Thai Horse

‘Damn,’ he said to his wife, ‘we’re going to be almost a half hour late. Damn, damn, damn!’

Ambassadors from Finland, France and Holland were in the receiving line when the bomb exploded. There was a moment of deafening sound, of fire and light, as the crowded room was illuminated and assaulted simultaneously. The boom of the bomb was followed almost immediately by shrieks of pain and terror. The chandelier had shimmered and burst, its hundreds of glass ornaments reduced to thousands of gleaming shards.

The deadly glass darts projected by the force of the explosion streaked down into the crowd below. Like chunks of diamond shrapnel they ripped into the dignitaries. Pale women in expensive gowns, their faces suddenly shredded by bits of glass and metal, staggered into one another. Ambassadors in cutaway coats were driven to their knees and assassinated by glittering arrows of death. And in the momentary silence that follows any shock and before chaos breaks out, the chandelier, weakened by the explosion, swung feebly and then its support snapped and it plunged down on top of the dead and wounded in a great splash as the rest of the glass shattered on impact.

‘M-my God,’ the American ambassador cried out as they turned off the main street into the drive of the embassy. Ahead of them in the garish beam of their headlights, people in their evening finery, bleeding and blind, were staggering out of the shattered reception hail into the street.

KLONG GIRL

Sy was in a small park across the street, practicing his moves. He looked good, a quick jabber with good legs. Hatcher reached in the car window, tooted the horn and the driver came immediately.

‘I am looking for a girl named Sukhaii who works on the Phadung Klong near New Road,’ Hatcher said.

‘Is she a whore?’

‘Yes,’ Hatcher replied, repeating the girl’s description from the police report. ‘Five two, sixteen years old, ninety pounds. A real princess, they say.’

‘Of course she is a real princess,’ Sy said with a shrug. ‘Who would go with an ugly whore?’

‘That’s very philosophical,’ Hatcher said.

‘It may take a little time to find her,’ Sy said, ‘the water babies do not stay in the same place on the klong.’

‘While we’re at it,’ said Hatcher, ‘I’m also looking for these two people.’ He showed Sy the photograph of Cody and Pai taken in Vietnam fifteen years ago.

‘Is this old picture?’ Sy asked.

Hatcher nodded. ‘Fifteen years,’ he growled.

‘They change a lot,’ Sy said.

Hatcher nodded again. ‘I’m sure of it,’ he said.

‘This is American and Thai girl?’ Sy asked.

‘No. The man was an American flier, but the girl was Vietnamese.’

‘Ah,’ Sy said. He stared at the picture for at least a minute and then nodded and passed it back to Hatcher.

As they drove through the crowded streets, Hatcher reflected on his plan. First, try t find the girl, since she was the only person who had actually seen both Wol Pot and Windy Porter’s killers. Then he would start checking out Porter’s surveillance locations to see if that produced anything. Near the top of the list was the section called Tombstone and the Longhorn Bar. The subject of Thai Horse was touchy, since it involved street gossip. Was there really a Thai Horse, and if so, was it a gang? A man? Wol Pot or Cody? Or someone new? Because Hatcher could not tie it directly to Cody, he would play that by ear.

The trip to Phadung Klong took only a few minutes; the intersection was a few blocks away, just past the sprawling produce market now almost deserted for the day and across a short arched bridge at the klong. It took Sy three stops and the better part of an hour talking to river people to get a lead on the girl.

‘They say she works closer to Rama Four Road,’ he said returning to the car. ‘We find her, mai pen rai,’

They drove parallel to the klong, separated from it by thick banyan trees, flowering orchids and shacks built on stilts over the banks of the river. At Rama Four, Sy parked the car and disappeared. down the bank of the Hong. He was gone for another fifteen minutes.

‘She has moved to Klong Mahachai,’ he said when he got back. ‘But it will be difficult to locate her until tonight. We should find her near the Maharaj Road crossing close to the Thieves’ Market in Chinese Town.’

At dusk they drove to Maharaj Road, and Sy once again scouted the banks of the klong. He was gone only a few minutes this time.

‘We have luck,’ he said proudly. ‘Come.’

He led Hatcher along the edge of the klong, past several boats.

‘You be careful, okay, pheuan?’ Sy said. ‘Sometime the girl boss he looks to steal your money, watch, you know? But I be behind you,’ he said, pointing down the row of snakeboats and houseboats that were tied to the bank and to one another. There were many young women sitting in the bows of the boats, smiling, appraising, inviting a bid from the crowds along the canal. Hatcher followed Sy as they threaded through the crowd of gaping tourists that was already beginning to gather on the bank and past several boats until the little Thai stopped a man who was heading upstream with a fishing pole.

‘Sukhaii?’ Sy asked ‘You know which is her boat?’

The old man smiled gleefully, nodding vigorously, and pointed over Sy’s shoulder to a long boat practically at