Cold Hit

by Christopher G. Moore

  “The man died,” said Noi.

  “And I need to comfort his family,” said Father Andrew. “But first I have to catch my breath.”

  “And see if you can work us into your schedule,” said Calvino.

  “That can be arranged,” said Father Andrew, looking at his empty wineglass.

  Jess leaned over and filled the glass. “I am learning about Thailand,” said Jess.

  “Vincent wouldn’t have brought you here if he didn’t think I could help. I am not saying that you aren’t in for a hard time. But we can manage. The community already accepts you as a priest and what’s-her-name as a nun.”

  “Sister Teresa,” said Calvino.

  Father Andrew crossed himself.

  “I specialize in hard times,” said Father Andrew “Or have your eyes and ears been shut the last hour or so?”

  He knew the score and that, given who was on the other side, the odds of the game were always against him. He was also straight, had no time for nonsense, and lived in a world where there was never time to explain the details or for theory. Too many people dying, doing drugs, robbing, whoring, and giving up hope. Too many street kids who never knew the meaning of hope or love. Father Andrew applied his faith as a triage to stop that last of drop of hope from dripping out of his community. He reached over and touched Jess’s shoulder.

  “As long as you and Sister Teresa are staying with me in Klong Toey, no one, and I mean no one, is going to touch you.”

  Jess put his hand over Father Andrew’s. “I believe you, Father.”

  LAPD Officer Jess, born in Bangkok, a Buddhist, understood how an entire community of Thais had put its full faith in this single man. He felt the power, the strength of the man. He believed this priest could do exactly what he said. Jess had acquired an Americanized sense of justice; he believed in equality of law enforcement, that no one was above the law. He had forgotten a few things about how things really worked—like the influence of the people who had set out to murder him—members of the hidden class with their access to privileged information and power. These people did not go around the center of power; they were the center, the core, the black hole that was so strong that it bent light, justice, fairness, and equality. No one betrayed a fellow member of the privileged club. Their motto—handed from one generation to the next—everything and everyone could be bought: business opportunities, seats in elite schools for their children, forest land in national reserves, promotions, concessions, and friendship. Normal laws did not apply to them and there was disdain for individual merit and transparency. Those who questioned or failed to play by their rules disappeared from the game. What made the network work so efficiently while it remained so well hidden was the halo of fear and silence surrounding the members, keeping this class out of sight (except at high society functions), out of the press (except the society page), and out of controversy (except the occasional son who was arrested for shooting or beating someone and then released, or a rigged set of examinations for school entrance that was exposed and quickly faded away). The release from jail, the fading away of the scandals—this was only part of their power. But that power didn’t extend to LA. Jess could not be bought.

  He would testify in Charn’s trial; he would do what he could to convince Charn to implicate others. And Charn might listen to Jess, who was older and thus had to be deferred to, and Jess was Thai, and Jess was persuasive.

  He had attempted to persuade Charn to breach the code of silence. They wanted Jess dead. It was no more complicated than that. The complication had been caused by Jess’s failure to believe justice prevailed; that would only happen if he could bust the big boss and so far Charn had not been co-operating. He was learning about justice in Klong Toey and Father Andrew had all the makings of a good teacher. It was as if he were learning kick-boxing again. Watching a master demonstrate the moves, flow through the drills, automatically anticipate the angle and velocity of the next punch.

  Taking a bodyguard assignment at face value had been a mistake. But finding Noi had been that lucky bonus that a mistake sometimes pays. If he could return with her to LA, she would help him turn Charn against Kowit and Gabe Holerstone. Whether there would be sufficient evidence to charge Wes Naylor, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t made up his mind about Naylor’s role in all of this. Was he an innocent dupe or was he involved in the smuggling operation himself? Most of the time Jess had a gut feeling one way or another. Naylor, however, had thrown him off-balance. He simply did not know how to read his act.

  Father Andrew led them outside the house and down the narrow concrete pathway to the house of dead man’s sister. They went inside and Father Andrew said a prayer. Jess and Noi, following Father Andrew, heads bowed, eyes closed, hands folded, joined him. Calvino wasn’t sure whether they were pretending or whether these were real prayers and were for the dead man who lay on a mattress in the corner—or whether the prayers were for themselves. After a few minutes, Father Andrew led them back to his house. He went upstairs and a few minutes later came back down dressed in his pure white vestments.

  “Now, it’s time for Mass.”

  The birthday cake girl who had caused him to lose his five hundred baht tagged along as they walked through the slum and out of the parking lot and across the road to the slaughterhouses. Halfway across the parking lot Father Andrew stopped to talk to a man who was using a hammer to pull nails out of a wooden door. The man had a pile of lumber under his feet. A woman in baggy jeans and a T-shirt held the door as the man extracted the nails with a hammer. It was hot and dark in the parking lot.

  “Where’d you get the door?” asked Father Andrew, shining a flashlight on the man, then the door and the woman holding it.

  There was no answer. The man looked up for a moment with no sense of recognition or concern that Father Andrew in his formal white robes had appeared out of the darkness. Father Andrew then addressed the her.

  “Did he steal the door?”

  “No, we paid for it,” she said.

  Father Andrew watched in silence as the man pulled out nails. He wouldn’t talk to Father Andrew; he wouldn’t even look at him. Jess couldn’t stand the disrespect and kicked the door out of the woman’s hands.

  “Get out,” said Jess.

  The man held the hammer and took a step towards Father Andrew. Jess dropped him with a high kick that hit him square in the face. He was out cold.

  “Let’s go, Father Andrew,” said Calvino.

  So much for a low profile, Calvino thought. A singing nun and a kickboxing priest who lays out a man with one solid kick in the face.

  “Good idea,” said Jess.

  “The man is a thief and a drug addict. I’ve been waiting for years for the cops to take some action. I guess I had to wait until the LAPD came to town,” Father Andrew said as he pointed the flashlight into the dark.

  “And the woman?” asked Jess.

  “She’s a whore who sells herself around Lumpini Park,” said the straight talking priest. “That is as low as you can go in the whoring business. She has six kids. She’s also on drugs. And now and again, she deals drugs. They’ve both tested HIV positive. They make a nice couple. You know, I look at a man like that, and it tests my faith. It’s not like he’s human. He would kill you . . . he would kill all of us in a minute and not think that he had done anything wrong. It would be like pulling nails out of the door.”

  As they continued to the slaughterhouse, Noi tripped and nearly fell; Calvino caught her by the arm, breaking her fall. She had stumbled over a young man who sat hunched on the pavement. The young man lifted his eyes and smiled as Father Andrew shined his flashlight on him.

  “Why don’t you come to Mass?”

  The boy made no response, looking up blankly into the beam of the flashlight. He wore a short-sleeved green football jersey but he had no arms. A birth defect had left him with tiny claw-like appendages attached to the shoulder.

  “Get off drugs and come and work for me at the center. You can be an
artist.”

  Still no response but a sloppy drug-induced grin.

  “At least get out of the road before a car runs over you.” The boy got to his feet with no hands to help him and wandered off into the dark.

  As they entered the slaughterhouse, Father Andrew explained that the kid was a first-rate artist; he used his feet to paint, and he had shown talent. But there was one rule for working for Father Andrew: no drugs. He had just finished his story when they rounded a corner where about thirty people sat on the floor in front of a small altar. Laotian workers with no papers. This was the place where they hid at night. Dozens of cheap fluorescent strips—the neon lights of the poor—hung from the ceiling illuminating the faces of mostly yings and children in the group. Father Andrew walked to the altar, raised his arms, his eyes closed, and he gave a blessing.

  “Sisters and brothers, I am honored you have come to this mass. I know that you have suffered. I know that you live in fear. You feel abandoned, alone. I want to tell you the story about a small girl who is very much alone. Her name is Dew. And she’s eight years old and her parents are both dead. She has two younger brothers and Dew is the head of the household. She finds food for her family. She goes to school. And when her brother was crying and wanted to go home, she went to his hong in the center and sat on his cot. She told him that he should close his eyes. That she was going for a taxi to take them home. Her brother closed his eyes and went to sleep. The next day was easier for him in the slum. And the next day easier than the day before. You see, it is people like Dew who teach us that even the most humble and weak can find strength, and they can give strength to others. I ask you to follow Dew’s footsteps. Do not give up. Do not give in to defeat. Find the light that is in all of us, the one that can give you hope in the moment of darkness.”

  As he was speaking to the worshippers, a group of men started unloading pigs from a large truck parked ten feet behind the altar. Calvino touched Jess on the shoulder, pointing toward the truck.

  “I don’t like the look of this. This time try to keep out of it. You kick one more person in the head and we will have broadcast our location to everyone who wants to know.”

  Jess nodded. “You’re right.”

  The half-dozen men spoke to each other in Khmer. That meant they had come into Bangkok from Si Sa Ket or Surin Province. The men worked with sharp, long-bladed knives. One of the men cut the throat of a pig. Other pigs waiting for the knife squealed with pure fear. Blood shot out, hitting the edge of Father Andrew’s robe. He turned to the men and spoke to them in Thai. “Please, leave us for fifteen minutes. We are giving prayers. In your religion you pray, don’t you? Can’t you spare us a few minutes?”

  The Khmer workers ignored his plea. A large knife quickly flashed as the worker slit another pig’s throat and more blood splattered Father Andrew’s vestments. The spray of blood struck Noi’s habit. She wiped a droplet of blood off her arm. Rubbed it between her fingers until it became sticky. Some of the kids in the makeshift congregation started to cry. One of the mothers lifted her child, her bamboo mat under one arm, and quietly left. The mood of the workers was turning ugly. They knew what they were doing and no one was going to stop them from hacking away at the dead pigs.

  Calvino pulled Jess back. “Let Father Andrew handle it. He’s a pro and he won’t need to kick anyone.”

  “Please don’t do this,” said Father Andrew, bowing his head. “Let us pray.”

  The slaughtering of pigs continued. The Khmer worked efficiently together killing pigs, one after another, dozens of carcasses piled up, and in minutes Father Andrew’s vestment was soaked in blood. His eyeglasses and forehead and cheeks dripped with pig’s blood. His birthday special mass looked like a blood sacrifice gone wrong. It was time to leave. The Laotians had vanished. One by one the neon lights went out as if they could not bear to see the priest bloodied. Father Andrew stood at the altar, his arms extended. “There’s nothing left to celebrate,” Father Andrew whispered. “Let’s go back.” The only people left in the slaughterhouse were Jess, Noi and Calvino and the Khmer pig killers, who had their own lights rigged up and carried on with the blood letting. None of the men looked up as they worked carving up the pigs. Some of the men dragged a fresh-killed carcass over to the boiling vat of water, hoisted the dead pig, and dumped the body into the water where another worker scrubbed off the hair. The blood and gore flowed down the concrete drains in the pen. The Khmer laughed at Father Andrew; their arms covered with blood, they pointed and laughed at the priest. Fluorescent lights shining from a long row of shacks made of plywood and paper looked like swifts’ nests at ceiling level where dozens of eyes peered down at the spectacle of blood and death as if watching a battlefield. Father Andrew looked up at them. He had come to preach hope and strength and courage and there he was covered in blood, covered in humiliation.

  As he turned around he saw Calvino, hand under his jacket, holding his .38 police special. He couldn’t stand the humiliation of his friend. The smug smiles on the Khmers’ faces as if they were untouchable and these farangs could do absolutely nothing to stop them slaughtering pigs.

  “I am not gonna let them do this,” Calvino said.

  It was Jess’s turn to rein in Calvino, grabbing Calvino’s arm. “It won’t help.”

  Jess had been waiting, thinking at first that this was a setup. Someone had found out they were in Klong Toey and these men had been sent to finish the business that the bomb had left unfinished. But they had shown no interest in Calvino, Jess, or Noi. They were doing their job. They didn’t care about anyone or anything else. Jess walked to the back of the slaughterhouse and talked with a vendor squatting near a boiling pot. The vendor told him that the pig killers were just another illegal crew of Khmer with no papers doing the dirty work of a Chinese merchant.

  Jess was returning to the altar as Father Andrew and the others were leaving the slaughterhouse.

  “I am at a loss for words,” said Father Andrew. His voice was shallow, small, and distant. “I am sorry to have let you and your friends down.”

  “You haven’t let us down,” said Jess. “If anything we let you down. We should have done something.”

  Something hung in the air like a lover’s excuse.

  “This isn’t your fight.” The blood dripping off his chin. “This is my turf. Or it was mine. There is nothing you or anyone can do.”

  Noi was still on her knees, praying, as if somehow she could make the blood of today disappear. Father Andrew tapped her on the shoulder. She opened one eye. He motioned for her to rise. She raised her hand palms up, showing the blood caked on her fingers.

  “It’s time to go, my child. The damage is done.”

  No one spoke as they walked back through the parking lot, passing the drug addicts working through the pile of lumber, taking nails out of another door. A Por Tek Tueng van was parked next to Father Andrew’s Toyota and two workers, or bodysnatchers as the locals called them, loaded the dead man’s remains for the final trip to a wat as his relatives and neighbours looked on. Everyone stopped as they saw Father Andrew covered in pig’s blood. The word spread quickly through the community and soon a crowd stared at their defiled priest. It took some time for them to understand what had happened. At first they thought he had been in an accident. Everyone was talking at the same time. Father Andrew raised his hands to quiet them.

  “I am going to have to leave you now. You can see what they’ve done to me. I have lived with you for thirty years. But I can live with you no longer. I must leave. You can see what the Khmer slaughtering the pigs have done to me? I was holding Mass and they did this to me.” He made each word separate with tiny pauses in between. There was a silence, and he raised his hands. “This defilement. I have lost my dignity. How can any priest without dignity serve you?

  He cannot. Without dignity, there is no respect, and without respect, faith and belief cannot exist. I have failed as a priest. I am going to the church and tomorrow I will leave. I will not come ba
ck here. I cannot come back here. Please understand me.” He started to say something else, his lips moved, and he was giving a benediction, blessing them, his hand raised high in the darkness.

  A dozen men quietly moved out of the crowd and started across the parking lot towards the slaughterhouse.

  “Jess, take Noi back to Father Andrew’s and wait.”

  He looked at Calvino. “You’re not going back there.”

  “It’s going to be worked out the Thai way,” said Calvino. Another group of men from the slum who had been talking slipped away from the main crowd. Calvino found himself following them through the parking lot. The guy pulling nails out of the doors saw them coming; he dropped his hammer and ran. The woman with six kids stood her ground as several of the men picked up two-by-fours from the pile of stolen lumber.

  They continued walking as a unit towards the lights in the slaughterhouse. Without any warning, they entered the pen where the Khmer were butchering pigs. The leader of the group walked forward, swung the piece of lumber as hard as he could, smashing one of the Khmers’ legs. The man fell hard on the cement, howling with pain, his leg shattered. The femur was shattered; a shard of bone stuck out as if he had stepped on a landmine. The other men set to work quickly, felling the other Khmer. It took less than a minute for the Khmer at the far end of the pen to realize what was going on but by then it was too late as the second group came in behind them and beat the last of the workers until the two by fours were splintered and bloodied. The eyes in the lofts above the slaughterhouse floor peered down at the shattered Khmer whose broken bodies lay among the slaughtered pigs on the bloodied floor. Moaning and screaming and shouting in Khmer. None of them could walk. They were dragging themselves through the blood, gore and slime, afraid the Thais would come in and finish them off. That had never been their intention. The Thais said nothing as they battered a couple of the Khmer unconscious. Calvino had never seen any group work with such precision, taking out each of the workers. Breaking an arm or a leg. The blows were not intended to kill but to maim. By the time they had finished, the slaughterhouse was silent. The Thais threw down the bloodied pieces of wood and walked out, lighting cigarettes and speaking in low voices about how the Khmer should stay in Cambodia and how the Thais had shown them mercy given the grave sin they had committed. They filed past Calvino. The leader, who had lingered a moment, stopped beside Calvino, taking a long suck on his cigarette, and said, “Tell Father Andrew that he has his dignity back. And we would like him to return to the community. We beg him not to leave us. Tell him he is respected and that he is needed.”