by Rob Brunet
When I woke up, I was lying in a hospital bed, my hand splinted and bandaged and feeling like I imagined those pennies we’d put on railroad tracks when we were kids might have if they had nerves running through Lincoln’s face. Worse.
At least it wasn’t my pitching hand. Not that it much mattered any more.
Two men were sitting there, staring at me. A white man and a black man.
My teammates. Rod “Shooter” Beck and Willie McGee.
Willie, said, “Dusty wanted to come, Pete, but the club had a fit.”
“Loyal fuck, isn’t he. At least you guys came.”
Both men looked at each other. Rod said, “Some shit, huh, Pete? Almost make it to the Show and this is what you get. What’re you gonna do now?”
Up to that minute, I hadn’t thought much about it. I made my decision right then. “I’m going home to New Orleans.” I worked up a grin. “This little setback is just a speed bump on my way to riches.”
“You gonna keep on gambling, Pete?” Rod said. “Might want to reconsider that.” Willie nodded in agreement.
“Nah,” I said. “I’m done with that. It’s time I used some of my mental dexterity.”
“You’re gonna keep feedin’ that gamblin’ jones, aren’t you?” Willie said.
“No way, Jose. Gambling’s a loser’s game. I found that out the hard way. No, I bet you guys a hundred bucks each I’m back on my feet in a week. A month, tops. I’ll be watching you guys in the World Series from my private box. Lighting Cubans with C-notes.
“I’m giving two to one odds,” I said as they made their way out of the room. “No, three to one. Wait!”
They must not have heard me.
Back to TOC
Here’s a sample from Tom Crowley’s Murder in the Slaughterhouse.
Prelude
The pick-up truck careens along the mountain road. Forest cover hangs down to the road on one side, but on the other side there is a hundred foot drop.
Inside the pick-up are four kids—fearful and hopeful but mostly just curious to see what’s beyond the next corner. Previously, thirty minutes was a long trip for them; the five hours on the road thus far is an impossibly long time. The children are from Lisu hill tribe homes in a remote northwest corner of Thailand. The vehicle is a battered Toyota pick-up with an extended cab. The male driver and a woman they just call Auntie sit in front, the four teenagers sit in back. They are all young and slight of build. It isn’t crowded even with the carry bags they were allowed to bring along with some changes of clothes and a few other personal possessions. They have been in pick-up trucks before, but this is the first time any of them have ridden inside the cab. When the groups from their hill tribe villages went to market, the kids lucky enough to go along sat in the open back of the pick-up, exposed to the sun and rain, but happy and excited. This luxury of riding inside is new to them.
The four teenagers don’t know the driver or Auntie. The arrangements for the trip had been made by their parents, or in the case of the twin fifteen-year-old girls, Aom and Nang, by their stepfather. Their mother had cried but agreed as the money to be gained from their jobs working at a restaurant in Bangkok would be a big help now that she had two younger children from her new husband and couldn’t work as much to earn money. Also she knew, though she had never said anything, that her new husband had been molesting Aom, who had become increasingly quiet and withdrawn, over the past two years. Aom’s mother thought her daughter would be safer in the city. Their stepfather had even been paid an advance on their salary, a large amount of money: twenty thousand baht, about six hundred and eighty dollars.
Of the two boys, Joe is bigger and taller than Pan and has broader shoulders indicating that when he fills out he will have a strong body. Pan is not only of much slighter build; he is attractive, almost pretty, in his good looks. The boys don’t know the girls or each other though Joe remembers seeing the twins at the farm market the previous summer. The Lisu girls in their colorful clothes had stood out for that as much as for their cuteness. For hill tribe girls, fifteen was not too young to be thinking of marriage. Joe had been too shy to approach them initially and by the time he had snuck around and had some mountain whiskey to drink and built up some whiskey courage, they were gone. The boys are from different villages, but of the same mountain-dwelling Lisu hill tribe group as the girls. They are also fifteen years old. For some reason, the payments to the boy’s parents were only half of those paid for the girls since they were from different villages. This was not general knowledge. The important point to each family is the promise of money flowing back to the village from Bangkok. All of the children had finished school with the sixth grade since it was deemed to be enough education.
In the cab of the pick-up truck, they sit divided—the boys on one side and the girls on the other—with the girls’ bags in between them as a barrier. They haven’t spoken to each other very much at all. Then Joe speaks to the girls in the Lisu dialect asking what village they are from. Aom, still cast in the role she has taken with her stepfather of protecting her sister Nang, replies and names her village. The Auntie turns around and yells at them to keep quiet, adding that if they have to talk they can only speak Thai from now on. Startled, the children all nod in frightened agreement. Nang starts crying softly. Aom holds her and comforts her, telling her it will be okay.
The road continues to twist and turn and finally descends to the city of Tak and the broad plains covered with rice fields. It is the first time the mountain born and bred teenagers have seen open countryside and now the sense that they are going to a different world and life gains strength within them.
At Tak the pick-up joins the North-South highway. Shortly afterwards, the driver pulls over to a rest area. The kids are let out but told to stand next to the pick-up and not wander away or go inside the food mart. Auntie takes the twins to the restroom and then brings them back. Then the driver does the same with the boys. After that they wait while Auntie goes inside and buys drinks and snacks for all. No food orders are placed. The kids will eat and drink what they are given and do it as the pick-up drives along. As soon as their food and drink arrives, they are ordered back in the pick-up which proceeds south on the highway, through the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, and on to Bangkok.
The shadows from the receding sun grow longer as the pick-up races down the highway and darkness is falling as they come to the northern outskirts of Bangkok. The kids have all fallen asleep as they ride through miles of lush green rice fields. The driver curses as he slows suddenly to pay a toll and they catch up with the remnants of the evening rush hour on the city’s expressway. The kids wake up, eyes wide open at the number of cars and buildings and lights. It’s a Disneyland without joy. They had never imagined there could be so much of everything. Finally, after several toll stops, starting and stopping and more cursing at traffic by the driver, they come to the exit indicating the port area of Klong Toey.
It’s complete darkness now. The bright lights of the upmarket areas of the city are left behind as the driver winds through congested, dimly-lit streets, across a railway track and pulls up in front of a dilapidated three-story Chinese shophouse which has a few colored Christmas lights hanging outside to mark it as a night spot. The ground floor has some tables and is being used as a bar. Men are sitting around several tables drinking. A small shrine, lit by red lights and an altar with a picture of a Chinese Buddha, is set up in the far corner. This is primarily a Chinese slum area in the port district. Stairs in the back of the shophouse lead to the upper floors. The driver and Auntie herd the kids to the front area and Auntie asks a question using a strange dialect the kids don’t understand, not Thai. One of the men grunts at her and points a finger up the stairs. Auntie leads the kids around the small tables; the men drinking and playing cards are all looking closely at the hill tribe kids. One man picks up on the fact that the girls are twins and makes a comment to those at his table, resulting in raucous laugh from all. The kids don’t understand th
e language but Aom is familiar with the nature of the look. The man could be as dangerous as her stepfather. She puts her arm around Nang in a protective gesture as they walk along.
On the second floor, there is a hallway with doors to three rooms, a bathroom and in back a kitchen area with a table. The stairs continue up to a third floor divided into the same arrangement. Auntie leads the kids to the kitchen table where five men are drinking and playing cards. One of the men, a bit more carefully dressed than the others and a bit older, in his mid-fifties, looks at Auntie and the kids. He speaks to Auntie in a Chinese dialect.
“These are the hill tribe kids? Do they all understand Thai?”
“Yes, it was all we could get on this trip, but I have two or three more whose parents I’m still talking to. Maybe on the next trip.”
Auntie turns to the kids and tells them to come closer so the old man can inspect them. He deliberates for a few seconds, walking around the kids to look at them from behind. As he does so, Aom reflexively puts her arm around Nang’s shoulder again as if to shield her from the old man’s gaze. This move is noted. The old man thinks to himself, “This is her weakness. She’ll do anything to protect her sister. Well, we’ll give her a chance to do everything.”
Then he turns back to Auntie, “It’s okay. They will do. Put the two girls in the same room to start. We’ll put the pretty boy in the room next to them. Make sure they get some food and get washed up, especially the girls. Show them how to wash their pussies. I’ll see to the boy myself. We’ll start training them later. There will be a lot of customers interested in playing with the twins at the same time. They’ll bring in good money.”
Turning to the driver the old man gestures to Joe, “This one isn’t pretty enough for our customers. Get him a meal and then put him back in the truck and take him down to Ranong. He goes to work on the fishing boats in the morning. We have people down there waiting for new crew. You know where to go.”
He reaches into his pocket and gives the driver a handful of blue pills. “These will help to keep you awake on the drive down.”
The driver and Auntie both nod and turn away with the kids. It’s time for the kids to start their new life; though it will not be the life their parents have been promised.
Chapter 1
In most cities of the world, you could say as the dawn eases its way above the horizon that the city begins to stir. In Bangkok, that wouldn’t be precisely correct. The mystical mix of the city’s night beat continues through the verge of dawn and the pace of the city only hesitates. There is a somewhat perceptible pause in the city’s life movements as the often desperate human night activity slows to a crawl, around dawn, as the night people complete their retreat with the last of the seductively clad sex workers and transgender beauties scurrying out of the growing light into the back of taxis. But the beat is taken up virtually immediately with the morning traffic of the day people as they begin to reclaim the city.
As the sun’s first rays reflect from the many pieces of colored glass and Chinese porcelain embedded in its structure and pagoda towers, Wat Arun, Bangkok’s ancient temple of the dawn, glows and provides a show of dancing light from its location on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River. The lights provide a beacon to the boat traffic on the still dark river below. Not all of the City of Angels shares this brightness, however.
At the slaughterhouse across the river, miles to the east in the city’s largest slum area, Klong Toey, the sun is also just breaking over the horizon. Long shadows cast from two blocks of run-down apartments just to the east interrupt the first streams of light to find the rough concrete floor of the old structure. The building is open on the sides with only a sheet metal roof above to keep out the rain and a four-foot high, rusting, iron-railed fence around the pens to hold the pigs and secure the killing ground. Concrete gutters run down the sides so the blood not captured for pig’s blood soup, and the other liquids expelled by the dying pigs, could drain down to the outlet. Water hoses used at the end of the night’s slaughters ensure the waste washes completely through the gutters and the outlet drain and into the nearby canal. The canal itself is bordered by slum shacks which provide their own donations to its septic waters as it seeps into the Chaophraya River. It has rained the night before. The moisture hangs in the air and a mist rises from the wet concrete as the early morning sun warms the air. The rank odor of blood lingers and grows stronger with the warmth of the sun.
It is quiet now. The squealing of the pigs, the shouting of the laborers gaffing, slashing, killing and rendering the pigs ended hours before, around midnight. The trucks loaded with pig carcasses then immediately departed for the fresh markets throughout the city. Now there is the silence of dawn. Birds, magpies mostly, are hopping along the gutters and floors picking at loose remnants of flesh caught in the rough concrete. The rats, competing with the birds for the loose bits of flesh, are becoming more hesitant as the light slowly increases. They are dashing back to hide in holes in the drains, watching beady-eyed for moments, and then dashing back for another morsel to carry to their den. As the light intensifies, they will leave the killing ground to the birds and wait for the next night’s slaughter to begin.
Twenty yards away, up the rough concrete ramp leading out of the slaughterhouse to the road above, commercial life is beginning to stir. The sidewalk vendors selling plates of rice, bowls of noodles, fried chicken and pork and morning snacks and drinks are setting up their stands and starting to cook the food the morning crowds, on their way to work in the city, would need. However, down below, one carcass still remains sprawled just inside the rusted rail of the pen nearest the exit to the road adjoining the slaughterhouse. The carcass is on its back, one leg sticking out under the lowest of the iron rails, a bare foot pointed towards the road above. It is the body of a tall, slim boy—a teenage boy. His corpse is nude and he is lying with his head thrown back and hands out to the side, his adolescent genitals exposed. The body seems posed for a crucifixion, awaiting a cross. His head is unnaturally thrown back probably due to the gash cutting almost completely through his throat. There is a gaff, one of those used to hook the pigs and pull them to the slashing, stuck in his mouth and his blood has drained out and pooled around his body. His eyes gaze up sightlessly, not squinting from the early morning sun. Except for the birds strutting their macabre dance around his body, there is no movement at all.
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.”
&nb
sp; 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.