Trader of secrets

Chapter Fourteen

From the air, the international airport in Bangkok looks like a huge copper dragon with hackles of white scales erupting from its back. Up close it is a soaring modern complex of buildings, the fifth largest air terminal in Asia.

The concourses are long, encased in curving walls and arched ceilings. Looking down from the confines of the international arrival gallery, we can see the public areas below. The cavernous halls are festooned with shops and restaurants, and dotted with stunning artwork. There are statues of Vishnu and an entire array of giant-size figures cast in what appears to be porcelain; the entire work is half a football field in length, all painted in striking colors. It seems even more surreal because I am half asleep.

Harry, Joselyn, and I are dying on our feet, exhausted from jet lag. We do the quarter mile to immigration trudging along the hall like zombies auditioning for parts in Night of the Living Dead.

It takes a half hour to clear immigration, gather our bags at customs, and make our way out to the main terminal. There we agree on a division of labor. Harry and Joselyn head off to the window that says “Currency Exchange” to get some local cash while I make arrangements for ground transport.

It takes only a few minutes to hire a car and driver. We follow our bags as they are rolled out of the terminal and into the garage, where the pungent odor of petrol fumes mixes with hot humid air.

Harry and I take off our jackets as the luggage is loaded into the trunk of a low-slung sedan.

“I don’t think we dressed for this.” Harry wipes the perspiration from his brow using the long sleeve of his shirt. “I didn’t even bring any shorts.”

“We’re not going be here that long,” I tell him. “Hopefully we’ll be back in the States before we can adjust to the difference in time.”

“Right now I just want to be here long enough to sleep for a day or two.” Joselyn is looking as if she’s about to drop.

Outside the light is bright. Heat waves ripple the air beyond the confines of the garage. Our driver, a slight, small-boned Asian man wearing a coat and tie, is looking sufficiently cool to make me wonder if this is winter in Thailand. He looks at the paperwork given to him by the girl at the counter inside. He glances up at Harry and me, then says: “We go Pattaya?”

“Right, we go Pattaya,” says Harry. “How long?”

The guy looks at him, scrunches up his mouth a little. “Ninety minute, maybe. You sleep.” He gestures toward the car.

“Do I look that bad?”

“Naw, you’re beautiful,” says Joselyn. “Take the bamboo shoots from under your eyelids and get a few years of sleep and you’ll be fine.”

She and I collapse into the backseat while Harry sprawls in the left-hand passenger seat up front. You might swear the car was filled with laughing gas. As soon as the driver starts the engine and begins to roll, the three of us are asleep. The driver could have dragged me behind the car and I would have slept right through it. The only sensation is some vague awareness of sweeping curves and the rumble of the tires on the road at high speed. At some point I feel a series of rolling rhythmic bumps that jar my body. It feels as if the car is porpoising along the highway. But I’m too tired to wake up and complain about it.

Some time later, I don’t know how long, I become aware of voices. When I open the slits that are my eyes, Harry is talking to the driver.

“What’s the problem?” My speech is slurred.

“He wants to know what hotel we’re going to. I told him the Marriott, right?”

“Right.”

Harry reconfirms it with the driver as the car moves to the left onto what appears to be an off-ramp. I’m in that middle place where the brain is debating whether to sample another slice of death or wake up. The car takes a broad sweeping turn to the right. We cross over the top of the main highway and onto another road. It is lined with palm groves and low brush. There are several large buildings that look like factories off in the distance to the right.

Behind us the landscape erupts in occasional sharp jutting hillsides, an indication that maybe this is volcano country. Ahead of us the lay of the land is low and flat for as far as I can see, and the sky has that kind of ethereal edge to it that makes me wonder if it might be kissing the sea. If I had to guess, I would say we are moving toward water, a shoreline somewhere off in the distance.

“How much longer?” I ask.

“He says maybe ten minutes,” says Harry.

I look at my watch. At the airport I had changed the time to Bangkok time. It’s just after one in the afternoon. I decide to rouse myself so that I can move enough at least to get to the room.

“What time is it back home?” says Harry.

“I don’t have the slightest,” I tell him. My leaden brain is not up to those kinds of calculations, not at the moment anyway. Joselyn is sprawled across the backseat, her head on my lap. She is out cold. I am wondering if I can wake her or if we’re going to have to roll her inside with the luggage.

Within minutes the traffic begins to thicken. Occasional small motorcycles, some of them spouting sidecars mounted with smoking braziers, begin to propagate along the sides of the road. Soon there is a growing herd of two- and three-wheeled traffic. Like a line of motorized wildebeest they hug the edges of the road with the riders bent over the handlebars as the cars and trucks speed past them using the main traffic lanes. As we draw closer to civilization I notice that some of the bikes are carrying four and five passengers, a few of them with small children clutching the handlebars and standing up front between their momma’s knees. None of them are wearing helmets. It looks like the motorbike equivalent of the family minivan.

Doing sixty miles an hour you’d have trouble slipping a playing card between the grip on the handlebars on some of the bikes and the side of our car. How our driver is missing them is a mystery.

“Damn!” says Harry. “This could be an ambulance chaser’s paradise.”

“Maybe they don’t get that much for an arm or a leg off over here,” I tell him.

“You think?” says Harry.

“Not everybody has a jackpot tort system like ours. Why do you think all of our manufacturing jobs moved over here twenty years ago?”

“I figured that was because of the thirty-cent-a-day minimum wage.”

“That too,” I tell him.

“Pretty soon I suppose the doctors will figure out a way to do intercontinental robotic surgery. Then we won’t be able to reach them anymore. And the way Washington wants to tax the rich, they’ll all be picking up and moving over here. Pretty soon there won’t be anybody left to sue. So why should we bother going home?” says Harry.

“I don’t know. You got me.”

We pass under a high gold arch that spans the road. A short distance farther on, the road swings to the left. Here there are multiple lanes in each direction separated by a wide grass-covered median strip. We travel on this road for a few miles, moving at high speed. There are commercial buildings and businesses on both sides of the road, and traffic is starting to get heavy. It looks as if we’re getting close to the center of town.

We come to a stoplight. The driver maneuvers into the far right lane, getting ready to cross traffic and make a turn. The light turns green; we go a couple of blocks and find ourselves stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The sidewalks here are crowded with pedestrians, vendors selling fruit, fish, chicken, anything you can eat from the sidecars of parked bikes. Now the slower two-wheel motorbikes get the upper hand as they stream between the stopped cars. They jump to the front of the line at each stoplight.

“How much longer?” says Harry.

“Not far. Maybe ten minute.”

“That’s what you said a half hour ago,” says Harry.

“You give tip?” says the driver.

“I give tip if we get there today,” says Harry.

The driver maneuvers into the left lane and a few feet farther up he turns into a narrow alley and starts to move. We twist through a maze of backstreets, dodging kids and dogs, Asian women with pushcarts selling food, and potbellied white men in tank tops and T-shirts hanging out in the beer bars, some of them tattooed like scrimshaw.

A few more minutes and two more turns and we find ourselves on a broad four-lane one-way street with shops and businesses on both sides. Here the traffic is heavy once more. There are vendors all along the street and beer bars on every corner. “Seccon Road,” says the driver. “Marriott.” He gestures with his head up the street.

Harry turns to glance at me from the front seat. I’m looking out the window to see if I can catch any street numbers. According to the note, the office for “Waters of Death” is somewhere along Second Road.

“I don’t see any numbers,” I tell him.

“Don’t worry about it. We can check with the front desk when we get to the hotel. Show them the address. I’m sure they can tell us where it is,” says Harry. “I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna get some sleep before I go anywhere.”

I look at my watch. “It’s a quarter to two. Hope to hell our rooms are ready.”

“They better be,” says Harry. “Otherwise I’m gonna crawl over the counter and kill the clerk.”