Bangkok Hard Time (16 page)

A Small Bloodbath

The following morning I stayed in the cell for another two hours after the doors were opened. It was a Saturday after all, and there was no rush to get to the prison yard. The sound of the public address system screeching to life to play the National Anthem at eight o’clock on that dry cool December morning awoke me and brought me back once again to the reality of where I was.

When I arrived in The Garden a short time later, everything seemed very tense. At the island gateway there were several blueshirts milling about and looking very anxious. As I walked past the Chinese huts, there was no eye contact with any of the residents there. Once across the bridge and inside the American cabin, I found the Kid serving up coffee to Bubba and to Dan, an inscrutable British guy being held for extradition to the US on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to smuggle pot. Ollie had gone to the prison store, the Kid reported. A blueshirt who was a frequent visitor and one of the few trustees we trusted to be not too overly zealous in his job was also present. It was the blueshirt who warned us of what was happening.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Bubba said that Didier had been stirring up the Westerners again all morning with the same old story and that the Saturday substitute building chief had sent some blueshirts into The Garden, ostensibly to keep a lid on things. The Kid made the observation that all the Chinese hut residents were, curiously, sharpening their cooking knives and meat cleavers. I looked above the shack’s entryway to assure myself that Bob’s bamboo club was still in its usual place. Now I was also tense. I found myself hoping that Ollie would return soon.

I got some coffee as Bubba lit up a joint and said, “Hey Rock … just relax.” I tried to relax, but the volatile atmosphere in The Garden soon exploded.

Murat, a young French Algerian prisoner, was walking the same path I had walked only minutes before when he was attacked by an Indonesian Chinese convict who shared a tiny hut with Penis Presley. Brandishing a freshly sharpened meat cleaver, he cut the French boy’s forearm down to the bone.

Murat cried out inaccurately in English: “He breaks my arm.” He then reported the attack correctly in French – “Il
a coupé mon bras”
– as he ran off crying in the direction of the French house with his forearm squirting out an almost unreal quantity of blood.

Moments later, Didier appeared in the path between the Chinese huts and began sucker punching every Chinaman in sight. He found the Indonesian still standing with the bloody meat clever in his hand and knocked him out with one solid blow. Then he beat up on poor Penis Presley again. From every surrounding shack, the Chinese poured out with clubs and knives to threaten him. As he was not intimidated, they attacked.

It occurred in the exact spot at the end of the bridge leading into the American cabin where the German kid had been assaulted the day before and where I had killed a rat “with a banana peel” four years earlier. I stood at the entryway watching as my aggressive cell mate, lying on his back after being struck by a club, was being hacked with a meat cleaver by a Hong Kong prisoner sitting on top of him. I screamed for his assailants to stop, but this time simply yelling did not work. I felt I had no choice but to enter the potentially murderous mêlée … so I did.

When I came running across the bridge with Bob’s old bamboo club, most of the adversaries backed away. I like to think they may have recognized that it was not just a clump of banana peels that I had in my hand. However, they also must surely have noticed that Bubba Hollywood, a man the size of any two and a half Chinese inmates, was watching from the entryway of the American hut. All the blueshirts in The Garden had evacuated themselves from the island as soon as the altercation began – except for the one visiting in the house. He was now hiding behind Bubba.

Still on his back on the walkway, Didier had somehow managed to get the meat cleaver-wielding attacker turned around on top of him and was trying to choke him while the Chinese assailant continued to chop at Didier over his shoulder. Dropping the club, I grabbed the Chinese prisoner’s wrist as he drew back to hack my cell mate again. A short tugging and pulling match ensued before I finally wrested the cleaver from his grip. In the struggle for the slippery, blood-covered weapon, I had to bend the cleaver in a ninety-degree angle in order to extract it from his grip. As a consequence of this maneuver, the tendons on the back of his other wrist were inadvertently severed. I then tossed the weapon into my hut at the blueshirt’s feet.

My attention was now drawn to recovering Bob’s bamboo club which another Chinese had already picked up to use against me. Reluctantly, but true to his word, Jean-Yves was calmly standing at the ready a few meters away, should he be needed. Under his foot was the club that he had relieved the Hong Kong prisoner of.

Didier was now standing again. With his face, arms and scalp lacerated in a dozen places, he roared at the other Chinese. One of his ears was spurting blood grotesquely and dangled by a thread of flesh as he continued to swing wildly in all directions. Other Westerners had now joined the fray. Because they had shown up empty-handed to a knife fight, some were cut or stabbed before routing all the Chinese from the island. The quasi-victors then directed their anger towards destroying the huts and property of the vanquished.

Weak and on the verge of fainting from loss of blood, Didier was carried past a phalanx of guards and blueshirts gathered outside the entrance to the island. With the other wounded, he was hauled off to the prison hospital.

The mayhem was continuing as I walked down the path to the gate of The Garden still carrying the stupid bamboo club. (Read: Still
stupidly
carrying the bamboo club.) A lone Thai guard entered through the gateway; I recognized him immediately as the chief of central control. This chief was one of the few incorruptible guards and the third highest ranking officer in the prison: a tall muscular man who I knew to be a very fair. In his hand, he carried the familiar four-foot rattan pole. He was a by-the-book, no-bullshit guy. His oldest son had been a junkie who had only recently committed suicide.

Realizing who it was, I dropped the club, squatted and raised my hands with palms together in front of my face. To my instant dismay, I noticed that my hands, arms and clothes were covered in blood.

This looks really bad for me, was all I could think.

Even though I had not struck or intentionally harmed anyone (hell, I had not even damaged anyone’s belongings), it looked like I had just committed a murder. At that moment, however, it was not the best time to start pleading my case.

To my surprise, the central control chief looked down at me and asked in Thai, “Are you wounded?” I answered that I was not.

Calmly ordering me to stay where I was, he continued alone into the depths of The Garden, where he walked among the prisoners pointing out those who appeared to him to have been involved and directed them to join me by the gate. When he returned to the line of suspects, some of whom had taken my cue and humbly squatted, he called for the hesitant guards and blueshirts. Now emboldened by the presence of his authority, they came swaggering onto the island. Injured suspects were taken to the hospital while the rest were taken to the Central Control Building to have leg chains applied.

Sleep that night came very hard. Only the evening before, I had fallen asleep optimistically fantasizing about what I was going do when my pardon came through. Now back in chains and on twenty-four-hour lockdown, I could only hope that none of the dozen or so combatants in the hospital would die. If I could have cried, I would have.

My self-absorbed pity party that night was apparently wasted: the next day, it was learned that only a few of those involved were seriously hurt. But even those unlucky ones should soon recover, it was said. The others with only bumps, bruises, scratches, small punctures and/or a few stitches went from the hospital to lockdown in chains. Within the next couple of days, all foreign embassies showed up at the prison to count heads and see what was happening. The overblown story, as reported in local newspapers, had been headlined
Farang Riot at Klong Prem Prison.

Marcia, the para-consul from American embassy, was the first to show up, followed soon thereafter by the French consul. Among the last to come out to the prison and check on their people were the Brits. Even though Hong Kong was then still a British colony, the embassy representatives seldom concerned themselves with their Chinese subjects. Once again, that obvious disparity was none of my business.

The prison authorities carried out a wide-ranging investigation of the incident over the next month. The Chinese involved refused to speak to the central control chief who had been placed in charge of interrogations. In contrast, when asked, I (like the other Westerners) told him the full the story as I had seen it which was verified by the blueshirt in the American hut who had witnessed the mêlée. One of the Chinese inmates rebuked me for co-operating, saying that in Hong Kong a convict never speaks. I reminded him that we were in Thailand, not in Hong Kong, but I don’t think he still really appreciated the difference.

After a few days in the hospital, Didier was returned to cell #165. During the day, Jean-Yves, who had not been implicated, was able to go to The Garden while Didier and I were locked in our cell 24/7.

Toward the end of the month, I almost began to wish that I had not become involved with his obsessive vendetta against the Chinese. Though I never voiced my feelings, I sensed that he resented needing to be saved by me from his bloody battle. Our friendly relationship seemed strained because of that incident.

The Kid sent up food daily via the keyboy along with funny cigarettes from Bubba, which helped a lot. But then Jean-Yves would return to the cell at evening lockup and, not really meaning to, compound the ill feelings by cranking up an argument just for the fun of it about any tiny aspect of “the incident”. Even though their silly debates were in French, I understood enough that I was often biting my tongue just to keep from laughing.

Fortunately, all inmates involved soon recovered from their injuries, more or less, and none of them filed any charges against the other. The Indonesian Chinese convict who had been the original aggressor on that day was sent to Building #7, where violent prisoners were often held for indefinite periods. Even after the prison surgeon did the best he could to repair his severed tendons, the Hong Kong guy who had chopped Didier would have a permanently crippled left hand. He was moved to another cell block section as well until he could again get his mind right.

A month had passed since the brawl when one morning, after the eight o’clock playing of the Thai National Anthem, the keyboys opened the cells of all the chained prisoners who had been involved. We were escorted by a nervous group of blueshirts to the building chief’s office. As had happened many times before, the building chief directed me to translate for him as he explained what the central control chief’s determination of the investigation was to be. Unlike previous occasions, when I had been simply been the messenger of his words for other
farang
inmates, this time the imperatives/orders were for me as well.

Two dozen of my fellow malcontents, both Western and Chinese, were crowded into his office. Some of these prisoners were squatting behind me, showing respect and proper deference, but most were defiantly standing. The building chief, holding his own four-foot rattan pole, was red-faced and sweating profusely as he walked around from behind his desk, bent down and softly hissed to me, “You make me lose face with my superiors.”

Oh no, this is starting out badly, I silently moaned.

He stood up straight to address us as one. With an expansive fake smile, he calmly addressed those assembled there as I struggled to interpret for them. Of course, I could only translate into English, so those who understood English translated for others into their own languages.

“Good luck for you,” the chief began, with an insincere grin. “You have filed no criminal charges against each other in the court. The warden sees that both sides have equal fault in this matter and orders that you make penitence among yourselves.” There was a disbelieving murmur in the room as I related what was said.

“You will have your chains removed. Go now.” And, with his voice beginning to waver, he said. “I see you.” Then his demeanor did another Jekyll-and-Hyde swing. “You make me lose face,” he yelled at us.

When I repeated this in English as calmly as possible, he snapped down at me, saying that I should have spoken the translation of his words with the same emotion as he had said them. I had no choice but to decline. Trying to extricate myself from the situation with some grace, I apologized to him, saying that it was my understanding that the warden had ordered me to make penitence to the others. My relationship with this gentleman began to sour from that point on.

Glimmers Of Hope

It was the morning of Christmas Eve. The chains were removed and The Garden atmosphere was back to being as normal as it had ever been. “Normal” really was not the correct characterization, since nothing there had ever really been what normal people would call normal. A return to the status quo is more like it. There were a few new
farang
faces on the island and a new American in the house.

The Thai prison system has a way of chewing up and spitting out those
farangs
who fail to acclimate. Andy Botts, the heroin-smuggling
Haole
from Hawaii, was the latest unfortunate young man to be receiving correction from the Thai people. An ex-con from Stateside, Andy had much less trouble acclimating himself to prison life in Thailand than most others.

He and Bubba Hollywood were already big buddies, so I knew that Andy was probably good people. I never heard him whine. Bubba, if nothing else, was a quick and generally accurate judge of character. It was a quality in him that I respected, since usually my own first impressions were wrong.

Because he had been incarcerated before, Andy was full of clever questions about his new environment and it was obvious that he would soon be taking everything in stride. I explained how the petition for Royal Pardon worked and perhaps bragged hopefully about how I thought that a positive reply for mine should be coming any day now. It was wishful thinking, I can assure you, since I was actually full of doubt about the final outcome.

The Western embassies had been working on a prisoner transfer treaty with Thailand. If agreed to by all parties, then a
farang
prisoner could be transferred into the custody of his home country’s judicial system after four years in a Thai penitentiary. That would eventually become an option to get out of Thai prison. But the idea of ending up in US federal prison, being eligible for parole in a few more years and with a federal conviction hanging over your head, had me obviously preferring a pardon from His Majesty. Having already been incarcerated in the US before, I knew there would be no thatched roof bamboo hut in a garden, no invitations to eat
kwitdeo
noodle soup at Sompomg’s hut while listening to a kid singing into an egg, and no Thai ganja. I determined that if I still had to be in a prison, then my preference was to stay as a guest in a Thai prison.

When Andy asked about the possibility of escape, I said, “Forget it.”

At that time only one
farang
had ever escaped a Thai prison. Roland Parisienne, a French Canadian, had originally been arrested upcountry for possession of two grams of heroin and was sentenced to three years. He had managed to escape from Chiang Mai Prison only to be caught two weeks later in Bangkok. Without a passport or a flight ticket out, and with his face splashed across the pages of newspapers, the whole of Thailand had become his prison. Captured, he was charged with escape and later picked up an additional charge of possession of twenty grams of heroin while still incarcerated. In 1986, after doing seven years, he was pardoned by The King.