“He sounded mad. Crazy in the head.”
“I know. I quit my job, today. Nobody can work for him.” She told Mrs. Somchai about her job at the Riser Room and then about Suma. “He’s never liked her since the day he hired her.”
“Poor thing. Both of you are better off out of there,” said Mrs. Somchai.
A police cruiser entered the parking lot out front, the siren screaming. Lawan heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
“I better go.” Mrs. Somchai turned in the doorway. “Do you want to file a complaint?”
“No. Forget it,” Lawan said. “I’m late already.” She rushed into the bathroom and brought out Emily. The cat was fidgety and fussing from Lawan locking it inside the bathroom. “Can you take Emily for a while until I get back,” she asked Mrs. Somchai.
The women nodded. Lawan handed the cat over. “I’m late already,” she said and watched the old woman go next door.
Chapter Eleven
At that same hour—3:30 p.m.—across town, Arun Songsiri woke up in bed with a splitting headache. He had no dreams, no afternoon arousal, and felt pain all over his tall, scrawny body. It was the same pain he felt that day in the central prison at Nakhon Si Thammarat where he’d fallen victim to molestation in the shower—a year ago last month.
He had served a three-year sentence for illegal gambling in a back alley gambling den that the police on Koh Phangan Island had shut down. Now, in a morbid psychosis, fearful about his future beyond prison walls, he envisioned living a life in a much larger city, far away from his enemies. Changmai, miles to the north of Bangkok and far away from the island, was the place. There, he could start over in the hustle and bustle of large crowds moving about the city. There, he could feel totally free, again.
A week ago, he had purchased a ticket off the island. The speedboat ride over to Koh Samui Island, with the only available airport in the area, took thirty minutes. Inside the airport bathroom was where the trouble started. One bulky brute emerged from a stall and punched his face hard and cracked two ribs with fierce body blows. The other man—wearing a black, shiny suit—stood lookout at the front door to prevent anyone from entering. The man who punched his face—a blocky, short-armed gangster from Hong Kong—spoke to him in a deep, dark, and threatening voice .
“This comes from Bennie. You know Bennie…huh?”
He knew Bennie. Bennie Zee. Everyone on Koh Phangan Island knew Bennie Zee.
“Well, this message is from Bennie. You have one week to come up with the money.”
Bennie’s spies were everywhere. He’d regretted buying the plane ticket to Changmai. At the last minute, he’d cancelled it and lost his money on a non-refundable ticket. Plus, he also had to write off the ticket over to Koh Samui Island. Arun had lost big time all around, with nothing left to show for his efforts. All he ended up with that dreary day was a bloody face, a black eye, some cracked ribs, and the ominous warning: You have one week to come up with the money.
Arun Songsiri, a thirty-four-year-old ex-con and gambling addict, had lived a paltry life crowded into the dim lights and stale smoke of gambling dens on Koh Phangan Island. His game was Chinese Mahjong. The game was developed in 500 BC and connected in some way to the Great One, Confucius, who was fond of birds, which would explain the name, meaning sparrow.
The game usually had four players. Each player received a hand of thirteen tiles with a winning hand coming from four or five melds—a meld being a set of matching tiles). As luck would have it, Arun always came up one or two melds short of a winning hand. He had borrowed heavily from anyone insane enough to loan him money, and over a short period of time, sank deeper into debt. Being a survivor, Arun adapted to a new life of by dodging his creditors and learning to live on very little.
Two bowls of rice a day and maybe some platua—Thai tuna fish—if he could get it, was all he ever needed. Last week, just as his dreary life seemed at its lowest point, a one thousand baht note borrowed from his sister Suma sent his spirits soaring into the stratosphere.
Arun sat on the curb of a deserted street that day beyond the cabin he shared with Suma. The bicycle lotto vender drove by. The vendor, a fat man wearing shades and a Baltimore Orioles baseball hat, stopped and peered down over the handlebars at Arun.
“Want lotto ticket?” he asked Arun, speaking to him in Thai.
Of course, he wanted a lotto ticket. What did he look like sitting outside on a hot sweltering sidewalk on a day most sane people were indoors?
“Of course I want lotto tickets. What the hell do you think I’m doing out here? I’m waiting for your ass to swing by. Let me see the board.” The lotto man handed it over gingerly to him with a startled look on his face.
With careful thought, Arun chose numbers that coincided with his birthday: 12-5-77. Combinations of 1, 2, 5, and 7. He waited all night with a premonition bubbling in his veins like boiling water, that something good was about to happen in his wretched, tormented, miserable, meaningless life—there weren’t adjectives enough to describe the way he felt. The next day, as he checked the papers, 2-5-7 had come up big. Out of millions of numbers, out of millions of number combinations, 2-5-7 was drawn, and the lotto was worth $200,000.00.
Although winning lotto was something to celebrate, it caused yet another problem. That amount of money meant that he could only pay one creditor, while the others would have to wait for their money. A bad mistake. Maybe Arun agonized over his decision as he forked over the money—exactly the 200k he owed—to Parry Langer, his part-time drinking buddy and “friend” whom he’d almost come to trust.
Still left unpaid was the huge debt he owed Bennie Zee. A bad mistake. Maybe? Arun mused, but he’d never been mistaken for being the sharpest tool in the box, and his life—cluttered with booze, drugs, and gambling debts—was racing downhill, out of control and faster than a car without brakes.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“Oh, Arun.”
A few days before, Lawan had shrugged and tried to make sense of it.
“You had the money…all that money…and you gave it to Parry Langer, that creepy child molester?”
“I did. I did. I did.” Arun whined. “Parry’s not a child molester, either. He just has…um…you know…”
Lawan stood in the bedroom beside Arun’s bed, stopped, and caught her breath.
“You call this guy your friend.”
“Yes,” Arun said sheepishly through a pair of glazed eyes.
The half pint of bourbon on his bed stand was empty, the bottle tipped over. The Mekong label glowed brightly on the bottle’s brown, frosted glass. Arun went to get up but sank down in the bed, looking hung-over and exhausted.
Lawan had brought over a bowl of rice topped with a tangy, spicy Thai sauce laced with pineapple and bits of chicken. He ate the meal and tossed the bowl on the floor beside the bed. The room was cluttered with piles of unwashed clothes, cigarettes in overturned ashtrays, and dime novels—he liked to read when he wasn’t gambling and losing all his money. A desk lamp lay crushed in a corner. One crumpled, smelly, unwashed sock draped over the porcelain base. A box of condoms, a T-shirt embossed with a fiery dragon, and one cigarette stained with lipstick from one of Arun’s late night escorts lay scattered across the floor.
“Gawd! This place is a pig pen, Arun.” Lawan bellowed in his ear. “How can you live like this?”
Lawan had a large, black lawn bag. She bent over, bobbing up and down as she picked up clothes. There was a broom and dustbin outside in a wall closet. She came back in, swept up the room, took the bin back outside, and emptied it in a garbage can at the side of the cabin. When she came back inside, Arun tried to get up out of bed. He was in his underwear—a pair of sky blue briefs with a bulge in the middle. Lawan looked at him disgustedly and continued to clean up the room. A few minutes later, Arun got up, went down the hall, and took a shower.
“I have something to show you,” he said to Lawan when he returned wrapped in a towel, his dark hair glistening
with water. He opened the top drawer of the bed stand and brought out a 9 millimeter Smith & Wesson.
“Nice, huh?” he asked proudly, showing her the gun with a glitter in his tired, bloodshot eyes. “It’s for protection. I’m taking lessons at the firing range.”
Lawan stared at the gun in shock and disbelief. “What are you going to do…shoot somebody?”
“If I have to,” he said.
* * * *
Arun waited until four o’clock. The lotto vendor usually arrived late in the afternoon, making his rounds on his bicycle. At 4:15 p.m., Suma, who’d overslept again, raced around the cabin in a panic while slamming drawers, getting dressed, and putting on makeup. She slammed the front door on her way outside, late for work as usual.
Meanwhile, Arun kept his eyes on the street, looking out for the lotto vendor. At 4:30 p.m., he saw two vehicles pass by in front of the cabin—a delivery van with wide, black tires and a wheat-colored Camry. The van came by five minutes before the Camry and then nothing. The street was as empty as a movie lot at midnight. No vendor in sight. Arun decided to walk out to the street. Give it ten or twenty minutes. Maybe, the guy was running late. Maybe, he stopped off for a beer somewhere after selling a lot of tickets.
As he sauntered back outside along the walk, he remembered he’d forgotten to lock the door to the cabin. Arun was lazy and didn’t feel like walking back to lock the door. Ah, screw it. He’d sit on the curb and wait with one eye peeled for the vendor and the other eye back on the cabin. It seemed like a good idea. Besides, he couldn’t lock it, anyway. He’d forgotten where he’d left his key—on the bookshelf…or in the drawer to the bed stand? Was it out on the pegboard in the kitchen? He couldn’t remember.
He looked up the street and back, again. Ah, hell. Who cares, anyway? He was close enough to the cabin. If someone tried to slip inside, he’d spot the bastard, race over, and put some hurt on him. He may be skinny, but Arun was tall and gangly, and he could hit pretty hard for a guy his size—five-ten and 155 pounds. So, he wasn’t worried.
Besides, he wore his amulet for good luck, and it gave him protection. Most Thais believed in the power of amulets and wore them constantly. He also had the Smith &Wesson tucked away under his pillow. So, that gave him extra incentive not to worry. At 4:45 p.m., the vendor rode by. Arun waved the guy over, and the guy stopped one inch short of running over his feet.
“Hey, watch it!” Arun shouted at the guy. “Watch the goddamn bike, will ya?”
“Sorry,” the guy said.
He leaned over the handlebars with his fat face smiling down at Arun like a circus clown. His breath reeked of beer, and his nut-brown eyes glittered in a dizzy light. He wore jeans, sneakers, and the same Baltimore Orioles baseball cap he’d worn when he sold Arun the winning lotto ticket.
Getting off the bike, the vendor kicked the stand down and parked the bike next to the curb. A ray of late afternoon sun glinted off the chrome handlebars. The vendor brought out a large board with rows of square, paper tabs lined with numbers. Arun fingered through the tabs of paper, looking for his birthday numbers. The guy stared out dreamily onto the street while Arun searched through the tabs, tearing off ones with a combination of 12-5-77. He won the lotto once; maybe, he could do it, again.
“You got a cigarette?” The vendor brought two straight fingers up to his lips and tapped them lightly.
“Naw, don’t smoke.” Arun shook him off.
As he studied the lotto tickets, Arun had no idea what was going on behind him. In the wheat-colored Camry, Bram Beckers had driven by five minutes before and pulled off onto a side street. He got out of the car, crossed a vacant lot, and walked up to the door of Arun’s cabin, keeping his eye focused on the street. He was both pleased and astounded to find the front door unlocked. Putting the sheet of tool metal back into the pocket of his suit coat, Beckers opened the door and slipped inside.
“That should do it.” Arun pulled out a thousand baht note he’d borrowed from Lawan and handed it over to the vendor.
The guy unzipped a cloth bag and slipped the note inside. He said, “Kap-Khun Kap”—thank you very much—got back on his bike, and drove away.
Sitting on the curb, Arun stayed a while longer. Studying his numbers, he wished, hoped, and prayed that some combination would turn up tomorrow to make him a rich man, again.
Inside the cabin, Bram Beckers searched to see if anyone else was inside. When he found the place empty, he moved down the hall toward the back bedroom. With a pair of black riding gloves, he opened the door and closed it behind him. The room was clean, the bed made, and a smell of lilac filled the air. Beckers got out his K-Bar knife and waited.
Chapter Twelve
At 4:15 that afternoon, Suma was panic-stricken. Her nerves were about to snap. She locked the cabin door and rushed across the stone walk out to the road. Wild puffs of air squeezed in and out of her lungs. She had overslept again and was racing frantically to get to work.
Last night, Bennie Zee’s scissor-clipping voice had gone off on her, again. This time, it was for trying to crash his private party. The time before that was for mixing Russian vodka instead of Puerto Rican rum into a fat lady’s cocktail. Like pieces of flint struck together, the sparks just seemed to fly whenever the two of them were around each other. One of these days, one of them would sustain serious injury if they kept going on like that, and the one getting injured wasn’t going to be Bennie Zee.
Suma’s cabin was a mile south of the city limits. The dense, tropical terrain of the Had Rin hills separated two beaches on the island’s southern peninsula. Sunset Beach—Had Rin Nai Beach to local Thais—was on the island’s west coast. Its companion, Sunrise Beach—Had Rin Nok Beach—was on the east coast. Sunrise was without question the more popular of the two beaches. A beautiful, idyllic place, it hosted the world-famous Full Moon Beach Party.
Hurrying along a path through the small, rocky foothills, Suma breathed hard. Her lungs felt raw and sore, like the lungs of a first-time jogger. She had a lot on her mind right now. Her life was forever in a state of chaos. There was Seabury and Bennie Zee to think about. Lawan—looming out there on the horizon—expected her to change, but she knew she had to stop. It wasn’t good to act so serious all the time. She had to learn to relax.
Hadn’t her therapist, Doctor Thongchai, suggested this very thing? Yes. Yes. Good old Doctor Thongchai. Short, thin legs churned under her as she hurried down the trail bordered by tall stands of white pine, and thick clusters of bamboo and tamarind that shut out the late afternoon sun. Wind blew hard inside the trees. It sent a strand of black hair into her eyes. She batted it back with small, slender fingers, capped by nails painted a sassy, coral color. As she raced on, she heard Seabury’s voice rifling through her mind. No, no. No way. I won’t do it.
She thought Seabury could have reacted better. Softer, less vigorous, and not used that belittling chuckle on her—the one that made her feel small and insecure. Her request for money—call it a long-term loan—wasn’t even for her. It was for Arun.
Up ahead, a huge, white finger pointed back at her, carved into a wooden sign nailed to the trunk of a pine tree. It was a familiar landmark. My friend. My quiet, gentle friend, she said to herself and caught her breath. The sign posted on the tree said: Sunrise Beach ½ kilometer. The sign next to it was from the Koh Phangan Forest Ministry of Thailand. It warned hikers about dangerous sinkholes in the area. The white finger was a road sign that greeted her each day. It had become a friendly reminder that she reached the halfway point of her journey.
She smiled. Then, just as quickly, her mood changed. She found herself caught up in the heated fury of another argument raging inside her. I know you. I know you, Suma.
The wind kept blowing, and something crashed inside the trees. The sound sent birds winging high into the sky. Frustrated, she gulped puffs of air. As her lungs inflated, she began to feel tense and irritable, like her nerves were a metal cord about to snap. She knew what being bipolar meant. Doc
tor Thongchai had explained all of it to her at the hospital. Now, in a frantic moment, it brought her to the edge of yet another full-blown, emotional trauma.
She talked out loud to herself, she answered herself, and she kept arguing. A voice sprang out of nowhere—Stop it. Stop it, Suma. You’re only hurting yourself—and shut down the argument. In a wild instant, she realized what she was doing. She was thinking too much. She was analyzing, probing, poking, and prying for answers that probably weren’t there. In the end, she concluded she wasn’t going crazy after all; she was merely hyperventilating and suffering from stress.
The wind blew harder. Branches shook. Leaves rattled inside the trees. Clouds of pine-needled grit swirled around her ankles and tore off into space. Walking faster, dressed in her red glitter mini and blue canvas shoes, Suma pressed on. Try as she might to remain optimistic, she felt her mood changing again only seconds later. Now, she was going back the other way, coming down off the mountain. Oh, please. Not again, Suma. Time seemed to fly by, and she was easily distracted. Some people always ran late, and unfortunately, she was one of them. The day was nearly over. Her night was just beginning, and the thought depressed her. She did all she could to keep from crying.
She walked from the coolness of the forest to where a vacant field full of thick, thorny brushes and tall grass greeted her. She crossed the field, and ten minutes later, her legs were killing her. Behind her, now in the western sky, the sun’s celestial power baked the land. It sent birds winging from the sky for the shade and seclusion of tall, dark trees. Waves of heat shimmered off the ground. Each footstep brought her closer to the Riser Room. The thought sent a startled bird winging through her stomach. A sharp pain of fear and frustration pierced her heart.
I’m late. They’ll complain, again. She took another full stride when the smell hit her. Cat urine and dog feces wafted up at her. Yuck! She made a face and gagged as bile rose in her throat. The awful taste lodged on her tongue, and it mingled with the outside smells stuck in her nostrils. She held her breath. She cringed and kept going, taking long strides with her short, brown legs.
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