Bangkok Burn (29 page)

“When we got back to Kata. Joom took you back to my hut. I sat on the beach with Por. Later Joom came out, sat with us. She reached over, put her hand on my neck, and pulled me to her. Gave me a kiss the like of which I’d never had. I can still feel it. Told me she forgave me and she would love me forever for what I’d done. And then she said they were leaving in the morning, taking you with them.”

A mist hung low on the river. A dog barked, setting off others on the far bank. An ice cube rolled over in a glass. Apart from that it was silent.

“Why did you decide to tell me this now?”

“I was talking with Pim earlier today. She told me about your talk with the Farang who kidnapped me. When you told me about it, you didn’t mention the bit about ‘Leon’. You know, when a woman came into the room and said, ‘Leon’?”

“Yes.” The hairs on my neck stood up.

“That was the name of the guy who kidnapped you when you were a kid. The one we burned to death.”

Truth Will Out

24 May 2010 Pak Nam 6:15 am

My eyes flicked open. Pim had left. I hadn’t woken her when I finally got to bed at four-thirty. Chai handed me the phone, mouthed ‘Sankit’ at me. I took the phone.

“Still sleeping, eh? It’s Monday, you know, weekend’s over. Anyway, I’ve got some information for you. Came from a friend of mine in Crime Suppression. I’d prefer to meet in person and it is important you come alone. Meet me at the VIP breakfast lounge at the Dusit in an hour. Alone. Don’t bring your shadow.”

“All right. I’ll see you there.”

As the crow flies, it’s eighteen and a half kilometers to the Dusit. But crows don’t have to deal with Bangkok’s roads and traffic. I was half an hour late. Leaving Chai with the Maserati, I went up to the VIP breakfast lounge. Sankit was sitting with a cop. There were a couple of other tables occupied but those around Sankit and the cop were empty. I went over, gave Sankit a wai, for forms sake. The cop raised himself out of his seat a little and waied me. I waied him back and sat down. Now that we’d sorted out the pecking order we could order breakfast. Sankit looked at his watch and raised his bushy eyebrows at me. I wasn’t in the mood. I just ignored him. He waved a hand at the cop, wiping his mouth with the other.

“Khun Oh, this is Sarawak Khumthong.” Inspector Khumthong, to you Farang. “He’s with Crime Suppression, based at Hua Mark. Sarawak, you can talk freely with Khun Oh. He is my future son-in-law.”

The Inspector swallowed nervously, all smiles, nodding his head.

“Sor Sor Sankit had requested some colleagues to assist in finding out about the bombing that took place on Ratchada, concerning Mr. Samuel Harper, and your father.” I noticed he was careful not to mention it was a massage joint. Polite.

“My superior asked me to investigate. We didn’t learn anything new about the bombing other than what forensics told us. However, one of my detectives saw the video of you - sorry, Mr. Harper - and his bodyguard after the explosion. It is from the tape of the CCTV. He recognized your bodyguard from another investigation. I asked him to bring me anything he had. He brought me these.” Khumthong passed me an A4 brown paper envelope. Just then the waitress arrived to take my order. Just coffee, thanks.

“What was your detective investigating?” I asked him, opening the envelope. Inside, a thick sheaf of large photographs in color.

“A gang of Cambodians were dealing yaa baa in Lad Krabang. They killed a couple of the local dealers and took over the rest. We got onto them from another dealer, who was scared he was next.”

I waited while the waitress poured the coffee and left, then I took out the photos. My blood ran cold. It was Chai talking to the three gunmen from the hospital. The date time stamp in the bottom corner of the photos said the tenth of May. They were sitting at a table next to a food stall on a sidewalk. In the middle of the stack, a photo of Chai’s hand reaching into an inside pocket, a glimpse of paper and passing it to the fat guy, the amulet easy to recognize. I went through all of them. Right to where Chai gets into the Lexus he was driving that day. I remember it. Two days before the explosion, and the attack at the hospital. Chai had said he was going to a temple. He’d just finished a long chat with Por on the cell phone. I wanted to puke but I held it together.

“Thanks for this Sarawak Khumthong. If there is any way that I may be able to assist you in future, do not hesitate to call on me.” He waied me, I waied him back, I waied Sankit. “Father, thank you for breakfast. I have to go. I have business to attend to.” I got up and walked out of the restaurant. I managed not to bump into anything, even though my legs were wobbly. ‘Weak at the knees’, I believe is the expression you Farangs use.

I used the washroom on the ground floor, near the lifts. Went into one of the stalls, I wiped the seat, and sat down. I was shaking. I breathed out, had to get a grip. I took the photos out of the envelope. There was no mistaking it for anyone other than Chai. I tried to think of reasons why and came up dry. I breathed out hard, the ache in my chest swelling. I squeezed my eyes shut and something broke inside me.

I washed my face and left the washroom. Walking past the sparsely filled cafeteria on the ground floor, the doors to the car park were opened by a smiling bell boy. Chai waiting outside, moving for the car the second he saw me. He looked the same, moved the same, but everything was different.

Fortunately, we don’t talk much, so silence was normal. I couldn’t trust myself to talk, the envelope on my lap. It took an hour to get to the Dusit from home. It took a lifetime to get back. I glanced at the cell phone. It was only nine-thirty in the morning. I got out and went straight into the house. Mother wasn’t around in the main room.

Beckham was sitting cross-legged on the deck by the door to the guesthouse. He got up and opened the door for me. Mother was perched next to Por. She turned to me, a big smile on her face.

“He woke up just a short while ago. Said your name and went back to sleep. I spoke to Thomas. He said it is a sure sign that Por is recovering fast now.”

“I need to talk to you.” I flicked my eyes at the nurse on the other side of Por’s bed. Mother asked her to take care of some things upstairs. I pulled a chair over from the dining table and sat down next to Mother. Her face serious as she read mine.

“This morning Sankit invited me for breakfast. Said he had some information to give me. Asked me to come alone. He was a with a cop from Crime Suppression. He handed me these.” I put the photos on the bed and spread them out, propping them up on Por’s leg. Mother picked one up, the one with Chai slipping the money to the fat guy. A hand went to her mouth.

“Oh no. Oh, Chance. I’m so sorry.” I’ve never seen Mother cry but tears welled up in her eyes, the photo in her lap the cause. Tears landing on the image, one on Chai’s face, distorting it. She sniffed back the tears and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Where’s Pim?”

“She went to visit some friends. I spent some time with her this morning on the range. Chance, we have to deal with this now, today. We have no choice.”

“I have to ask him why.”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is to remove the threat. That is the truth. If you try to understand why everything happens you can go crazy trying. It can be as stupid but as basic as jealousy. Money, blackmail, position, bad mood, all of them - are why things happen. But when you cut off the source it all stops.”

“I need to know why Chai has done this to me.”

“Ggh.” The sound made us both jump. We’d been talking in whispers. It was Por. His eyes open. He was trying to talk but the respirator in his throat made that impossible. His eyes were barely open, but I could tell he was forcing himself to stay awake. He lifted a hand and made a sign for a pen. On the coffee table, a pad and a pen. I got up and grabbed them. I put the pen in his hand. It still felt frail and fragile, but he gripped the pen. I held the pad steady for him.

‘not Chai’ – he wrote. The pen fell out of his hand. His eyes closed but flickered open. He signaled for the pen again. I put it back in the finger.

‘chai talk ok - Por’. The pen slipped off the bed covers and fell on this floor. His eyes didn’t open. The heart rate monitor looked normal. He had fallen asleep again.

“You go get ready and meet me at the sala in five minutes.” Mother picked up the photos and put them back in the envelope. She pressed the bell for the nurse.

I went to the main garage off the forecourt of the main house. On the rear wall, a bench stood and above the bench, shelves holding toolboxes. I took one of the toolboxes down and pushed on the panel behind it. The panel pushed in, sliding sideways to reveal a secret shelf. I took out a Beretta M9 and a Gemtech silencer, putting them on the bench. I loaded a magazine. It’s like folding a parachute, something you have to do yourself, to be sure. The garage and house were quiet. Each click of a bullet seated like the click on a slide projector flicking through images of our life together. Some images of photos when we were apart. Photos he had of me and I of him. I thought of him as a brother. We were a team. I pushed the full magazine home and put one in the chamber.

I picked up a jacket from my room and went down to the sala. Joom was sitting at the far end. Next to her stood a small table and on the table, the family Buddha, ancient and worn. I knelt and waied. Mother patted the floor beside her. She was sitting with her knees tucked under her next to the table. I sat down covering the gun with my jacket. Mother called Chai.

“Chai come down to the sala now I want to talk to you.” Mother hung up the phone. It was her style. She turned to me.

“I’ve told everyone to leave us alone. No one will disturb us. Whatever needs to be done must be, for the sake of the family. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mother.” I checked that the safety was off, sitting cross-legged, with my hand under the jacket, finger on the trigger guard.

Chai came up the steps to the sala. Shoes off, he paused slightly, a frown crossing his face as he saw the Buddha. He prostrated himself and waied three times as is our custom. Keeping his head low, he crossed to us and knelt on his knees in front of Mother.

His glance took in my stance and hand. His eyes flicked to me, understanding. The corners of his mouth twitched up in a little smile.

“Chai, you will swear to Buddha that you will tell the truth.”

“Yes, Mother.” Chai looked calmer than he had ever done. His hands folded one on top of the other as if he were at meditation - a calm face and eyes that were smiling.

“Chai, did you pay the Cambodians to kill Chance.”

“Yes, Mother. I did.” My heart raced. I was truly shocked. He was so blasé about it, like it was nothing. Mother put her hand on mine, the one under the jacket.

“Can you tell us why?”

“No, Mother. I’m sorry, I cannot. I cannot tell a lie and I cannot tell you the truth. I swore I would not.”

“Who did you swear this too?”

“I swore that I wouldn’t say.”

“You understand that Chance has no choice but to kill you?”

“Yes, Mother, I understand and I accept it. I am content.” He smiled at me. “My brother is ready to become Godfather, so my work is done. May Buddha protect him and guide him.”

Mother leaned forward, placing the pad with Por’s words on it in front of Chai. “Por wrote that today. I think he wrote it to you. Does that change what you can tell us?”

Chai visibly slumped and smiled.

“Por is awake?”

“Yes, for very short periods. He is recovering. Now can you tell us what this is all about?”

Chai waied the ground in front of Mother, holding his hands together in front of his chest.

“I swear, in front of the Lord Buddha, that what I shall say is the truth as I know the truth.”

Chai’s Tale

24 May 2010 Pak Nam 10:15 am

“In early May, I went to the showroom to get a car. If you remember, it was the car you took to Hua Hin, when you stayed at the Dusit.”

“The seven series BMW?”

“Yes. What I didn’t know is that Por had just used the car for a job. He had loaned the car to some Indian financier and he had it bugged. The bugs weren’t taken out until after you came back from Hua Hin. I took the car back to the showroom and picked up another one. Two days later, Por called me to come see him. We talked here. He asked me what I knew about you and Pim. I told him what I knew. He told me that Pim was forcing you to leave the family and asked how I felt about that. I told him the truth which is that would upset me very much, that you belonged to us.” Chai smiled at me. “And you do. You are ready to be Godfather now. You belong here, with us.”