to my ear and my little finger to my mouth. Chai handed me a cell phone. I dialed Uncle Mike’s number. I checked the time on the cell. Four am. It rang, and rang, and rang some more, until a polite recording of a female voice said to leave a message. He slept with his phone on. Always. I’d never not been able to reach him.
All thought of sleep vanished. I felt a deep shame for not thinking of Uncle Mike. I remembered Por’s simple words, ‘Too busy to go and see your uncle’, and here I was too busy to even think of him. Shame and anger: ‘Griengjai’.
***
It was mid-morning before all the preparations were made. These are tough times in Thailand. Yesterday another M-79 was fired. These seemingly random attacks had been going on for weeks. All part of the red shirt versus every other color that Thai politics had divided itself into. These attacks had put a strong military and police presence on the roads. Clearance to drive Por and myself, armed, out of Bangkok, to the East and the South was needed. Clearance cost money or favor; sometimes both.
Mother finished another call to Aunt Malee, distributing orders like a general in a live fire zone, which in a way she was. She hung up without saying goodbye and hit the green phone button again, this time calling an army colonel. It was trade favor time. I recognized his name as Mother sweetly said hello. She introduced him to his wife, the daughter of her third cousin. I wasn’t paying attention and only caught the last fragment. Something about Pornsak’s college fund. If I remember right Pornsak was his son. I was too busy trying to work out who was moving on us. So far no one had showed their hand.
“All right, yes, he’ll meet you downstairs. Yes, now.” She pressed the off button on the phone with a flourish and put it on the table in front of me. Legs straddled, hands on hips, she looked down at me.
“It’s arranged. You’re to leave now. You’ll have a police escort as far as Chumphon. There’s a black VW van waiting downstairs.” Her phone beeped. She snatched it off the table, attacking the screen with her thumbs. “Okay, Beckham has checked them out. It’s all okay. Call me when you get there. Do you need money?”
I nodded and she went to the sofa. Picking up a Nike shoulder bag from the floor, she tossed it on the seat and spread it open. Then she lifted a pilot's suitcase onto the sofa, flipping open the twin back lids. 1,000 baht notes wrapped in bundles of a hundred thousand. I counted about fifty bundles before she zipped the bag and handed it to Chai. He slung it over his shoulder. I got up and gave her a deep respectful wai. I felt worried for her and was scared for her. She smiled, stepping forward, and mindful of my wounds, gave me a soft hug. Stepping back she looked deep in my eyes.
“Don’t worry. I will be fine. And Por, if Buddha wills it, will survive this. You don’t worry about us. You get well.” Then her eyes turned tough, taking me back years. “You take care of things, Chance”
“Yes, Mother.”
She leaned in close. I could feel her breathe on my ear. “Promise me. Kill them all.” Each whispered word said distinctly.
“Yes, Mother.”
Behind every powerful man, there’s a powerful woman. In Por’s case, five of them.
Tricks For Free
13 May 2010 Bangkok 11 am
We cleared Bangkok’s traffic and were well on our way south. The VW was comfortable with in-seat DVDs and individual mp3 listening. I plugged in my earphones and sat back. It would take at least eight hours, depending on traffic, to reach Uncle Mike’s place in Phuket. It’s about 840 km or 530 miles from Bangkok. We’re cruising at a steady 160 Kph, about a hundred miles an hour. No one’s going to stop us. Everyone is profiting from our speed and uninterrupted passage. Chai's in the seat opposite me, cleaning his Uzi.
The question of who was trying to kill us was gnawing at me. I shut my eyes listening to Edgar Cruz playing Bohemian Rhapsody, singing along in my mind about it being too late, time's up and my body aching. Yeah, that’d be about right.
The most obvious choice was Big Tiger. Big Tiger was the younger of Por’s generation and hung out near the Ancient City. He’d grown in wealth and power under Por’s umbrella of peace between the gangs of Samut Prakarn, Pak Nam. Was he making his move before I came on the scene? Ironic, since I didn’t want it. According to the radio broadcast we’d heard, as we passed Hua Hin, I was dead. There’s something quite liberating about that.
Khun Por’s funeral rites and mine were announced on the news. I checked the time on my cell phone. Two hours since we’d left Bangkok. Por should be in the army hospital in Cambodia by now. It was announced the governor would send his deputy to the funeral as he had to be away on a foreign trip; code for I can’t be there but I need to show respect. All he could do in the circumstances. I received an SMS from Beckham: A-okay. The news of Por’s death was big news. Even with the red shirt stand-off and politics dominating everything, all the local Thai stations reported on the funeral.
Using my wireless Air from True Move I plugged into the social networks: HiSO and Dara facebook pages awash with the same article. Comments about tears ran freely. Many no doubt hoping that their debts had died along with Por. I turned the radio off. We understand crocodile tears. We have a farm of them. An SMS from Mother confirmed she was okay. We’d brought ten new phones on the way out of town, and Chai had stocked up on SIM cards, spending the first part of the trip out of Bangkok sending the numbers to Beckham, Mother and the aunts. It wasn’t likely anyone could trace the calls.
I called Uncle Mike again with no more success than the earlier times. Frustrated.
Uncle Mike and Por had run together in the early days. A New Zealander by birth, Uncle Mike had met Por a couple of years before John and Barbara. Uncle Mike only smuggled weed. Lots of it. That’s how he met Por, who supplied the weed - those days, Thai Stick, these days, Cambodian. Sailing the ocean blue from Thailand to Perth, dropping the loads off on islands before coming in to drink gin and tonics in the Royal Perth Yacht Club. He’d made a fortune and the cops never knew he existed. Until one sad day he was pulled over for speeding with fifty kilos of weed tightly packed in the boot of his car. Arrested and jailed with his trial date near, he bribed a federal judge and got bail. Por waited just over the horizon in a Thai fishing boat, the decks covered in drums of diesel. Enough to get them home.
A lot of guys who smuggle drugs never make money from it. They always reinvest and eventually they all get busted or killed. Part peer pressure, part nature of the business, they don’t know when to quit. Uncle Mike did. He put his hard earned money into land in Phuket in the late sixties - huge swathes of beachfront property. He used Joom’s name to do it. We don’t let Farang buy land in Thailand. Yeah, right. Apart from the land, he’d bought technology stocks. Everything that Warren Buffet did, he followed. It made him a very wealthy man. But you’d never know or think that the guy in shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt full of holes, riding the little Honda Dream motorbike was worth about 450 million dollars: a conservative estimate of a moving number. Some reckon, my aunts in particular, that he’s worth over a billion. Thinking of my aunts and Uncle Mike made me smile.
For years Por had tried to give one of them to Uncle Mike. When he’d send me to Phuket, he’d take the newest wife or girlfriend, sometimes both, with him, me riding in the back. He’d stay at Uncle Mike’s place, back then, a simple villa with a pool overlooking the Andaman Sea. P
or would stay for a few nights and then head back, always suggesting to the aunt that she stayed on with Mike. It wasn’t that Por didn’t want them. He just wanted his best friend to have a good wife, and he’d done some pre-qualifying. The aunts weren’t opposed to the idea either. They would look at Mike with that “I promise you everything” look - another tool in the Thai women’s toolkit of Man Management. He’d smile and say nothing. Por would leave, pressing a few thousand baht in my hand, leaving me with Uncle Mike for the summer.
Bangkok time was surviving the streets, learning the rituals of structured society, and the responsibilities and intricacies of a modern mafia business. Time with Uncle Mike was learning how to be free. To abandon preconceived ideas and live simply; eat, drink, think, play, and sleep. Rock climbing in the Hindu Kush so we could watch a sunrise; Rock music at Madison Square Garden and my first joint; sailing across the Malacca Strait to Langkawi, reading Frost under a full moon, to the sound of water slopping against the hull.
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
