by Bill Moody
Chapter 2
Matt Chance squinted towards the lamp table next to his bed. His mobile phone was ringing. It was just seven AM. He had thought he could sleep late. His girl, Noi, had pleaded she was too busy at work to spend the night and had left him to himself. He doubted that was the only reason. They had had some disagreements of late. It seemed to be something about commitment. In any case, he had thought a late morning’s sleep would be the consolation prize. Obviously that was not to be.
He grunted into the phone not quite ready to talk. The caller’s tone was urgent, “Matt, it’s me, Somchai. I need your help. Now.”
This brought Matt awake. Somchai was an important friend, his coach in Muay Thai, really his mentor in all things Thai as he struggled to relearn what it meant to be Thai after spending all of his adult life in the West, and much of that as a U.S. Army Ranger serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Somchai had influenced Matt greatly as he sought to get his feet on the ground—physically, mentally and emotionally—after returning, burned out from the wars, to his mother’s homeland. If Somchai was in need, Matt would respond.
“Matt, are you there?”
“It’s okay, Coach, I’m awake. Where are you? What’s wrong?”
“I’m down by the slaughterhouse in Klong Toey. I need you here, Matt. One of my boys has been killed.”
Matt could hear the edge of panic in the coach’s voice. The violence in the coach’s life was the controlled violence of the ring. This killing, whatever it was, had unnerved him.
“Okay, Coach. I’m on my way. Twenty minutes or so.”
Matt ran through the shower, brushed his teeth, skipped the shave and was actually outside in fifteen minutes, but it was still going to be a struggle through traffic to get from his mid-town condo to the slum area in which the slaughterhouse was located. He decided not to try driving and waved down a motorcycle taxi trusting the bike would cut through the chaotic rush hour traffic much faster. The motorcycle guy wasn’t eager to go over to the slums until Matt offered to double his fare to one hundred twenty baht from the normal sixty baht. That did the job and Matt hopped on the back.
The adrenalin rush of weaving through the morning rush hour traffic, with Matt riding pillion trying to anticipate the driver’s frantic twists and turns, ensured he was fully awake when they got to the slaughterhouse. As they pulled up to the entrance, Matt could see a crowd had formed on the street above the ramp which led down into the area of the holding pens. People were delaying their departure for work, pushing to get a look at the scene below, some eating the fried chicken and rice they had just purchased from the street vendors, and exchanging comments on what had possibly happened. Matt pushed through the crowd and came to a police barrier where a local cop from the Port Authority police station was keeping people back. Matt held up an ID for the Department of Special Investigation, DSI. The ID had been authorized for him by his DSI friend, Neung, a foreign officer buddy from their time together in U.S. Army Ranger training. The cop raised the barrier and waved Matt through.
The sun was higher in the sky now. The direct sunlight heated the pools of rainwater and the air was wet and carried the rancid odor of death. Matt walked down the concrete ramp. He could see some eight to ten people gathered next to one of the pig pens below including a foreigner, a fat older white man, dressed in baggy blue jeans and a rumpled T-shirt, who was yelling at the police and the officer in charge. As Matt approached, he could understand what the foreigner was upset about. He was shouting at the police for leaving the body uncovered for the crowd to gawk at. The officer in charge, probably the head of the Port Authority police station as the port was only a few hundred yards away and this area was within his jurisdiction, was standing stone-faced and not replying. Matt looked beyond the group and he could see the boy’s nude body exposed to all. A couple of officers were in the act of covering the body with a sheet. All the senior police officer did, when the foreigner paused for breath, was to hold up his hand to signal the foreigner to stop for a second and then he nodded towards the boy’s body. It was now covered and the two police officers who had covered it were standing aside. The foreigner looked towards the body, said, “Okay,” threw up his hands and turned and stalked past Matt going back up the ramp.
Coach Somchai was at the edge of the group around the police officer and saw Matt walking towards him. Matt waved to him to step towards him so they could talk privately without the police overhearing. Matt gave Coach Somchai a respectful wai, hands clasped together in front of his face.
“Coach, what’s happened? You said this is one of your boys?”
“It is, Matt. You know him. It’s Yod. He was one of the boys from the Metta Home for street kids that we would see at the Muay Thai training camp. Somebody killed him and left his body here last night.”
He nodded towards the pigpens. “He was only fifteen years old. He had no parents or at least none claiming him.”
Matt asked Coach Somchai, “How did you get brought into this?”
“It was Tarn, the head house mom at the Metta Home. The police called her to come and identify the boy as they thought it might be one of her kids. She came down and identified him and then left immediately as she couldn’t stand to see him like this. She phoned me right after and asked me to come down and talk with the police to make sure they treated the case with respect. She was afraid they would just say it was an amphetamine-related drug case and let it go at that. She swears the boy wasn’t doing drugs, either buying or selling.”
Matt nodded, “Well, I understand why the police would think that way, Coach. Even the motorbike guy who drove me over here asked me why I wanted to go anywhere near Jet Sip Rai. He said it was dangerous. He said it was just for people buying and using amphetamines or Ya Ba as he called it.”
The nearby Jet Sip Rai slum was a strip of run-down housing built by squatters on land owned by the Port Authority. The slum was immediately adjacent to the port where truckers from all over Thailand came to pick up goods shipped in from abroad. The drivers brought Ya Ba from suppliers at the port to keep themselves awake for the long hauls up and down country delivering the goods. Pinning the cause of the murder on drugs would be the default mode of the police on any investigation in the port area as drugs were involved in ninety percent of their cases.
Matt looked back towards the crowd watching from the entrance to the slaughterhouse. “What about that guy?” he asked gesturing towards the foreigner up above the ramp who was still talking with the crowd.
“Oh, that’s Father Paul. He’s an American missionary priest who is in charge of the Metta Home. He got the call about the boy and came to see for sure that it was one of the boys from Metta. He’s made his point here and talked to the crowd. He’ll go home soon.”
Sure enough as they watched, the priest stopped talking to the crowd and walked towards the van that had brought him to the slaughterhouse. A man wearing an Australian bush hat who had been recording his activities put away his camera and joined him.
Turning back to the death scene and pointing towards the police, Matt asked, “What do we do here, Coach?”
“Just join me in talking with the police colonel in charge, Matt. I want to let him know we have worked with the boy and haven’t seen him involved in drugs at all. After being yelled at in public by the priest, I’m sure he’s not in a good mood so we don’t argue with him. Let’s just try to plant a seed of doubt in his mind that we can exploit later.”
“Okay, Coach. Lead the way.”
Somchai turned and walked over to the officer and waited politely as the he gave some instructions to the police on the scene. The colonel finally turned to Somchai and Matt.
Somchai gave him a polite wai and started to introduce himself. He was interrupted, “No need to introduce yourself, Coach Somchai. I know who you are. I was a fan of your boxing. When I was younger my dad would take me to the Lumpinee stadium. I saw you fight. You were a great champion. What can I do for you?”
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Somchai was surprised and happy to be recognized. “Thank you, Colonel. It makes an old man feel good to be remembered.”
Turning to Matt, Somchai introduced him. “Colonel, this is Kuhn Matt. He and I have been helping Krue Pip of the Penang 96 Muay Thai camp train some of the boys from the slum. This boy, Yod, was one of our boys. We want to find out what happened to him. He was not a Ya Ba boy, Colonel. He didn’t use or sell amphetamines.”
The officer didn’t answer but looked at Matt for minute, studying him. Matt was used to this. As a luuk krung, literally half child, the name given to Thai with a Western parent, his appearance, Thai but not quite Thai, always caused a bit of a pause with a Thai audience.
Matt responded to the once over by showing respect, giving the policeman a wai and a traditional Thai, “Sa wa di krup,” greeting with his hands clasped in front of his face.
The colonel, always conscious of his high position, returned a halfhearted wai and nodded back. After staring at Matt for a moment, the colonel said, “I believe I’ve heard of you, Khun Matt. You have friends in the DSI, I believe.”
“I helped out the DSI last year as a consultant on a case where some American scientists went missing, but only as a consultant.” Matt was playing it low key and humble knowing that anything that indicated that he felt he was important could cause offense.
“I think it was a bit more then consulting. I heard you were with the team that shot it out with the drug runners and finished them off. It was a good job. Well, both of you are welcome here but my officers have the situation in hand. The boy’s throat was cut no more than four or five hours ago. It rained last night but this happened after the rain. As you can see he bled out here so it was done here. We are waiting for the medical examiner to arrive so that she can take charge of the body. Then we will learn more.”
As he said this, a white van followed by a Mercedes coupe pulled up on the street above.
A camera truck from one of the TV stations pulled up at the same time.
“Ah, here she is now. It must have taken her a while to get her make-up and hair right and alert the press.”
A slender woman in her mid-forties, dressed in black slacks and a pink shirt, stepped out of the Mercedes. True to the description, she looked ready for an audience: make-up just right and with a modish, almost punk hairdo, her short black hair mixed with patches tinted blond and swept up. At the same time, she projected a no-nonsense approach, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves as she walked down the ramp and calling behind her for her staff to bring a box of medical equipment down for her. This was the fashion-conscious, very PR-aware, but very competent and strong willed national medical examiner, Khun Wattana. From the second she was on the scene, she clearly considered herself in charge. Matt could tell by the body language of the police officer that he was not comfortable but was also not about to publicly challenge the lady.
The colonel turned for a last word to the Somchai and Matt, but nodded to the coach. “Let my officers perform their investigation. Any information they learn about this boy, whether Ya Ba was involved or not, as well as what this lady has to say, I will share with you. If you learn anything of substance from your contacts, please feel free to call me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I will try to find common ground with this lady.”
He walked towards the body but stopped short and waited for the medical examiner. Both just nodded to each other, no exaggerated formal respect was to be shown by these two. The medical examiner had locked horns with the police before, publicly disagreeing with their theories on murder cases too often. Both were aware that this case could be the occasion for more contention.
Matt turned to the coach. “Come on, Coach, let’s get out of here. We can’t do anything for Yod and these guys will find whatever there is to find here.”
The coach nodded slowly and turned to follow Matt. He found the scene overwhelming. For Matt violent death had been too common a scene yet he found it overwhelming in different ways.
They stopped on the street above the entrance ramp. The crowd was still growing, especially now that a TV van had arrived. Matt took the coach by the arm and led him away from the crowd.
“What do you want me to do, Coach? The police will handle this.”
“Matt, once the TV cameras go away the police will put this on the back burner. You heard what he said about Yod, ‘this boy.’ Yod is not important to them. The case will slowly disappear. You know how to do these things, Matt. You have friends in the Department of Special Investigation. You worked with them last year and helped to track down the yakuza gang. Ask some questions. Don’t let them bury this.”
Matt looked back at the scene, the TV truck and the crowd up above, the police and the medical examiner below. In a few hours the body would be gone, the pigs for the evening slaughter would start arriving on trucks from the countryside and the slaughterhouse would be back to its normal business. Three to four hundred pigs would be slaughtered by early morning and the cycle would go on.
“Okay, Coach. I’ll try. Who do I talk to? Who will know about Yod?”
“Start with Tarn, the house mom at Metta. She should be there now waiting for a report from me. Go talk to her. I can’t do it. This sort of violence is beyond me. You have experienced war and death. She should know about Yod. She is the one who got him off the street and back into school. I’ll phone her and tell her to expect you.”
Click here to learn more about Murder in the Slaughterhouse by Tom Crowley.
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