by James Newman
“They had a claim?”
“They did. A fatality. Finnish backpacker. Name: Alexandra Korksi. Age: twenty-three. Died on a routine diving lesson off the island of Ko Samui. Coverage – full life indemnity, pain and suffering. The Thai brokers on behalf of the family negotiated a settlement of one and a half million dollars and the insurance company paid it, in full, last week.”
“Did they investigate the claim, sir?”
“Yes and no. Mainly no. They hired a local adjuster. In hindsight the adjuster could have been corrupted. The report is in the claims file. The underwriters saw one and a half big ones for a young European a good price and settled it backed up with the local report and some legal papers. I agree that the price for life of a young European diver was about right. As you know it cost money to check it out properly. You could end up paying double, triple. If it goes to court, you can never stop paying until the day you retire or die.”
“So what’s the problem? They paid it. They learned a lesson. Move on.”
“They’ve had another one. This time an Italian: Franco Dini. They want another two big ones. They haven’t given us any details of the fatality.” The coordinator looked out of the window. “Just a one-liner asking for the funds.”
“A bit pricy for an Italian, sir,” Joe smiled. He knew that the nationality wasn’t important. The fact that there were two claims in quick succession was.
“Yes. And a bit suspicious. So far we have seen no death certificates, nothing, zip. Niente. We expect that these deaths have been faked, or even worse, assisted,” The coordinator frowned.
“Well Wordsworth should get in touch with the deceased’s families, sir.”
“Well they might be able to, but Bangkok’s not playing ball. They insist all the negotiations go through them. That’s why we need a man on the ground.”
“And who is pursuing the claims in Thailand, sir?”
“The Bangkok retail broker is a guy named Hale. He is a liability for the syndicate. He likes the high-life wherever he’s working. He moves around Asia – Hong Kong, Singapore, and now Bangkok. Be careful with him, Joe. He speaks the lingo and has an eye for the women. Apparently he fell into the bottle in Asia and he has yet to crawl out. He’s a drinker and he is our way into Bluegreen. The kind of man you might be able to manipulate. Your recent problems are a worry to us, Joe. But I’ll be buggered if I can think of a better man for the job. I am giving you a chance to prove the syndicate wrong. To show them you can put your head into the lion’s mouth. I must be mad, to trust you, Joe. As I say. One last chance.”
“I admire your confidence, sir.”
“Well, be careful, Joe. Keep a clear head, if you slip up the syndicate will pull the finance away. Don’t pick up the bottle, Joe. Stay away from women. One day at a time. If you slip up then it will be egg on my face too.”
“Understood,” Joe said. His thoughts turned to all those brown thighs in Bangkok. Brown thighs and golden beer. He erased the thought.
The job was all he had.
THREE
Turtle Island
A pathetic cigarette
GANTIRA’S LONG hair framed a beautiful smile and a pair of brown eyes that rose upwards when curious and narrowed when angered or upset. She had thirteen different ways to smile and none of them meant happiness. She tiptoed around disputes where possible and let others dive into disasters if they chose to do so: it was the local way to do things.
She picked up the box of Marlboro and slid one from the box and lit it. It was a habit she had picked up during her days studying tourism in Australia. She missed those calmer times. She remembered afternoons reading glossy magazines and drinking cappuccino in fashionable coffee-shops. Polished floorboards and over-sized sofas. She missed the opera house, the sea, and the bridge. She missed the way people spoke their minds without worrying about their faces.
Gantira breathed out a toxic cloud and gazed at the blue smoke spiralling up to the ceiling. Franco didn’t mind the smoke. Most western men were malleable and bland like sticky rice. Thai men playfully led the way like the front feet of the elephant. Thai woman were reliable and steady and Westerners were easily manipulated outside their comfort zone.
The bungalow rested on a limestone mountain. Palm trees shaded the morning sun. The ceiling fan spun slowly above them. She glanced at the painting of the marina. A large bedroom led to a balcony. The blinds were tightly closed. She slipped on a hemp dress. She glanced at Franco. He sat up in the bed massaging his brow. Her world would be shattered, if they saw them together. But what was her world? The islanders owed her nothing. She was born Thai but had never been accepted. Her international education kept her isolated. The locals took simple pleasures in her possible downfall; their victories sweetest as the rich fell shamefully to their own level. They had pinched-up faces and played cards at night. They had nothing much to lose and were determined to keep it that way. They watched television and believed in what they saw. They were from another world.
She strode over to the French doors and opened them. She looked out onto the golden sands and the blue and green sea below. Song birds sang in the fig trees nearby. The morning was scented with jasmine. The sex was ordinary. It meant nothing more than the chorus of gasps and grunts. It seemed that each thrust was less important and more dangerous than the last. It ended the same way it always did; a cloud of shame and a pathetic cigarette.
A dog barked in the distance followed by a series of howls from the pack of strays that gathered by the restaurant at the foot of the mountain. Gantira walked through the French doors and onto the balcony. She flicked her cigarette ash into a large seashell that stood on the stone balcony table. She looked out across the sea; blue and green fishing boats were returning to the Ko Samui cove. The sun glimmered across the waters. She noticed a lone swimmer far away from the beach.
“I killed her,” Franco said from inside the bungalow. She turned and walked back inside. Franco was sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. She sat at the vanity and looked in the mirror; a beauty spot on her cheek. She had considered having it removed. There were many such trivial matters that required her attention. A bare thread spiralled loose from the hem of her blouse. She lit the loose thread with the flame from her cigarette lighter and watched it slowly fizzle away into smoke, nothingness, air.
“Nobody killed her.” She realised the truth was too dangerous for him to hear. She could not meet him again. He would bring bad luck. She glanced at the Italian sitting on the bed and wondered what she ever saw in him. “It happened,” she said standing up.
Franco stood up. His body reminded her of a marble statute she had seen at the university of Sydney. This is what she had seen in him.
“I have to go back into the water,” he said.
“You shouldn’t go back. You should leave the island. You should forget this ever happened,” she told him.
“But, the equipment...”
“It was an accident; you need to stop blaming yourself. You cannot stay here.” Gantira put a hand on his shoulder. She remembered that morning. The plan. He brushed her hand aside. “You have to go.”
He looked directly at her. His features sharp with anger. “bullshit,” he snapped.
“Do you have money?” Gantira walked the five steps back to the balcony turned around to face him. “Enough for you to leave the island? Forever?”
“Is that what you want?”
Gantira shrugged. He was just a diver. “There is an insurance investigation,” she said.
“I checked the equipment before the dive.”
“You did your best, Franco,” Gantira said remembering how the equipment had been tampered with shortly before the dive. Jinks smiling as he left the dive centre. “The matter will go to the court. You don’t have a work permit. Things will become complicated for you – in the eyes of the law you killed her. You shouldn’t have been out there with her. Deportation could be the least of your concerns. I’m saying this because I care abo
ut you, I would hate to see you in a Thai prison. Do you know what they do to foreigners in there?”
“No?”
“Perhaps it is better that way.”
“I tried to save her life. ”
“This is Thailand.”
“I need to talk to your husband. He can make this thing go away.”
Gantira lit another cigarette and looked directly at Franco. “Shogun is like the box jellyfish. Do you know of the box jellyfish? Of course you do. You are a diver, no? Each tentacle has half a million injections of venom. His tentacles stretch wide and far and contact with them results in death.” She walked over to a coffee table and picked up his keys. She handed the keys to him. “Leave the island today or the octopus will find you.”
Franco slammed his hand onto the coffee table. A glass tumbled to the floor. Smashed into a hundred pieces. They both looked at the broken pieces. Franco picked up a large shard of glass. He held it in front of her, his face a snarl of anger.
She smiled. “In Thailand it is desirable to have a cool heart,” She took the shard of glass from his fingers. She ran the jagged edge against her forearm. A tiny spot of red appeared. A line of blood trickled down her forearm. She smiled and looked up at him. “Is this what you want?” She stared out to the cove and smiled. “You want to see me bleed? Is this what you like? Fate is what happens when you aren't true to yourself, and destiny is what happens when you are, Franco.”
She heard him swear. She heard the door closing. She heard his footsteps. He started the bike and she listened to the machine growl down the mountain path before opening up with a burst of aggression along the beach road. She walked over to a fish tank in the corner of the room and gazed inside. A fish the size of a man’s fist swam inside. She looked at the creature and smiled.
Amateurs.
FOUR
Bangkok
Straining to be fashionable
JAMES HALE was on his tenth drink. Or was it the twelfth? The glass was almost empty. Or was it partially full? Someone else would have to tell him. Someone that cared. Hale didn’t. He was standing in an aircraft-hanger-sized nightclub called Hollywood that was full with just as many sharks. Next to him stood Pim who worked for Bluegreen. Hale knew the type. Her father was born into money and she had never been without him or it. She was sweet, just out of university; beautifully-built and nervous. Hale leaned over to her: “You see, Pim, It’s really not my scene this. All these high society kids with their expensive haircuts, their sharp suits and their iPhones. In this city you either have the world or you have nothing. We don’t belong here. Why don’t we split and get a steak?”
“I don’t eat meat,” she said. Pim knew where she belonged and it wasn’t sharing a table with this drunken farang. Her father would hit the roof if he found out she was at a nightclub let alone with a foreigner who had a reputation.
“Figures,” he said and scanned the dance-floor. There were tables and chairs with young hipsters trying their hardest to look fashionable. They shared bottles of Johnnie Red, coke and ice. They were all connected with wireless technology and the old money. They tweeted, they face-booked, they lined, they sent stickers, and they copied and pasted. They were the new generation and they wanted immediate cyber-gratifications. Hale had more than a few drunken and cynical light-years separating him for this new cyber-savvy crowd. He wished that he’d had their chances, their education, and their hardware. The haircuts, they could keep. Hale liked his short back and sides just the way it was, cheers very much.
Hale was ranting. “Opportunities just land at their feet, all the toys and all the boys. Wow! iPhone5, special fucking delivery materialises under their pillows after a rather lucid dream. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. A Lamborghini simply builds itself around your skinny frame after a few well-chosen words in the old man’s shell. All you have to do is turn the key and put their foot to the gas. If you crash it, daddy buys you a new one in a different colour. If you run over someone, daddy simply pays the bill. Where is the conflict, the sense of ever earning anything? If I earn the money to buy a sports car I want to really enjoy the experience of a hit and run. Hell, I’ll do the time. What’s the point in having all the toys without feeling the price, the value? Do you know what I’m saying Pim? Is this all just washing past you? If I do a hit and run I want to be there. I want to experience the whole trip, baby. I want to feel the cold clink of metal on my wrists. None of this high-society bail for Mr Hale. Life is what I want. As much of it as you can give me. I want to hit and hit again. A fucking outlaw...”
“I think they are just trying to have fun...And what’s wrong with Lamborghinis and iPads? These are good things no?”
“What’s wrong with them? Have you even been listening? What’s wrong with them? Just about everything...They are the devil’s toys thrown onto a society of hate and prejudice. This is Beelzibub’s bargain, right here. Fun?, Sister, they are pretending to have fun, but look at them. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing, honey. The funny thing is how the country pretends to be a poor, nice third world country to get the rates on import, export. Tax breaks. People starving. How about that meal?”
“Khun Hale, in Thailand ladies take things slowly,” Pim blew out a tiny breath of exasperated air.
“That’s not the Thailand I know, sugar. Is a Lamborghini slow? No. Is an iPad slow? No. Thai ladies like fast things. Fast, sister, fast, boom, boom, bam, bam.”
“Well, maybe you should get to know our country a little better.”
“Or maybe not,” he said under his breath. “Excuse me one moment, oil change.” Hale pushed through the crowds and headed for the exit. He was itching to get into the zone. The zone was a parallel universe on Sukhumvit road. The Street of Dead Artists led up to the Nana Entertainment Plaza. Explorers ventured into the zone for a few days, weeks, months, years. Some never returned. Some returned broken shells of their former selves consumed by desires, greed, and theft. They sat in bars, grey ghosts of their former selves. Dreams and nightmares were spun like webs around the carnival rides. Promises were made to be broken. The zone took no prisoners. The shows, the fashions, the attractions and the actors came and went but the story was always the same. Hale belonged in the zone; outside of it he was just killing time, like a junkie waiting for a fix. He needed the zone and the zone needed him. He felt safe there.
Two police officers stood at the exit blocking his path. They wore the tight brown uniform with guns clipped to their belts. An officer with a neatly trimmed moustache and a blank expression handed Hale a small plastic container. He looked at it. He looked at the two officers.
“Sample,” said officer number one.
“Sample?”
“No sample. No go,” said number two.
“Are you taking the...”
Hale realised that they were indeed and they had the authority to do so. He snorted through his nose like a delinquent child, “You want me to piss in a bottle before I leave?”
“Sample,” the officer repeated,
“Talkative, aint ya?”
This was unexpected. He took the plastic cup and thought about it. He needed a contingency plan. The line of cocaine snorted at Q Bar was bound to show up in the sample. He pocketed the receptacle and headed back into the crowds. Pim stood at a table fending off a group of fashion freaks. Their hair gelled up like Korean pop-singers. Hale pushed through the mob and spoke to Pim, “I need you to do something for me.”
“What is it?” Pim shouted over the trashy pop band live on stage.
“I need your help.”
“What?”
“I need you to give me something.”
“What do you need?”
“Your urine.”
“What?”
“Your urine, pee pee, piss, piddles,’ he said, mocking her accent, “I need a sample.” Hale passed the container to her. She looked at it.
“Whatever for?”
“They’re asking for it at the door. I take it you have no
drugs in you?”
“No I don’t...never have...”
“Of course you don’t. The problem is I do, perhaps, sometimes... I have a little something inside me. I do however have a solution. It involves you. Now, run along to the ladies fill this little cup up and bring it back to me.”
“You expect me to do this for you?”
“I played golf with your director the other Sunday. We talked about you. He said something about a promotion. We were teeing off at the nineteenth hole. It’s all a bit of a blur.”
“A promotion?”
“His words not mine. I told him I wasn’t sure about it,” Hale passed her the plastic vessel, “‘Pim’s a fine lady but lacks basic decision-making skills,’ I told him. I say things as I see them.” She looked at Hale and then looked at the vessel. She smiled painfully and walked towards the ladies restroom. It was all too easy. Pim returned through the crowd followed by a Thai colleague named Boss. Boss had always confused Hale. He had a guilty expression most of the time and Hale figured there must have been something behind it. He worked for Bluegreen. Boss was the only man that Hale had ever met that had caused him to question the size of rats. Boss had once told him about a theory that rats could grow to any size given enough food and a happy environment. Hale reasoned that there was no limit to their size. Especially in Bangkok. Especially for Boss. He turned to face Pim, “Have you got it?”
“Yes,” she handed him the plastic vessel filled with warm yellow liquid. Seeing the small vessel Boss grabbed it from Hale’s grasp. A splash of the liquid spilled onto his hand.
“So I see we’re playing shots,” he said drunkenly. “What is it?” He takes a sniff, “Tequila?”