Thai Horse (51 page)

INVITATION

The next morning, the
Bangkok Natio
n
told Hatcher that aside from the daily races at the P
h
at racetrack, Sy’s boxing tournament was the only other sports event of the day.

The big story on the front page was the bombing of the West German embassy in Paris. Seven people, including the Finnish and Swedish ambassadors and their wives, had been killed. The American ambassador had arrived late and missed the explosion.

In a related story, French officials stated that the infamous terrorist known as Hyena, whose body was discovered later in the day in a hotel room, was believed to be responsible for the attack. Their conjecture was that Hyena had later been murdered in an internal dispute with one of his own people.

Hatcher threw the paper aside and studied the photograph of Wol Pot for several minutes, memorizing his eyes, the shape of his face, his ears, the configuration of his nose and lips, committing them to his
ch’uang tzu-chi,
the window to his mind. He tried to imagine what Wol Pot would look like if he shaved his head or grew a beard or mustache. The keys were Wol Pot’s eyes, savage and merciless, his ears, which were large and stood away from his head, and his nose, which was long and narrow, unlike that of most Indo-Chinese, whose features tended to be more blunt and heavy.

In his
ch’uang
t
zu-chi,
Hatcher isolated a strip from Wol Pot’s forehead to the tip of his chin, concentrating on that area of Wol Pot’s face.

Hatcher spent most of the morning checking out the crowded and noisy Sanam Luang produce market, showing Wol Pot’s photograph to stal
l
keepers and boat people, hoping perhaps someone would recognize the man who had listed himself as a produce salesman on his passport. Nothing. He visited the passport office in the hope that Wol Pot would be remembered there. Certainly he must have applied for a new passport. But once again he ran into a wall of shaking heads and silence. It was highly likely that the elusive Wol Pot had purchased a fake passport, which was not that difficult to do in Bangkok.

A check of the rest of the locations in Porter’s book proved uneventful. Hatcher’s best lead to Wol Pot seemed to be his penchant for sports, although spotting the little Vietnamese in the crowds that attended the horse races and boxing matches seemed unlikely. The trip to the horse races yielded nothing but crowds of frenzied bettors, since the only thing Thais seemed to like better than sports was gambling.

He returned to the Longhorn in the late afternoon and gave Sy the rest of the day off to prepare for his boxing match that night, promising he would use the ringside ticket Sy had given him. The crowd would be smaller than at the track, and since the tickets in Wol Pot’s wallet were for a previous boxing match it was obvious he liked the sport.

Wilkie seemed delighted to see him. Up in the Hole in the Wall, there was a great deal of activity among the regulars. The poker game had been suspended, and several of them were sitting
around
the table, talking excitedly. W. T. was leaning back
iii
his chair, sighting down the barrel of a .30 caliber
rifle
with a gold inlaid barrel and a stock of hand-carved teak. A formidable weapon and a beautiful one.

‘You’re a betting man, Hatch,’ Wilkie yelled as he entered the Longhorn. ‘Better hop up there and get in on the fun.’

‘What’s going on?’ Hatcher as
k
ed, entering the Tombstone inner sanctum.

‘Tigers!’ Prophett said with a touch of awe in his voice.

‘Tigers?’
Hatcher said with surprise.

‘A tiger, to be precise,’ Earp said polishing his
rifle
with a chamois cloth. ‘A rogue tiger running crazy down the peninsula. Killed a couple of kids and an old man. Max Early has put together a hunt.’ He seemed in a more friendly mood than he had been the day before and obviously was excited by th
e
thought of the excursion.

‘Kind of sudden, isn’t it?’ Hatcher responded.

‘This is a man-eater,’ said Potter. ‘He’s not going to sit around waiting for us to rent tuxedos for the affair.’

‘It goes down tomorrow morning whether we’re there or not,’ said Earp. ‘And we’re gonna be there. This is one bad animal.’

‘Everybody kicks in two purples, killer take all,’ Wonderboy said. They were like kids planning a holiday.

‘Sweets will hold the wagers. He has to stay here and mind his store,’ said Corkscrew.

‘How about the rest of you?’ Hatcher asked.

‘We’re declaring a holiday,’ Gallagher said brightly.

‘We’re taking the dawn plane to Surat Thani,’ said Earp. ‘Leaves at five
A.M.
Takes an hour. Max’ll pick us up, takes another hour to drive to his place. We’ll be tracking the bastard by eight. With any luck we’ll be back on the seven o’clock
fl
ight tomorrow night. It’ll sure perk up your vacation. Interested?’

‘This an official invitation?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Why not?’ said Riker. ‘The bigger the pot the better.’

‘How about a weapon?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Max’ll fix you up,’ Corkscrew said with a wave of his hand.

Max Early was the only one of the regulars Hatcher had not yet met. The tiger hunt was a perfect opportunity to get closer to these men and particularly Prophett. Thus far, his only glimmer of a lead was Prophett’s mention of Taisung.

‘Pai-tio,
soldier, great
sanuk,’
Corkscrew said with a grin. The Thais tended to divide everything in life into two categories:
mai-tio,
which was serious stuff, like work, and
pai-tio,
which was
san
u
k—fun.

‘You’ll love it, Hatch,’ said Potter. ‘Give you something to talk about when you get back to the World.’

‘Why not, maybe I’ll get lucky and pay for part of the trip,’ Hatcher said.

‘Great! How many’ve we got now?’ Wonderboy asked.

‘There’s you, Melinda, Johnny, W.T., Corkscrew and Potter, Gallagher, Ed Piker, Hatch here, and Max, of course
—
that’s nine,’ said the Honorable, who was keeping a list.

‘Are you the official referee of this operation?’ Hatcher asked with a smile.

‘I’m treasurer and chief logistician of this little club,’ the Honorable said to Hatcher. ‘I’ll take one purple for the plane ticket and put your change in the ledger.’

‘Fair enough,’ Hatcher said, handing him the purple note.

Riker rubbed his hands together eagerly and said, ‘Not a bad little pot. Five thousand bahts.’

‘Give Sweets two more for the bet and you’re officially in,’ Earp said. ‘And be at the airport by four-forty- five or you may not get a seat. This is one game you don’t want to miss.’

And a strange game it was, thought Earp. We’re watching him while he watches us. Grudgingly, he admitted to himself that the Honorable was right
—
they had to isolate Hatcher and find out what his game really was. And now Max had provided the perfect solution to the problem. For if Hatcher was as dangerous as Earp suspected, what better way for him to die than chasing a killer tiger.

A TOUGH GAME

Hatcher arrived at the small boxing arena a little after seven. It was mid-city at the rear of one of the stunning Wat Suthat. Although the main event did not start until ten, Sy was a preliminary fighter and was scheduled to fight at about eight o’clock.

This was not a big-time
Muay Thai
match but was like a tank-town fight in the United States, a testing place for young Thai fighters looking for a place on the big-time cards held four times a week at the Lumpini or Rajadamnern stadiums.

Noise, heat and confusion greeted Hatcher as he entered the small arena, which was surrounded by betting windows and Thai bookmakers. The betting was frantic. It was still daylight and it was hot, and the Thais, who gambled with great passion, were a noisy and frenetic mob, sweating and screaming and waving their bahts overhead looking for a bet.

Added to the general confusion was the music that accompanied the fights, a traditional but cacophonous blend of woodwinds, banjo
like stringed instruments, a semicircle of tuned gongs, and several different kinds of drums. The overall effect made a cat fight sound melodious by comparison.

Since two Thais had won the flyweight championship of the world a few years earlier, both traditional
Muay Thai
and Western boxing were featured on the card. The fans stood around a large garden at the rear of the arena, like the paddock at a racetrack, watching the boxers warm up and making their choices. The
Muay Thais
worked almost in slow motion, like ballet dancers, while the American-style fighters jogged about the grass paddock like American fighters warming up. But if the
Muays
practicing their ballet-like moves seemed somewhat dainty, nothing could have been further from the truth; they were by far the more ferocious battlers. There had been a time in the past when these Thai fighters had bound their hands with hemp on which ground glass had been sprinkled and fought until one of them col
l
apsed. Now they wore ligh
t
weight gloves
—
no glass permitted
—
and there were five three-minute rounds. The referee could also stop the fight in the event of an injury.

It was well known in martia
l
-arts circles that a good Thai fighter was a vicious opp
o
nent and almost unstoppable.

Sy was wearing a dark blue jacket with a green and red cobra coiled on its back, its white mouth open and threatening. He took it off and handed it to his trainer, a hard-looking box of a man
w
ith a crushed nose and thick eyelids. Beneath the jacket, Sy wore red silk boxing shorts with his name printed across the leg in blue Sanskrit. He was also wearing a cord around his head and his left bicep, traditional trappings for Thai boxers. The band around his head was tan and white with a stiff ponytail that stuck straight out in back with a strip of blue silk dangling from it. The thong tied tightly around his left bicep hid his good luck amulet strung to it. His feet were bare.

Sy moved with incredible grace, his eyes almost hypnotically fixed, standing on one
foot,
then on the other, spinning slowly as the music played at twice the normal tempo in the background. Then suddenly as he spun around he lashed out with several ferocious kicks, slashing his arms in a series of one- two punches, then spinning around again and ending in a slow-motion pirouette.

Hatcher was impressed. He went back to the betting area, weaving his way through the yelling, gesturing crowd, keeping an eye out for Wol Pot, although he realized the odds of spotting him in such a crowd were far greater than the odds against Sy winning his match. Hatcher bet a purple on his driver, the underdog in his fight, taking the long end of a five—to-two bet. If the little Thai won, Hatcher stood to gain 750 bahts, about thirty-seven dollars, which he planned to give to Sy as a bonus.

For the first few bouts, Hatcher cruised the crowd around the betting windows and bookies and checked out the screaming gallery during the fights, paying little attention to the action in the ring.

No Wol Pot.

At six-thirty, Sy was ushered into the outdoor ring. On the edge of the city, lightning streaked across the sunset sky accompanied by the distant rumble of thunder, but nobody paid any attention to the threatening storm.

The referee, as in Western boxing, introduced Sy and his opponent, a larger and huskier fighter named Ta Tan.

No biting, wrestling, judo, spitting, butting or kicking the opponent when he is down, the referee warned in Thai, explaining that there would be five three
minute rounds and the match wou
ld
be stopped in the event one of the fighters was injured. There was a loud chorus of boos and catcalls at the latter announcement.

The ritual of the fight began. The music stopped and the crowd became silent. Sy lowered his head and folded his hands in the traditional
wa
i
,
thanking his trainer and praying to Buddha, telling his God that he believed he had the ‘right’ spirit to win his battle. Gautama Buddha spoke of four noble truths: first, existence is suffering; second, suffering is caused by desire; third, eliminate desire and you eliminate suffering; and finally, the eight ‘right’ rules by which one eliminates suffering
—
right understanding, right thought, right speech, right bodily conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right attentiveness and right concentration. Sy repeated these t
o
Buddha, promising to abide by the rules and live the
r
ight’ life.

After the prayers the music began slowly, providing background for the two fighters, who circled each other in the ring, showing their moves. Sy seemed a more classic fighter than Tan, whose style was less poetic. He seemed more of a brawler, less quick than his smaller opponent.

The first round passed without incident, a dizzying exchange of kicks and punches, most of which missed their mark as the two fighters parried and studied each other’s style.

In the second round, Tan moved from his corner fast and struck first, jogging forward on one leg while with the other thrusting at Sy with short, stabbing kicks. Sy easily avoided the first moves, dancing away from him, spinning around and parrying Tan’s kicks with his own feet. Then Tan did a change-up, switching legs quickly, parrying and leaning sideways and throwing a hard kick at Sy’s groin. It connected b
u
t it was high. The little Thai grunted, doubled up and backed away, but Tan pursued him, punching now with lefts and rights, which Sy dodged by moving his head away from the blows until Tan landed a hard punch on the temple.