Bangkok Burn (9 page)

I froze, listening
: a scratching sound below the window of the study. Someone was trying to break in. Below the study is the kitchen. They were trying to get through the kitchen door. Shit! I'd left the guns in the car with Chai. I went quietly into the bedroom. Pim was sleeping. I knelt softly on the bed and covered her mouth with my hand, putting a finger to my lips. She woke, eyes panicked staring at me. I leant in close to her ear.

“Don't say anything, and quietly, very quietly, go and hide in the closet. Someone's trying to break in.”

She nodded, eyes wide, scared, and got out of bed. I turned and went back out to the landing, listening. They hadn't got in yet. I had double bolt locks on all the doors. When they figured that out, they'd come in another way. Maybe through the window. I needed a weapon, fast. My golf clubs were downstairs in the cupboard under the stairs. Can't get at the kitchen knives if they're coming in that way. I edged toward the top step of the landing and heard the creak of the kitchen door. Shit. Shit. They were in already. I knelt down in front of the study door on the landing, the bedroom with Pim in opposite me. The stairs are made of wood and the fifth and sixth stairs creak. They've never been right since I bought the house.

I forced my breathing to slow, my heart hammering away. If there were more than one I was fucked. I waited. Sweat rolled into my eye. I tried to keep my breathing quiet. Quiet and slow. I heard the stair creak and then silence. I waited. Had he skipped the next step? Another creak. I felt a desperate urge to take a leak. Fuck it. I went around the corner of the stairs and dived down. Shit! There’re two of them. Slow motion time or fast brain time kicked in, seeing, as I dived, the first guy lift his gun and fire. I felt the bullet crease my skull as I crashed into his chest. The second guy was very quick. He ducked as we went over him and we crashed to the bottom of the stairs. The guy under me not moving, his gun clattering away towards the front door. I dived for it, looking over my shoulder, sliding on the floor reaching for the spinning gun. The guy on the stairs rose, turning, his gun coming up. I wasn't going to make it.

I saw the bedroom door open. Pim came out with something white and rectangular held above her head. The guy seeing my look, turned, his gun swinging towards her. I got my fingers on the spinning gun, bringing it up and fired three times quickly. He went down, but I kept firing, getting up walking towards him. Seven shots, good grouping.

The guy I’d tackled on the stairs was dead, broken neck. I went through his pockets. Nothing except a few thousand baht, a spare magazine, and a packet of cigarettes. If you couldn't do it with one mag, you wouldn't get a chance for two.

I wiped down the gun and put in in his hand. Holding his hand steady I fired two more bullets aiming at the other guy's chest. The last one missed and hit him in the face. Powder traces on the hand would now confirm this guy fell down the stairs, broke his neck, and then fired multiple shots hitting the first guy. Yup. I could see the words in the very expensive police report to come.

Blood dripped on his face, mine. I reached a hand up to my head. Above my ear, I felt raw flesh where the first bullet carved a groove. It stung and was wet with blood. Another fraction of an inch and I'd have been killed. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket. My feet scrunched on broken pieces of ceramic toilet. Good choice. I went up the stairs to her. She was crouched on the landing, at the same spot from where she had hurled the toilet lid at the guy. She’d saved my life.

“Get dressed. We're out of here.” I said, softly. She stayed where she was. I put my hand on her shoulder giving her a squeeze. She was shaking. “Pim. Move it. Go get dressed.”

She looked at me and nodded, still in shock.

Then the doorbell rang.

I glanced down the stairs at the door. Shit, someone must have reported the shots. I shook Pim by both shoulders and pointed at the bedroom. She nodded and moved. I went downstairs and peeked through the eye-hole. One of the estate’s security guards stood outside, talking into his radio. Bullshit or bribe? I opened the door. The guard was skinny, tall, long bony throat lost in a shirt collar four sizes too large.

“Um, excuse me, sir. Sorry to disturb you, sir, but we’ve had calls about gunshots being fired, sir. Is everything all right?”

“Come in,” I said, opening the door.

He had a worried expression on his face as he sidestepped past me into the hallway, his eyes wary, body language screaming, “I don’t want to be dealing with this.” His mouth opened when he saw the guy with the broken neck behind me and then he saw the guy on the stairs. The guard's Adam's apple bounced in his throat.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, voice even.

“Somchai, sir.”

“Okay, Khun Somchai, here’s the thing. I just came home and found these two guys like this, but I don’t want to be involved, so here’s what I suggest as the best way for us to handle this. One, we could report this to the police and spend the next twenty four hours explaining how these two guys got past you guards and into my house. Or two, we can keep this to ourselves and I’ll tidy everything up. You remove the CCTV tape for tonight. I was never here, and this never happened. You go home twenty thousand baht richer.”

Somchai, looked at me, and looked at the bodies. His Adam's apple bounced some more.

“Fifty”, he said, his eyes almost apologetic. Almost.

***

I bought a packet of Marlboro red and coffee at the 7-11 opposite Big C on Lat Phrao, Pim's Audi 6, engine running, curbside. I put the coffee on the roof of the Audi and tapped on the window. I handed a coffee through to Pim. She took it and the window shut again. Even at night the temperature was hot, about 27 Celsius, and the fumes from the traffic on the road were heavy. It was 2 am, and normally a lot of traffic on the road now as closing time for the bars, clubs, and karaoke lounges hits, but tonight it was quiet, empty. Wars do that to a city. And not a good time to be driving around with an unlicensed weapon. The army had set up road blocks all over town. My mind was spinning with the latest attack.

A black Benz ran the red light on the other side of the road, used the U-turn, crossed three lanes of fast moving traffic, cutting in front of an eighteen wheeler and pulled up behind the Audi. The truck slowed, the driver’s boy yelling out of the window at the Benz. Chai stepped out of the car and took three fast steps towards the truck, his hand reaching into his jacket. It pulled away with a belch of black smoke. I thought I saw a grin on his face as he turned but it was late and I was tired.

I handed him the keys to the house and the entrance card to get into the compound.

“Two of them. One had Cambodian cigarettes on him.” Chai nodded, looked at the cigarette burning in my hand. “Mother's sending a couple of guys to clean up. I need you to take Pim to stay with Mother.” He nodded again, and handed me a sports bag. I raised my eyebrows in question.

“Phones, I've programmed them all, cash, Glocks and I put in a couple of hand grenades.” He looked disgusted with me, his expression dark, eyes flat, angry, hot. “You shouldn't have been unarmed and alone. Next time I'll stay.”

“Okay. We'll talk about that later. Take Pim to Joom’s place and stay with her until I get back. I should be back about eight in the evening. It's the Thai flight. I'll leave Pim's car at the airport. If they knew where we lived they might know the car. Pick me up tomorrow outside exit four, eight twenty. Bring Pim with you tomorrow. Okay?” Chai nodded. I went back to the Audi and got in, tossing the bag in the back seat. I reached over and stroked Pim's cheek.

“You've got to go with Chai. Okay. You'll be safe with him. I'll be back tomorrow. Chai will pick me up tomorrow, and he'll bring you with him.”

Pim reached across the space between us and put her hands on either side of my face pulled me to her. Lips open she pressed hard, her tongue hot in my mouth. She broke off and sat back, hair wild, still holding the sides of my face.

“I'll see you tomorrow. I promise.”

She nodded, dropped her hands, and got out of the car. She walked over to passenger side front door of the Benz, shoulders and back straight.

I pulled out into the sparse traffic. We don’t even take curfews literally. Thinking. The thing about information is that it accumulates. You start off with one event or data, and then another occurs and you start to gather information. The latest attempt worried me a lot. Only five people, family, knew where that house was. Pim, Joom, Por and Chai. It was possible that they had followed Pim, but I doubted that. They had come late, and they had come for me.
I
hadn't seen the Benz that Chai was driving so there was no way they could have known by watching that I was there. The other piece of information was that they obviously didn't believe I was dead. And that was interesting. It meant my rumor was working. The cockroaches were coming out into the light. Dead cockroaches. I needed one of these guys alive.

I turned onto the expressway and up the ramp. An Army Humvee parked at the top of the ramp with a few soldiers standing looking at me as I drove by. A sign of the times. I lit another cigarette and opened the window. Keeping the speed low, I wasn't in a hurry now, on autopilot. I was heading back to Ratchada area. I was on the Ramindra Expressway heading into the city alone on the expressway, a surreal experience.

I couldn’t make sense of any of what was going on. None of it fit. Not the bomb in Heaven. The only people who knew we were going to meet in Heaven were Por and I. He set it up and called me. I didn't even tell Chai until we were about to drive there. So how did someone manage to plant a bomb in the room, and time it for when we were both there? And then the hit at the hospital. Okay people knew we were at the hospital. Easy target, but why use amateur hour Cambodian hitmen? Same with this latest attack. No one knew I was there. Except Chai. The only common denominator was Chai. But that didn't make sense on a couple of points. One; I knew beyond a shadow of doubt Chai's loyalty was solid; we’d been together since I was five years old. And two; he could kill me anytime he wanted.

I dropped down onto Rama 9, and did a U turn, driving past the cultural center on Ratchadapisek, I took a right into Thiam Ruam Mit Road. Pulling up the ramp into Peep Inn, I slowed to crawl. The parking boy with his red waistcoat jogged ahead of me and pulled a heavy red plastic curtain aside. I swung the Audi into the parking slot and got out. The boy tugged the curtains closed behind the car. I gave him a couple of thousand. His eyes grew big.

“I'll be here till morning. Keep the rooms either side of me empty. Wake me in the morning no later than six and I'll give you another thousand.”

The boy waied, nodding his head. He backed out through the edge of the curtain, closing it behind him. I waited. Heard him move away. Collecting my bags from the car, I went in. A vulture on a perch peered into the window out the back of the room. Peep Inn's specialty was theme rooms with exotic bird zoo. Ostriches, eagles, and in my case, a vulture outside a room themed as a nurse’s station. Very fucking appropriate.

I hung my suit bag on the back of the door and pulled the chair over from the built in make-up table, pushed it under the knob until it held. I got a glass from the top of the fridge and balanced it on the chair. I was tired, knew I'd sleep deep. A thin blanket on the bed, Bangkok's short time motels aren't a place that people usually come to sleep. I pulled it over me, and took a Glock out of the bag putting it on the bed beside me. I flipped the switch next to the headboard. The lights went out. My cell phone beeped. An SMS from Chai ‘@home’, I hit reply, ‘K’.

I lay on the bed looking up at the ceiling. It had been a while since I’d had to kill. I’d killed five people now. I killed two when I was fifteen, on my birthday. It happened in Trat, a province next to Cambodia. Por was driving a pickup truck with Joom in the passenger seat in front, and me on the small bench seat in the back. We’d gone to the market, Por buying a pig to roast for my party. We stopped at a red light. A motorcycle pulled up next to us and the pillion rider shot at Por. He missed, the bullets hitting steel and breaking glass but not hitting bodies. Por pulled his gun out but then a bullet hit him in the arm. His gun flew onto the back seat next to me. I still see it perfectly in slow motion. I picked the gun up. Joom had me on the range when I was ten. I check, safety’s off, rack a round into the chamber, bring it up, breathe out, center the sights on the target, the shooter’s black visor, and squeeze the trigger. He crumpled, sliding off the bike. I see as I move the sights to the next target just like on the range. The driver panicked and stalled the bike. He was kick-starting but had flooded it. I shot him in the back twice. Twenty four hours later, Por had us all on a beach in Mexico. They treated me differently after that. The whole family did. Apart from Por and Joom, I was the only one who had killed on the family’s behalf.