by Yigal Zur
“Are you trying to use me to wash it clean?”
“Maybe,” she said. “When people come here, they’re naïve kids, still wet behind the ears. Every smile seems to open the door to an unknown world. But some are illusions.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew her world. It was paved with people who had gone down the wrong path.
“I met him at his club,” she said. “He was the most un-Israeli Israeli I’d ever known. The ones I’d met before were all like you, sarcastic, damaged. He was charming. A real gentleman. He showed me there were other options.”
“And it didn’t bother you, how he made his living?”
“I ignored it, or repressed it. Same thing. I didn’t talk about the embassy, and he didn’t talk about his business. He preferred to talk about Buddhism and mysticism. It was easy for me to forget about work and just have fun.”
“How did he get to be so powerful?” I asked.
She puffed on her cigarette before answering. “Weiss always uses the same game plan,” she said finally. “He smiles at the backpackers and plays hardball with the Thai. That’s what makes him such a good go-between. He knows how much Israelis love to take risks. He can always find someone who shows up here after a year in India. ‘I’ll make one trip,’ they think. ‘What can happen. Then I’ll take the money and go back to India for another year or two. I’ll be able to chill out, drinking chai and puffing on bongs all day.’ Weiss and his Thai associates know some of the shipments won’t make it through. They factor that in.”
“Sounds great in theory. There’s just one problem,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Micha Waxman didn’t just arrive here from India. He lived in Bangkok, high as a kite most of the time, and knew all the suppliers that could help feed his habit. And I have no doubt that he paid in sexual favors. He doesn’t fit your description. Neither does Sigal Bardon. Her family is rich. A few months ago, she decides to tour the East and winds up in Thailand. You’d expect her to go to the islands, lie on the beach all day and cut loose at acid parties at night, doing her head in and fucking like a rabbit. But instead, she gets involved in a drug deal and disappears. I still don’t know where or how she met Micha, how they were connected, or whose idea it was to cash in on the drugs or the money.”
While I was talking, Aliza stubbed out her first cigarette and lit a second. Again, she blew the smoke toward the ceiling with a twist of her lower lip. And again, she closed her eyes. It was a tic I already recognized. Opening her eyes, she gave me an inquisitive look.
“We thought you knew,” she said.
I almost missed it. We? I wondered who she meant, but I didn’t ask. I removed her hand from mine. Was she working me? If she was, who was her puppet master? Weiss? Reuven? One thing I was sure of: she knew what happened to Sigal.
There are no chance encounters. I’d almost fallen into the trap, almost being the operative word. You always have to remember there are only two things that make the world go round—money and sex. Whether each on its own or both together.
She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something. Her sharp teeth gleamed like delicate Chinese porcelain.
“I don’t,” I said.
Again, she covered my hand with her long, cool fingers.
“I can’t say any more. Not now,” she said. “Go talk to Malachi.”
“Who’s he?”
“An Israeli doing time.”
“His name doesn’t appear on the list of Israeli prisoners. I’ve seen it.”
She leaned back in her chair, nearly rocking it, giving herself time to answer.
“He comes from a well-known family. They kept it out of the media. Don’t want anyone to know their son got himself in trouble. He’s in for a long time. Drugs. Not likely to get a pardon. He’s in touch with all the falangs in the drug trade in Bangkok.”
“From prison?” I asked.
She laughed.
I left her sitting there, engulfed in the cloud of smoke rising from the long, thin cigarette between her lips. I signaled goodbye and she waved back, immobile save for the slight movement of her hand. I had no way of knowing that a moment later she would take out her cellphone, press a number, and say, “He’s on his way to Malachi.”
You never tell a woman about meeting another woman. So I called Reut, told her what had happened with Weiss, and didn’t mention my encounter with Aliza.
“I’m going to see an Israeli in prison,” I said. “My source says he knows everything that goes on in Bangkok.”
I listened to her silence. Finally, she said, “I’m starting to believe we won’t find her.”
This time it was me who remained silent.
“You know, like a sister’s intuition.”
“I’ll call you when I get back,” I assured her. “Can we meet?”
“Yes. I’ll wait for you here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I WENT BACK to the Chao Phraya and got on a large ferry for Nonthaburi on the other side. It was noontime, as hot and humid as only Bangkok can be. The river was as flat and shiny as a mirror, its stillness broken only by the foamy wake behind the ferry. A light breeze momentarily sent a small ripple through the water. The hyacinths bobbed up and down; a long-tail boat sailed by. It took about an hour to reach the last stop. Toward the end of the journey, there were very few passengers left on the ferry. I went up to the top deck and stood next to a young guy who pulled off the rubber band holding his long blond hair in a pony tail to let his curls fly about in the breeze.
“Bangkok Hilton?” he asked with a smile.
I nodded. It was only logical to assume that everyone still on the boat was heading for the same place, the Bang Kwang men’s prison, known as the Bangkok Hilton by the foreigners incarcerated there.
“Going to visit a prisoner?” the guy asked.
“Yes, an Israeli by the name of Malachi Razon. It means ‘skinny angel’ in Hebrew.”
“Heroin?”
I nodded again. Most of the foreigners in Thailand’s “correctional institutions” are doing time for smuggling heroin into Europe or Africa. Now and then you get a pedophile or a murderer.
“What about you?” I asked.
“It’s trendy in Khao San these days to visit a prisoner. I guess beaches and acid parties don’t do it for us anymore. I’m curious to see if what they show in movies like Bangkok Hilton is true. I went to see a Brit yesterday. Today I’m going to visit someone else.”
“How was it?”
“Depressing. I didn’t get to ask him a single question about life in prison. He didn’t stop talking about how he was going to use the power of his mind to teleport himself outside the walls. If it wasn’t that, it was the insect noises the prisoners make. I was there for an hour and a half and he didn’t shut up for a second. He wore me out.”
“But you’re still going back?”
“I feel it’s the least I can do for someone confined to the world’s asshole,” he said. “You know how it is, the thought that ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’”
We arrived at the last ferry stop and everyone disembarked. First off was an elderly couple carrying a heavy straw basket, he in shorts and flip-flops and she in a flowery dress. They were followed by a young couple in tight black clothes and gold chains. My long-haired friend and I brought up the rear.
We passed the market selling vegetables and fish and turned left at the first corner. That’s where the famous Thai smile vanishes. In front of us was the tall gray prison wall. In the courtyard outside is the visitor screening post under a sign reading “Bang Kwang Central Prison.” Just so you know where you are.
If you want to get in before noon, you have to arrive at the gate by ten thirty and fill out a form. It asks for the visitor’s name, passport number, and nationality, and the prisoner’s name and block number.
I filled in the details—Malachi Razon, Block 3—and handed it to a guard with a pockmarked face whose attention was focused on a
bowl of soup that smelled of fish oil. He worked his chopsticks deftly, dripping soup on the form, but he didn’t seem to care. Just as he couldn’t care less about some falang rotting inside. He glanced at what I had written, waiting to finish his soup before doing anything else. When he was done, he lit a cigarette under a “no smoking” sign, asked for the pen in the pocket of my shirt, scribbled a signature, took the carton of phony Marlboros I had bought in Patpong the night before for ten dollars, and gave me back the signed form. We walked to the visitor area, the whole group from the ferry making our way together. From the other side of a chain fence, a row of prisoners was led in. The first two were Thai and the other two foreigners, one black and one white, the latter presumably Malachi. I’ve seen a lot of ghastly sights in my time, but this is one I never get used to: leg shackles making their macabre noise and symbolizing more than anything else the drastic change in a person’s life. Kids who used to be carefree backpackers were now convicts in one of the worst prisons in the world. The black guy’s face broke into a broad grin, and my ferry companion parted from me with a wave of his hand as he walked toward him. Malachi didn’t smile.
The shackles were old and rusty and dug into the flesh. The wounds had healed around them, making them an integral part of his body. He sat down across the table from me, coughed a few times, wiped the phlegm away with his hand, and asked, “Why did you come on Friday?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right, but when it sunk in, I was stunned. When was the last time anyone came to see the asshole? He lived like a rat surrounded by starving cockroaches, and the timing of my visit didn’t suit him?
“I keep Shabbat,” he said, coughing heavily. His dull eyes flitted back and forth to the guards sitting in the corner. As far as he was concerned, I could get up and leave. He didn’t give a damn that I’d come.
“Okay, but I’m already here and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back,” I said.
“After sundown tomorrow.”
His face was scrawny. Several of his teeth were chipped and others were black. Drugs do that to you; they rot the teeth. There were cuts on his cheek and ear that didn’t look good. I guessed that someone had hit him with a brick, and the wounds were festering. That could do him in.
A rat ran across the floor. Neither the prisoners nor the visitors gave it a second glance. The guards didn’t pay it any mind either.
“You look sick,” I said.
He laughed. “Sick? I was already on my way to the morgue, but what I saw in the hospital convinced me to get out of there fast.”
I remained silent. Letting him vent was a good start. He played with the sidelocks hanging down from his typical prison haircut, a shaved head. He undoubtedly had to pay a heavy price for those limp curls.
“What was wrong with you?” I asked offering him a cigarette from the pack of Marlboros I’d brought with me. It’s common practice to bring prisoners cigarettes. They’re the coin of the realm behind bars. Sometimes a pack is used to transfer cash, with a few of the smokes replaced by tightly rolled-up bills. The guards know all about it. They take their fifty percent cut during the body search when the inmate leaves the visitor area.
I saw the hesitation on his face. “It’s Shabbat, and I quit smoking anyway.” But his eyes kept going back to the pack I left on the dirty wooden shelf under the double wire partition between us. “Food poisoning. Didn’t stop shitting, like it was shooting out of every hole. I thought I was gonna die. I prayed to God to get it over with fast. I was so weak I couldn’t stand up. In the end, they sent me to the hospital. It looked like something out of the Middle Ages during the plague. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent mortality rate.”
The rat made its way across the room, keeping close to the wall where the prisoners were sitting. I noticed one of the Thai prisoners give it a hungry look. The protein on the menu was getting away. “We sleep on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe. It’s no wonder disease spreads quickly. The last thing they want is an epidemic in the prison. It’s bad for business.”
“But you recovered,” I said. Not that he looked healthy, but at least he didn’t seem to be at death’s door.
He laughed, again revealing his rotting teeth. “Praise God. I made it out of there. Somehow, they cured me. It was a miracle.” He coughed, and then went on with his story. “The first day in the hospital, I fell out of bed. And the beds are high. Forget the diarrhea, it’s lucky I didn’t break my neck. I forgot how to sleep in a bed. All around me were locals dying of AIDS or one of the other curses that get you when your immune system is gone. I just wanted to get out of there. And their screams. You never heard anything like it. The guards shoot junk into them to make them scream. They tell them it’s a cocktail to cure AIDS. I guess when your immune system isn’t working, it hurts even more. I kept praying like some religious fanatic. Lord have mercy on me. When the doctor came by in the morning, he asked if I had any money. I said yes. He got the money, and by the afternoon I got the medicine. It helped.”
We both sat in silence for a moment, and then he said, “You wouldn’t wish this life on your worst enemy. The best you can hope for here is a fair trial and an easy hanging. I’d do anything to get out of here. God willing, I will.”
“What are you in for?”
He laughed again. “Same as everyone. They picked me up at the airport trying to smuggle drugs to Amsterdam. Just another nitwit who thought it wouldn’t happen to him. They looked at my passport and saw I flew back and forth from Bangkok to Amsterdam. Sometimes Bombay or Goa. You don’t have to be a genius to put two and two together. They caught me with a K and a half of heroin.”
I could see the beautiful beaches of Goa in my head, the chance meeting on a moonlit night followed by the request to take a small package with you on the flight to or from Bangkok. They’re always sure they won’t get caught.
But Malachi was different. He was no naïve jerk. And his faith made him even tougher. I wondered how long he’d been doing it and who was putting money in his prison account. You can’t survive in the Bangkok Hilton without money. They don’t take plastic here, just cash. You draw it out little by little, only as much as you need each time. It’s too dangerous to have a thousand-baht bill in your hand. You’re likely to get slaughtered like a rat for lunch.
“I can help you,” I said.
He started to laugh and then swallowed it. “You? Who do you think you are? The only ones who can help me are God and the king of Thailand. In that order. The first one is with me all the time. The second, I have to wait for his next birthday and maybe I’ll get a pardon.”
“All that tells me is that your friends, including Alex Weiss, are happy to let you rot here,” I said.
He gave me a dirty look, coughed, and spit the phlegm out on the floor. “You come here, I don’t know who the hell you are, and you try to fuck with my head.”
“Trust me,” I said, taking a stab in the dark, “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen too many Israelis in your situation. For the first year, your friends come to visit. Then they scatter to the four winds. They each have their own story. One is being investigated in France, another is extradited to Columbia. All that’s left is your family. Do you want them to see you like this? A year ago, you were a young man with his whole life ahead of him. Next year you’ll be an old man with nothing to look forward to.”
My words ignited a tiny spark in his eye. For a man serving life in prison, maybe is the last glimmer of hope: maybe they’ll transfer him to Israel, maybe the king will grant him a pardon on his next major birthday. I did the math. If he’d been in Thailand for a while, he probably had a local girlfriend. They always do. And since she wanted her falang to take her with him when he went back to the good life in Europe, she must have made sure to have his child as soon as possible.
“Did she have your kid circumcised?” I asked.
“That’s what keeps me awake at night,” he answered.
Bingo. “Does she visit you?”
“No. In the beginning she used to come once or twice a month. The first year, they even let us have conjugal visits. After we fucked, she’d complain she didn’t have enough money. You know what they’re like. As soon as you stop giving them money, they forget about you. All I know is that she sent the kid to live with her parents in the country and she went back to the bar where I met her, in Nana Plaza. I don’t give a damn about her anymore, but it’s killing me to think that my baby is being brought up to herd buffalo in some village in northern Thailand instead of getting a proper Jewish education.”
“I can arrange for him to be adopted in Israel,” I said, stretching the truth. I had no idea if that was at all possible by Thai law, but I left it for later to find out. My job now was to manipulate his emotional state—Tactic no. 5 in the Security Agency handbook.
He didn’t respond. But he was nobody’s fool. “Assuming you can, what do you want in exchange?” he asked finally.
“Sigal Bardon,” I said. “If she’s still alive.”
Again, he coughed and spit on the floor. “How do I know you’ll keep your part of the bargain?”
“You have my word,” I said. “Nothing else matters. You know that.”
“Give me a cigarette.”
I passed him a cigarette and a lighter. The guard didn’t react. I knew he’d extract payment from Malachi later. Malachi lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “That’s so good,” he said. “Look, all the big shots in the drug trade are looking for her. Half the officers in the Bangkok police, the Chinese, Weiss—they’re all looking for her.”
Check, I thought. Sigal’s alive. Score one for me.
He took another drag on the cigarette, coughed again, and spit again. “It’s not just the 21K of heroin and the money. She flipped them off. They all have to depend on their mules. Without them, they wouldn’t be where they are. They can’t allow them to turn the tables on them. One mule changing the rules? They can’t tolerate that. Can you imagine what it does to their image? The shipment disappeared and Sigal disappeared with it. They’ll find her. Trust me. They found Micha Waxman, didn’t they? And they took him out. When they find Sigal, she’ll be gone for good.”