Lost in Pattaya (18 page)

“Miho, I owe you a
lot, and I am sorry, since I meant not to hurt you in any way. Here is the
surprising part, I don’t even love Thuy Binh, no more or no less, before or
after whatever it is that you saw on the Yacht. If you will forgive me I will
be grateful. I just want my little girl not to be a part of our world. Let her
go, please,” I said; ready to plead if the need arose, searching in vain for
any softening of her eyes. I was ready too, to power the cell phone on with a
slight depressing of my forefinger.

“I can’t do that,
even if I wanted to, we got married this morning,” she said, looking deadpan,
up at me, still swallowing what she had sipped.

“Stoned marriages
are lovely bar-stories, I mean Bangkok is the Vegas of the East,” I laughed out
loud; it was a false forced laughter. Inside, I was wrenched, imagining my
under-age child marrying a dyke in the shattered logic of coke. They would have
rushed back to enjoy the pleasures of touch, the first one after a marriage, as
if finally legitimate, like honey from the moon.

“Palash, the Lord
has been the witness to our conjugation. I will not take lightly you talking
that way about my partner,” she became sombre, and I began giving up on her.

I gave up on
arguing the reason that I wanted Miho to see, untangling the convoluted ball of
love and revenge that had proportioned large in her mind. It was apparent, she
was beyond counsel and I only dithered momentarily before I condemned her.

“Miho, you are a
child and I can only warn you, please don’t do this. The lord will forgive you
for having divorced a child straight after marriage. Go to Pattaya, and claim
your kingdom, you will be the pearl of Pattaya,” I delivered my caveat,
glancing at my watch, assured, it had ticked past the fifteen minute mark that
me and Aziz had agreed upon, before
we
played my next move.

“Fuck you, I would
have killed you, had you not been my relative,” she said, looking at her wrist
watch, a gaudy fake Casio, knowing well that Li Ya was not penitent enough to
spend this amount of time kneeling in contemplation before the Lord.

It struck me then,
other than Li Ya, I had no relatives whom I thought of as mine.

Miho was beyond
counsel and too far down the road for turning back, so, I pressed the power
button on the mobile phone, the same one that would alert Kawai, the prince of
Bangkok. I had only guessed that the SIM was traceable with geo-position
trackers, alerting him to the latitude of the victim he targeted. I imagined a
printing press, pressing out visiting cards, clamped in complicity with the
mobile service provider of Bangkok. I slipped the phone into the shopping bags
on the floor.

“I need to pee,” I
said, getting up and moving towards the toilets, which were outside. It was
easy melting into the crowd since the streets were packed with people, mostly
tourists soaking in the famous night life of Bangkok. Walking past the temple,
I was relieved to see that Aziz and Li Ya were not in sight. As planned, I moved
towards the row of taxis, got into the one at the head of the queue, and
declared my destination after I was seated and sealed in the icy cab
“Suvarnabhumi Airport Terminal 1.”

At the terminal, I
could see them from a distance, Aziz with Li Ya, Fang Wei and Georgy. Things
had worked as planned. Li Ya was weeping inconsolably, obviously wanting to
return back to her lover. Fang Wei was thanking Aziz while Georgy tried to calm
Li Ya down. In a few minutes Aziz left them, moving towards the coffee shop on
the upper level, our intended place of meeting.

I too moved,
walking slowly as I dialled Fang Wei’s line. She answered in a few rings, and I
could see her on the concourse as she spoke into the phone.

“Thank you Palash.
Despite what you have been through, you have come to our help in our darkest
hour,” she wept gently, moving away from Li Ya and Georgy, so she could be
private.

“I had no choice.
I can’t look after or even be near Li Ya because she loves me too much and I am
not the example that a daughter should emulate,” I simply said, my eyes too
watered.

“No Palash, in the
end you have been the best dad possible,” she replied. “Despite everything, you
have preserved and protected our darling.”

The defiant
triumph of my life’s failure, came crackling in the words of my biggest
adversary, my wife. A good feeling surfaced in me, like a meditative calm that
a beggar monk experiences, having lost all before gaining what cannot be lost,
self-respect.

“I don’t think we
will speak again . . . I am sorry for any pain that I might have caused you. I
want you to know that I bear no grudges against you, or Georgy; it is the past
and I am leaving it behind. In the future, you are the right parents that Li Ya
needs, not me,” I said, meaning each word that I had carefully spoken.

On the terminal
concourse, I saw her stoop, weeping without restraint into the phone.

“Try to keep her
in Singapore, away from the drugs . . . She has a penchant for those, wonder
where she gets that from,” I managed a chuckle. “Promise me, you will take care
of yourself,” I said, before hanging up, watching them for a few minutes more.
She wept on Georgy’s shoulder, who wrapped his arms around her. Then, they
disappeared beyond the immigration checkpoint. It was the last I saw or heard
of Fang Wei.

At the coffee
shop, Aziz was livid. “There is a fucking shoot-out in Patpong. What have you
done? Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to hand Miho over to Kawai?”

Miho, deadly
little Miho, she wasn’t going away quietly.

“What are you
talking about?”

“Mr. Mitra . . . I
think you have misconstrued my offer to help,” despite his anger, he held
himself together, raising the cappuccino to his lips. “Bringing chaos to
Bangkok and its peaceful existence was definitely not what I had bargained for.
All I wanted was to help a desperate father, that is all,” he rose, asking me
to follow, jumping into a cab outside the airport. We hit the rush hour and
were trapped in the pollution for a couple of hours. It gave us ample time to
speak. I tried hard, but it was futile trying to explain that I thought it a
good trade, to sacrifice Miho along with the blood on the streets, in return
for keeping Li Ya away from her, forever.

His phone kept
ringing and he alternated between aggressive shouting and restrained
compliance, clearly taking and giving orders all at the same time.

About a minute or
two before we arrived back at Patpong, Aziz slipped a gun in my hands. “Keep
this and come with me. Now I may need your help,” he said. This was the second
gun I had been handed, in about as many weeks. I simply accepted it, all the
while knowing that Li Ya would be in a blessed cold turkey on the jet liner
scorching towards the Gold coast, safe from the clutches of doom that I almost
lost her to.

The otherwise
festive street of sex was unusually quiet, as if in mourning after a tragedy.
Business was clearly hit, and when the river of money shrinks, its famine
starves the most powerful of our world. Aziz ducked into an alley and made
inquiries, asking me to wait outside and keep a watch.

“They had a gun
fight, it is true. You should have told me, you know. This is out of control,”
he was moving away quickly and I followed.

“What happened,
Aziz?” I eventually asked, after we were in another taxi, this time moving
steadily on the side streets while the traffic struggled on the main street on
our right.

“I am not sure,
but she fought back when they found her. She is injured, not sure if she is
still alive, but I know she is with Kawai, either way.”

When we got off
the cab, Aziz was on the phone, clearing our way into the dilapidated palace of
Kawai. It was as if through the phone, the news of our arrival was keeping the
guard dogs away from us. Strangely, Kawai’s palace was quite ordinary, standing
on the end of a dirty everyday street with his dogs scattered all around it.
They did not frisk us; such was his power, Aziz – the keeper of law. We walked
up to the den of the walking-talking painting, Kawai.

“Aziz, you worry
too much,” Kawai smiled, his shirt was undone and rivulets of sweat ran down
his body, as if paint dripping from a drying canvas, drenching the sarong that
he wore around his waist. His exertion was from the whip he had been wielding
upon Miho, who sat tied to a chair, slumped over and barely breathing. When she
looked up, I saw that her face was a ruin, the whip having taken with it the
skin where Kawai may have directed its snap. She was barely conscious but her
eyes were alive and when they met mine, she spat a large pool of saliva and
congealed blood in my direction. Weakened, the projectile of red oral discharge
simply fell on her lap, dripping over her thighs before adding to the pool of
blood in which her chair stood.

“Do you want to
fuck her, before we kill her?” Kawai the animal offered, looking at me looking
at Miho. Fucking Miho, it was a repulsive thought, like lusting for a son’s
girlfriends, and I suddenly hated myself for having masturbated with her in my
mind on many occasions. Kawai, the catapult that I had used to eject Li Ya from
Bangkok, was ugly and corrupt, with a life valueless and bereft of any meaning.
It was a pitiable site, Miho nearing her end, yet it gave me heart, since I
knew it was necessary to erase Miho so Li Ya could have a chance at a decent
life, a life of good values that the young must cling on to, allowing time to
sift the ones worth embracing for a lifetime. All of us are ready to die, the
moment our values seem misplaced and un-justifiable through a lifetime of good
acts.

“We can wash her
and give her to you for a few minutes, if you like?” he looked at me again,
searching for a taste for sadomasochism that many in his trade satisfy with his
aid. I did not have it, a taste for sexual bestiality.

“Just kill her,
please, she is just a kid,” I asked of Kawai.

This flared and
fanned his anger.

“No one tells
Kawai what to do, I will cut and feed you to the fish, kill you at my will,
slowly, like your bitch inside,” his voice got raised and the tension in the
room sharpened as he undid his fly, motioning me to follow him in, to the inner
room.

In the smaller
room inside, Thuy Binh was on the floor, naked and tied to the grill of the
window, like a captured wild-vicious animal, sagging after a sapping struggle.
Kawai urinated on her, starting with her face, and finishing on her torso. I
knew if I followed my instinct of covering her body with my shirt, his rage
would get redirected towards me. She was nearly finished, pumped full with
alcohol and drugs, apart from the brutality that Kawai’s gang had clearly
unleashed upon her. Yet, in a surge of energy, she glanced at me, peacefully
gazing up, as if pardoning me for not having been able to save her. My ravaged
Buddha was close to finding her peace.

“Kawai, you gave
me your word there would be no more street violence and shootings. You
promised, you would let them run Pattaya, without any plans of vendetta and
revenge,” Aziz stepped into the room. He was upset, his words loud and not
scared of showing displeasure, unlike me. The sorry sight of Thuy Binh did not
hinder the flow of his words or actions, as if he had always known what he
would find inside the room.

“Yes I promised,
and I never broke my promise. I never sought them out in Pattaya, I could have
if I wanted to but I did not. They came here, into my territory, and that I
cannot tolerate. I am Kawai the Prince of Bangkok,” he swayed alcoholic as he
spoke, the green dagger on his back and the serpent of black ink around it
seemed to slither and hiss, as if preparing for the fight at hand, intimidating
Aziz.

“We can’t have
this chaos in Bangkok, it is bad business and I need to know what your plans
are,” Aziz turned pragmatic, assuming his role as the catalyst of peaceful
tourist trades of the city. Without tourism’s industry of pleasure, Bangkok
would sink within weeks if the influx of sex seekers disappeared, which they
would if Aziz was unable to keep the streets safe. As it is, the political
street protests had barely subsided. Now this mess, it would paint the city’s
books deep red, closing on a bad year.

Drunk and stoned
Kawai drew his knife and pointed it uncertainly at Aziz. A trickle of sweat
appeared under the fangs of his ink black serpent, as if spitting venom. His
dogs, three of them, alerted themselves for action, reaching for their
assortment of guns and knives. Kawai and his dogs tarried; it was Aziz who
turned decisive. He drew his gun with finality and shot Kawai in the head,
killing him instantly. There was no neat hole in his head, it was as if his
face had exploded, a thick pool of blood and brain splattered all over. The
useless knife was quivering in the grip of his dead empty threat. It was too
late for that. The snake too seemed to have received the bullet from Aziz -- it
stiffened into a lifeless tattoo, unable to adorn an ugly man anymore. Kawai’s
dogs, they remained uncertain, without conviction as they witnessed the sudden
horrific death of their leader, wavering with their useless weapons at Aziz who
was already on his phone, speaking calmly in Thai as he explained the
situation. He waved at the dogs to mute their hollow snarls. They obeyed,
awaiting instructions from Aziz.