by Roland Perry
‘Relax. It is purely a public relations exercise. We all want you here.’
As they were leaving the room, Dr Sileoni waddled up to Mendez.
‘The girl Noi will live,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve had to hospitalise her.’ Mendez’s face flushed and the doctor added quickly: ‘Don’t concern yourself. I’ve paid off the doctors at the hospital . . .’
‘I don’t care about that,’ Mendez answered. ‘I was looking forward to her tonight, especially after this meeting. I’m pumped!’
After the cricket match, which the Chargers won, the two teams, umpires and some spectators mingled for drinks in a marquee. The governor had consumed several glasses of Scotch before he asked Cavalier to join him on a stroll around the oval as the sun set.
‘You played a nicely crafted innings today,’ he said. ‘You took your time. I was so disappointed you missed your century.’
‘I wanted to outstay the police.’
‘I could see that.’ The governor looked around, making sure they were out of earshot of everyone. ‘I spoke to my chief after you went into bat. You have touched on an ultra-sensitive nerve. There are so many pressures in so many directions.’ He stopped walking and put his hand on Cavalier’s shoulder. ‘I have to be careful what I say, but I trust you will not mention me as a source . . .’
‘Of course not, Governor.’
‘Right.’ The governor took a deep breath. ‘I am not happy with what is going on in my province at the moment, with certain interlopers thinking that they can control things with great wads of money.’ He paused. ‘This is strictly off the record.’
Cavalier was intrigued. ‘You have my word,’ he said.
‘You are right in your assumptions.’
Cavalier looked into his sweeping, intelligent eyes. ‘Okay,’ he said slowly.
‘Those two poor creatures were picked up by certain farang.’
‘Where?’
‘There is a walk of several hundred metres on Kotchasarn Road, left at the top of the Loi Kroh Road and along the canal. It’s where the most unsavoury, rather sad, ladyboy creatures ply their trade. Many of them have AIDS. Many are on drugs. None of the regular bars will employ them. The police have tried to do something about them, but every time they clear them out, they return in the dead of night.’ He sighed. ‘They can be a hostile lot. One can only assume that the two victims got themselves into some sort of altercation. That is a guess, you understand.’
‘Are your police investigating these “foreigners”?’
‘Yes, but, er . . . interference is coming from outside the province.’
‘Is that why Chief Azelaporn is here?’
‘I am not at liberty to confirm that.’
They strolled on.
‘They must investigate all leads,’ the governor said and, turning to Cavalier again, remarked, ‘My advice is for you not to write anything about this.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘You have walked into something very big and possibly not good for your wellbeing. It is better for you to forget about it.’ The governor’s bonhomie had evaporated. It was clear that he was conflicted over having to deal with corrupt police and dangerous foreign drug lords on the one hand, and, on the other, Cavalier, a foreign journalist to whom he owed no allegiance, except for a tenuous link through sport. Cavalier was aware that, in the end, a Thai governor would not protect him, especially not in the current political climate.
The police confrontation made Cavalier cautious about returning to the Centara. When he rang the hotel, a nervous receptionist told him that his room had been raided by several policemen, who insisted that she inform them if he returned.
‘I’m sorry to ask, sir,’ she said, ‘but will you be staying at the Centara tonight?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Sir, you have taken your belongings. You need to check out.’
SHOOTING FOR NUMBER 81
Before Cavalier could find other accommodation for the night, he was to attend a dinner at Rafferty’s, for a few members of the Chargers team. But, given the events of the afternoon, he wanted to make sure he would not be tailed by the police or anyone else. He told Rafferty he would be at his apartment a little later than planned.
Cavalier left Prem at dusk and reached the freeway that would take him into Chiang Mai City. He picked up speed in tight traffic, passing several cars while keeping an eye on the rear-vision mirror. Cavalier thought he could see one biggish vehicle dodging cars and coming up fast behind him. He slowed and moved into the left lane, to let it pass. But the car slipped in several vehicles behind him. He was not sure if he was being tailed or not. He wheeled out of the slow lane and sped off. Then he knew. The other vehicle, a Humvee, jerked its way out of the slow lane. It was one of the cars in the Mendez convoy.
He put his foot down and sprinted the Mazda forward for several hundred metres. The Humvee tore after him with a roar of acceleration that had other cars veering clear or slowing up to let it pass. Cavalier was blocked by the heavy traffic. The Humvee swung up almost parallel with him. The front passenger window began lowering. He saw a gaunt-faced man with an eyepatch, and the short barrel of an AK-47 handgun. In a flash, he knew that hit man Jose Cortez was about to attempt to add to his list of eighty kills.
Cavalier veered as close as he dared, then braked hard, causing cars behind him to do the same. There was a gap behind the Humvee; Cavalier swung the wheel hard right, filling it. Cortez bellowed for someone in the back seat to lower the right passenger window. The Humvee had almost stopped. Cavalier swivelled the Mazda out right once more and accelerated past it, now almost stationary on his left. He sprinted off again and was soon fifty metres clear of the vehicle. Cavalier sounded his horn and cars parted, leaving him and the thundering Humvee with a route through the traffic maze. Cavalier then swung across three lanes, hand on the horn all the way, forcing others to let him through. The Humvee driver, despite remonstrations and abuse from Cortez, was not quite as quick. Cavalier swung the car very late and hard at the next left off-ramp, the Humvee careering on. The driver braked hard. A long semitrailer behind it also braked, with a loud, hissing expulsion of air. Its massive weight carried it forward, slamming into the Humvee’s rear.
Cavalier stopped on the off-ramp, almost parallel with the crash on his right. The Humvee had a dent in its rear. Three of the four people in it emerged gripping some injured part of their bodies. Cavalier looked for Cortez. He struggled out, holding his head, then collapsed on the road. His forehead had hit the front window, which had shattered. The truck driver was out of his vehicle, trying to help. Cavalier watched as everyone surrounded the bloodied hit man, who was lying face down and not moving. Cortez’s companions, and others, tried to revive him. Much to Cavalier’s chagrin, they were able to sit him up against the car. He was regaining consciousness.
Cavalier moved down the road, and stopped with his hazard lights flashing. It was now dark and he didn’t wish to be in a second accident. Within five minutes, an ambulance pulled up at the crash scene and Cortez was stretchered into it.
Cavalier looked at his watch. It was nearly 7.30 p.m., and 11.30 p.m. in Australia. He sent Gregory a text: ‘Tell the Americans a certain hit man with a score of 80 has been in a traffic accident in Chiang Mai. He’s being taken away by an ambulance from the . . .’ He paused to crane his neck, to read the name on the side of the vehicle . . . ‘Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital, Suthep Road.’
Cavalier drove to the Canal Road and Rafferty’s apartment building, again keeping an eye on his mirrors and any unusual vehicle movement. He arrived without further incident, and planned to stay only a couple of hours. He was quiet, despite the other half-a-dozen guests engaging him occasionally. His mind was elsewhere.
He had no alcohol, picked at his food and excused himself early. At the door, away from the others, Rafferty remarked: ‘You okay? You looked like you’d seen a ghost when you walked in.’
‘Sorry; not quite myself ton
ight.’
‘Well, I’ve got some news about the governor,’ Rafferty said. ‘He’s just been given the word that he’s to be moved on. The junta’s placing him in another province.’
‘When did you learn this?’
‘Just before you arrived. He’s not too happy.’
‘Did it have anything to do with this afternoon?’
‘He didn’t say, but he suspects that prick Chief Azelaporn wouldn’t have been favourable to him. They’ve clashed before. But it’s the junta that’s made sweeping changes around the nation; not just here. Cronies are running things everywhere.’
‘Hmmm,’ Cavalier replied.
‘Another thing the governor told me,’ Rafferty said, ‘the junta’s made Azelaporn the number-one cop in the country, as of tomorrow. Watch him, mate. He’s ruthless.’
Cavalier drove to near Kotchasarn Road and parked the car in a side street. He took six five-hundred baht notes from his wallet, and left it, his phone and his watch in the car’s trunk. He put on the same wig he’d used at the entertainment centre, added glasses and cap, and pocketed his French passport. Then he walked up to Kotchasarn Road, running parallel to a canal and at right angles to the Loi Kroh Road. It was 11.20 p.m. as he strolled along a deserted, dark stretch of the road. Across the canal, in the backpacker area, bars and dance places were in full swing, despite the approaching curfew. He had walked for under half a minute when someone moved out of an alley in front of him, lighting a cigarette. The match flickered enough for Cavalier to discern a tall and gaudily made-up ladyboy.
‘Looking for some fun, handsome?’ she croaked in English, blowing smoke away from him.
‘How much for a short time?’ Cavalier asked in Thai.
She looked him up and down, with eyes made up with so much black mascara that she appeared to be wearing goggles, and said, ‘For you, handsome, five hundred baht each for me and my friend Nicole.’
Cavalier could sense someone behind him. He looked around. Another tall ladyboy, wearing less make-up, and with a muscular build inside a black tracksuit, was standing there, with a leer rather than a smile.
‘I’ll give you five hundred each, but not for a short time,’ Cavalier said. ‘I’m after information.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a third person, then a fourth, moving close.
‘What information?’ Nicole asked.
‘I want to know about the murder of two of your companions a few nights ago.’
‘You a cop?’ she inquired, drawing on her cigarette.
‘No,’ he said, laughing. ‘Hey, would a cop ever offer you such good money for info? You don’t even have to waste time fucking anybody.’
Cavalier moved a pace to his left, so that he could see three of the four ladyboys. The tall one in a yellow dress and high heels looked like she’d be a kicker, but she was so emaciated that he discarded her as the one he should attempt to bring down first. The third one was also thin but more feminine. The fourth member of the little gang was lurking behind and out of sight. No, it has to be Miss Muscles Nicole, he told himself. She looks like she wants a fight.
‘Do you know if the killers were foreigners?’ he asked.
Cavalier saw Nicole tense. He smiled and kept his eye on her, as he took two five-hundred-baht notes from his jeans pocket. ‘Well, were they?’ he said, holding the notes up.
‘We’ll need more than that,’ the gaunt one said, and then coughed until she brought up blood. Cavalier took out another two notes.
‘We want ten thousand for that information,’ Nicole said. ‘Each.’
‘Hey! I’m not a walking ATM! Haven’t got that sort of money on me.’
‘Let’s go, then,’ Nicole said, gesturing to him.
‘I want that information first,’ Cavalier said. ‘Or no ATM.’
There was something in his eyes and body language that made Nicole hesitate.
‘Yeah, they were farang,’ the tall one said, wiping blood from her mouth and tossing away her cigarette.
‘What country?’
‘Mexico.’
‘Sure about that?’
‘We had a text from Annie,’ Nicole blurted out.
‘Annie? One of the victims?’
‘She told us,’ Nicole said with a vigorous nod, ‘the top dude was going to kill her. They had been down this way the night before the murders.’
‘They were Mexican, all right,’ the tall one said. ‘They wore those silly hats and big boots.’
Nicole moved close to Cavalier. ‘C’mon,’ she said, ‘let’s go to an ATM.’
The sound of a bullet cut the hot night air. All heads turned to see a convoy of military vehicles coming along the road. In that moment, Cavalier swung his right leg behind Nicole’s ankles and pushed her in the chest. She went down. He sprinted across the busy road in between the military vehicles. Reaching the canal, he ran in the opposite direction from the soldiers, glancing to see that the ladyboys had scattered and were not in view. Cavalier than dashed back across the road and down a deserted narrow alley running parallel with the Loi Kroh Road.
He walked in the dark for a few minutes. One car bumped by. He waited until it had passed and then followed the alley around to the right, his aim to reach his car on the other side of the Loi Kroh Road. At the road, he glanced left. Several cops were marching out of the entertainment centre. They didn’t seem concerned with the bars closing down—they were searching for someone.
Cavalier turned right up the Loi Kroh Road and headed back towards the canal. More cops were coming out of side streets. He stepped into a bar, the girls in it beckoning him to have a drink. Cavalier sat near the back, watching the street. His heart was thumping as two cops entered just as he was served a Scotch. He invited two bar girls, Emmy and Nok, to sit either side of him and made much of being a generous Frenchman, standing and ordering drinks for them in a stumbling mix of French and English. He then pretended to read the girls’ left palms and told their futures.
‘You will meet a short, fat man,’ he said in English to the tubby Emmy, ‘but he is a very rich farang and a nice person.’
‘When?’ she asked.
‘Inside a year.’
Emmy groaned. ‘That long?!’
‘It’s the best I can do.’
Beautiful Nok pushed her hand out for a reading just as the cops wandered further into the bar. They checked the ID of three other men in the bar, not bothering with one elderly man who said he didn’t have his ID with him. The cops hovered over Cavalier, who pretended not to notice as he laughed with the girls and began reading Nok’s palm.
‘You will meet a handsome farang,’ he joked, ‘with fair, longish hair.’ He ran his hand through his wig and added, ‘a bit like mine.’
Nok slapped his arm playfully. The cops interrupted them, asked for his passport and checked it. Cavalier’s wig was hot, and causing beads of sweat to build on his forehead and around his neck.
‘Take off your glasses,’ one cop demanded in Thai.
Cavalier pretended not to understand. Nok gestured at his glasses. Cavalier removed them. The cop held the passport photograph up and looked down at him. He gave the passport back and warned everyone to vacate the bar in fifteen minutes, when the curfew would begin.
Cavalier breathed a sigh of relief and sipped his drink, Nok placed her hand on his. The cops departed. Everyone in the bar relaxed, except Cavalier, although he returned to his act of being a happy-go-lucky French palm reader. The Thai girls liked his jokes and, as the minutes ticked by, began proposing that he ‘short-time’ them in rooms upstairs at the back. Just as he was considering a dash to his car, which was a few streets away, a shutter in the middle of the bar slid down halfway. It separated the back section and pool table from the front section, which opened on to the Loi Kroh Road. As the manager, with a few of the girls, began counting the day’s takings in the back, Cavalier was ushered into the front and the three other patrons left. One of the girls stood guard in the street. He knew it was too
risky for him to leave.
He decided to wait until the bar shut down completely before leaving. He asked for a second drink. Emmy and Nok seemed untroubled by what had taken place; they were used to interruptions. They were working hard on him now, in their genteel and seductive way, for neither had snared a customer that day, or so they claimed. Nok had bottle-blond hair, which didn’t quite work on a naturally dark Thai. But she was bubbly, while Emmy was dour, fidgety and with a permanent air of disgruntlement. It seemed as if she may have been in the bar business one or two seasons too many. In any case, though, the last thing on Cavalier’s mind was sex. Uppermost was flight, although he could have done with a room to hide for the night. He had three thousand baht in his pocket, and more in his wallet in the car. But he had no chance of accessing it.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, reverting to Thai and taking a ten-baht coin from his pocket, ‘I’ll bar-fine one of you. That’ll mean I’ll be able to pay the lucky one for the whole night, two thousand baht.’
The girls frowned. ‘You speak Thai!’ Nok said.
‘Do you agree about the toss?’ he asked.
Nok nodded; Emmy shrugged.
He tossed the coin and asked one of them to call heads. Nok called heads, and Cavalier, a canny two-up player, made sure she won. Just as he was consoling the pouting Emmy, the girl on guard at the front hurried into the bar. She made frantic signals and yelled, ‘Soldiers!’
The shutter clattered right down, leaving the three girls and Cavalier vulnerable in the bar’s exposed front section. The lights went out. The girls grabbed him and the four of them hid under the bar. Cavalier hoped it was just a routine curfew check. He could see through slats in the bar. Lights were flashing from slowly moving military trucks. Soldiers, automatic weapons held ready, bounced out of the lead vehicle and stomped down the side street next to the bar. They were strangely quiet, making them even more menacing. Cavalier and the girls remained still.
After ten minutes, the military convoy limped down the road in the direction of the entertainment centre and the night bazaar. Cavalier still wanted to leave, but realised that the cops and military would be crawling all over the area for another hour or so. If he drove his car, he might be picked up. He had not registered the vehicle with the hotel, but the cops at Prem would have photographed the Mazda and its numberplate. He couldn’t risk using it again. It would be better if he could find a taxi and, in the meantime, he had to be careful in his dealings with Nok. The way things were in Thailand, with everyone encouraged to spy on and pimp out anyone who might be a problem for the junta, he couldn’t trust a soul.