“6.7.4.8.1.0,” he told her.
Ben walked over to the case, picked it up, and began to tap in the numbers like a Neanderthal trying to figure out a cigarette lighter. The moment Joe needed was the moment the ape realized that the code was incorrect. That split second when Carmen and Ben were focussed on the case and the contents inside it.
It happened.
Carmen turned her head to look closer at the briefcase. Joe stood and pushed the shooter to one side. He sprung upwards and made for the door. It was unlocked. He opened it. Carmen let off a round that sounded like a bomb explosion inside the dungeon. Joe made it to the other side. He hazily ascertained his bearings. The alcohol washing through his system. It wasn’t a dungeon. Not below ground level. It was on a higher floor. Stairs. He jumped down four steps as another blast of powder exploded behind him. The stairs led down. It was an old shop-house. He reached the next floor as another blast fired. The stairs dog-legged around a corner and Carmen fired another shot. It missed, ricochets off the wall in front of him. Ben’s footsteps were heavy behind her as they chased Joe down the next flight of steps. Joe jumped three at a time and found himself on the ground floor. A door. The bookcase. He found himself in the bar.
Past Pops.
The skeleton.
Through the hallway and back onto the street.
A passing Tuk-tuk caught the wave of his hand, “Hey you!” Joe jumped into the back seat and told the bucket to drive. No time to negotiate. No price. No destination. Drive. The two-stroke screamed. The front wheel came off the ground.
“Drive, drive…”
The bucket revved. The driver turned to face Joe in the back seat. “Hey, where you go?” He spoke in broken English, “My name Tip. I give good price,” he turned back to face the road. Oncoming traffic swerved to avoid his path. “Where you go?”
“Drive,” Joe told him in Thai, “drive wherever you want as fast as you can go.”
“Okay, boss,” the bucket shot though the traffic. Joe looked behind them. Ben. He had commandeered another tuk-tuk giving chase the length of five cars behind. His driver was revving with the same ferocity as Tip.
“Turn left here,” Joe told the driver. Tip jammed the handlebars to the left. He revved the bucket and they burst out of the mouth of soi thirty three and onto Thanon Sukhumvit heading to the east of the city. Where Monica was found. The temple. Away from the Zone. Ben’s tuk-tuk was gaining distance on them. “Look, my brother, that tuk-tuk behind is trying to kill me, can we drive faster?” Joe shouted at the driver as they hurtled forward. No time to panic. His thoughts were slow and careful. Like an animal’s.
They weaved in between traffic narrowly avoiding disaster with a pick-up. Construction workers loaded in the bay. The bucket tipped to one side as Tip avoided a breaking number twenty-five. The engine screamed past a stretched limo, a Porsche, a tour bus.
Tip waved at the passengers.
They swerved around taxis, snaked through tuk-tuks, motorbikes.
“Him?” Tip said pointing a thumb backward to Ben’s driver. “He my friend. Same same my brother. No problem. We like have fun together.” Tip pulled out a mobile phone, dialed a number while driving with one hand, spoke for a few seconds, and put the phone back in his pocket.
Joe looked back and saw the other driver simultaneously put his phone in his pocket.
“What did you tell him?”
“I say crazy tourist want race,” Tip smiled and pulled back the accelerator as Thong Lor flashed past them. Restaurants, markets, shop-houses all a blur of color, all history. Joe’s noodle pounded with alcohol but the wind was helping. The streets were a vision, a blur of color and lights.
Red lights of Ekami ahead.
Tip took a short-cut though Watt Tha Thong and waied with both hands at the statue of Buddha. The bucket veered across the road as the drivers hands left the handlebars.
Rocketed forward toward a row of stalls. Tip looked, screamed, “JepMare,” grabbed hold of the handlebars, and steered the heap through the car park.
Pedestrians leaped clear of the vehicle. Mothers grabbed their children screaming and running for safety.
Ben was still following. His hands came up. So did the blowpipe. He fired a shot. It whistled past Joe’s bucket.
Pierced the foam seat cushioning.
“Hia!” Tip shouted. “Fucking lizard.” He thought for a moment, “My friend, you have gun too?”
“Stolen by a magician,” Joe told him as they mounted the sidewalk.
Pedestrians diving for safety hurtled along from one block to the next. The tuk-tuk rattled along the uneven sidewalk. Ben bumped up onto the pavement following close behind. He blew another dart. It whistled past and hit an obese American tourist in the buttocks. She collapsed in the road clutching her behind.
Her face a snarl of surprise.
“Have idea,” Tip scanned the road before swinging a sharp right across a busy U-turn section. Oncoming traffic headed straight toward them. Horns blaring, they sneaked down a sub soi. Ben still followed. “Esad!” said the driver.
Ben’s driver swung the tiny vehicle left and followed Tip’s heading toward a klong, a canal, a small bridge separated them from the other side. Tip’s bucket rocketed toward the water and then they were airborne. Joe’s noodle hit the carriage ceiling as Tip launched the bucket over the bridge.
Landed with a thud. Wheels still rolling on the other side of the canal.
Looked back to see that Ben’s tuk-tuk hadn’t made it and was stopped the other side of the klong, Ben waved his fist at the driver. He raised his blowpipe and then put it back in his pocket, slowly. Joe got out of the vehicle and dusted himself down. Smiled and got back inside.
“Hey mister, where you going now?” Tip said.
“I need a drink,” Joe replied, “take me to a goldfish bowl.”
FORTY-TWO
THE GOLDFISH bowl has a green-tinged undersea glow somewhere in the Red Night Zone.
A bottle of Vodka in front of him and two glasses.
One for Monica’s ghost and one for Joe.
A large glass screen and behind the screen, sit a number of women. Some are dressed in bikinis and some in sarongs of gold and reds. All are beautiful.
Some of these temptresses chat into mobile phones and some watch a television screen at the front of the bowl. Some simply stare into space or into the eyes of one of the customers.
Upstairs, king sized beds, hot tubs and massage rooms, inflatable mattresses, and soap. Monica’s ghost had disappeared. He finished the glass and stared at the goldfish bowl. His eyes are drawn to a woman behind the glass, she has a beehive hairdo. Thick red lipstick, eyes staring straight at him, through him, examining him. She walks up to the table, she leads him upstairs into a room with a hot tub in the middle and a bed to one side. She sits on the bed, opens her handbag, and takes out a small emerald pillbox. Two tablets, swallows one, and gives the other to Joe.
“What is it?”
“Just something to help you relax.”
She turns on a tap. The sound of water, hot water, she adds some foam to the bath, and turns the jets on. She takes off her dress, young firm Thai body, a tattoo like Monica’s, the tiger scratch. Her body is hairless’ shaven smooth. Monica’s ghost was somewhere within her. Her ghost was inside every woman in the Red Night Zone.
He takes off his shirt. She sighs contented. He takes off the rest of his clothes and steps into the water. She soaps his body. Tensions relaxed within her hands. Muscles loosen and tendons retire. She takes the soap, rubs it into lather, and then puts her hands under the water. She picks up a long razor blade that sits on the edge of the bath. This won’t hurt, she tells him as she begins to shave his body hair. She runs the razor blade over every contour.
His eyes close.
He drifts off for a moment and then something wakes him
.
Splashing water on his centre.
She tells him it is time to clean him. She speaks in Thai. The soap she rubs into a lather, up and down on his shame,
“And now I shall clean it properly,” she splashes some more water to remove the soap with a slow sensual motion and then she did what nature dictated.
Joe slips away into what Freud called,
The little Death.
FORTY-THREE
The thin man returned to the room.
Lek was still out.
He takes out a syringe.
Burns a methamphetamine tablet into a solution.
Plunges the spike into her and pushes it into her body.
Her eyes opened.
She wishes they hadn’t.
She takes in the room, the transsexual Thin man. He or she is stripped to the waist. Her wig sits on the hotel vanity. She opens a bag. Takes out a butcher’s knife. Says,
“I didn’t want you to miss this, dear.”
Advances on her. She watches the blade sink into her chest, and slice along and down towards the pubis. She listens to the sound of her flesh tear, watches Carmen open her abdominal wall and pull out a kidney.
Hacks it free.
Looks into Lek’s eyes. Says,
“Sorry to be such a pain, honey.”
Blackness.
FORTY-FOUR
YOU ARE sitting in a bar on Sukhumvit soi Seven. Wicker chairs and a table in front of you. The Sunday newspapers.
Soccer scores.
The heat is obscene,
but the beer cools you down.
“Did you win?”You follow the voice to where a middle-aged man in his mid-forties sits. It’s Pops. He has short-cropped hair and wears a lightweight business suit. You recognize the voice and the face from the dreams.
“No. My team never wins,” You tell him. “How about you? Are you winning?”
“The demons never win.”
“Tell me, what’s the secret?”
“Things happen. This is Thailand,” he says removing an invisible piece of dust from his jacket lapel and lighting a small brown cigar. He smiles sadly.
“They do indeed. Tell me what you did?”
“The dead know what they wish they didn’t know. You are seeing me as a normal person because you are almost dead. You drank the soma. You are seeing me as I used to be. The dead see the dead like the living see the living. Don’t ask me too many details. It is exhausting to explain the answers. All cats are grey in the dark.”
“How did you die?”
“So Monica didn’t tell you?” He walked away from the bar and sat at a table. He picked up a menu and glanced at it. He shrugged, “Not much use on an empty stomach.”
“Tell me about Monica,” you ask again.
“She was such a lovely girl. A playful child. We used to play games when she was an infant. I would hide pieces of candy around the home and she would search for them. When she found them, she would kiss me. As she grew older, our games would change. Even as a child, she was flirtatious. With the perfect smile the world would be yours, I told her. I taught her many things. She was a romantic child.”
“Can a child have romance?”
“Yes, but they can resent it in adulthood. She had her revenge. I searched for her everywhere, but I could not find her and my heart became weakened by loss and whiskey. Then about eight or nine years later, I saw her in the street. Of course, her clothes had changed, her hair was different and she wore much make-up, but I recognized the little girl I had adopted as my daughter all those years ago. The one who pinched my nose, danced, and played my little games. She took me to that horrible place. The place where the demons lived. We drank and she began dancing slowly, seductively in the traditional style. I was stuck between a fatherly need to protect, and an insatiable lust brought on by the beauty of Sita and the soma that had much consumed me by that time.”
“Sita?”
“The wife of Rama, the most beautiful of women. I later found out that Monica was indeed special. A reincarnation of Sita. If she had had an education, you understand, she may have been a very powerful woman. But she ran away, onto the streets, into that life.”
He takes off his jacket, shirt, and turns to show you his back and the violet, blue, and green marks across it. “She whipped me,” he smiles, “I was so drunk by this point that my eyes were beginning to close into a beautiful dream as she danced and toyed with a whip in front of me. I didn’t know if I were in a dream or a nightmare. I did not care. Then I thought there must have been something in that drink, a sleeping tablet. I woke up a long time later. When I awoke, I was locked inside what I thought was a coffin.”
“The isolation box?”
“I don’t know what they call it, but I was in there for what seemed like many days. Sometimes I could hear others outside the box. In the room, there were groans of pleasure and pain and sometimes the sounds of metal on human flesh. It sounded as if animals were being slaughtered. I thought for sure that this was hell. That I had sinned and that Ravana had no place for me. That I would stay in this box for eternity, learning about the pain I had caused others. Every sin I had ever committed washed through my body in that box. The full assault of shame and misery.”
“And then what happened?”
“She opened the box, and I would rather she had let me die from starvation and suffocation than witness what I saw happening in that room. Will you do one thing for me? Please do not let my wife suffer. Tell her anything but the truth, if you see her, give her this,” he hands you a small object.
Pops fades away and you are travelling at top speed along a dark tunnel.
Suddenly, the scene changes to
a waterfall on an island.
There is a black dog sitting next to you.
The dog rubs against your inner thigh.
Monica suddenly reappears sitting on a wooden chair, its grain worn away by the years. She begins to transform in front of your eyes. And then the middle-aged man in a suit and tie appears next to her.
Pops.
They both slowly transform into grotesque creatures with long pointed mouths, tiny necks, and swollen stomachs.
“Do you have the key?” Monica asks you.
“What key?”
“The key.”You reach into your pockets and find a key. You pass it too her.“No, not this key. This is the wrong key. Go back and get another key, and while you are there make sure you put everything right.”
A sudden feeling of movement. Incredible speed, back into the blackness from whence you came.
The darkness of heaven.
FORTY-FIVE
10th October 2010
JOE WOKE up fully clothed in an empty hot tub. He rode the train of his mind back to the night before.
The relapse, the chase, the girl, and the pill.
In his hand was a five-baht coin.
He turned it between his fingers.
Double sided.
He got up and pocketed the coin in his jeans. There was a bed in the room. He sat on the end of the bed, got up, walked over to the tub, and turned on the taps. It filled with water. He took off his clothes, got inside, and splashed around. He felt slightly more human. His body shook. His head ached as he stepped out and got dressed.
He walked out of the room and down the red-carpeted steps. Inside the goldfish bowl, two bored masseuses sat staring into space. Opposite the bowl, sat a man with a cocktail in his hand. He was wearing a brown uniform. He wore bug like glasses and his free hand rested on his gun holster. He smiled at Joe and patted the chair next to him.
“How was she?” Rang said.
“I don’t remember much, Inspector. She could have been wonderful or she could have been a man.”
“I’ve been thinking about bringing you in, Joe. We ha
ve the evidence that you killed Monica.”
Joe’s drunken mind reeled back to his visit to the police station. The panties that the inspector had passed to him. He handled them. His prints would have been on them. They had him. “Why don’t you?”
“Because I like the way the case has been resolved. I don’t want to reopen it and I don’t want to take you in. I don’t want you pursuing this case either. You pursue it, I take you in, and when I take you in, you won’t be out for another thirty years. Think about it, Joe. Thirty years without one of them.” The inspector pointed at the two women sitting behind the glass screen. “The only sex you will have will be with the katoeys. Also thirty years without one of these,” the inspector took a long drink from his cocktail. “Then there are the sleeping arrangements. Thirty to a cell. One ceiling fan between them. You want to eat a decent meal, then you’ll have to buy it. There’s protein in cockroaches, but you have to eat a lot to sustain any kind of health. The rice soup gets a bit boring after a few years. Believe me, Joe; you don’t want to go inside. Stay away from the case. The whore killed herself. Let me hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“The whore killed herself.”
Joe looked at the inspector, looked at the door, and then turned and walked towards the door.
“Say it,” Rang repeated.
Joe turned around. “We both know who did it, Rang. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Francis.”
“Then who?”
“I know who visited the room that night. Found their little Halloween party and saw red. The only one with motive.”
“She did it. To herself.”
“Sure she did,” Joe opened the door. He heard the footsteps behind him. He turned. Rang had a standard police issue in his mitt. Joe smiled and took a step closer to him. “Rang, this case is not your case. You could shoot me, I don’t have much to live for and I don’t have anybody. If you pulled that trigger, hell, you might be doing me a favour. Think about it if you kill a foreigner in Bangkok, things could be tough. That’s why you haven’t locked the killer up. Bad publicity. Twenty-six missing hookers. You will be involved soon. The next target will be a girl with connections. Her name is Lek, worked out of Nana. Now a Danish woman is trapped in the bar. If you go in and rescue her you’re looking at promotion.”
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