by Ken Austin
The forms complete, Veneer walked with a guard out into a low hallway that led into the visitors area.
Let’s get a look at Streeter. Look into the eyes of a man who is going to spend the next 12 years behind bars. See if there is anything that tells me what kind of person he is. But Veneer would be wary during the interview. It took him a while over the course of the time he had visited prisoners, but Veneer had learned that cons were excellent at reading emotions. If you were trying to put one over on them, or act in a way that wasn’t your true self, they knew.
The guard who was walking with Veneer lightly grabbed his arm and guided him into the room where Streeter was waiting. No glass partition and talking through phones like in all the prison movies, Veneer thought, as he often had when he met prisoners here. A room with the prisoner handcuffed to a hook welded to the metal table where he sat.
Streeter looks like a librarian thought Veneer. He was lean, not imposing at all. He had limp hair that hung uniformly around his face and the side of his head.
“Hello, my name is Vic Streeter,” he said. He leaned forward in his chair and offered his shackled hand. Veneer shook it. Firm grip, but not the strength he expected from such a supposed hard case.
“Nice to meet you. My name’s Sal Veneer.”
“I met a lot of strange characters when I lived overseas,” Streeter said. Launched right into his story. No small talk. Veneer had told the other convict, Slopski, why he wanted to interview Streeter. That he had ideas of writing a book. He was sure that Slopski had passed on the information to Streeter.
He’s got that gaunt, skull-head look, thought Veneer. Former junkie? Current junkie?
Veneer fumbled to get his notebook out as Streeter talked. “Mind if I tape record our conversation?” Veneer asked.
Streeter stopped and looked at Veneer with a calm, deliberate stare.
Fuck. Have I committed some jailhouse faux pas for daring to ask about the tape recorder? Veneer paused his hand inside of his backpack clutching the tape recorder. He looked straight at Streeter and waited.
Streeter held his gaze for a moment.
“Of course you can!” Streeter said. A smile crossed his face. Veneer breathed a sigh of relief and placed the tape recorder on the scratched metal table.
“So, I’ll keep telling you about some of my exploits and you tell me if you can use any of it,” said Streeter before he continued talking.
“When you go overseas, it’s like you see things again for the first time. You’ve been walking through life in various stages of numbness since you were a child. Maybe you don’t even know it. But when you get somewhere that is so different, it’s like a temporary revelation. Everything is new again.
“But, just as we become numbed to our most familiar surroundings, we also become more familiar with the new country that we are in as well.”
Boiler-plate stuff. Let him get warmed up. But if he doesn’t get to something interesting soon, you’ve got to hit him with some hard questions.
“But that buzz of life in a place like Bangkok can sustain you for a lot longer than life in a relatively sterile shit-hole of a city in Canada.”
Veneer jerked his head up from the notes he was scribbling and looked at Streeter at the evocation of that strangest of metaphors. Streeter smiled and recognized his own absurd imagery.
“But the greatest thing for me was the number of situations that a person could get involved in. Unlimited opportunities. I met other like-minded foreigners like myself. A sense of disconnect is part of the experience. And the weird sense that you…can get away with things. An incredibly naïve way to feel, but every other foreigner who I met in Thailand, the ones who wanted to get a situation going, felt the same way.
“Just as many ways you get can tripped up over there as here. Just different ways. First day there I ended up in a bar frequented by expats and travelers. A lot of hard cases in there and wannabe hard cases. It was pretty easy to determine who was who. I sat down beside a quieter older Brit who seemed to have an aura of calm around him. But what drew me to him was the fact that a coterie of little sycophants surrounded him. He obviously had something that they wanted.
“Brits are some of the nastiest characters in that part of the world, foreigners who set up their own little underworld full of scams, heists and plenty of violence. If you play the game right, you can join in their fun and games and get away with a lot.”
“What was it that you got away with?” asked Veneer. He looked around the grim room and the guard standing at the door and then looked back at Streeter.
“Sure, I’m sitting here for a good chunk of my life. But what I’m in here for has little to do with what happened over there. “
Streeter pulled out a pouch of tobacco from his shirt pocket and started rolling a cigarette.
“What I got away with, for a good while, was being part of one of the biggest drug smuggling operations working out of that part of the world. Heroin that comes from Burma and is shipped out through various avenues. Big shipments.
“I got to know…let’s call him The Brit, and paid close attention. At first, he needed people to help him who weren’t afraid of different situations.”
There was that word: situations. The way Streeter said it with a knowing sneer made Veneer laugh to himself. A single word loaded with memories for this old con.
“It mostly involved setting up transactions,” Streeter continued, “arranging shipments, pressuring various people into carrying out their end of the bargain, and yes the occasional flash of violence. But most of all, it was about watching and observing how things worked.”
Streeter struck a match and lit the roll-up cigarette that was hanging from his lips. “I understand you can no longer light up a cigarette just anywhere out in the real world,” said Streeter.
“Yes, smoking bylaws have toughened up in recent years,” said Veneer. He didn’t add, “Thank fuck for that.”
Interesting back story thought Veneer. But he hasn’t given me anything that I can flesh out as the beginning of a longer narrative. Some self-aggrandizing stuff as well. But who doesn’t engage in that when they are telling the story of their life? Got to get at some of the details. Damn, great writers take a nugget of something and run with it.
“Can you get into the actual machinations of how some of these deals happened?” asked Veneer. “I mean…just a summary version, beginning, middle, end, of exactly what happened. That’s the kind of thing that people want to read about.”
And it will give me an idea of is this is worth pursuing.
Streeter seemed to analyze the history of some incident in his mind. As if he was looking on from the outside and trying to place himself inside the past drama.
“Hmmm…yes, the big operations that I was part of. Those kind became less frequent after I was there for a while. Smaller, easier to organize undertakings became the standard. The big ones were too dangerous. Too many people had to know too many things. Smaller scale allowed us to change plans quickly, to abandon things if something seemed off.
“We always tried to bring in a few younger types who we could get to do the most dangerous things. Sometimes we trolled through the bars and guest houses of Kao San Road to find the right kind of person.”
“What qualified as the right kind of person?”
“Someone who was stupid enough to not know how dangerous bravado can be, and someone who was young enough to not have suffered because of it.”
“So basically you’re talking about drug mules?” asked Veneer.
“No, more like a canary in a coal mine,” said Streeter.
Veneer looked up and saw the guard who was at the door. The guard was looking at him and Streeter.
Streeter was relaxed in his chair. The roll-up cigarette was in his hand, hanging at his side. A wisp of that sweet-smelling pouch tobacco smoke curled up around Streeter’s face, giving him a calm, ethereal look. Veneer could see him in that bar in Bangkok, calmly talking to The Brit an
d making it clear that he wanted to be part of some situation. He was probably just as good at sidling up to the young backpacker type who he wanted to pull into their drug running schemes.
He seems to be holding back a bit thought Veneer. I’ve only got about half an hour left of my allotted time with him.
“Is there anything you can give me that I could really spin into an article? Interesting stuff so far, but I need something more concrete.”
Streeter reached inside his shirt front and pulled out some kind of medallion and let it drop against his chest in full view.
“What I can give you is a general idea of what went on during my time there. What I want you to do, is to go and find out the rest of the details on your own.”
Veneer screwed up his face and raised both of his hands in the air.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I am saying. I want you to go to Bangkok and fill in the rest of the details. I can’t give them to you at the moment.”
“Why not?”
“Because what I want to share with you is not the slightly exaggerated details of a couple of drug smuggling operations provided by an aging small-time criminal. What I learned in Thailand is far more important than that.
“And don’t for a second think that what I want to share with you could not have been learned elsewhere. But it happened to play out in Thailand for me.
“Besides, the mystique of the orient and all that related horseshit does make it more likely that it will resonate with people.”
“OK, but what exactly is it that you learned? Was it something about other people you worked with?”
The door to the room they were in opened and the guard came in. “OK, Streeter, the visit is over.”
Veneer scooped up his tape recorder and put it and his notebook in his backpack.
“What is it about? The story that you want to share?”
“It’s about death. And how people deal with other people’s death, which is the easiest part of death. But how they come to terms with their own mortality is the most difficult.
“I learned about these things when I was involved in one very distinctive operation that is likely still going on today. It involved a Bangkok mortician who specializes in dealing with families and friends of foreigners who die in Thailand and then sends the bodies back to various countries such as Canada, the US, Australia.”
A sparkle of excitement took hold in Veneer. He knew that when the right story presented itself that it would be obvious. This had something, he could feel it.
“OK, that sounds like something I could run with. But I have got to meet you again to get some more details. I don’t really see myself going to Thailand, but that doesn’t matter. Research can fill in a lot of the blanks.”
Veneer arranged another meeting time with Streeter and secured the authorization from the prison officials before he left. But he would never get the chance to meet Streeter again. Two days later Veneer was sitting in his small studio apartment that was near the campus when he received a call from professor Gletgen.
“Sal? I got a call from the prison officials in Kingston. They told me that they had to cancel the meeting you had with an inmate named Streeter. By the way, I don’t recall that there were any visits with inmates coming up. Was this something that I should have known about?”
“Uh, no. It was related to the most recent interviews we had done. I had to go back and clarify some of the information from a previous visit. I misplaced some of my notes. Anyway, why did they cancel? Did they reschedule?”
“No. That prisoner you were to meet was killed by another inmate.”
Veneer hung up the phone and considered the unlucky turn of events. Veneer stayed in his apartment all day considering what he should do.
Like so many unexpected occurrences in people’s lives, the death of Streeter solidified some things in Veneer’s mind. He really had had enough of wasting his time at the university. And he felt like the chance he had been looking for had just slipped through his fingers. Damn. Poor Streeter. Why should he care about the old con? But he did for some reason. And strange that Streeter had been going on about death.
Within a week, Veneer dropped all his courses at the university and talked to professor Gletgen. He told him that he had decided to go to Bangkok to see if he could follow up Streeter’s story and hopefully put together the beginnings of what might be a true crime book.
Veneer came clean about his unauthorized visit to Streeter. He was relieved when the professor forgave him. And Gletgen told him that he would have a word with the faculty president and make a special arrangement so that Veneer could return and pick up his studies within the next couple of years without any academic penalty. Perhaps even put the experience in Bangkok toward some credits.
The next few weeks were hectic as Veneer sold off his things and subleted his apartment. He was hell bent on making it happen. He was really pulling up roots and heading to Thailand.
Veneer landed in Bangkok at the end of April. He strode off the plane and was hit with a wall of humidity. Confusing airport. He read that the airport was less than five years old. Must have been a tough five years.
He followed the signs that directed travelers to immigration. He looked at the crush of people passing him in the other direction. Travelers, backpackers, business people. Most of them were Asians but there were many Caucasians as well. He arrived at the immigration area and saw about twenty line-ups with hundreds of people in total.
Veneer stood in one of the line-ups and plopped down his carry-on bag and looked at the rest of the people around him.
A fat older American man was standing behind him now. Veneer knew he was American. Something about his mannerisms and style of dress. He had a bloated face with thinning hair on top. He had grown the remaining hair on one side as long as possible and then had swept it over the top of his bald crown. He was wearing one of those black t-shirts with a gaudy, colourful image of a motorcycle on it. The kind of shirt that you won at carnivals. The kind of t-shirt that white trash loved to wear. He had on knee length shorts and was wearing sandals. His thin, pasty white legs seemed obscene and contrasted with his bloated upper body. He was standing next to one of the most beautiful women that Veneer had ever seen. Long and smooth, with toffee brown skin, a perfect complexion and cat-eyes.
Veneer read about these types of older, mostly Caucasian men who traveled to this part of the world and hooked up with much younger women. The woman in turn received some kind of financial security.
The woman smirked at Veneer ever so briefly and then her blank stare was back. The older lummox saw Veneer looking at his girlfriend.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” the lummox said.
“Uh, yeah,” said Veneer as he looked around to see if anyone was listening in on this awkward exchange.
“Mac Grifton is my name,” said the lummox as he held out a meaty mitt for Veneer to shake.
Hell, why not, thought Veneer. Veneer knew exactly no one else in this strange country. Perhaps this lummox would be able to give him some ideas about where to stay the first few nights. After much research online, Veneer determined that it was easy enough to land and sort things out after arrival. But a few pointers now that he was here wouldn’t hurt.
“Hi. Name’s Sal Veneer.
“First time in the country, aint’ it?” said Grifton with a big grin on his face.
“Yeah. Does it show?”
“Oh yeah! We’ve all been there. That realization that you are in a different world. And once you get to know this world, you will come back again and again.”
Mac Grifton gave Veneer some good information for getting started in Bangkok as they stood in the immigration line-up for the next 40 minutes. By the time Veneer finished the brief interview with the immigration officials and picked up his luggage, he felt ready to go.
Veneer walked into the lobby of the hotel where the taxi had left him. He looked around and took in the colourful charac
ters and the buzz of activity.
The people waiting in a queue at the hotel check-in counter appeared outwardly calm but most were already seething. An American tourist was throwing a tantrum, as he demanded that reality be quickly and efficiently shaped to fit his world.
“This is not acceptable solution to the problem!” the man bellowed, staring down at the diminutive female who was working behind the counter. The man appeared middle aged, with shorts revealing emaciated white legs, a loud colourful, short sleeved button up shirt and a face reddened partially by the sun and partially from his rage. Next to him stood his wife, also middle aged with short hair and the thick through the neck and shoulders look that afflicts numerous women of her age and leads many people to mistakenly believe that they are bull dykes. She was glaring at the Thai woman working behind the counter as her husband continued to rail.
“We are Americans, do you realize that?” he hissed.
“Yes, I am realize that Mr. Washhead but we have addressed your complaint and…”
“That’s Washburn!” he spluttered. You have not addressed it adequately and you will have to compensate us for this fiasco! The dirty glass that was in our room would never be accepted in the US!” the man yelled as he backed away from the counter and pointed at the now frightened Thai desk clerk.
At that instant the elevator doors that were positioned a few metres to the right and led past the reception desk in a straight line directly to the hotel entrance, opened. A German tourist with an extraordinarily large stomach that had been acquired after years of continuous beer drinking came striding out of the elevator, moving with surprising speed and grace for such a large man. The American stepped backwards as he continued shouting and collided with the German’s large stomach, bouncing with a speed that shocked all those in the hotel lobby and left them open-mouthed as the American flew through the air in a twisted pile of skinny legs and brightly coloured clothing.
The man’s wife started shrieking as she ran towards her inert husband in a pile on the floor. As she ran she caught her shorts on the hook of a passing luggage cart, ripping the fabric clear of her body and leaving her bare-assed and shrieking.