Bangkok Burn (2 page)

“But this morning I dreamed about an elephant.”

A sharp intake of collective breath, the volume went back up. I just couldn’t resist it. The girl sobbing on the TV forgotten, cards by mutual unspoken agreement folded, the aunts turned to compiling.

Counting off in reverse order the number of sutures I had, 120; the number on the door, 24; and how many pieces of glass, metal, and brick Dr. Tom had taken out of me, 14; then, of course, the piece de resistance, the 9, embossed on my chest … and an elephant in a dream.

These numbers, turned upside down, added together, subtracted and manipulated with seemingly logical extensions that would have floored Einstein, were then compiled as lottery numbers and jotted down on napkins with jeweled Mont Blancs. The cell phones came out, lottery number consultants, Monks and Mor Doo’s, Fortune Tellers, on speed dial.

Auntie Dao, Star, wife number two, her fifties bouffant hair-do shimmering with glitter, got up from the sofa with a heave, and rocked her way over to the bed. She reached across and took the elevator button from Aunt Malee, then looked at it as if inspecting a flawed diamond.

“You know it might not be 9; it might be 6,” she rasped from her smoker’s throat. A collective gasp at the perception. Six is “hok” in Thai, but in a slightly different tone also means fall, as in fall down, with connotations of death or bad luck.

“No. I had a chat with the police forensics team. It was definitely a nine.” Doctors and teachers are infallible in Thailand. Everything they say is the truth. In Dr. Tom’s case, I had no doubt that he
had
called the forensics team. After all it wasn’t every day that someone standing five meters from a bomb, survived and, more importantly, had a 9 embossed on their chest. I had just become an urban legend. What amulets I wore on my neck, such information to be gained by bribing hospital staff, had increased tenfold in value.

Dr. Tom put a hand up to the beeping IV machine and fiddled with a knob. “Sleep now. We’ll talk later.”

The Aunts chatter faded to the beat of the girl still sobbing on the TV. At least sixty percent of Thai soap opera is spent sobbing. Not the watchers, the actresses. There was a reason for that, but I fell asleep before I could remember what it was.

***

I was born in Goa, the son of two heroin-smuggling hippies from Boston, John and Barbara’s inconvenient accident of free love. They came to Bangkok on the trail of the Double UO with me in tow. The Vietnam War was going full blast, and smack was the drug of choice of the hip set. A lot of people made a fortune smuggling smack. John and Barb got dead, shot-gunned on the stern of a yacht. Por had bought the yacht for them in Singapore, their Valhalla craft off a beach at Boracay Island, an early template for drug deals gone bad. I have the news clipping. It’s on the Internet, an old forgotten article in an Asian Boating magazine, a couple of druggie’s five minutes of fame, all used up.

Their last name was Collins. Mine is Harper. Samuel C. Harper. It was a name Por got off a clothing store in New York. He took me there to get some suits made. I get a good discount. I’m glad he changed my name. It saved me the job. There was no fucking way I was going to go through life as Sunrise Krishna Collins. But Por had bigger reasons than my problems with my love-child name. The Germans who’d put the hit on my parents, and ripped off Por for a couple of million, were looking for me.

I became Samuel C. Harper, Por became my father, and when the time was right, the Germans became dead.

I woke up thirsty, weird dreams taking me back to my childhood, my mouth feeling like the bottom of a bird’s cage. The IV machine cast a green electronic light over the now darkened, vacated, and quiet room. I took a drink from the glass of water waiting on the side-table, and noticed the
9
button was missing. The aunts would have had it cut up by now: five ways. Mother would get the largest piece and they’d split the rest.

A huddled shape on the sofa snored, the glint of the distinctive curve of an AK-47
magazine cuddled in his arms. His back to me, I couldn’t make out who it was - one of the “boys”. In the nurse light of the hallway, Chai was sitting in front of the door, his back to me, his head held high.

“
Chai,” I said softly. I didn’t want to startle the sleeping shape with the AK. Chai turned his left ear toward me.

“
Help me up.”

Chai got up from his sentry position and walked over to me without making a sound. His eyes held a question, and he hesitated. Dr. Tom or Mother had left orders.

“
I’m going to see Khun Por.” It wasn’t a request.

He dropped the steel bar on the bed. I got my legs over the side. Everything hurt. Chai wrapped an arm around me and helped me onto my feet. Taking the wheeled IV drip stand with me, we shuffled to the door. Chai paused, holding me steady, he then let go of me. I wobbled but I had the drip stand for support. He took out his Uzi, and opening the door, gave the hallway a quick scan. He turned and nodded to me, holding the door open. I had a flashback to Red. It wasn’t pleasant.

Shuffling forward, the bright light of the corridor bit into my eyes. I had a serious headache. I stood, wobbling. Chai took my arm in his left hand, his right held the Uzi pointing down the corridor. Chai’s a ‘shoot first, ask questions when everyone’s dead’ kind of guy: my kind of bodyguard. He parked me by the door, tapped the cell phone on his belt, and whispered into a mouthpiece.

“
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.