by Yigal Zur
Strung out or otherwise, he had identified me as Israeli.
“Why should I?” I asked. The piece of human shit had striking black eyes. They were the only thing about him that was clean.
“Around here they believe that if you give to the monks, you’ll be rich in the next life, if you buy a poor man a beer, you’ll find love in this life. It’s all about racking up karma points.” I laughed, gesturing to the young waitress in a yellow T-shirt to bring another bottle. He held it up to his mouth and took a long drink. His hand was shaking, but there was the sign of a good upbringing in the way he said, “Thanks, bro.”
Two young punks walked by and opened their foul mouths. “Hey, Valium. You find yourself a sucker?” Instantly, his distant smile disappeared, along with the longing for a different life that I thought I’d glimpsed in his eyes. All that was left was bile. “What’s it to you?” he shot back.
“Why ‘Valium’?” I asked.
“That’s what they call me. I can’t remember my real name. It’s the Datura. I get these headaches. Agony. Then I scream for Valium. It’s the only thing that helps.” With a laugh, he added, “It’s also the only thing I can get without a prescription. So everyone calls me Valium.”
Moonflower, Datura innoxia, I thought. He was another victim of the plant with the innocent-looking white bell-shaped flowers that contain alkaloids from the atropine family, a poison that causes hallucinations and can be lethal if not used properly. Not long ago I found Yoav, an Israeli kid whose memory was erased by a few drops extracted from a Datura plant. The sadhus in India, holy men who have renounced the material world in search of more profound meaning, take it to induce the deepest meditative state. Two or three drops and they can cross the boundaries of consciousness into the depths of the soul, into a madness where they wander through the infinity of the incomprehensible. You have to be a very stupid falang to imagine you can handle something the sadhus have learned to control over thousands of years of meditation, hallucinations, delirium, and asceticism. All I could do for him was ask, “Another beer, Valium?”
“Sure,” he said, with a crafty look in his eyes. What an elementary existence, I thought. “That club across the street, who owns it?” I asked. I was hoping it was only his long-term memory that had been wiped out.
“Weiss,” he said. “The man’s got bucks and balls. He hit it big. Used to date one of the top models in Thailand. He’s got connections all over. Everyone knows him.”
“Can I get H around here?” I asked.
Valium was getting excited. He could already see this was going to pay off. “Just H? I can get you anything you want. China White, ecstasy, speed, opium, ganja, Buddha stick. Just say the word.”
“Is Weiss in charge of the transport?”
He started laughing like a madman. “My dad was in charge of transport for the electric company.” He laughed hysterically, and then stopped abruptly. Apparently, he still had a trace of common sense. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
Israelis control one of the trafficking routes for hard drugs in the East. I’m not talking about backpackers hoping to make it rich by doing a little amateur smuggling. I’m talking about real crime syndicates. I’ve heard from several sources that merely transporting the drugs isn’t enough for them anymore. Their appetite has grown. They want to get into production too, become partners in the opium fields in Laos. And I knew that an agent of one of the biggest syndicates had been in Bangkok, negotiating with Myanmar’s military junta over construction of a plant to manufacture ya ba, the “crazy pill” that’s the drug of choice in Thailand. Was Sigal’s disappearance connected in some way to the drug lords? At this stage, I was working on the assumption that it was, but I still didn’t know how or how directly. What had she done that set their food chain on fire? And what link was Weiss in that chain? Micha Waxman’s murder was proof that the people involved weren’t just little fish. I had no doubt that a lot of drugs, and a lot of money, were on the line.
It was time to leave. I gestured for Valium to get lost. His years of living on the streets told him he wasn’t going to get any more out of me. The road to Nirvana is paved with obstacles. The beers I’d bought him were the most he could hope for, and he knew the time had come to move on. I realized I wasn’t much different from him. I, too, was feeding off the morsels of information and half-uttered remarks I managed to squeeze out of the people I came into contact with in Bangkok. It’s a lousy feeling to know that everyone else is smarter than you. I had to kick it up a gear.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I CROSSED THE street to the club. “Cross” isn’t really the right word. I cut a path through the sea of excited, sweaty, sticky humanity on the prowl for a good time. They were all hunting desperately for a place where they could forget who and what they were, where their whole being would become no more than the animalistic drive for lust and gratification, where the only way to cool down was to take the ice cubes from your whiskey glass and press them to your burning face, or to the face of the person beside you, with his or her seductive smile, shiny white teeth, and soft skin.
The doorman was tall and thin, with a crooked nose that must have been broken at some point. Even though his uniform was a little loose, I could imagine the flexible muscles underneath, the long arms with the gloved hands that could easily shove an opponent into a corner, the feet planted firmly on the mat and then rising to kick the other man in the chest or stretch out unexpectedly to trip him up while his elbow, his ultimate weapon, struck him in the side.
I showed him the card I had extracted from Micha Waxman’s hand.
He threw me a quick look. “Israeli?”
I nodded.
Staring at the card, he asked, “You been here before?”
“No.”
A dark-complexioned kid adorned with leather straps and silver chains appeared beside me. The doorman waved him off. “I don’t let his type in,” he said. “They’re usually good kids until the DJ happens to put their favorite music on, and then all hell breaks loose.”
I nodded as if I understood what he was talking about. “Tell me,” I said, “the names Sigal Bardon and Micha Waxman mean anything to you?”
It didn’t take a prophet to know what his answer would be. “As one Israeli to another, if you’re smart, you won’t ask me questions like that. I don’t want to be impolite and refuse to answer.”
I looked at him curiously and then remembered. “I know you. You’re a boxer, right?”
Even the most modest people in the world fall into that trap. Oh, Buddha, how wise you were to speak of ego. It’s such a basic drive it even tripped up Freud.
“Don’t screw with me,” he said in a tone of contempt that couldn’t hide the pride. “Everyone here knows I was world champion.”
“But they weren’t all in your boxing class precisely four years ago last September,” I said.
He glowed. It’s so easy to make people happy. You just have to want to.
“Hey, you’re from the Security Agency? Sorry,” he apologized, looking around as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to say the name out loud. “It was a pleasure to work with you guys.”
I nodded, but he didn’t see it. His attention had been drawn to a black limousine making its way through the crowd. It pulled up in front of the club. The driver in a cap and white gloves jumped out and opened the door. A heavyset man with a large bald head and two exceptionally hot local whores got out of the back and headed for the door. He was dressed in a white shirt and a black Armani jacket, the real thing, not a knockoff you can get for two thousand bahts at Patpong market. A dozen gold chains with amulets, bracelets of every shape and color, tight black leather pants, and alligator shoes completed the outfit.
The doorman became a paragon of obsequiousness, proving that muscles and world championships are not everything in our transient, material world.
“How are you tonight, Mr. Weiss?”
“Great, great,” Weiss answered, going inside and leav
ing behind a wake of aftershave as strong as your average tsunami. He glanced at me briefly as he passed, but didn’t stop. The piece of shit sent Ivan the Durian to take care of me, I thought, and now he’s ignoring me. My picture had undoubtedly come up on one of the links he clicked on when he Googled me. It doesn’t take more than two minutes on the net to attach a photo to a name. If he was ignoring me, he must have a reason.
Noticing my expression, the doorman said, “Don’t look at me like that. Even a world champion can’t make a living from boxing.” He waved away another stray trying to get in and smiled broadly at a dark curly-headed Israeli, the type that always looks unshaven, who was also flanked by two hot chicks. His were blonds. “Hey, Avishai. What’s up?”
“All good,” Curly answered, moving his right hand lower until it was crawling up under the miniskirt on one of the blonds. Her cold blue eyes were hazy from all the speed he’d pumped into her. You could actually smell how impatient he was to get her onto the dance floor and light her up. When she was high as a kite, he’d shove her into the dark restroom in the back for a quickie.
“Give an Israeli a week in Bangkok and he thinks he runs the place,” the doorman said, watching enviously as Curly and his girls went inside. Getting a grip on himself, he added, “We work our asses off for years, climb into the ring every week, and what comes of it? Muscle for hire. And that schmuck? He just shows up and he’s already popping over to Laos and Cambodia, and each time he comes back he’s got a bigger smile and a bigger gold hamsa on his chest, flaunting it.” I heard the bitterness of a boxer well past his prime who still had to get into the ring. There would always be young wannabes who didn’t mind getting kicked around as long as their names appeared on the fight list of the Lumpini Boxing Stadium, published every Wednesday in the English-language Bangkok Post. Something to send home to Mommy on the kibbutz outside Ashkelon, in Paisley near Glasgow, or in one of the projects on the outskirts of Moscow.
“Now you know you can trust me,” I said, “so tell me: Does the name Sigal Bardon mean anything to you?”
He focused on the sidewalk across the street. Then he came back to me, colder than ever. “Did she work here? If she was a waitress, I wouldn’t know. The turnover is astronomical. They come hoping to hit the jackpot, and then disappear.”
“What about Micha Waxman?”
“Look, man, you don’t know what you’re getting into. We’re not back home. No one here is your best bud. Don’t you get it yet? Every Israeli in Bangkok is only out for himself. Back off. Let it go while you still can.”
It was time to pick him up and shake him a little, like a boxer who falls to the mat and comes to in the middle of the countdown. His trainer has to pour a bucket of ice water on him to wake him up enough to get one more three-minute round out of him.
I waved the Apocalypse Club card in his face. “I got this out of the hand of what was left of Micha Waxman after someone stuck a knife in his back,” I said.
I expected the shock treatment to produce results, at least get me a little something to go on. But my boxer friend scanned the area, looking hard behind him at the entrance to the club, before saying, “I don’t know nothing. The only thing I can do for you is get you in free. You interested?”
Inside, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Black walls, dim lighting, long bar. Despite the early hour, quite a few males and females were already hanging out, all occupied in the same activity, drinking and checking each other out, and all with the same goal: not to end up alone when the night was over. Loneliness is ugly. I spend a good part of my nights alone and I know exactly what it looks like. We’re all on a quest for our soul mate, if not forever then at least for a night or an hour. Each of those time periods has a set price in Bangkok.
I leaned over to the bartender. Judging by her G-string and tiny bra, she also did duty as one of the go-go dancers who worked the aluminum pole in the middle of the dance floor. I ordered a beer, shouting to make myself heard, and she placed a cold bottle of Singha in front of me. I took a sip and then turned to survey my surroundings.
Weiss was sitting in a corner that gave him a view of everything going on. A square bottle of whiskey and an ice bucket sat on the table in front of him. The two hot chicks, one on each side, were wrapped around him. Ivan sat a seat away, his eyes glued on Weiss. From time to time he got up and slipped another ice cube in the boss’s glass. Each time, Weiss took a sip and went on watching the people crowded into his club.
All of a sudden, I caught sight of Reut Bardon, no less, heading in his direction. What was she doing here? That woman was always up to something. How did she find out about this place?
I moved nearer. Reut had almost reached Weiss when a short, broad-faced man with a large mole beside his nose appeared out of nowhere and blocked her path. Weiss signaled for him to let her by.
Aha, I thought, things are starting to fall into place. Weiss, the man of bucks and balls. The goon with the mole. Oh, yes. I slid to the far end of the bar, as close as I could get to Weiss’s table. Ivan had his back to me. I hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Weiss in person. As far as I was concerned, everything was cool.
Reut opened her mouth. “I—” she started, but Weiss cut her off abruptly.
“I know who you are,” he said. “You’re here to screw with me. Sit down.”
Reut sat directly opposite him. Weiss gave her an icy look and pointed to the girl on his right. “You know who she is?” he asked.
Reut shook her head.
The girl grasped Weiss’s hand and placed it between her legs. “This is Miss Joy,” he said. “She’s number one in Bangkok. She’s got a college degree.”
He gave her time to rub herself with his hand before freeing it and pointing to the other girl. “What about her? Any idea who she is?”
Reut didn’t answer.
“This one is Miss Chong Nung. First Class.” He stroked the bare leg of Miss First Class, who giggled in response.
“You see what kind of life I have?”
Reut kept silent. Without warning, Weiss raised the ice bucket and brought it down hard on the table. The ice cubes flew in the air and the water spilled out. The two girls flinched, but Weiss ignored them. He was consumed by rage.
“So tell me,” he said, rising and leaning over the table toward Reut, “why shouldn’t I enjoy it? What am I, some kind of fucked-up Buddhist? I’m supposed to suffer? All because your sister fucked me?”
Blanching, Reut started to get up, but the guy with the mole appeared out of the shadows and pushed her down. I left my beer on the bar and braced myself for action.
Weiss’s former smugness had drained from his face. He leaned over Reut, furious. “Idi nahui, fuck off. You get the message?” His face was bright red. “If there’s one thing Alex Weiss won’t tolerate, it’s being screwed with. Your sister is this small, this small,” he repeated, forming a tiny space between his forefinger and thumb and shoving it in Reut’s face. His bracelets jangled while the talismans on his gold chain struck the table, nearly overturning his glass. “Bangkok is a small world,” he said. “I’ll find her.” Thrusting his face in hers, he lowered his voice. I could no longer hear him clearly. All I caught was, “Even … save her, I’ll find her.” Or something like that.
Shit, I fumed. I missed the name.
Weiss pulled himself erect. “You’ll never see your sister again. Trust me on that,” he said. “Now get the fuck outta here.”
Reut stood up quickly.
“Get the fuck outta here,” Weiss repeated, shrieking.
Reut retreated toward the bar. I went up to her and took her arm gently. She jumped. “You startled me,” she said when she recognized me.
Even in the dim light I could see how pale she was. Her red lipstick emphasized her large eyes and their amazing deep green color. Those eyes were now flitting warily from side to side, making sure there were no more surprises in store for her.
“I need some air,” she said. “We’ll talk out
side.”
Taking my hand, she led me out of the club.
I hoped Weiss was watching. I’m six feet one, after all, so I’m hard to miss. But the club was dark and smoky and very crowded. Wherever we turned, we rubbed up against frenzied dancers. I caught a glimpse of Weiss. The two girls were again smeared all over him like lipstick.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
OUTSIDE, THE AIR was thick and fetid, a pungent mix of nocturnal vapors, exhaust fumes, and frying squid. The end-of-day activities were in full swing. Vendors were packing up their wares and then pushing their carts homeward, their heads inclined and the muscles in their outstretched arms bulging with the effort. One by one, they vanished into the infinite abyss that is Bangkok.
Fruit sellers stood on every corner, hoping to dispose of the last of their produce before the morning sun melted the ice. At this time of night, none of the people emerging from the clubs would notice the generous sprinkling of sugar on the pineapple or papaya they bit into. A little sugar at this hour would be welcome, invigorating the blood that had soaked up untold quantities of alcohol and drugs, reducing them to a white funk. Reut and I stopped at a fruit stand, filling a bag with slices of tart green mango. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was too beautiful for this place, too beautiful to be embroiled in the sinister reality we found ourselves in.
“What did he say to you?” I asked. “I only heard part of it. I wasn’t close enough to catch it all.”
I wanted to hear her voice, wanted her to talk. At that moment in time, it didn’t matter what she said. I realized that if she weren’t Sigal’s sister, I could easily forget the whole thing, just file it away as another unsolved case. There are plenty of those. We never guarantee success. You start out on an investigation with hope, but things don’t always go the way you want. It’s the same in life, no?
“All I found out is that Sigal is in danger.” She sounded tired, drained. “You were right.”