Lost in Pattaya (16 page)

In the half-hour
ride, I mulled the revelation of Li Ya, discovery of her adult built that only
a few minutes of conversation had lain stark.

They,
Georgy, Li Ya and Fang Wei, discussed me
and probably knew more about me than I thought. It was possible that they had
paid private agencies to track and report on my life from time to time, reports
which may have left them more than satisfied as regards my inability at causing
disruptions to their life.

Li Ya knew that I
lived in Thailand, with the same folks who had provided her with playful
company for a few weeks in her childhood. How would she have known? Actually,
was it not straight forward for a child to discover the truth despite all the
lies she may have been envenomed with?

At the Holiday
Inn, she had a room reservation, on the supplementary credit card that her
parents had gotten for her.

“Don’t use that
card, here I will pay by cash,” I extended US dollars to the check-in clerk.

At the room we
settled down, asking for sandwiches and ice-cream.

“How is Miho?” she
asked, waiting for what she thought was an appropriate moment.

Her question, it
stabbed me, opening possibilities that I prayed hard against.

“What? What do you
mean?” my speech was unsteady and my thoughts were scattered by the dope.

“You know I stayed
with her, you do right?” she asked.

“Yes, but that was
only for a brief period and that too many years ago,” I replied, leaving the
half eaten sandwich limp on the plate.

“I never lost
touch with her, I have been exchanging messages with her almost on a daily
basis, that is how I knew that you came searching for me, back to Pattaya and
decided to stay on with them,” she said, still eating her sandwich.

Li Ya knew of the
prostitution ring’s existence and the profligate life that I shared with it, in
addition to the bed of the ring leader, Thuy Binh.

“Miho and I have
been good friends all along, though I have not seen her in years. Also, I want
you to know that I don’t think you any less, just because of your lifestyle. I
mean, the stuff that you have gone through in life, I think you are a brave man
if anything,” she said, picking up the soiled plates before depositing them on
the floor of the hotel’s corridor outside our room.

I went to the
toilet, shooting up one last time that night, hoping to awaken refreshed,
dealing with what I had just committed, the abduction of my own daughter, a
case of which could easily be made out given that I was holed up here with her
by my side while her legal guardians were launching a search.

They, Fang Wei and
Georgy, they were not looking for her. If they were, our door would have been
knocked upon and knocked down by now.

It was ironic; I
had committed the same acts, abductions of daughters, almost as justice meted
out against those who had been responsible for my daughter’s disappearance many
years ago. Of course there were significant variations between the two
abductions, first off being the detail of the abductees’ age, while the second
pertains to my criminalisation; I mean how could I accept her silly suggestion
of being away from her parents without consent for a few days, even if she had
left them to be with her own father? Her loss as a child, it had defined the
decay of my entire life. Now, when I had found her again and discovered that
she knew the emptiness of my life, it seemed her being united with me had
little meaning left in it. I had drifted into a dark-tide from which she was
best kept away, even if it meant I never saw her again.

I did not
encourage conversation that night, simply wanting to sleep off the coke before
picking threads up on the following morning. I lay awake, sensing Li Ya stir
when she thought I was safely asleep. She rummaged through my stuff, found what
she was looking for and disappeared to the toilet for a few minutes. She may
have turned the tap on so she could mask the true purpose of her visit,
insufflations. I suspected she had searched and found my coke, snorting it in
the toilet, quiet in the confidence of youth that she was stealing behind my
back. When she emerged back, she tiptoed about, settling on the couch, plugging
in her phones, listening to music as the newly initiated often do in order to extract
the pleasures from a high.

I did not say a
thing, knowing it was not the first time she was tasting this stuff. Addiction
to substance needs a host. It wasn’t di cult to connect the dots through to the
past, linking her trial and consumption of drugs at the coaxing of a new found
friend many years ago, Miho, with whom she spent only a few weeks, before she
flew back to Singapore. Her teenage growth would have been in communication
with her hostess of pleasures, waiting for an opportunity to make real the
memories of her juvenile highs.

I did not say a
thing since I felt incapable of admonishing another on a matter I myself had no
restraint over. I lay awake, frozen tight in silence, feeling a complete loss
of authority over Li Ya, my own daughter. This loss of authority was because I
had not been a part of her growing years and felt unsure of guiding her, let
alone control her. In that moment, I should have swung into action, calling
Fang Wei, driving Li Ya to her good parents with urgent immediacy, but, I
simply lay there pretending to be asleep, letting my own daughter get stoned,
consoling myself with meaningless reason, logic that it was pure stuff she was
having, a stuff that won’t make her sick with one or two hits.

After a couple of
hours, I summoned some courage, turning on my side towards her, “Li Ya, go to
bed now,” I said, noticing the clock glowing green at three AM. She had fallen
asleep on the couch by then and did not stir.

It was I who
remained awake to the fact that my reunion with Li Ya was tepid, without the
jubilation my imagination had held. My daughter was idolizing the wrong dad,
me.

I decided not to
say much in the time we had ahead but I made a mental note to completely
distance myself from her after that, hoping that the sensible direction of
higher education chosen by her parents would prevail, settling Li Ya into her
years of youth and adulthood. In fact, in the morning I would leave her back in
the safety of Fang Wei and Georgy, returning to the forgotten-lodge before
planning on any further moves.

I did not sleep at
all and close to dawn I took all my little packets of coke to the toilet where
I locked myself, contemplating flushing them down with the blood that would
suffice if I acted upon the plan of slashing my wrists, a plan that did not
seem as horrific or unachievable to me then as it might to you now. Death, it
too was a plausible manner of disappearing; my disappearance ensuring things
mended well. With me gone Li Ya would be forced to seek back her good parents,
cutting short any misadventures of youth that she may be planning.

All junkies wallow
in the self-pity of addiction; almost none nerve-up to act upon their mindless
plans of escape from it.

When I emerged
back into the room, I had already had a hit having restored all the coke back
into my pockets. A small quantity of it, I left on the table in front of Li Ya,
still asleep on the couch. I left some for her so she knew that I knew and I
did not want her wandering the streets consuming contaminated stuff, coming in
contact with the SriJaya’s of this city. Slipping out of the room, I surveyed
the empty hotel corridor and headed out to Lumphini, where I would do my duty
towards Thuy Binh, searching for her and hoping she was still alive. I would
get back in an hour or so, speak to Li Ya before sending her back to Fang Wei,
who was in a far better position to parent Li Ya.

In such thoughts I
walked about the lotus pool towards the centre of the park, noticing joggers
and stretchers starting their day with a bout of vigour. Loud, hoarse, forced
laughter fell ugly on morning ears, coming from the laughers across the lily
pond. An energetic white dog darted ahead of me without a leash, frolicking in
the morning air.

Kawai, he welcomed
me to the world of gang tattoos. His own was primarily on his back, and across
the length of his spine, a coiled serpent, hood spread in aggression at the
unfortunate beholder of body art, covered for now by the white vest that he
wore.

When I saw him
across the lake, he seemed ordinary other than the sleeves of ink on his arms,
emerging from beneath a linen white singlet. He did not really approach me; it
was the white dog that bounded playfully towards him, making mirth with the
Lord of Bangkok.

“Hello sir, I know
you?” the exquisitely tattooed man made his inquiries in a friendly sort of an
ordinary manner, digging a squash ball out of his white short’s pocket,
pointing it towards me, holding it up, as if for me to chase, then throwing it
lustily into the air, letting it float before it landed in the lake, all to the
delight of the dog who yelped in the glee of morning games, darting aquiline at
the bobbing ball on the surface of the disturbed lake.

“Hello, I am Kawai
and I mean you no harm, since you are harmless,” he extended his hand, and I shook
it, warmly.

“How did you find
me?” I asked, all the while holding close to mind the image of my stoned little
girl at the Holiday Inn, hoping to just veer the entire juggernaut mess of my
life away from the angel at the Inn.

“I ask questions,
I am Kawai and you are using up too quickly the slack of politeness that I have
extended,” he was still smiling at the soaking white dog that appeared with a
hiss of impeded breath, given the ball in its canine jaws. Kawai turned in my
direction only after he had re-launched the squash ball in a projectile
trajectory. His expression became dour, facial contours all pointing
earthwards, smile-less.

“I am just a
drifting man, I have nothing to do with her business, believe me,” my tone had
softened, right at the threshold of begging.

“Her business . .
. you mean Thuy Binh, my whore, who kept you as her whore?” he asked, holding
his unfurled palm up to the dog, indication enough for the dog to disappear
behind us, where I was sure an entourage of gangsters petted and leashed the
pesky beast in.

“Whatever it is
that you want from me, I will give you. Please, just let me go, I have played
no part in this story,” I begged, my memory bleeding back to the stoned angel
at the Inn.

“We are brothers,
ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Because we have
fucked the same whores,” he smiled again, to my relief.

I was silent,
imagining his naked magenta body, pinning Thuy Binh roughly underneath,
penetrating deep, till she was forced to give up. Her scream rose in my ears,
cut short by him smothering her to submission. For her, it must have felt like
being raped by the canvas painting of a monster.

His fingers were
tattooed with daggers along the phalanges, colours alternating between red
green and black, laid out almost like the bones that provided stiffness to his
palm.

“Yes, I want
something from you. Something simple,” he penetrated me with his look.

“I want that rat;
she goes by the name of Miho now. I know you think that is her name, whores are
like that, the best ones are di cult to tell apart from their assumed names,
including our bitch Thuy Binh.”

The koi fish on
his forearm, changed its colour from a scaly vermillion to a deep post-sunset
red, then it swam away up his arms, disappearing under his singlet, as if
escaping the morning’s un-glorious glare.

The coke made my
eyes well up.

“No, I swear I
don’t know where Miho is. If I do I will let you know,” I was stammering and he
could probably tell I meant what I said, for my spirit was with the angel in
the hotel room, and I was consumed by the compulsion to ensure the angel was
not trapped in my web of helpless consequences.

“Tell me, how will
you tell me, do you know how to find me?” he was smiling, like a master to a
dog.

He stuck his
painted palms into his pockets and pulled out a card. It was a curious looking
visiting card. Along its edges it had daggers, red green and black, all
entwined in serpents forming a frame for its contents, and on its top right
corner was a SIM embedded in perforations that could be cut away, just above a
number etched deep and clear in gold.

“Call this number
or simply activate this SIM when you want to find me,” he started moving away,
alone, as if he was simply another morning visitor, seeking the peace and quiet
of Lumphini Park.

I sat down on a
bench, scanning the people of the park, looking for eyes that may be following
me. There were none that I could find. I must have been there for over fifteen
minutes and it seemed that the Lord of Bangkok had come alone to see me, which
obviously could not be the case. But, in not finding any trace of his gangsters
it became amply clear that I was the one who was sticking out like a thumb
among fingers. When I started walking towards the train station, I ensured I
stopped around corners peering about every now and then; finding nothing that
seemed unusual. On the trains I remained cautious, looking for rakes plying on
the opposite side of the platform from where mine stopped now and then. I kept
darting across and boarding trains in various directions before I felt sure that
I would have shaken off anyone who may be on my trail. Eventually, I
disembarked about four stations away from the Inn, taking circuitous routes,
before waiting patiently for a large tour group to arrive, mixing with them and
entering the hotel.