Bangkok Burn (20 page)

I stumbled up the path, thinking I’d go take a shower before I spoke with Pim. Sober up. As I reached the turn by the pool, I saw her sitting on one of the loungers nearby. Mother was giving her hug, stroking her hair and it looked like Pim was crying. I stopped dead still. It seemed they hadn’t heard me. Joom took Pim’s head in her hands and said something. I couldn’t catch it and I didn’t want to eavesdrop. I just didn’t want to intrude upon them.

Mother got up and walked into the house. Maybe she had heard. I walked out of the bushes making enough noise that Pim could hear me. She sat up and quickly wiped her cheeks, sitting with her hands in her lap. I sat on the beach lounger next to her, reached out and took one of her hands, holding it in both of mine.

“What’s up? You don’t look happy.”

She sniffed, wiped a tear, and shook her head. I didn’t say anything, just held her hand. A few minutes, sniffs, and tears went by.

“When you came back all beaten up, I was shocked. It made everything real. Then you said you’d killed someone again. I love you, but I don’t think I’m strong enough for you. I told you about the kitten. I’m not Joom.” She sniffed again and breathed out. “Fuck, I didn’t want to cry.”

I got down on one knee holding her hand.

“Pim, will you marry me. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, bear my name, and have my children?”

She looked at me straight, studying my face. What she was searching for I cannot say but it seemed she found an answer. She lunged at me, grasping me around the neck. I teetered, hanging on, off balance and then we fell into the pool. We came up gasping, coughing, and laughing all at the same time. We stood in the shallow end. Light from the back of the house cast a glow across her face, her wet shirt transparent, the lacy bra underneath an invitation.

I sunk into the water up to my neck. Taking her hand I pulled her into the deep end. The pool was in shadow here and the sala next to pool was dark. We crept quietly into it.

A Confession in Heaven

21 May 2010 Pak Nam 5 am

Ken had called me three times
the previous night. I wondered if his rumor mill extended to Cambodia.

A smoldering Bangkok was returning to normal, if a city made of extremes can be called normal. At least the last pockets of urban war had settled back to being just urban. Tension was high though, in people’s thoughts, about what the future will hold. A sort of national sentiment of, ‘what’s next?’

I was having coffee, in the kitchen downstairs. Ba Nui, Joom’s maid, cook and boss of the house had made me the coffee. I told her Joom’s story of the case of mistaken identity that lead to my funeral. She still was not one hundred per cent convinced that I wasn’t a ghost.

“So Por and the Farang who looks like you, Sam, was blown up and mere Joom didn’t call you for four days while you were on holiday in Bali? Is that what you’re trying to tell me happened?”

“No, Ba Nui. I told you, in Bali only some places have signal towers and I was at a dive resort on the far side. Most of the time I was under water.”

She gave me a disbelieving look. “Well, even if you’re a ghost, you bullshit the same Chance did. You want your usual breakfast?”

I laughed and nodded. Ba Nui moved off, starting to prepare my breakfast. I like this time of day. Good thinking time.

We were bringing Por back home today. Mother, Beckham, and a few less than half a regiment of Thailand’s finest were picking him up at Don Muang and taking him straight to the safe house. The living room of the safe house had been kitted out to Dr. Tom’s specs with equipment bought, borrowed, and rented. Cleaned, stocked with food, generators filled with fuel, and all the systems checked. The house had been under guard since yesterday morning when the final medical equipment had been installed. We also kept the money there. I would move in with Pim, Mother, and Uncle Mike. We’d look after Por and we’d stay until we’d dealt with the situation. Chai and Beckham would of course be with us. The aunts were scattering with the daughters: Europe, America, Australia, and Korea. The choice of Korea sparked a pool on who was having what done, mother or daughters. With everyone safe and being on home turf, we could shake the bamboo and see what came out.

It was time to go on the offensive. But first I was going to have breakfast.

***

Ken lived in a walled compound off Thonglor, in one of the small sois leading to Soi 49, just like a few thousand other Japanese executives. This whole part of Bangkok had been occupied by the Japanese. Every street from Soi 33 to Ekamai has Japanese restaurants and book shops. Entire shopping complexes, rows of shop-houses, shop on the ground floor, storage on the second, living on the third and fourth floors, mostly built by the Chinese, catering to the Japanese.

Ken was out. We had watched him leave a few minutes ago. I nodded to Chai. He spoke into his cell phone. We were parked about a hundred meters from Ken’s front gate, in front of a row of shophouses. Tum drove up and parked right next to Ken’s wall, Pichit and Somboon in the back. Tum jumped out, climbed on the back of the pick-up, and helped them lift the package over the wall. Pichit jumped over the wall. A few seconds later he was pulled back over by Somboon and Tum. They scrambled back into the pick-up and drove off. The whole operation had taken less than two minutes. Message delivered.

Bangkok’s traffic was almost back to normal as we got snarled up in it on Petchaburi, heading for the Expressway. The army was still keeping a strong presence on the streets but things were generally quiet. We passed the Humvees stationed at the top of the on-ramp and headed north.

Jutumas Sangponcharoen, otherwise known as ‘Ice’ had lived with her parents in Nonthaburi, just past the Bangkok Remand Prison. A sign at the front of their soi read, ‘Welcome to Bangkok’. Their house was one in a row of town homes, three story houses built exactly like shop-houses but with a door instead of a roll up iron gate.

I pressed the doorbell on the wall outside. I could hear a small dog barking inside and then the door opened. An older man dressed in a white t-shirt and black trousers came out. I waied him.

“Excuse me, Elder Uncle, but I am looking for the home of Khun Jutumas.”

He nodded and bit his lip. “Yes this was her home. I am her father.”

“I am very sorry for your loss. I saw her just before the explosion.”

“You did. You were there?”

“I passed her in the hallway, just before.”

“Come in, come in. It’s too hot to sit outside. Tell your driver to come in too,” he said nodding at Chai, sitting in the car, engine running, with the air-conditioning on.

I nodded to Chai and the man opened the gate. We walked to his front door, I slipped off my shoes, and we went inside. Chai stayed outside, better to keep an eye on the road.

The furniture was Chinese, black lacquered, inlaid with mother of pearl. He indicated I should sit on the bench seat and sat down next to me. A woman dressed in black, I guessed her mother, brought a glass of water, and set it in front of me.

“My wife, Fern’s mother. My name is Sompong,” he said looking at her and softly smiling. He had tears in his eyes but they stayed there. He reached up and brushed them away with his wrist. Her mother walked back into the house.

“She was our only daughter. Fern’s mother was advised against having any more children after she gave birth to Fern. So I had the snip, you know. She was twenty-four. Just finished university. Good grades, good university. She was happy, doing well. I warned her against going out that day. I knew all that trouble in Bangkok was getting bad.”

I took a sip of the water. He wanted to talk about her. I wanted to listen. His pauses were filled with the sound of the fan vibrating in the corner of the room each time it reached the apex of its arc.

“She was a smart girl. Stubborn and willful too. She wanted a car her first year at university. I thought she was too young to be out and about at that age. Bangkok is a big city and a dangerous city for a young girl. But she told me that she could take care of herself and she could get her own car.”

“She lived here with you.”

“Most of the time. Sometimes she stayed with friends. Sometimes she said she was going on a trip with her friends. She was grown up. You can’t keep them with you all the time. You have to let them go.” A tear swelled and escaped from the corner of his eye.

“Was she seeing anyone special?”

“Oh there were boyfriends. In her third year, she was away a lot. Exams and studying, she said. But each time she came she was driving a different car. This friend, that friend, she said. I never said anything but it made me and her mother sad. We just hoped it was a phase she was going through. But there was no one special, at least she never mentioned anyone. There was one boy. Came around here one night. He was angry with her about something. Yelling and carrying on in the street about how he loved her. This was just before she went to Korea.” He got up and walked over to a sideboard that ran along one wall and took down a photo. He handed it to me. A smiling, ‘Ice’ at her graduation ceremony, flanked by her parents looking stiff and awkward, but proud.

“This was Fern before she went to Korea. She told me she was with a friend. When she came back, she looked different. She’d had her nose and, her, you know, her breasts done.” He looked embarrassed as he talked about his daughter’s boob job. “I asked her where she got the money to do it. It’s not cheap you know. She just said a friend had lent her the money and she could pay it back whenever she liked. I argued with her. She told me I didn’t understand. She was right. I don’t.” He bit his lips and the tears rolled freely now. He turned away to hide them and took a tissue out of the box on the table in front of me.

I sipped the water and gave him a moment to compose himself. He sighed and then sat back in the seat.

“How about you, young man? Were you injured in the blast?”

“Only very slightly. I was protected by the elevator. This boy, the one who shouted at her from the street, how old was he?”

“Her age, a little older perhaps. He had one of those modified cars, low suspension and loud sound.”

“Do you remember what make it was?”

“Yes. It was a Honda Civic. I have one. Mine’s not modified but the basic shape is the same.”

“Did you hear his name?”

“She called him ‘Pi Um’ I think. But I’m not sure. Like I said, that night they were shouting and screaming at each other.”

“Did you see him any time apart from that one night?”

“Only once a couple of weeks before. He parked up the soi. Didn’t even have the decency to say hello to us. Do you think he might have had something to do with this? The police told me it was an argument between Poo Yai, big shots, and they were investigating. Of course I don’t hold out any hope they’ll catch who did it but that’s what they told me.”

“I don’t know what happened but I’m trying to find out. If you remember anything else can you call me on this number?” I gave him a card with a cell phone number on it. He looked at it for a while. The well of tears had filled again. Finally he put the card on the table in front of him.

I waied him and stood up. He showed me to the door. I slipped my shoes on and he walked me to the gate. Chai had turned the car around. I turned, waied him again, and got in the car. As we left, I looked in the rear mirror. His face was in hands, shoulders heaving.

It didn’t sound like Ice had anything to do with the bombing. Just an innocent bystander, wrong place, wrong time. I’d check the jealous boyfriend with the modified Honda Civic but I reckoned Uncle Mike’s hunch was wrong. We went out the back way. There was heavy security around the prison. From the Chaengwattana Expressway, we cut left onto the flyover to Ratchayothin and then onto Ratchada. We did a U-turn just before Huay Kwang and Chai cut across three lanes of fast moving traffic to make it into the soi that Heaven was in.

Having narrowly avoided death, we parked in Heaven’s car park. Chai put on his shades. I tried to get my heart to slow down. The doorman, who doubled as valet parking, did a double take when he saw us and hurried inside the building. By the time we reached the door he was back to open it with the manager bent double in a wai.

We walked into the cool marble floored foyer, the walls decorated with quasi roman statues of naked women. Here and there little boy statues peed. The manager now straightened up a little, but still kept his head bent low.