‘Lucky? You think I’m lucky? You’ve no idea what’s going on, do you?’
‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘I’m the fall guy,’ he said. ‘The farang fall guy.’
‘They’re going to blame you for the fire?’
He opened his eyes. ‘What do you think? I’m the token farang at the club, who else are they going to hang it on?’
‘But the papers said that the fire was started by the band.’
Marsh snorted. ‘And who hired the band? The farang. And who was responsible for the fire inspections? The farang. And who said that the fire exits should be locked? The farang. And who said it was okay to fill the car park to double its capacity?’
‘The farang?’
‘Exactly. They’re going to hang me out to dry, mate. Life behind bars if they get their way. You know that whatever happens, the farang gets the blame. And I’m the farang.’
‘Why do you think you’re going to be the fall guy?’
‘Because a lawyer came to see me yesterday saying he wanted to discuss my defence. He said that the police were preparing to press charges and he wanted to make sure that I was ready.’
‘He wasn’t your lawyer?’
‘He works for a firm that one of the partners uses,’ said Marsh. ‘I told him to go screw himself.’
I nodded. Telling Thais to go screw themselves wasn’t the smartest course of action.
Especially Thai lawyers.
‘I wouldn’t think that the police would be looking to charge you, unless you’d done something wrong.’
Marsh tried to sneer at me but he grunted with pain instead. ‘How long have you been in Thailand, Turtledove?’
‘A few years.’
‘Yeah, well you should have learned by now that people who do things wrong often end up getting away with it, and people who’ve done nothing often end up in prison. Getting punished here has more to do with who you are and how much you have rather than what you did.’
Marsh was a cynic.
But he was probably right.
‘The fire exits. Was it your idea to lock them?’
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘What do you think I am?
‘Whose then?’
‘Thongchai. He’s one of the owners.’
‘From Isarn?’
‘Udon Thani,’ said Marsh. ‘He ran away as soon as the fire started. Saw the flames and just turned and ran.’
‘And he wanted the fire exits locked?’
Marsh sighed. ‘We’d been having problems with people sneaking in through the back. One guy would pay to get in and he’d kick open a fire door and a dozen of his mates would pile in. I said we should just station security guards at the exits but he said we didn’t have a budget for that.’ Marsh shook his head. ‘Two hundred baht would get you a guard for the whole night. The price of one beer in the club. Cheap bastard.’
‘So he had the exits locked?’
‘Chains and padlocked. Did it himself and carried the keys. I screamed for him to come back and open the doors but he didn’t stop.’
‘They’re saying that it was fireworks that started the fire.’
‘Yeah. The idiot lead singer set them off halfway through his set.’
‘Didn’t anyone know what he was going to do?’
‘It was their first time in the club. I was there at the sound check during the day and there was no mention of fireworks then. I was near the entrance keeping an eye on things because we had a hundred or so kids trying to get in even though we were full. First I knew of it was when he takes a lighter out of his pocket and he lights these black things. Next thing I know there are white sparks everywhere and the crowd is cheering. Then the showers of sparks get bigger and then the ceiling catches fire and everyone starts screaming. That’s when Thongchai ran for it.’
‘How did you get burned? You said you were by the entrance.’
‘I was trying to get people out. The power went so all the lights went out. There was a surge to get out and people fell. I stayed as long as I could but…’
He closed his eyes.
‘You know what I don’t understand?’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
He opened his eyes. ‘When I did get out there were hundreds of people watching and most of them were holding up their cellphones, taking pictures and videoing. Why didn’t they help?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why were they standing there taking pictures of people dying? They could have helped but they didn’t.’
It wasn’t a question that I could answer.
I don’t thing anyone could.
It was the way of the world in the twenty-first century. People preferred to be observers rather than participants, and nothing was real unless it had appeared on YouTube.
‘They could have helped, but they didn’t. I helped and I got third degree burns and now they want to hang me out to dry. It’s not fair.’
He was right, of course. It wasn’t fair.
I held out the photograph again. ‘Ronnie, did you see this boy in the club that night?’
He squinted at the picture. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You were at the door all night?’
‘That’s the thing, I wasn’t. I was moving around.’
‘So he could have gone in when you weren’t on the door?’
‘It’s possible.’
I sighed. ‘Well, it was worth a try.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Marsh.
‘Young American kid on his gap year. His parents are worried sick. They haven’t heard from him in a while and then they read about the fire.’
‘Close family?’
‘Mormons,’ I said.
‘I left home when I was sixteen and I don’t think my parents even noticed.’ He sighed. ‘I am in so much shit, Bob.’
‘It might not be as bad as you think.’
‘The lawyer said the prosecution were looking to put me away for life.’
‘I spoke to a Public Prosecutor yesterday and she said the investigation was ongoing.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. The lawyer said that I was going to get the blame for the fire certificate not being up to date, for the locked exits and for the underage kids there. He said the best thing to do was to just admit everything and throw myself at the mercy of the court and that I’d probably only get ten years and that would get cut in half at some point.’
I nodded.
The bit about the sentence being cut was right. That’s how it worked in Thailand. On major holidays like the King’s birthday thousands of prisoners had their sentences reduced. It happened so often that a guy sentenced to thirty years for murder could easily be back home in five years. The only sentences that weren’t reduced were those of drug dealers.
‘Sounds to me like you need a lawyer, Ronnie. Someone with your best interests at heart.’
‘Do you think?’ he said, his voice loaded with sarcasm.
‘Do you know anyone?’
‘Never needed one before,’ he said.
‘I’ve got a friend who knows what he’s doing,’ I said. ‘I’ll get him to drop by.’
‘Thai?’
‘For this sort of thing, you need a Thai lawyer,’ I said. ‘And you need a good one.’
I stood up and both knees cracked. Marsh grinned. ‘You’re getting old, Bob.’
‘We all are,’ I said.
‘Can you see the remote?’
It was on a shelf next to his drip. I picked it up.
‘Put the sound up so I can hear it, will you?’ I boosted the volume and he thanked me. ‘You could try talking to Lek and Tam. They might have seen your boy.’
‘They were on the door?’
‘Yeah. They’re kickboxers, they train at the gym in Washington Square most days. You’d better say you’re a friend of mine or they’ll not talk to you.’
‘
Thanks, Ronnie.’
‘No sweat. Just don’t forget that lawyer.’
CHAPTER 8
There were half a dozen girls giggling at the reception desk when I got out of the elevator on the second floor. I was there for a battery of tests as part of a yearly health check. The sort of annual service that would cost you several grand back in the States and costs a couple of hundred at the Bumrungrad, and you’re waited on hand and foot every step of the way. A nurse who looked sixteen smile coyly and took me to a seat where a girl who could have been her twin took a blood sample that I swear to God caused me not one iota of discomfort. I don’t know if they used extra sharp needles or if the sight of two beautiful creatures in nurse’s uniforms dulled the pain, but I felt nothing.
I was taken to a waiting area where after five minutes another nurse apologised for the delay and gave me a coupon for a free cup of coffee or a portion of French fries. Two minutes later I was in to see the doctor who would be overseeing the tests.
Doctor Duangtip.
There was a battery of framed certificates on the wall behind him. Bangkok. London. San Francisco. You could buy similar certificates in any print shop in the Khao San Road, but his were the real thing. I’d been coming to see Doctor Duangtip every year for the past four years, so I knew the drill. A physical, blood tests, a cardiac test that had me running on a treadmill with electrodes strapped to my upper body, a chest X-ray and a lower abdomen ultrasound. Two days later a brief chat about the results and a suggestion that I should try cutting down on fatty foods and alcohol to lower my cholesterol. My cholesterol levels, good and bad, had remained a few per cent higher than average since I’d been having the yearly check-ups, and cutting back on fatty food and going to the gym three times a week hadn’t made any difference either way so I’d cancelled my gym membership and eaten what the hell I wanted.
Doctor Duangtip ran through my medical history and then sent me of for the first of the tests. I was totally relaxed.
I was fine.
I was fit.
I was healthy.
I was going to live forever.
Little did I know.
CHAPTER 9
Washington Square is a hangover from the days when Thailand was an R amp;R destination for American troops fighting in Vietnam. The main venue slap in the middle was the Washington Theatre, a huge cinema with more than a thousand seats. Around the theatre were dozens of bars, clubs and massage parlours, all just a few hundred yards from the intersection of Asoke and Sukhumvit roads. After the war ended the troops went home but the Square stayed much as it was, frequented by vets who preferred to stay in Asia rather than return to the real world. Time took its toll, on the vets and on the area, and these days Washington Square is a pale shadow of what it once was. Some of the bars are still there, and you can still get a soapy massage, but the cinema became a transvestite cabaret show and then a sports bar, and every year there’s talk of the area being demolished to make way for a shopping mall or condominiums.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Washington Square. The Bourbon Street restaurant, tucked away behind the cinema building, serves great Cajun food, and the bars are quiet havens where you can have a drink and watch American sport and listen to American voices mumbling around you. And I’m a big fan of the Dubliner, an Irish pub at the entrance to the square which serves breakfast all day and a decent cup of coffee most days. The Muay Thai gym wasn’t a place I’d ever visited, mainly because they didn’t serve breakfast or coffee and because these days my preferred exercise is a game of tennis with my next door neighbour.
It was a hot day, probably in the low forties, but there was no air-conditioning in the gym. Instead they had opened all the windows and had half a dozen floor fans on full power, and the contrast with the blisteringly-cold air-con of the taxi that dropped me outside had beads of sweat forming on my forehead within seconds.
I took off my jacket and wiped my forehead with a handkerchief. ‘I’m looking for Lek, or Tam’ I said to a stocky man sitting behind a metal table reading a Muay Thai magazine and chewing on a toothpick.
The man looked up and frowned, confused because I’d spoken to him in Thai. ‘You speak Thai?’ he said.
‘This is Thailand, right?’ I said, and he laughed.
‘Why is your Thai so good?’ he asked, switching to Khmer. He had nut-brown skin and a snub nose and I figured he was probably from Surin or Sisaket, close to the Cambodian border. He was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of two kickboxers slamming into each other and baggy tracksuit bottoms.
‘I watch too much television,’ I answered, speaking in Khmer and throwing in a few curse words for emphasis.
He nodded, impressed. ‘Thai girlfriend?’
‘Thai wife,’ I said.
‘From where?’
‘Chiang Rai.’
‘Children?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. Thais had no reservations about asking the most personal questions of people they had only just met.
‘Is Lek here? Or Tam?’ I asked.
He took the toothpick out of his mouth and jabbed it towards the far end of the gymnasium where a lanky trainer in a baggy tracksuit was holding a punchbag for a bald-headed Westerner who was grunting every time he launched a kick which thudded against the canvas with the sound of a seal being clubbed to death. ‘That’s Lek.’
I sat down on a wicker chair and waited for the session to finish. The bald guy wasn’t a fighter, and he certainly wasn’t fit. After a minute or two he was bathed in sweat and he was barely getting his kicks above knee height. Eventually he waved Lek away and bent double, gasping for breath. Lek patted him on the back and draped a towel around his shoulders before helping him over to the changing rooms. Lek reappeared a couple of minutes later holding a bottle of water.
‘Farang here wants a word!’ shouted the guy with the newspaper.
Lek looked over at me and jutted out his chin. ‘You here to train?’ he asked in accented English.
‘Me?’ I patted my stomach. ‘My fighting days are over.’ I spoke in Thai, and gestured at the changing rooms. ‘What about him, when will we be seeing him in Lumpini?’ I asked, referring to the city’s main Muay Thai stadium.
‘He thinks he’s Rambo,’ said Lek. ‘Wants to get fit so that he can be a mercenary in Iraq.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said.
Two more Westerners appeared at the entrance. They were in the twenties with the sort of muscles that only came from steroids. They both had their names tattooed in Thai across their left forearms. Michael and Martin. They waied Lek but spoiled the effect by grunting at the same time. They looked at me with hard faces as they walked to the changing rooms as if daring me to pick a fight with them.
I smiled.
Smiling is the best way of dealing with aggression, I’ve always found.
Unless you’ve got a gun strapped to your waist, of course.
I didn’t have a gun, so I smiled.
‘Ronnie Marsh sent me,’ I said. ‘I took the photograph of Jon Junior from my pocket and showed it to him. ‘The night of the fire, was this boy there? In the club.’
Lek wrinkled his nose. It was a nose that had been hit so many times that it was almost flush against his face giving him the look of a confused monkey. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Maybe?’
‘Farangs all look the same to me,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Was he with anyone?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Because if he was with a girl I’d probably remember the girl. Girls are more memorable. Especially pretty girls.’
‘Yeah, I get it. Is Tam around?’
Lek pointed upstairs. ‘He’s sleeping.’
‘Okay if I go and ask him?’
‘He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s sleeping.’
‘I’ll be gentle.’
I went up the stairs. They opened into a landing where there were three chipboard doors. There was a buzz-saw snoring coming from one of the rooms and
I pushed open the door to find a stocky Thai man wearing nothing but red and gold Muay Thai shorts lying face down on a stained mattress.
‘Khun Tam?’ I said.
The snoring continued so I bent down and shook him by the arm.
Big mistake.
He let out a shriek, jumped up into a fighting crouch and threw a punch that I only just managed to avoid by falling backwards and staggering against the wall.
‘Whoa!’ I shouted. ‘I come in peace.’
Tam drew back his right fist but then he checked himself. ‘Did you touch me?’
‘Not in a bad way,’ I said. ‘You were snoring.’
‘Who are you? He put his hands on his hips. He was dark-skinned and his chest and abdomen were the texture of seasoned mahogany.
‘My name’s Bob,’ I said. ‘Ronnie Marsh sent me.’ I took out the photograph of Jon Junior. ‘He wanted me to ask you if you remember this boy from the night of the fire.’
Tam looked at the picture and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘No,’ he said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I was on the door all night and I didn’t see him.’
I put the picture away and thanked him.
‘How is Khun Ronnie?’ he asked.
‘Not good,’ I said. ‘He’s in the Bumrungrad.’
‘He saved a lot of people. Stayed inside to help them get out.’
‘What about you?’
‘I went outside, phoned the fire brigade.’
‘What about Khun Thongchai? What did he do?’
His eyes narrowed as he looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why do you care about him?’
I shrugged. ‘Khun Ronnie said he ran away.’
Tam avoided my gaze and didn’t reply, letting me know that whether Thongchai had stayed or run away was none of my business, or his.
I thanked him and went downstairs. Lek had gone and the guy with the newspaper smiled as I left.
I had a definite ‘no’ and I had a ‘maybe’ from a bouncer who only remembered girls so I was fairly confident that Jon Junior hadn’t been in the Kube on the night that it had gone up in flames.
It would just be nice to be sure.
Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon Page 5