Rogue’s Gallery Pattaya
5 years ago I was contemplating a move from New York.
The choices were Paris, Palm Beach or Pattaya.
Each city beginning with P.
Paris had been my home during the 1980s. I saw no gain in reliving those lost years in the City of Lights. Palm Beach was a good spot for a gigolo existence at the Breakers Hotel, however 50 was still too young for monetary coupling with turtle-skinned heiresses, so I decided on Pattaya for obvious reasons.
Sun sex and fun.
Having a baby slowed down my efforts on the latter two. My wife doesn’t condone either, but let’s me go out with Sam Royalle, my longtime friend. “He’s not bad man and you get too drunk.”
After two beers I wasn’t only interested in two more beers. Sam was no saint, but Patttaya’s rogues’ gallery had him playing for the angels.
Russian pimps, German bikers, French credit card scammers. American real estate fakes, British football holligans, Aussie mercenaries ad nauseum and then you have the Thais; the good, the bad, and a few of the in-between. It’s hard to avoid this tidal wave of evil, unless you want to hang out at the Seventh Day Adventist Church down the street from my soi, only holy-rollers aren’t much fun either, since they are seeking to save my already damned soul.
So I end up in dubious dens for my drinking pleasure.
Go-go bars and beer bars and short-time drinking establishments.
I don’t associate with the farang criminal element or the Thai mafia, but sometimes you can’t help meeting a character who would make your mother rise from the grave and tug you by the ear out of the bar. “What I tell you about people like that?”
“That they’re trouble.” My mother like my wife is more right than wrong.
You aren’t only what you eat but who your friends are.
Sam Royalle and I were in a go-go.
The girls on stage were whipping their naked flesh with thick hoses.
A lot of noise, but little pain.
Three Thai men entereed the bar. The staff greeted them with deference. The mama-san offered them a bottle of Whiskey. Johnny Walker Red and not 100 Pipers. Two were definitely police. The third wore a Pancho Villa moustache. His shoes were imported leather. He sat down with a hand behind his back. A gunman. He noticed my watching him. I smiled and said hello to him in Thai. We struck up a conversation in his language. After several drinks I told him I was a writer and he replied that he was a hitman.
His admission was almost surprising, however as a teenager I had spent a weekend in a monastery and many people made confessions to a failed priest faster than they would to a police interrogator. After all priests supposedly practice a vow of silence, especially about young boys.
The hitman seemed almost proud of his profession. “I go everywhere. If you want anyone killed, let me know.”
He had a card.
A hitman with a card?
My mother’s words echoed in my head. “What I tell you about people like that?”
I nudged Sam it was time to go. He paid the bill and we went to Diamond A Go-Go. Sam knew the hitman already and said, “I’m surprised he doesn’t advertise in the Yellow Pages.”
“Can you think of anyone you want killed?”
“George W Bush and Tony Blair.” He whispered for fear of the NSA picking up the sentence via satellite.
“Too expensive.”
“Then who you want to kill?’
“There’s the guy who beat me up in 7th Grade, but I’d only want him kneecapped.”
“He probably has arthritis already. Anyone else?”
I had been suicidal a year ago. I didn’t feel that way anymore.
Old girlfriends?
My heart has always been forgiving.
“Can’t think of anyone.”
“Me neither.”
“Pity, eh, here we have a killer on the cheap and we can’t give him any work.”
“Better that way.”
I agreed for while I might be lapsed Christian I remained true to the 5th Commandment, except in the case of mosquitoes.
They get the death sentence 20 times a day. Even more if I hired the hitman. Somehow I think that contract might not be in his repertoire.
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