Chapter Four

Four

Lonny woke in tangled, sodden bed clothes, body pulsing with pain. His head vibrated and the lacerations on his face and skull were stuck to the sheets with dried blood. The room was the same dank tone it was when he had collapsed and he had no idea how long he had lain there.

‘Submersed in the filth already, not yet 24 hours in the country but he lies here debauched and abused. Jesus help him that cannot resist eating from the hands of whores.’

Lonny sat up with the bed sheets pulled to his chest, his heart walloping against his ribs.

‘Who the hell's that?’ He croaked.

The black-out curtains opened and blinding light flooded the room. Silhouetted against this was a pear shaped figure with his arms thrown over his head. ‘Awaken to the light and praise the Lord Jesus.’

‘Close the goddamned shades,’ Lonny moaned.

‘Blasphemy, rise and shine,’ The pudgy man chuckled.

‘What do you want?’

Lonny squinted into the blinding sunlight, the figure moved away from the windows so to be seen. He was dressed in a dark blue suit with a four square over snow white shirt and black tie. He looked like a B movie representation of a T.V. car salesman. His fluffy brown hair was freshly tonsured in a side part, his treble chin clean shaven and white as pillowed lard. He wore highly polished wing tips and smiled greedily showing off perfect teeth.

‘Ed?’ Lonny asked.

‘You got it pal, Ed Drabzyc - knows a little about everything and that much more about the Lord’ and he laughed in a freewheeling kind of way.

‘Christ.’ Lonny buried his head in the musty pillows, his sinuses plugged and eyes burning again.

‘Wow, let’s start right there and stop that kind of thing. They’ll be no taking Gods name in vain while I’m around.’

It was a command Lonny hadn’t heard since he was a kid sent off to church by his Ma so he could learn the kind of morality they didn’t teach at home. ‘Where were you last night? You were supposed to meet me at the airport,’ Lonny said.

‘I think it’s more to the question of where you’ve been today, how you got yourself into such a state already.’

Lonny sat up, ‘Maybe if I had some help I wouldn’t have been wandering around this morning looking for food, clean clothes and a decent place to sleep. Maybe if you'd been where you were supposed to be none of this shit wudda happened.’

‘Maybe if you hold your breath somebody will give you a lollypop. I was at the airport when your plane landed and I waited an hour, very early into the morning, well past my normal bed time and far from my home, to meet you. But you never showed up.’

Lonny got out of bed and limped into the bathroom to examine his battered face in the mirror, threw some cold water into it and came back.

“I was there, my luggage wasn’t, look around. Then I was held at customs, even though I didn’t have any bags. Then I didn’t know where I was going. You’re supposed to be a detective. Couldn’t you figure that out?’

Ed’s face scrunched up. ‘I’m no detective.’

‘Jerry said you’re a private detective.’

‘If that’s what Mr. Whitman told you, he lied. Or possibly he was talking about someone else.’ Lonny stood with a towel half wrapped around his waist considering this. He was sure Jerry told him he had hired a detective. Did he say it was Eddy? He couldn’t remember.

‘What’s that tattoo?’ Ed asked.

Lonny glanced at his shoulder where the words Root Hog or Die were still visible, though faded with age. ‘It’s just something my drill sergeant used to yell at us when I was in boot camp, means like get it done.’

‘Sometimes it's dreadful stormy and sometimes it's pretty clear

You may work a month and you might work a year

But you can make a winning if you'll come alive and try

For the whole world over, boys, it's root hog or die.’

Ed chanted the words in a vaguely familiar tune that might have been a religious hymn, or a childrens song. His eyes closed with feeling.‘That’s a pioneer saying. Means you’re responsible to make your own way. God helps those who help themselves as the bible says.’

‘Yeah, well, he don’t do much for me lately.’ Lonny scoffed.

‘All right, let’s calm down now. That’s in the past and this is now and we have a plan to discuss.’ Lonny sneezed cutting Ed off.

‘The first thing I would like to discuss is this room. This ain’t nothing like what a certain person explained it would be.’

‘This is an adequate hotel, very discreet.’

‘It’s filthy, look at my face.’

‘The hotel didn’t beat your face.’

‘Not the cuts and bruises. I can’t breathe, can’t see.’

‘It’s discreet. Mr. Whitman stressed discretion.’

‘I need clothes.’

The two eyed the path of tattered, bloodied garments sopping wet from the air conditioners run off that ran in a discontinues line from the door to the foot of the bed.

‘I'll agree with that.’ Eddy snickered.

*

Ed left promising to return later in the evening to pick Lonny up for their first nights reconnaissance of Tanner working at his NGO post. In the meantime he would have fresh clothes sent to the room; he judged Lonny’s size to be about his own. Lonny guffawed and told him to think again.

When Ed was gone Lonny lay back on the bed wondering if he would be able to get back to sleep for a second before he was fully unconscious again.

*

Lonny passed by the wire screened reception hole and slid his key through the slot until the chunk of wood attached to it caught in the gap.‘You want clean room’ the girl called from the darkness.

‘Yeah, of course I want the room cleaned. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Clean room 200 baht please.’

He stopped and peered through the fence at the blue silhouette watching a television mounted somewhere above her head.‘It’s extra to have the room cleaned?’

‘ 200 hundred baht please.’ She repeated never glancing away from the screen.

‘Forget it; you couldn’t get that room clean any way.’

‘You no want?’

‘No, don’t clean the room. I like it just the way it is.’ Down the stairs and back into the subterranean parking lot Lonny was more determined than ever to change rooms. To hell with what Ed had arranged with Jerry.

Ed was waiting in a ridiculous compact car, like some cast off model conceived of in the factories of the former Soviet Union but discarded as insulting even to that broken empire.

Lonny opened the door and jammed himself into the tiny bucket seat. Wedging his knees against the dashboard he got the door closed.

Eddy was still wearing the same suit but now it hung on him in wrinkles as if it were damp. ‘You’re looking a little better.’ He commented as Lonny tried to get settled.

‘I don’t feel any better.’ Lonny was wearing the tan slacks and cheap button down, short sleeved dress shirt, stretched tight against his back that Ed had sent. He felt like a fool. Wearing anything but jeans made him unhappy, but these cut rate suburbanite clothes wore like a slur.

‘I’m taking you to a place called Pot Pong, Tanners there every evening between five and eight handing out pamphlets. Him and two female volunteers.’

‘What, it’s like a neighborhood?’

‘I think district is a better description, as in red light district, I’m sure you’ll fit right in.’

‘What the hell’s that mean?’

Ed smiled and rolled his eyes nodding a bit. ‘ Just listen, I’m taking you there but I’m not waiting around, you can take the sky train back.’

‘How? I don’t know how that works.’

‘You're from New York and don’t know how to take a train?’

‘I’m from the Island, I don’t take trains.’ Ed handed him a piece of note paper folded neatly in quarters.

‘I wrote out directions, it’s three stops, I think you can manage.’ Lonny unfolded the note and read out the names each more uncomfortable in his mouth than the last.

‘Everything all right with the room?’

‘No, everything is terrible with that room and they want to charge me extra to clean it.’

‘Sure, clean rooms a little extra.’ Ed commented distractedly as he checked his mirrors and ground the stick shift into reverse.

‘What kind of car is this?’ Lonny asked

‘83 Suzuki Flasher, 3 cylinder, incredible gas mileage – mucho mileageo.’ Eddy steered the toy like vehicle out of the garage and rolled to a complete stop at the mouth surveying the empty street right and left before carefully, hand over hand, turning right.  

‘Where we going again?’

‘Don’t talk while I’m driving please, its already difficult enough to negotiate the streets here.’

The lisp in Ed’s voice Lonny noticed earlier had worsened with the tension of driving and made words with a soft T like negotiate sound effeminate and pleading.

He guided the tiny car from the side street into the main flow of traffic on the numbered road hesitantly. His hands locked at 2 and 10, stabbing at the peddles with his feet, making the car jerk and almost stalling it several times.

There was nothing to do for the clogged traffic but trickle along in the lane while motorcycles wove and dipped through any break wide enough. Still, Ed drove badly, uttering self-censored and childish, but truly angry curses under his breath. A car changing lanes was a turd face, a bike passing that glanced his mirror a damned queer.

Half an hour later they turned from the main road onto a quiet, tree lined side street with handsome squat buildings that belonged to a different era, a different city. Ed brought the car to a stop in the empty parking lot in front of the largest of these buildings.

‘Nice here, seems kind of old.’ Lonny said.

‘This whole street was a rectory, now it’s a school, this is the church, St. Sebastian’s. A lenient order, not very serious about their dogma.’

‘Like a Catholic church?’

‘No, Unitarian church.’

The different orders of Christianity had never made much sense to Lonny and he didn’t know one from the other. Christian and Catholic were one in the same to him.

‘It’s a Christian church is what I mean.’

Eddy gave him a disgusted look, ‘yes.’ He answered shortly.

‘I didn’t know they had them here, thought they were all Buddhist.’

‘Most, but there is a good number of Christians as well, of course they make a mockery out of the faith in places like this. C’mon I’ll show you where he is.’ Eddy lisped.

They walked to the end of the mostly deserted street, stanchioned by tall leafy trees that filtered the cities lights to wisps and shadow. After a short walk the peaceful street intersected with a traffic locked four lane through road. Directly across the area was packed with a heaving throng of people. Even before they reached the intersection Lonny could feel the bass pulsing from the bars under his feet. The noise at the intersection was like a force bearing weight against his body.

‘Up there.’ Ed shouted to him.

Lonny followed Ed up the stairs of a pedestrian bridge. He was soaked in sweat again, the contusions on his head ached and his body was sore from the kicks making the climb painful. But when they reached the bridge it was Ed who looked like he might drop dead on the spot.

His breath was short and he wheezed audibly even over the cacophony of music and traffic noise.

‘You alright?’ Lonny asked.

Eddy held the handrail and was wiping his face off with a dish towel he kept folded in the waist of his trousers under the flap of his jacket.

‘Fine, fine, just a little..’ He trailed off indicating the stairs with the limp towel. At the half way point Eddy was still gripping his towel like a flag of mercy and used it to indicate the boy with a flapping motion. ‘He’s there.’

Lonny looked down at the seething sidewalk and there was Tanner, blonde and tanned in shorts and a muscle shirt surrounded by cooing girls wearing the costumes of their profession. The girls milled around him each holding one of the leaflets he was passing out.

‘So now what?’ Lonny asked.

‘Now?’ Eddy said, already stepping back, tucking the towel into his waist. 'Now I go home. This is the end of my involvement. I don’t cross this bridge.'

'What? What the hell am I supposed to do?'

Eddy waved him off. 'Don’t know, don’t know what you agreed to, I don’t know what kind of deal you made with Mr. Whitman but this is it for me. I don’t go over there. That's the heart of it, where men loose themselves.’

Ed’s voice had changed, his lisp still apparent but there was something off, he sounded near hysterical like an over excited child bordering on a tantrum. ‘You have your job to do.’ Shaking his head he disappeared down the far stairs.

Lonny crossed the bridge and descended into the density of bodies that clogged the sidewalk crammed with vendors selling all manner of thing from throwing knives to speaking toys to blue movies and personal lubricants. There was little room left for walking, so people moved along the edge and flowed out into the busy road. No one gave way, and all did their best to pretend they weren’t pushing on and against one another.

Lonny thought to circumnavigate the congestion by making the first right and going around the block along the smaller streets. He pushed his way through but found the side street almost as crowded and twice as loud. It was lined end to end with bars advertising beautiful women performing amazing acts. Intricate neon signs hung from each building and their flashing lights intertwined and gave the entire street a club like atmosphere. Music blasted from every doorway and girls in tiny school uniforms and bikinis ran out of them, grabbing at the gawking passerby’s, trying to physically pull them in while rubbing and cajoling.

Lonny fought his way through the first block only to find it dead ended against a four story building that housed another eight identical bars. Exhausted and feeling deafened by the noise he noticed a hand lettered sign with an arrow and the word Soi 4 in English outside one of the bars. It was a short cut through a narrow covered alley that reeked of urine and garbage. In the middle an old man sitting at a child’s school desk collected a through fare of 20 baht with the seriousness and diligence of any tax collector.

The parallel street was quieter and less frantic. The bars were open and looked comfortable. There were no touts yelling in front, no girls running through the streets. In fact there were few females around at all. Lonny scrutinized the men meandering in and out of the bars and decided from their grooming and posture that this was the gay cruising street, but was only thankful for the ease of pace.

At the corner, back almost to where he had started, he took a seat in an open air bar where he could watch Tanner who was standing in the same spot accompanied by two young foreign women. Both of them had tangled dread locked hair and wore big orange tote bags over shirts that read ‘Empower People’. The women were aggressive handing out their fliers. They shouted over the racket of music and traffic to the pedestrians. They used phrases like ‘body trafficking’, ‘sex slaves’ and ‘female oppression.’ The tourists paid them little attention, some snapped pictures with their phones but most simply laughed.

Tanner did none of this, instead it seemed every five minutes or so a group of the scantily clad girls from the side street ran out and ogled him, grabbing at the crotch of his board shorts, running their hands over his arms and kissing at his face. Then he would hand them a wad of the papers and a handful of condoms and they would all scream, running off, throwing the pamphlets over their shoulders like confetti but keeping the condoms for business purposes.

As Lonny sat at the bar drinking his beer and watching Tanner a young fey boy approached and whined, ‘Hello, you buy me a drink?’ raising his eyebrows.

Lonny didn’t turn, thinking if he ignored the kid he would go away. He looked off into the crowd but the boy didn’t budge, just sat staring at the side of his head until Lonny could feel the blood rising from his neck up into his face.

The boy leaned over, placing his hand on Lonny’s upper thigh and asked again in a voice almost comically mincing. ‘Mister, you buy me one drink palease?’

Lonny got up and moved over one seat still not looking at the boy. The kid yelled out ‘Why?’ in a pitch that cut through all noise pollution and fell into a rapid feline conversation with the bartender. Lonny’s beer was almost empty and he hadn’t any thoughts about what to do when Tanner walked straight into the bar and sat in the seat abandoned by the boy.

‘Tan-ner’ The bartender shouted mangling the name with obvious familiarity and joy.

‘Hey B, satwadee huh, can I have a beer.’

‘Tan-ner can have everything.’ The bartender giggled and went about fetching him a bottle.

‘What about me Tanner? Did you forget me already?’ The fey boy asked.

‘No, you want a beer?’ The boy slapped the bar and pouted.

‘I told you, when you learn to drink beer I’ll get you one every night.’

‘But Tan-ner I don’t like beer, I like sweet, please buy me sapy’

‘Can’t do it Ot, beer or nothing.’ The boy pushed his face onto the bar and stomped his feet.

Tanners bottle came and he upended it, draining half in one go. ‘Hot work eh?’ Lonny said.Tanner looked him over, judging and figuring in seconds that he was here by mistake or necessity not for fun and nodded. ‘You American?’

‘Sure, New York.’

‘I thought so, but you got to ask, Canadians get really pissed if you ask if they’re Americans.’

‘Yea? Why the hell for?’

Tanner shrugged and sucked at his beer bottle, finishing it down to the foam. “I’m from the Island.’

‘Geez small world, Queens, what part of the island?’

‘Great Beach.’

‘We’re basically neighbors. Great Beach is nice, buy you another?’

‘Thanks.’

Lonny held up two fingers to the bartender and pointed at the bottles but the bar tender had his eyes full of Tanner and only went to work when Tanner asked.

‘What happened to your face?’ Tanner asked, hesitantly, with a kind of snigger, turning up the corners of his mouth to show he meant no offense.

‘Took a beating this morning, for some reason. Four young skin head guys, just started hitting me.’ Lonny touched one of the wounds that still smarted on his head.

Tanner looked him over, openly now. ‘Something I learned standing out there every night, you see these English guys in groups just step aside. They’re worse than the, ya know, at home. They’re fucking bad.’

‘Watch’adoin out there?’

Tanner handed him a flyer and droned, ‘Stop the illegal and immoral abuse of women in Thailand.’ Then he cracked a smile. ‘I’m volunteering. I go to Hoffstra and they had this thing for an NGO, woman’s rights in the developing world. One of my professors asked me if I wanted to join. They flew me over here, stay for free, just come out here every night and hand out these flyers for a couple hours. I get credit and everything.’

‘You must get some abuse.’

‘Na, I just stand there, if you want one I’ll give, we got rubbers too, I pass a lot of them out. But these, no one’s interested in these flyers, besides the two hysterical lesbians over there.’ He nodded towards the dread locked girls who, though still going through the motions of canvassing the crowd, were throwing angry glances at the bar.

‘I guess from what I seen here in the last few minutes you’d be using a lot of them yourself, those hookers are loving you.’

‘I wouldn’t have sex with any of these girls if you paid me. None of them even close to the girls I get with back home? They’re mostly kind of ugly, used up. Even the young ones. Plus all the dudes they go with. No way man. It’s nasty.’

‘Never thought of that, Every night?’Lonny said.

‘No, more like four or five times a night, look out there and find the most jacked up dude you can find and then multiply that by 35 or 40 a week.’ Lonny drank his beer and shook his head ‘Shit, that’s awful.’

‘This place is awful. Have you been to any of these bars?’

‘Just this one.’

‘I mean girl bars, not gay bars, which is what this is.’ Tanner sat back with his eyes wide.

Lonny looked left and right. ‘And we’re the only two customers in the place.’The two simultaneously chuckle snorted dismissively at the suggestion.

‘I mean places like Mega Pussy or Nero’s or anything like that? It’s all a scam. They have the best looking girls outside and then you get in and it’s like oh shit son, nasty females. Then they give you huge bills and threaten you if you don’t pay.’

‘With what?’

‘Either they kick your ass or they get you arrested. The cops here all work for them.’

‘Sounds like Times Square when I was your age. Bad place to be protesting. And you don't have no trouble?’

‘It’s cool as long as we stand on the avenue here, but if we go in the side streets, yeah they can get pretty agro.’

‘Don’t go.’ Lonny smiled at him.

‘I don’t, but those two, they’re always fighting with the bouncers and cops and shit.’ Tanner laughed. A horn sounded at the curb. A black Mercedes sat idling.‘That’s me, thanks for the beer.’ 

Tanner bound out of his seat and with deft movements cut through the throng of people and disappeared behind the opened door of the car which cut into traffic blindly and moved with the flow into the waves of heat and exhaust hanging over the road.

The bartender was still looking fondly at the space above the seat where Tanner had been when Lonny up ended and his beer and said ‘That kid didn’t kill no one you ask me.’

The bartender nodded, understanding nothing and asked hopefully, ‘One more?’

Lonny paid and walked out. He was sticky with sweat, still tired and his body ached from the beating. The heat of the night was less oppressive than the day but still draining, a muggy, thick temperature that seemed to hang on the body like wool. He would check into some clean hotel, a place where he could rest and think. He had taken Jerry’s money on this but in reality promised nothing. Eddy was wrong and the kid wasn’t the viscous arrogant punk Jerry had made him out to be. Had he ever really thought he was going to kill him?

He patiently moved forward in the jumbled heaving crowd towards the corner, elbowed and shoulder smacked as he inched ahead. From his right side came a drunken shout of laughter.

“Yeah, lets push. You like to push? I like to push too.’ A shirtless torso lined with swerving blade like tattoos came straight for Lonny clearing pedestrians out of his way with effortless swipes of his huge hands. He towered over the crowd, sweat and the stink of day old beer poured out of him. Lonny tried to step aside but was ricocheted straight into his path by others struggling to move out of the danger area.

When the big man hit he was bent forward, using inertia and the lift of his height to send Lonny floating into the air. His feet never touched until he hit the side of a Toyota sedan with four women seated inside. The driver sat rigid with fear as Lonny’s face cracked against her wind screen strafing it with blood.

He slid off the side of the car into the street while the giant shirtless Nordic drunk screamed at him from the sidewalk. ‘Now it is your turn, come and push me, you like to push? Come and push me now.’

Lonny crawled unsteadily along the curb, breathing heavily with blood leaking from his mouth. He got to the foot of the pedestrian bridge, pulled himself up by the handrail and now more painfully than when he arrived ascended. There was no reason to turn around; it meant nothing, there was no understanding it, no apology to be had, and no vengeance. The clearing created by the violence had already closed up and those who had witnessed it took the anecdote with them to the next bar.

He knew now he would have to go back to the sodden room at the Mansion. He couldn’t check in anywhere else bleeding and covered in street filth and the dread of it combined with the humiliation of being tossed like a doll into traffic created a lump in his throat and a burning behind his eyes that had nothing to do with the diseased air conditioner in his room.

He limped from the pedestrian bridge to the sky train stairs and paid his fare and sat on the single bench at the end of the platform holding his ribs, trying hard to control the rise of emotion welling in his chest. Blood diluted with sweat ran down his face and dripped on his new shirt from the point of his chin. The first train went by as he stared at it, watched the riders file off and a few girls with older men board, but he made no move himself.

Slowly, after many determining glances, a young woman in business clothes came to him and asked hesitantly if he needed help.

He shook his head no, without meeting her eyes.

‘You drunk mai?’ She asked softly.

Now he did look up, suddenly enraged he stood and looked down on her as she backed away, ‘No I’m not drunk and who the hell asked you any god damned way.’ There was a tremble in his voice and his hands shook.

The woman, frightened but determined, dipped her hand into her bag and reached out with a miniature package of tissues, ‘you mouth is bleeding. I’m sorry.’

The outrage drained from his body as he reached out and took the tiny plastic wrapped packet of soft white paper. The girl smiled an encouraging smile and Lonny grinned back at her showing his red smeared teeth.

‘I’m Sorry’, he said, pulling one of the feathery sheets from the gap in the packet, ‘you're very nice, to do this. It’s the first nice thing any one’s done for me since I arrived in this city.’ The woman sat on the bench next to him as he cleaned the blood from his face.

*

Lonny returned to the Mansion in the dark. The street was as fetid, the building as run down, the hallway still stank like ashes and mold and the room still a hot bacteria filled cave. His body ached from the day’s double beating but he didn’t mind.

He fell onto the bed and leveraged his shoes off looking forward to the next day. He told the girl his woeful tale and she insisted on taking him to a late dinner to prove that Thailand is a good place and Thai people have a good heart.

She took him to a famous seafood restaurant so large it stretchered to the limits of Lonny's vision. The ceiling was high and arced above them and the whole place had the feel of a retired airplane hanger re-purposed. Young and old crowded the tables still bustling at 10 o’clock. She introduced him to foods he had never imagined, some inedible because of spice or simply smell and some delicious. He had grown up eating seafood but had never seen the array of edible creatures that had been dredged up from the waters and prepared in ways he was sure would be illegal in America.

They ate plates of food and still Pearl ordered more. Lonny drank a couple large beers and winced at the pain in his mouth when he swallowed making the girl laugh and he couldn’t help but chuckle along with her. When the meal was over she wouldn’t let him pay. He felt bad knowing that she probably made little money but the woman insisted.

They shared a cab from there, making two stops, her place first and when she got out she handed him her phone number and asked him to call her and then kissed him chastely on the cheek.

People had stared at them in the restaurant; it was no tourist spot and the looks made Lonny feel special. He was with a nice girl, a professional who worked as an accountant and he was proud. He hadn’t been on a real date in more than a decade, and now two nights in this city and with his face pummeled he had met someone.

He was full and content and the gravity of why he was there in the first place had drifted out of focus as he showered and thoroughly washed his fresh wounds. In the mirror he examined the large swollen area going yellow already across his ribs that would turn a variety of darker hues by morning. He brushed his teeth and spat out a pink foamy mix of blood and toothpaste then crawled exhausted into the damp, rustled bed and fell immediately into the depths of a coma like sleep.