The Amok Runners

by Colin Cotterill

I held up the fliers but Sissy ignored them and loomed over me like an undertaker.

  ‘Jimm,’ he said. ‘You’ve really gotta turn your phone on sometime.’

  ‘What’s up?

  ‘Director Boon. He’s dead.’

  The tonic water had necessarily given way to Saeng Thip rum. It was nasty but it was the only booze Khin had in the house. We sat facing each other while Sissy detailed everything he knew about the killing. When Boon left the set earlier that day he’d driven into town. He’d parked his rental car in the lot at the back of Doi Chang coffee shop on Nimanhemin. It wasn’t clear whether he’d planned to meet someone at the coffee shop or walk on somewhere else because he was shot four meters from his car. Two bullets, both to the head. No witnesses.

  ‘Say something,’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ I said.

  ‘The cops said it sounded like a typical hit. They found motorcycle tracks in the dirt by the body. They said it was probably …’

  ‘… a business-related conflict,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  That’s what they always say.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘It makes it neater. Nobody feels sorry for you if you screw up in business.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Remember the safari shirts in the lobby at the Dhara Dhevi?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about them.’

  ‘Think they were police?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘If they were police …’

  ‘Don’t do this again, Jimm.’

  ‘All I’m saying is if the guys that threatened Boon on Wednesday were police I can’t really see the cops being too transparent in investigating his death. Can you?’

  ‘Jimm? ’You’re a reporter.’

  ‘A crime reporter.’

  ‘As opposed to a private detective. Don’t get us involved in another one of your cases.’

  ‘We are involved. We’re witnesses to intimidation.’

  ‘It might not be connected,’ said Sissy.

  ‘You know it is.’

  ‘And who do you suppose we tell? Unless you’ve got friends at Interpol there’s not a thing you can do about it.’

  ‘We’ll just keep our eyes open is all I’m saying.’

  ‘I heard that before.’

  ‘Serious. Just observe.’

  ‘Right.’

  Chapter 6

  “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

  The city of Fang was established as a formal trading settlement by prodigious old King Mangrai during his heyday. He’d probably be sorry at the way it turned out. It loomed like a disappointing oasis at the end of a long flat drive from the foot of the Chiang Dao mountains. Not even the optimists of Lonely Planet could find a kind word for it. A stubborn hairpin bend after the river was the only reason passing traffic slowed down long enough to take it in at all. There were three hotels that seemed to say, ‘Why the hell would you want to stay in Fang?’ one or two roadside restaurants where the food benefited from the carbon monoxide, and a Seven-Eleven. Even dumps had a Seven-Eleven in twenty-first century Thailand.

  But Fang was the administrative centre for the region and it didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t. Most of the traffic just kept on going along route 107 in the direction of Chiang Rai. Sissy and I had stayed the night at Khin’s and swung by the shop to pick up Arny. Mair was still sulking about her debacle. We’d driven the two hours north in the jeep marvelling how the old jalopy was still able to climb hills. The film unit had invaded an area north of the city called Tha Ton. It was a fairly picturesque part of the country with calendar mountains and a slow moving river called the Kok. The town itself comprised a bridge, a police kiosk and several spidery lanes running parallel to the river. The pier was the launch point for long-tail boat or raft trips to Chiang Rai up near the Burmese border.

  Looming over this tiny hub was the Tha Ton temple mountain topped with a glittery stupa with its very own Hollywood sign. The words WAT THA TON CRYSTAL CHEDI stood in large plasterboard Thai characters legible from the surrounding hills. An albino Buddha sat in meditation below it. Rather than share their wealth with the poor or rescue crippled animals, Thai Buddhists preferred to donate their money to stuff. Many spent their income on bizarrely opulent whims: a mirrored archway, a whole team of gold-plated Buddhas and celebrity monks, bells and dragons, concrete boats, and ten-foot captions.

  Gangs of Akha hill-tribe women in clinking headdresses roamed the streets of Tha Ton and lighted upon hapless foreigners, bullying them into buying embroidery. There were garlic drying sheds and small bamboo treatment foundries all around and the ongoing sound of machetes. There was no shortage of noises and sights but nothing recommended the town more than the fact that it could, at a squeeze, accommodate three-hundred actors and crew. There was one hotel called the Chalet, two sets of bungalows which had the nerve to call themselves resorts, and half a dozen guest houses. Despite Arny’s new standing as a stand-in and the offer of high-end accommodation, he’d opted to stay with me and Sissy at the Garden Home. We’d stayed there before. It was a collection of wooden huts neatly spaced amid a sort of botanical experiment. It was as if the owners were more interested in the garden than in the guests. The rooms were barely larger than tool sheds and only three had views of the river. We’d phoned ahead to reserve one of these for our ten days in Tha Ton.

  The Chalet was certainly the top end in town but it was a distant dark star from the brilliance of the Dhara Dhevi. OB and the stars were billeted at the former but it was unlikely they’d use the little rooms for much more than changing and naps. There were no suites, spas or pools but each room had four thousand BTU of air, free stationery, and all four local TV stations. For people like Dan Jensen it was a hardship posting in the third world. He’d walked into the room, laughed, and walked out. A police helicopter had been negotiated to shuttle the upper echelons of stardom back to their ivory tower in Chiang Mai after the day’s shoots. We felt Jensen would spend more time on that chopper than most.

  Just out of Tha Ton was the project site. The set designers had recreated a corner of olde Chiang Mai out of plaster and foam. Its ramparts and the city moat looked just like the artist’s impression at the museum. Within the walls were temples and markets and an arena for cockfights. At the other end of the valley were the royal palace and a number of picturesque gardens where characters would meet and conspire and frolic. It was all as historically accurate as the researchers could make it but it looked so marvellous nobody really cared. On the far side of the mountain was the gently sloping plain chosen for the final confrontation; the almighty battle between the Burmese and the besieged Siamese. It gave me a full-on buzz just walking around the set.

  ‘It’s a kick, though, man,’ said Sissy in New Yorkian.

  With a little dark blush to his chin and his breast binding, my brother looked more like a man than I’d ever seen him.

  ‘It gets into your blood, doesn’t it?’ I agreed.

  Arny had been smiling all day. We sat on our ramshackle balcony with our feet on the rail. The Kok river, pigeon grey and lethargic, flowed by just a few meters from the cabin.

  ‘I can see why you do it,’ Arny told Sissy.

  ‘There’s a lot of sitting around,’ he replied, ‘but … I don’t know. There’s something about being involved in it. We grew up going to the movies and watching Mair’s old Beta cassettes. It’s always been my fall-back fantasy world. You don’t have to be a big part of it. Just hold onto its skirt and follow it around. At the time you don’t feel th
e real magic but you sense it. Then you go and see the movie and all the pieces are fitted together and you’re up there on the screen. You probably won’t even get close enough to nod hello to the stars but when that movie’s out it’s … “So, me and Dan Jensen just made this movie in Fang …”’

  ‘Hello?’ came a voice.

  ‘We’re out back,’ I yelled.

  Our’s wasn’t the most sprawling of residences. Visitors had little trouble circumnavigating it. The sweaty man, still wearing his Greg Norman hat and still damp at eight-thirty at night, arrived first.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘Can’t think why you’re staying out here in the middle of nowhere.’

  A few paces back was a figure I recognized. The grey hair had turned tropical and sprung off at all angles. It made that big skull look like a photo of a kapok mattress exploding. The guy from the flier – the cranium – was a pace behind his gofer.

  ‘OB wants to get a look at your boy,’ sweaty said.

  We raised our hands in a most respectful wai. I discretely stood in front of the joint that puffed guiltily on the wooden deck. It was like being busted by the school principal.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ said OB. ‘I’m Oliver Benjamin.’

  ‘How you doing?’ I said

  ‘Hi, OB,’ said Sissy. Arny just stood there with his mouth open.

  ‘This one’s Arny,’ Sweaty said without any real need. Our brother was the only one vaguely resembling the muscle-bound Jensen. In fact, Arny was more everything than Jensen himself.

  ‘I just wanted to check you out, see how you look from the rear,’ OB said, stepping up onto the deck.

  ‘He gets a lot of old guys checking out his rear end,’ I said before giving myself a few seconds to think about it. ‘I’m not saying you’re old or anything. It was just …’

  ‘Well done, Jimm.’ Sissy clapped. ‘Not yet on the job and you get us fired.’

  But OB seemed to enjoy the comment. He had a gravelly laugh that spoke of cigarettes of yore. He was tanned more from working outdoors than George Hamilton vanity and he had a good set of teeth, too comfortable in his mouth to be fake. He was a good looking guy in his seventies; at ease and worldly. We had Arny stand and turn a slow pirouette making sure to wiggle his butt on the way round.

  ‘Hope I’m not a disappointment,’ said Arny.

  ‘For fear of further ridicule,’ OB smiled, ‘now I’m reluctant to ask you to take off your shirt.’

  Sissy snorted a laugh. ‘And maybe a quick peak at your pecker?’ he said.

  Arny blushed.

  Sweaty stepped in. ‘No call for that kind of talk.’

  OB laughed again. ‘That’s okay. We aren’t doing the porn version till this one goes to video. Just a look at your back’ll be good.’

  Arny stripped off his shirt and did his musical muscle man routine. He really was an impressive looking man.

  ‘Wanna see mine?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘No, I think that’ll do just fine, son,’ said OB. He turned to the sweaty man, ‘Thanks, Larry. I need to ask a few questions here. I’ll find my own way back.’

  ‘You sure, OB?’

  ‘Sure. Night, Larry.’

  Larry loped off to build up his sweat reserves and left the second biggest grossing movie director in Hollywood swaying from foot to foot on our deck.

  ‘You want to sit down?’ I asked.

  OB nodded and the rattan seat creaked beneath him.

  ‘We don’t have a mini-fridge so the best we can offer’s lukewarm water,’ Sissy told him.

  OB smiled. ‘So, how long do you think you can keep that joint alight? At best you’ll burn down the cabin.’

  Sissy dived to his knees to rescue the weed. He blew at the fat end and brought it back to life.

  ‘Sissy’s got this fear of authority figures,’ I told him and he laughed.

  ‘It’s a habit I picked up from our grandfather,’ said Sissy. ‘He’s always sneaking around trying to catch us doing something sinful.’

  I offered the joint to OB.

  ‘Hmm. Don’t mind if I do. I love that smell,’ said the director, taking it respectfully between his thumb and index finger. He puffed and an expression crossed his face that suggested not a few of those seventy years had seen happy dope moments.

  ‘You suppose Damp Larry got a whiff?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘Who cares?’ said OB. ‘You could be sitting here toasting weapons’ grade plutonium on a spit and he’d keep his mouth shut. He gets paid too much to care about stuff he shouldn’t.’

  Half an hour later we were on the third of what OB called, doobees. Most of the lights of the town were out and the river slicked past black and oily. The natural sounds of the riverbank; frogs and cicadas and the like, reminded me how noisy nature could be. The conversation was loud but easy.

  ‘So, did you miss the chopper?’ I asked OB.

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘The studio booked us into that museum playground in Chiang Mai but I can’t say it’s very convenient. This way I get an earlier start and I don’t have to listen to The Teeth giving me advice on how to make a movie.’

  ‘I take it you aren’t so fond of our Dan,’ said Sissy.

  ‘There’s always one on a set who believes everything their publicist puts out about them,’ said OB. ‘But this one, I tell you, he’s weird. I get the feeling he was taking prima donna classes long before he hit the big time. You know what I’m saying? Got the spoiled-brat image down long before his first movie. If he listened to direction he could be an okay actor but he sulks and has his tantrums and walks out. You’ve just got to let him do his thing and hope he stumbles onto something worth filming. It’s like being an animal trainer for a fish.’

  ‘What are we doing here, OB?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘You mean philosophically?’ he asked.

  ‘No, physically. What are we doing in Fang?’

  ‘It’s pretty.’

  ‘Thailand’s got more pretty than you’ve got movie stories. Why are you filming here and not some easier place?’

  ‘You don’t think it’s easy here?’

  ‘OB,’ I said, ‘we’re ten miles from the Burmese border in a place that was the drug running depot for the Golden triangle for fifty-odd years. All the wealth and power up here is a result of being a better hoodlum than the next guy. You could have set up almost anywhere else and made life less stressful on yourself.’

  ‘Jimm, I don’t have to think of any of that stuff,’ he said. ‘I make movies. The studio hires people to make decisions on location. I just nod agreement when they show me the video.’

  ‘So, who recommended Fang?’ Sissy asked.

  ‘We have a Hong Kong office that hired a local company in Bangkok. They came out scouting locations together.’

  ‘Do you know the name of the Bangkok company?’ I asked.

  Sissy looked at me, ‘Do we really need to know that?’ he said still hoping I wouldn’t be investigating any more than I was getting paid for.

  ‘Sure we do,’ I said. ‘What kind of cool job would that be? Getting paid to drive around and take videos of mountains.’

  ‘Star something,’ OB said. ‘Star Casting and … Location? That kind of thing. I can ask my gofer tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  It hadn’t taken OB long to dissolve into a mellow state, dropping names and telling secrets. We’d hung out with two big directors in the space of four days and both of them had been ‘real’. Except one of them was now real and dead, and none of us could get that fact out of our minds. When the roach pin was back in Sissy’s pocket we walked OB along the coal black lane to his hotel. We felt responsible for him. We had to do whatever we could to keep the curse in its box.

  Chapter 7

  “Yes, you have a great body. May I use it?”

  Saturn 3 (1980)

  Dan Jensen was a high-flying star and that gave him the right to stand up three hundred extras and crew on a whim. The word had returned on the empty helicopter
that the actor had been unhappy with the breakfast muesli and there’d been an altercation at the buffet. It was unclear as to whether the dispute had led to fisticuffs, but the fact remained that Jensen was too disturbed to begin shooting that morning. He’d retired to his room with his disciples and was meditating with a corporate guru. Whatever the actual story, the sun was fighting its way free of the morning mist and Siam had no Andrew Axeman. OB decided to shoot around his scenes and insert them later. This however meant more work for Arny.

  When you have ten days to stay within a budget you don’t waste good sunlight, and nobody could honestly claim to have seen much of the sun before today. Their advisors should have warned the studio about March in the north but nobody could have predicted just how bad the pollution would be that year. The Chiang Mai authorities had announced sweeping measures to rescue the tourist industry from the smog. One of these involved the firing of hoses into the air downtown. Another was a plan to bring forward the Songkran water throwing festival by two weeks. But, as much of the smog originated from the junta on the Burmese side burning down forests to plant cash crops there wasn’t much hope.

  As the Thai military government had adopted a policy of not making any decisions during their tenure, the state of emergency announcement didn’t materialize. Farmers continued to burn off their crops and trucks continued to clog up the Chiang Mai basin with their illicit emissions. Everyone waited lump in throat for the monsoon winds to come early and blow it all away. It was a particularly Buddhist approach to handling an environmental disaster.

  Rather than wait for a sunny day, OB decided to turn the whole movie into something bleak and mysterious. He spent several hours with Arny filming over-the-shoulder and long-distance shots of the stand-in’s back. The stylist had taken an hour to make his hair look like he’d just woken up but when she was through the back of his head was remarkably similar to Dan Jensen’s. After watching a few minutes of old footage Arny had even been able to master the Dan Jensen amble. OB joked that he was tempted to shoot the whole movie with Arny and leave Jensen to his muesli wars. The director was enjoying his day without the star.