ultrasound. Two days later a brief chat about the results and a suggestion that I should try cutting down on fatty foods and alcohol to lower my cholesterol. My cholesterol levels, good and bad, had remained a few per cent higher than average since I’d been having the yearly check-ups, and cutting back on fatty food and going to the gym three times a week hadn’t made any difference either way so I’d cancelled my gym membership and eaten what the hell I wanted.
Doctor Duangtip ran through my medical history and then sent me of for the first of the tests. I was totally relaxed.
I was fine.
I was fit.
I was healthy.
I was going to live forever.
Little did I know.
CHAPTER 9
Washington Square is a hangover from the days when Thailand was an R amp;R destination for American troops fighting in Vietnam. The main venue slap in the middle was the Washington Theatre, a huge cinema with more than a thousand seats. Around the theatre were dozens of bars, clubs and massage parlours, all just a few hundred yards from the intersection of Asoke and Sukhumvit roads. After the war ended the troops went home but the Square stayed much as it was, frequented by vets who preferred to stay in Asia rather than return to the real world. Time took its toll, on the vets and on the area, and these days Washington Square is a pale shadow of what it once was. Some of the bars are still there, and you can still get a soapy massage, but the cinema became a transvestite cabaret show and then a sports bar, and every year there’s talk of the area being demolished to make way for a shopping mall or condominiums.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Washington Square. The Bourbon Street restaurant, tucked away behind the cinema building, serves great Cajun food, and the bars are quiet havens where you can have a drink and watch American sport and listen to American voices mumbling around you. And I’m a big fan of the Dubliner, an Irish pub at the entrance to the square which serves breakfast all day and a decent cup of coffee most days. The Muay Thai gym wasn’t a place I’d ever visited, mainly because they didn’t serve breakfast or coffee and because these days my preferred exercise is a game of tennis with my next door neighbour.
It was a hot day, probably in the low forties, but there was no air-conditioning in the gym. Instead they had opened all the windows and had half a dozen floor fans on full power, and the contrast with the blisteringly-cold air-con of the taxi that dropped me outside had beads of sweat forming on my forehead within seconds.
I took off my jacket and wiped my forehead with a handkerchief. ‘I’m looking for Lek, or Tam’ I said to a stocky man sitting behind a metal table reading a Muay Thai magazine and chewing on a toothpick.
The man looked up and frowned, confused because I’d spoken to him in Thai. ‘You speak Thai?’ he said.
‘This is Thailand, right?’ I said, and he laughed.
‘Why is your Thai so good?’ he asked, switching to Khmer. He had nut-brown skin and a snub nose and I figured he was probably from Surin or Sisaket, close to the Cambodian border. He was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of two kickboxers slamming into each other and baggy tracksuit bottoms.
‘I watch too much television,’ I answered, speaking in Khmer and throwing in a few curse words for emphasis.
He nodded, impressed. ‘Thai girlfriend?’
‘Thai wife,’ I said.
‘From where?’
‘Chiang Rai.’
‘Children?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. Thais had no reservations about asking the most personal questions of people they had only just met.
‘Is Lek here? Or Tam?’ I asked.
He took the toothpick out of his mouth and jabbed it towards the far end of the gymnasium where a lanky trainer in a baggy tracksuit was holding a punchbag for a bald-headed Westerner who was grunting every time he launched a kick which thudded against the canvas with the sound of a seal being clubbed to death. ‘That’s Lek.’
I sat down on a wicker chair and waited for the session to finish. The bald guy wasn’t a fighter, and he certainly wasn’t fit. After a minute or two he was bathed in sweat and he was barely getting his kicks above knee height. Eventually he waved Lek away and bent double, gasping for breath. Lek patted him on the back and draped a towel around his shoulders before helping him over to the changing rooms. Lek reappeared a couple of minutes later holding a bottle of water.
‘Farang here wants a word!’ shouted the guy with the newspaper.
Lek looked over at me and jutted out his chin. ‘You here to train?’ he asked in accented English.
‘Me?’ I patted my stomach. ‘My fighting days are over.’ I spoke in Thai, and gestured at the changing rooms. ‘What about him, when will we be seeing him in Lumpini?’ I asked, referring to the city’s main Muay Thai stadium.
‘He thinks he’s Rambo,’ said Lek. ‘Wants to get fit so that he can be a mercenary in Iraq.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said.
Two more Westerners appeared at the entrance. They were in the twenties with the sort of muscles that only came from steroids. They both had their names tattooed in Thai across their left forearms. Michael and Martin. They waied Lek but spoiled the effect by grunting at the same time. They looked at me with hard faces as they walked to the changing rooms as if daring me to pick a fight with them.
I smiled.
Smiling is the best way of dealing with aggression, I’ve always found.
Unless you’ve got a gun strapped to your waist, of course.
I didn’t have a gun, so I smiled.
‘Ronnie Marsh sent me,’ I said. ‘I took the photograph of Jon Junior from my pocket and showed it to him. ‘The night of the fire, was this boy there? In the club.’
Lek wrinkled his nose. It was a nose that had been hit so many times that it was almost flush against his face giving him the look of a confused monkey. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Maybe?’
‘Farangs all look the same to me,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Was he with anyone?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Because if he was with a girl I’d probably remember the girl. Girls are more memorable. Especially pretty girls.’
‘Yeah, I get it. Is Tam around?’
Lek pointed upstairs. ‘He’s sleeping.’
‘Okay if I go and ask him?’
‘He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s sleeping.’
‘I’ll be gentle.’
I went up the stairs. They opened into a landing where there were three chipboard doors. There was a buzz-saw snoring coming from one of the rooms and I pushed open the door to find a stocky Thai man wearing nothing but red and gold Muay Thai shorts lying face down on a stained mattress.
‘Khun Tam?’ I said.
The snoring continued so I bent down and shook him by the arm.
Big mistake.
He let out a shriek, jumped up into a fighting crouch and threw a punch that I only just managed to avoid by falling backwards and staggering against the wall.
‘Whoa!’ I shouted. ‘I come in peace.’
