Con Tracks (a.k.a Why I had to leave Nam)
Preface
I used to say that I liked arguing and challenging my ideas and rationale against other people’s, because it was a way of sharpening my mental sword. But now I realise that I was wrong. Because a sword isn’t sharpened in battle, it is only dented and dulled. Sharpening is something that takes place in the quiet times between battles and perhaps, that’s why I haven’t written for so long, for it has been a long time since I have been able to sheath my sword. For so long I have been in battle, with hearts and minds that fight using a different style and different weapons.
I am from Anglo-Saxon blood, and my sword play in characteristically so. I strike directly and with great force, aiming to disable my opponent as quickly as possible. I carry a conspicuous heavy sword into battle and a well disguised short-sword in treachery. Few ever see me use my short-sword except ‘those’ special victims. It is reserved for those who consider it safe to come close to me, those who consider me trustworthy, and so it is only when I use my short-sword that I cry, because it costs me vast quotients of self-respect and loads me with great self doubt. But I have only ever used it on a few occasions and I know I use it more sparingly than others and so that, and that alone, consoles me.
My broad-sword however, I hold righteously. It is seen from afar, holds no secrets and it is unashamed in its purpose. It must be swung with all one’s might and the clash of swords produces a magnificent crashing sound. But my swords and I are a long way from home, and I have been ill-equipped for my competition; for the sword of Asia isn’t forged in a mould like my own, it is created by folding the metal in on itself, internalising itself, a hundred times, then a thousand times, resulting in a fast, light, and flexible blade, with a thousand invisible, razor-sharp edges. My opponents strikes are dextrous and fast, they dance around me as their blade bends around my own. They aim to tire me and then strike when I’m exhausted, and thus I have learnt to conserve my power, using my heavy broad blade as a shield more than a sword, and reaching for my short-sword when they get close. I have learnt much about defence, something I knew little of before, and I do not blame my brutish blade, only my technique. I have grown more flexible and my stamina is greater, but it is time now to find some peace and quiet, so that I may put my blade to the whetstone again and attempt to restore its shine.
So here I sit, with my whetstone-slash-pen in hand, fifteen hundred metres above sea-level, looking out over the vast plains of the Maasai Mara in northern Tanzania, humbled by the six-thousand metre behemoth of Mount Kilimanjaro far off in the distance, which is still so massive that despite it being several hours drive away, I must still arch my neck back till it aches, just to imagine its top half which is lost above a blanket of rainless white clouds. But even before my gaze reaches Kili, I am left dazed and disorientated by the landscape around me. Everything seems to trick the eyes. The plains are too vast to comprehend, the mountains too big for the sky, and it is only in this setting that the five metre tall giraffe, and the five tonne elephant do not seem big enough. This is an epic landscape, no doubt, a glance to the left or right, meets with kilometre high volcanoes and valleys half as deep. These are Africa’s geological battle scars, and they are the product of the Rift Valley; a colossal wound that stretches half the length of Africa, from Somalia in the north, to Mozambique in the south. The violent result of the Earth trying to tear Africa in two. The life that is borne of this land reflects this violence too, because if it doesn’t sting, stab, or bite you, it’s probably a rock. This is also where we (humans) were born, like maggots in the belly of Mother Earth’s festering wound, and our carnivorous appetite can still be seen here or at least smelt, in the Maasai Warriors, who eat only meat and drink their milk with fresh blood, and subsequently sweat the scent of a butchery. A carnivore so supreme that Lions retreat in their presence.
I am far away from ‘The World’ but much closer to ‘The Earth’. I am far from my foes, and nearer a good friend, Tarnzan. Surely this is where I can rest and reflect, thus healing my wounds and sharpening my sword.
Enjoy friends,
MALicious.
CON TRACKS
*
1
Gas Cookers & Claret
*
“You fucking bitch!
I’m gonna fucking kill you!
You fucking understand me you fucking bitch!”
There’s tables and chairs ricocheting off each other now and I’m standing amidst a group of tired teachers with a fat joint wedged into the corner of my mouth and a glass of syrupy Jamesons at my lips. It’s dark in here, black walls and hollow hearts, but amongst the smoke and flesh I see a writhing waif of a girl, squirming her way around the pool table towards me, her head is jerking violently, as a pair of stiletto clad, lycra wrapped wenches tear chunks of hair from her head. I don’t know the ‘who, what or why,’ but the violence is ruining the vibe, so I stand forward and thrust my arms between them cleaving them apart. I embrace the girl, turn my back on the crowd and call to Van the mammasan.
“What the fuck do you want me to do with her? Inside or outside? Where do you want her?”
Van’s uncharacteristically frantic eyes pre-empt her words. “Outside! Outside!”
I twist and turn, as the wenches attack again. The girl is trembling, eyes darting, her face is spattered with blood, cut up from fake nails, and scratched to the meat underneath, her hair has formed ropelets of clotted claret that whip my face with every flick of her head.
As I blast a ‘BACKOFF!’ into the face of one of the wenches, and a forearm to another’s throat pushing her back against the pool table, this blood smeared harlot in my arms ducks to avoid another five talons being plunged into her face and I feel a slippery snake of hair and blood slap my open mouth. I try to spit out the greasy metallic taste in my mouth, but my teeth are clenched in defensive revulsion now, so instead I sputter it onto my chin creating a Halloween drool.
But all this shit is unconscious to me now, so I should leave it out. In reality, my attention is focused on the roaring rage that exploded from a red faced oil-worker in the corner. Across the pool table, two red eyes with blazing blue iris’ and pin-prick pupils, bulge in their sockets. They are trying to escape from the beetroot-red, bald-by-choice head of a very, very angry oil rigger. His size is bearish, with massive arms, shoulders the size of volleyballs that are at least an axe handle apart. The kind of guy that doesn’t wear clothes just stretches them
“C’mere you fuckin’ bitch! I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you! You hear me!”
He’s staring at me now, so I don’t know who ‘the bitch’ is anymore, but I’m feeling like a prime candidate for the title. At this point I switch from ‘annoyed confusion’ into ‘fear and dread’. I wrap my arms around the girl’s torso and practically drag her towards the door, but before we get to the door he’s upon us, with his fist raised well above his head, and ropelets of foamy white saliva swinging from his mouth. He screams: “You’re fuckin dead!”
He’s enraged, and this has all happened too quickly for me to panic, yet he’s still far more articulate than I, as I can only muster a series of “woah’s” and “wh….whoah’s”. He has a vibrating stare, all glazed, and all consumed by fury, and it leaves me with no doubt that he is on another level, blinded by rage. The hoard of harpies that were tearing shreds from the girl’s face are far less focused than the murderer-to-be in front of me, and in the moment that I stop fending them off, to protect the girl and myself from The Rigger’s fists, they leap in to scratch and claw, filling the void and creating a buffer zone between me and The Rigger. He starts swiping them away in single arm strokes, like he’s parting tall grass. They hit the wall hard and pool table awkwardly, crumpling in contorted piles as they fall. Those few seconds delay are all it takes for me to get out of the front door and into the steamy, night street. Outside a taxi lies in wait, but no driver is behind the wheel. Over my shoulder I hear the roar from inside the bar become clear as the doors swing open and the enraged Rigger spills into the street.
“Give that bitch to me khunt!”
“I can’t man, you’ll kill her!”
I open the taxi door and throw her into the back seat. Then in an act of impressive forethought I open the driver’s door and hit the master door lock and slam it shut, thus sealing the girl inside.
“Gimme that bitch khunt!”
“Look, I dunno you or her, or why the fuck this is happening, but I can’t let you smash her head in. I can’t!”
At this point he avoids my eyes, and bee-lines straight for the taxi, punching at the windows and wrenching at the handles, but they remain locked, and the girl lies inside in a curled up, trembling ball. Then I see the taxi driver cautiously running across the street towards his beloved automobile. I cut him off, throw 100,000 dong in his hand and say “Di di! Khong biet o dau! Nhung Di!” (Go! Go!, I don’t know where, just go!). He takes the money with a look of nervous confusion and I help him to get in and away. The taxi pulls away and I feel relief, but as soon as it’s gone I want it back, because it was the only thing distracting and dividing the Rigger from me. Numbed by adrenaline and Jamesons, I act without thought and get in the first word.
“Look man, I dunno what the fuck just happened but I just can’t let a man bash a girl.” (Of course I was never that noble in my original intent. This began because the fighting was fucking up my Feng Shui. But then again I can’t deny that it had become an intolerable situation.) He lurches forwards off the footpath and onto the street.
“Shut your fuckin’ trap! That bitch just broke a glass over my fiancée’s face and we’re ‘sposed to get married tomorrow…. So shut your fuckin’ trap!”
The dread boils up all around me, drowning me in double-think, and I figure the only way to placate this guy is to offer him vengeance. So with a steady low tone, that could have only been achieved under the guidance of strong liquor and Mary Jane, I stare at him and hiss: “If you want her dead, we’ll talk to the Italians. 2 grand and she’ll be in 10 pieces by morning. Got it! But if you do it here and now you’re gonna rot in a local jail for the rest of your life, no wedding, no nothing. All we gotta do is talk to the Italians.”
My new serious tone of voice and matter-of-fact mob talk stalled him enough for the logic of what I said to sink in, and with that he turned and went back inside the bar. Still numb with confusion, but confident I wasn’t on his agenda anymore, I followed him back into the bar. Back inside, the harpies nurse their wounds and sob, and waitresses wipe blood from the walls and the pool table. In the corner The Rigger cups a handful of flesh that is dangling from his wife-to-be’s cheek and holds it in place, while someone goes outside to holler a taxi. Most of the bar is trying desperately to act as if nothing has happened and they do well until they see me, at which point they look me up and down with revulsion and part like I’m a leper.
“Are you alright?” asks one of the five teachers, none of whom have so much as shifted on their chairs during this whole ordeal and thus know nothing of what went on outside, and obviously left me for dead. (Yeah Yeah, I know, where’s your friends when you need them? Answer: In Oz.)
“Um..? I’m not hurt.”
“What’s with all the blood then?”
“Where?”
“Dude, everywhere! Look at yourself!”
I shift my gaze down and I see the mess. A little bit of blood goes a long way, so a lot of blood goes everywhere. My shirt is saturated in a black-ruby oil, so much so that it clings to my skin and glistens. The claret runs down my arms and drips from my fingertips and in the reflection of a Guiness mirror I see it pasted over my face, and congealed in a matted mess in my hair, and red rivulets and smears run down my neck. I suddenly conceptualise the various origins of the blood that has collected on me, and I shudder in disgust and the dread of disease. I’m rarely good in the face of free flowing blood, but in this moment the adrenaline keeps me vertical.
“Dude, are you sure you’re ok?”
“Well I’m coated in half-a-dozen different people’s blood and half of them were hookers, so …. No, I’m definitely not OK anymore, I’m going home to shower in Dettol.”
“What happened with the big guy?”
“I told him to get the Italians to kill her.”
“Who the fuck are the Italians?”
Again, another wave of dread engulfs me and my mind spits silent, nervous, thoughts at itself: ‘Shit!’, ‘The Italians!’, ‘Who the fuck are the Italians? Indeed!’
2
How to Make a Devil Town
*
Before I go any further with this it would serve us well if I gave you a little history lesson on where I have lived for the past 18 months and why it is a such a drainage point for so many of life’s vagabond miscreants. My town, Xau Bien (Lying Sea) as I will call it, began its life as a secret hideaway for Malaysian Pirates some 300 years ago. After nearly a century of unhindered plundering, they were finally forced out by the Vietnamese King’s army, and the land was given to the soldiers that conquered it. In the decades that followed, it existed as a peaceful fishing village. Then a century or so later, the French arrived and colonised the area, designating it as there weekend getaway by the coast. The French Commander even had a massive winter mansion built here, that still stands, but is now used as a museum dedicated to detailing how the Vietnamese have defeated all their invaders throughout the centuries. After the French war finished, the American war began, and with it came several thousand ANZACs. It’s hard to say when the prostitution really took off because the French were fans too, not to mention its traditional place in the local culture, but it’s a good bet that it was with the ANZACs that it climaxed (excuse the pun).
The Russians then replaced the ANZACs when they left. They came to ‘help’ their communist comrades in Vietnam exploit their oil reserves. They built a massive fortified compound in the town, big enough to house a series of shops, a bakery, a bar, a restaurant or two, and 2½ thousand Russians. These days it looks like the result of too much cement and paranoia, but after the famine began in the late 1970’s those tall walls and razor wire kept them safe from the starving masses outside. This continued for the next decade and a half until in the early 1990’s a change took place far away that would create a massive shift in the power structure of Xau Bien. The event was the dismantling of the Soviet Empire. The USSR was no more and all those KGB spooks and sleuths suddenly found themselves out of employment. As the Swedish journalist Bertil Litner reported, back in ’97 talking with a local mob boss known as ‘Valerian’:
Valerian and his gang, like all other organised criminals, are engaged in a wide variety of both legal and illegal activities. Their company rents out Russian helicopters in **** ***, a Vietnamese port and beach resort where many foreign oil companies exploring in the South China Sea are based. They also import diamonds from the mines in Siberia and sell them to the many nouveaux riche in today's Ho Chi Minh City, which has regained its freewheeling lifestyle of the pre-war era.
Most Russian criminal organisations use former KGB agents as hitmen, and Valerian's gang is no exception. Following the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1991, the old KGB was replaced by a new, more professional spy agency called the SVR, or the state intelligence bureau. The SVR was modelled after its Western equivalents, the CIA and Britain's MI-6: a tightly knit group of analysts attached to embassies abroad. But back home in Russia, this reorganisation meant that over 200,000 former informers, street detectives and gunmen lost their jobs. It is those thugs who the Russian mafia now uses all over the world to carry out "special assignments," as Valerian puts it.
"Do you want to know about a Russian patriot who loved his country?” Valerian says, clinking his glass of vodka against my mug of beer. “A person who said, 'Fuck you, Russia!' and went to **** *** to become rich."
And so they did, a swarm of cloak and dagger men mingled and macheted there way into the community and into the oil industry. Soon, this highly organized and extremely dangerous criminal network had a stranglehold on the running of the town from the cops who were paid to stay at home, right up to the big wigs in the People’s Party. It was then that Xau Bien became the sunny destination for shady people that it is today, where anyone can come and live underneath the radar.
This marks the end of our history lesson, but the key point I want to convey is that what comes next is for you my friends, and you only, as the ramifications of this information landing in the wrong hands would put many necks in a noose and my own under the blunt end of a thick stick. Don’t let the cat outta the bag on this one kids.
3
Who the Fuck are the Italians?
*
Two months prior to the bottling of the Rigger’s wife, I sat over a beer opposite Lonestar. A fifty something man with slicked back hair and no sideburns. When we first crossed paths I figured he was an ex-mobster on account of his thick New York accent, excessive brille cream application, strange hand-tattooed symbols on his neck and arms and the fact that whenever I checked the history of the computers he used, he only visited one website: crimelibrary.org, and more specifically; the pages detailing the Brooklyn Mafia.
Was he on the run? Had he ratted on the family? Was he still involved? I decided to delicately test his history over a beer or three, but as it turned out, Lonestar’s story (or at least cover story) was far crazier that I’d ever expected.
Thirteen years ago he came to Nam after finishing his time as a Sergeant for the French Foreign Legion, commanding an anti-sniping team (Which means a ‘sniping team’ doesn’t it?) in Bosnia. Prior to that he’d spent the good part of three decades as a Legionnaire in all of the world’s hell holes; Sierra Leone, Libya, Algeria, and the Balkans. After 25 years of genocide under his belt, he no longer counted the bodies, just the wars. After the fourth beer, I felt confident enough to ask how an American could join the French Foreign Legion, which to my knowledge was only a ‘get out of jail free card’ for French criminals.
“So how did you end up joining the….”
But before I can finish the question, a meaty hand lands on my shoulder. “Ay khunt!”
I turn, but I need not, I know the voice, it’s Bludnut; my newest friend and this town’s biggest problem child. “Fuck man, I just took out the Italians. I’m still chargin! Look at my hands they’re still shakin! Ha Hargh!”
His already red face is now beaming, eyes alive and teeth gleaming through an electrified grin.
“Who the fuck are the Italians?” I respond.
“Who the fuck are the Italians? They’re the khunts who tried to have Shadow killed.” I turn around further to see Bludnut’s older brother, ‘Shadow’ as I call him, quietly standing behind me. He’s 25, 6’5”, with John Travolta – Pulp Fiction hair, a goatee and a collection of fiercesome tatts scrawled over his body, he says little, he doesn’t have to. He just nods, and adds: “My brother, he’s not a gentleman when it comes to fighting.” Rounding it off with a joking snort.
“Too fuckin right!” Bludnut butts back in excitedly. “I smashed his teeth out of his fuckin mouth onto the road.” At this point he shoves his hand in front of my eyes so I can see a dark bubble of blood weeping from the DIY ‘Punisher skull’ tattoo on his middle finger.
“Why are they trying to kill you?” I query. Shadow pulls out the chair beside mine and sits before talking. “I found out that this other wog was fuckin my girlfriend, so I found out which hotel he was in, went to his room, kicked in the door, and had a sit down with him.”
“What did ya do to him?”
“Nothing much” he says innocently, “just slapped him round a bit, y’know, broke his nose, and sat on his couch for an hour and told him to stay the fuck away or I’d kill him. Then a few days later we heard through our Vietnamese contacts that him and his friend paid two grand to have a hit put on me.” Bludnut butted in: “So we found these khunts on the street outside Red Dragon and we went up to them and asked them if it was true, and they denied it, you know, fuckin wog pussies. Then his mate fucked up coz when I said ‘1000 bucks’ his mate whispered something about ‘2000 bucks’ so then I knew, so I just jumped from the curb and gave him a massive Glasgow. I jumped from about a metre away, and connected in full flight. Fuck, you shoulda seen it, his nose just fuckin’ exploded! Then I just went ‘Boosh! Boosh!’ (He’s now holding and imaginary man off the floor of the pub and punching his imaginary head) and smashed his face till there weren’t any teeth left.”
I sit stunned, A: by the content of the story, and B: by the feel good tone of Bludnut’s voice. Still confused by his investigative skills I ask “Whadya mean 2000 bucks instead of 1000 bucks? How did you know they’d done it?” He cocks his eyebrow at me, admitting the flaw. “OK, that’s all bullshit mate, the truth is the people they paid are my family man.” He laughed heartily at that point. I’m married into the biggest triad in Vietnam man. My wife man, she’s one tough mafia bitch!”
We all huff and giggle at that, and Bludnut continues, egged on by our interest.
“See they gave my brother in-law a thousand bucks, not knowing how he knew me, and said they’d pay another 1000 after the job was done. So he just took the money and went straight to Phuong [Bludnut’s wife]. Now he’s gotta spend another two grand getting his teeth put back in his head. Fucking hilarious, eh!”
I stumble for words…… “Hilarious? Kinda. I’d call it fucking insane actually.” Shadow nods his head and gives me a wry smile.
*
4
Blood Brothers
*
The history of these brothers, or more accurately, their clan, is another story unto itself, but it deservers some exploration because it also shows how family can conquer big business, big crime, and big law, a fact that still runs the world as we know it today, eg: The Cargill’s, The Walton’s, The Bush’s, The Bin Laden’s.
A generation ago in Glasgow town, a thick necked sailor started his climb through the maritime hierarchy. He was a hard man, and progressed quickly. A self confessed Alpha-male, a man who sires prides like a male lion, not families like most mere men. A Hemingway of sorts, but without the fagginess of literature. He came, conquered, inseminated (came again) and vacated, unashamedly. As his lineage grew, so too did his wealth and power. A generation later he earned millions and owned mansions around the world by providing safety and security for oil companies; everything from emergency response helicopters in Singapore, to mercenary teams it Nigeria.
Meanwhile in Queensland, two of his sons by different mothers were warring their way through life. One lived in Redcliffe, one of Brissy’s most notorious suburbs. He was tall, and a little lanky. His hair was slicked back with brille cream and his poorly trimmed goatee clung to his flat, steely, jaw, which had been forged by years of sparring and countless street fights. His skin was etched in ink symbols, reflecting all his core influences, his Scottish heritage, martial arts, and friends now dead via drugs, jail, and violence. By day he continued his Kung Fu training which he’d been dedicated to since the age of 13. By night he was the security doorman for a bar owned by the Hell’s Angels. He was solemn and intelligent, respectful to those with power and ruthless to those without. The Angels liked him.
Eight-hundred kilometres away in a large outback centre, another young cub battled an equally hostile environment. In and out of detention centres and on and off smack ‘n’ meth, a short muscle bound red-head presided over a gang of meth-charged street urchins with a craving for ultra-violence. The cops knew him all too well, and by the age of 18 the law had deemed him ready for the big pen, and in many ways he was, for he could have had it better than most, as most of his extended family were big players in the maximum security jails of Oz. But with or without protection, it wasn’t a preferred place to be, so he escaped to Brisbane and lived on the streets, quickly sliding down smack’s dark slope. In the pit of his opiate decline, a biker offered him salvation; a home, and a strong hand to wrestle with while going cold turkey. Three months later under the eye of ‘The Angels’ he was clean and back to his lean fighting best. He had been taken in by the Angels and spent all his time with them. But his rehab wasn’t free; he had to pay for it with high risk B&E’s, debt collections, and random acts of violence on innocent civilians just to prove his mettle. When they went drinking he liked talking to the tall, dark-haired, doorman at the biker’s bar, mainly because he was the only guy of a similar age, but also because they had so much in common, even down to their choice of tattoos. After a few beers one night and far too many coincidences of history, Shadow showed Bludnut a photo of his father. Bludnut said nothing, just stared. Then after a few moments of confused silence, he spat the word “Fuck!” and then “Dad”. Stunned, they contemplated their options. By a creepy coincidence, each had discovered a brother. A brother by a different mother, yes, but a brother none the less. A blood-brother. Bludnut said to keep it quiet, because he had been planning to do something that that night that would spell the end of his time with the Angels. And with that, he returned to the bar and sat behind the biker who had originally dragged him from the streets and more recently had set him up to take to the fall for a computer warehouse raid.
After another two beers the biker finally made his way to the toilet. Bludnut followed. Two minutes later, Bludnut emerged from the toilets, red faced, bloody-fisted, and shaking. He walked to the door, looked at Shadow and said “I’m finished here.” Shadow whispered back through clenched teeth; “You’re finished anywhere in Oz.” and with that Bludnut sprinted out into the shady, night streets of Brisbane and seconds later Shadow followed. Shadow still had contact with ‘The Father’ and asked for an emergency ten grand. After a frantic week on the run between friends and family, Shadow secured two fake passports, a country without an extradition policy, and a destination that didn’t ask questions. They knew only two things now: 1. They weren’t coming back to Australia. 2. Something superiorly fucking weird had just happened.
*
5
Boys and Their Toys
*
In the days that followed the attack on the Italians, the boys lay low, and no longer would we hang out on my roof, smashing cans and bashing guitars, while murdering Sublime songs. Instead I’d drop by their house late at night via the rabbit warren of alleyways that fractures their part of town, and do our drinking and smoking in the subdued atmosphere of their lounge room. A week later Shadow vanished, and a week after that he reappeared with a box full of tazers, mace, machetes, truncheons, and a dull, chunky, handgun.
“Where the fuck did you find all this? I asked, staring at Shadow with a slack jaw.
“The Chief of Police in Saigon gave it to me.” He said grinning with poorly disguised pride. “What? Why? Don’t the cops want you?”
“That’s the Aussie cops mate, not the Vietnamese cops. They fuckin’ love me.” He replied, emphasizing ‘fuckin’ for comic effect. At this point my face twisted up into a knot and shook, which pretty accurately portrayed where my mind was at. I raised my eyebrows and surrendered to confusion, and at that point Shadow began his explanation to stop my head from imploding in on this vacuum of logic. “I train their tactical response team in martial arts now, so I’ve got fifty of Saigon’s nastiest cops under me.”
“Don’t they know your history?”
“Maybe, I dunno, but they probably do.”
“Well don’t you think that’s a bit risky?
“Nah, they’re dodgy khunts, so I’m perfect. They’re so corrupt that they only trust people with bad records.”
“Is this why they gave you all this gear?”
“Nah mate, I got it coz I took on twenty mafia fucks in an ambush and saved an army general’s life.”
“OK, I’m lost. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“See, my first job was to go with our accountant and the General out to Binh Duong and deliver nineteen grand’s worth of wages, which was chained to my arm in a briefcase. But we were ambushed by some mafia fucks, and we were taken into a room with twenty guys, and they tried to scare us into handing over the money, but none of us had the key, only the guy at the drop-off had the key, and only the General knew where to go, and I flattened two of them like they were toddlers when they came near me, so they got nervous. They had a go at me with some punches and kicks, but you know Vietnamese man, they can’t hit for shit, just chipped my tooth, so I just spat in the main guys face and said ‘Do Ma’ (motherfucker). That freaked them out so they started on the General, but you know, that khunts a mass murderer who spent six years in a hell hole jail being interrogated by the Yanks, so he aint scared of shit! Then after about fifteen minutes, our boys arrived in black jeeps and carrying snub-nosed machine guns and they fucked off real quick.” I stare at him, like he’s an Escher picture, mesmerized, confused, swearing that it’s both impossible and true, because it’s seems so plainly unbelievable, yet the box in front of me states otherwise.
Bludnut is now fiddling with the gun, running his fingers along the barrel and thrusting it out gansta-style, side on, shooting the Vietnamese news reader on the TV. It’s unloaded but none-the-less I’m feeling more anxious with every passing second. Shadow is particularly impressed with the titanium truncheon, as he says “guns are for pussies”. He passes it to me and shows me the release button, at which point a telescopic rod blasts out the end, throwing my hand back. “Jeezuz” I say in astonishment. “Fair kick, huh!” Shadow remarks. “You just need to put it in front of someone’s chest (he grapples is from my hand in a single fluid motion, and presses it into my spare rib) and press the button, and it’ll break their rib.” At this point he turns it away from me and towards the brick wall and presses the button. There’s a crack and a thud and now a circular imprint in the brick, with a web of cracks extending from it. Small fragments of brick crumble out of the cracks, and I too begin to crumble, exhausted by nervous tension.
The room had grown claustrophobic with smoke and violent ideas, a classic fear and loathing moment. It occurred to me that I needed a change of venue. “I’m off to have a beer at Lab before I go home. See ya’s later yeah?” They both looked up from their toys of choice, Bludnut’s eyes lighting up as he did. “Yeah?... I haven’t been out for ages. I’ll come with ya!” Phoung’s voice then interjected from the kitchen; “You no go out baby! Not safe baby!” Bludnut raised his eyebrows at me with a grin. “ Meet ya there.”
Five minutes later I’m sitting at my local, picking the picture off my beer coaster and flirting with the bar staff. I scan the familiar surroundings; the broad curves of the bar, the deep red and mustard yellow walls, the poster prints of Otis Redding, Led Zepplin and Bob Marley on the walls, and wishing the staff actually played this music instead of their cheeseball-Ibiza-stained-Asian-NRG-ear-acid. There’s only a few customers, and they’re of an all too familiar breed in this town; big, burly oil workers, and two old retired ex-pats. I recognize the old guys, there’s Mike the Vietnam Veteran who arrived here after 13 years of sailing solo, all the way across the Pacific from Florida, trying to sail away his sins, and the other is the quiet guy with leathery skin that lives on my street. I give them a nod of recognition, they raise their glasses and we mumble unconvincing well wishes. A minute or two later I hear the doors swing open behind me and a startlingly loud bird call ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’ which is Bludnut’s trademark room rattler. The oil boys at the pool table look up in confusion, the old guys turn their backs to us, and the bar staff roll their eyes and sigh, fully knowing the chaos that will inevitably ensue. Bludnut and I raise our glasses and swig away, recounting all the artists that we thought embodied the punk ethos; Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, but were dismissed by those too busy trying to be ‘a punk’, which for the second time that night makes me think about those impossible Escher drawings, and with that I make my way to the toilet, hoping I can piss out some of my disillusionment with the MTV generation at the same time.
On my return from the toilet, I see Bludnut with searing eyes, and his lips pulled back, revealing his clenched teeth. He’s mouthing messages and I’m instantly in defence mode, scanning the pack of oil-boys for an equally pissed off member, but I see none. By the time I get to my seat I can see who he’s looking at, it’s the old-leather-skin, and he’s countering Bludnut’s gaze with a bland derisive stare, and a curled top lip. “What’s going on?” I ask. Bludnut ignores me, and continues to mouth insults to old-leather-head and becons him with his middle finger. Old-leather-head sits motionless, just staring at Bludnut with burning intensity and a continually growing snarl on his lips. My words dissolve into nothing in this atmosphere of hate, so I order two tequilas to snap Bludnut out of this game of head-fuck. “Oi! Drink this!” I bark in his ear. His gaze pulls away from Leatherhead and I finally get to ask my question as the cactus fumes swirl into our heads. “What’s the issue?” I demand. “That’s one of the fuckin’ Italians. He’s a cocksucker-wanna be–mafia–fuck!”, “Fucking wog pussies!” He adds at an easily audible volume. Leatherhead raises his eyebrow at the remark and at me. I cringe. “What? The guys who tried to off Shadow?” I utter these words through a face broken by panic. “Yeah… tried!” He adds mockingly. I look to the bar staff for direction, but they’re too busy trying to master the MTV booty shake, with all the rhythm that Asia lacks. I draw Bludnut’s attention to the girls, their awkward gyrations aren’t great, but their café latte asses are enough to lead Bludnut’s eyes, and the conversation away from my newly found foe. I work hard on keeping his attention to our end of the bar, hoping Leatherhead will leave while he has the chance. It works, in fact it works so well that I don’t see him leave and nor do the bar staff. Once I realize he’s gone, I feel safe enough to start asking the questions that are now relevant to my survival.
“This is all pretty fucked up now dude. That old wog lives about two houses away from me. He sees me every time I leave my house.”
“Well next time ya see him, smack his fuckin’ head in!”
“Ahh… actually I’m thinking he might do that to me.”
“What? That old khunt? Get fucked. He’s a pussy. You could take him, just go ‘Crack! Crack!” He swings two massive hooks my way, and throws in a foot stomp for good measure.
“Yeah, well, I’m more concerned about the hitmen he hires to cut my throat.”
“Fuckoff. I told ya man, no one touches my family man, and you’re my best mate and all my family loves you.”
“Well, what if he hires whacked-out smackies?”
“Well arm ya’self!” He retorts in a mocking tone, then winks and pulls up his shirt revealing the butt of the handgun he was playing with at the house. “And when they come for ya, just give’em what for! No-one will say shit man, coz with my family you got the cops and the mob behind ya, and no-one will give a fuck about a dead smacky.”
I then get an image in my mind of Leatherhead returning to the bar and blowing our brains out, so I slam down another tequila to stabilise my sanity, but the alcohol is instantly vapourised by this new wave of fear endorphins, so I stand up from the bar and leave, stone-cold sober and shit-scared.
After the second night without real sleep, I start to see the logic behind all this violence, because both death and sleep sound like wonderfully preferable states to this endless anxiousness and paranoia. The following day I get my landlady to install a security light outside my room, and while the barefoot electrician is putting the sensor in place, she starts telling me about all the horrible crimes that have occurred in the last week; firstly, the young man who sliced and diced his girlfriend on top of the hill I live on, spreading her pieces all over the place, like fertilizer. Then she tells me about the double slaying at the market, where two unknown men approached two other men in broad daylight and in full view of the public, proceeded to hack their arms off and disembowel them with samurai swords, then finally in an uncharacteristically poetic act for Vietnamese hitmen; covered their corpses in yellow flowers. My landlady laughs nervously at the end of each story, and I just stare at the beautiful, peaceful, sea in front of me, remembering that it was this image of peace and quiet that drew me to this place. It then occurs to me that below the surface of that sea, it is a dark, cold, battleground for survival.
I drop by the boys’ house after work, and ask to see the toy box. Picking through the cache I notice all the premium choices have vanished, leaving only crude homemade machetes, sharpened chopsticks wrapped in electrical tape, and planks of wood with two or three nails hammered through them. They are all viscous and ugly, manufactured by desperate people in desperate situations. Nothing here evokes the images of organized crime, just the frantic starving underbelly of a crippled society. I finally settle on the first item that caught my attention; a red and white bamboo police baton, of good length, perfect weight, non-lethal, and most importantly, something that I can keep by my bed, and won’t give my maid the impression that I’m a serial killer. At home with my electronic sentry and baton, I sleep for the first time since the night at the bar.
In the days that followed I regained my confidence and sanity. I always made sure I zoomed past the Italian’s house, but beyond that, I saw myself increasingly as an irrelevant element in this circus of violence. “I’m not part of this.” I would say to myself, or “I’m a nothing” while kicking myself for being so paranoid. By weeks end, I’d pushed it out of my mind, eventually turning off the motion sensor as it had become an annoyance on account of the dozen or so tom-cats that prowled the area, setting it off at all hours of the night, leaving me; upright, shit-scared and shaking.
*
6
Shooting the Messenger
*
It was a Monday night when it happened, 4am, or there abouts. I’d just cycled into a light patch of sleep. You know the kind, when you get up in the early hours to take a piss and you’re fully alert, despite the fact that in 3 hours time, when you’re scheduled to rise, a team of wild horses won’t be able to drag you from your pillow.
I lie in the sweaty dark, trying to pin point a fat mosquito full of my blood buzzing above my head. Then I hear the soft ‘click-clack’ of my door latch being twisted. I freeze, motionless, eyes straining into the black, and I just lie there getting angry at myself. ‘Fight or flight! Fight or flight! What the fuck is this?’ My mind gabbers to me. ‘It aint a fucking T-Rex dude! Move! Fucking move!’ But I can’t, or at least I don’t. The door latch then goes silent, and my ears try to twist around for sounds. Then right above my head I see shadows move across the curtains. The bay windows above my head begin to strain and squeak as something is wedged between them in an attempt to lever them apart. Finally my body regains the ability to move and I make an attempt to slide to the end of my bed. As I reach the end, and raise myself from the bed, a loud squeak erupts from the bed. Everything falls deafeningly silent. I have one foot on the ground and the other is suspended in the air, collecting lactic acid. After a brief pause, I attempt to complete the manoeuvre, but the bed cries out again. Finally I shift my weight to my legs and step from the bed into a crouch. The window cautiously resumes its creaking and I make my way back around the head of the bed, towards the bedside table. Once there I feel for the baton, but in the half dark I can see it submerged under an undoubtedly noisy pile of empty beer cans and magazines. I sigh silently “What now?” I run through images of items in my room. None of them offer any protection barring the absurdly heavy chair in the opposite corner. By now the creatures at my window have discovered that the windows are locked by a sturdy iron rod, so more force is necessary, and the wood then begins to splinter. Then an unholy sound vibrates my mind. A howl with a screaming crescendo. It sounds like a drowning torture victim. I squat in the dark stupefied. Then recognition trickles into my mind…… ‘Cats! Fucking cats! It’s cats, fucking!’ There’s a booming voice of my housemate downstairs, the thud of something thrown in anger, maybe a shoe, and the lights of the living room come on. From my position by the bedside table I watch the shadows behind the curtain slink away and moonlight illuminate the view once more. I hold my breath for another minute, until I’m sure they’re gone and then gasp, and the Earth begins to spin again for me.
The following day, behind the heavy steel shutters that barricade the fortress that is Bludnut’s house, I tell him what happened. “That slimy wog khunt!” Bludnut barks to himself. “He’s fucked!” He hisses, with an air of finality that chills me. “They could’ve just been junkies, you know, just after shit to steal.” I offer in an attempt to dilute his savage tone.
“Nah, Nah, Nah!” He barks back at me. “That khunt’s fucked!”
“Well I’ve had junkies steal shit before, while I was sleeping.” I counter.
“Nah, It’s fucking him! He’s fucking fucked! I’m calling Shadow!”
He’s not listening to me anymore, he’s on aggression autopilot, so I stand up and scratch Lucky the large German Shepherd behind the ears. He was police dog, given to Shadow as a gift, so now he protects this mob family. “Does everyone change sides?” I ask Lucky through thought. He doesn’t reply, and so I’m forced to answer myself with another question; “Were there ever really any sides?”
*
7
The Night of the Long Karmic Knives
*
Again, it’s a Monday and I’m reclining in the director’s chair at the head of a massive boardroom table. I’m admiring the excellent lumbar support and the softness of the leather, but frustrated that I can’t simultaneously reach my coffee. At the perimeter of the table sit my students: a dozen managers from this country’s state owned, and thus; sole Oil and Gas company. They’re grinning more than usual today, because they all became multi-millionaires over the weekend when their company was floated on the stock exchange at a fraudulently low value, thus instantly doubling the share price once the outside investors realised its true value. Mr Dung, the General Manager, assures me that their success is due to excellent management and being in the right place at the right time, but I remind him that right family also helped, while stopping short of saying that he was practically given this position by his father, the Northern Army Major. He acknowledges my point with a brief proud nod, and quickly reminds me that twenty years ago his entire family’s monthly rashion of meat was 200 grams and he and his five siblings, two of whom died during this time, clothed their bodies with Hessian bags and had to sleep underground to avoid America’s bombs. To this I can say nothing, so I return to my lesson plan.
“OK guys, today you’re going to be in different teams, working for either a Local Tour Company or an International Travel Company. Now the International Company’s will be wanting to cut a deal (that means; agree to a contract, so write that down in your vocab list) with one of the Local Tour Operators. The International Travel Company will meet and negotiate with each Local Tour Operator and afterwards decide which Tour Operator they believe can provide the best tour for their customers. So first, let’s brainstorm some of this town’s qualities. Ideas anyone?”
Mr Ho the Sales Manager leads the pack; “Beautiful weather and fresh air.”
“Delicious seafood” adds Mr Tan the HR Manager
“Beautiful girls and good massage” declares Mr Phong the Trade Union Rep, and they all expel a devious chorus of laughter. I laugh as well, while shaking my head, “Maybe Mr.Phong, but we shouldn’t advertise that.”
“Why not?” he counters, before adding “Here the girl are the more beautiful that the other place.” I cup my head with my hands, cursing his grammar and that I’m being dragged down this contentious conversational path again.
“OK, we can say the girls are beautiful but we can’t advertise ‘those massages’ because it’s illegal, and many people might think it’s rude.” He shakes his head in disbelief and responds with conviction. “No! All men like. Law illegal, but not culture illegal, Asia culture law OK.” I raise my hands to the sky, shake my head, roll my eyes and laugh insanely. “OK, Mr. Phong, you win. Can we continue?” Mr. Phong’s then leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and stretches his face to incorporate a satisfied smile.
“Good road and not too many traffics.” Adds Mr. Ho.
“Safe for crime.” Mr. Phong erupts once more. I understand his intended message, but I can’t help but ponder its literal meaning. “Very true, Phong.” I reply through a restrained laugh. “But we say ‘It is safe, with little crime’. If we say ‘safe for crime’ that means criminals can live here, no problem.” He nods and notes it down. Mr. Tan speaks up at the comment; “No my teacher, you read newspaper today. Very bad. Man killed.”
“Yes, very bad, two man stab.” Confirms Mr. Dung, and then adds “He stab twenty. Kill for money.”
“Also the heroin” adds Mr.Phong excitedly.
The information comes at me quickly and they sacrifice accuracy for speed, so I’m not sure who, or how many are now dead.
“He foreigner. Italy man” stutters Mr. Phong again.
The world shudders to a halt and I stare into space. I stand, blank faced and unblinking for long enough to unnerve my students. Slowly my mouth gives birth to the protracted and awkward word: “Ssstraaaange.” Mr. Phong sensing my unease, comforts me: “Don’t worry my teacher, you safe for crime.” Once again I dwell on the literal meaning of Phong’s comment, then feign a smile and exhale a distracted laugh, before sputtering the words “Let’s have a break.”
During the break, I find the national newspaper and search frantically for the article. If I had been more methodical I would have found it faster, as it occupied the bottom right corner of page two. I decipher what I can of the language: 62 year-old man, Italian, killed, in house, knife, girlfriend, boyfriend, money, drugs. I learn nothing new and my mind starts to stumble in the darkness and I begin imagining; the scenarios, the alibis, the lies, the culprits, the patsies, the motives, the links. But in the end, all I can envisage is a knotted mess of negative karma, all guilty parties, and all the consequences justified. With my fifteen minute break over, I return to the class with only one clear question grating on my mind: “Where am I in this ball of dark karma?” After a distracted evening at work, I drop by the boys’ place to try to gain some clarity.
*
8
Tracking a Tiger
*
As I pull up in front of the house, Lucky’s snout is already protruding from the gap in the heavy steel shutters, teeth gnashing and barking savagely. He ignores my commands to sit or be quiet, so I beep the horn on my bike in the friendship rhythm: ‘bip beep, bip bip bip beep’. Soon after, Lucky’s snout is yanked back and Bloodnut peeks through the gap, and wrenches the shutters apart, producing a mechanical squeal, like a train pulling away from a station.
“Owya goin’ khunt?”
“Not to shabby.” I reply, lying.
“You’ll have to bring your bike round back, these gate things are fucked.”
“What happened?”
He huffs and replies: “Long story. Better come in though.” Quickly glancing up and down the street.
After parking my bike, and giving Lucky the opportunity to sniff me out, I’m greeted by a cold can of beer planted to my chest. “There’s only Tiger.” Bludnut declares. I hate Tiger beer, not for its taste, which is fine, but the crippling chemical hangover it gives me. “That’s fine.” I lie again, before asking; “So what’s with the gate?”
“Ah, fuckers tried to break in last night. Dickheads. They couldn’t get in, but they bent the fuck outta the gates.”
“Oh well, no real loss then.” He doesn’t reply, only nods.
“Where’s Phuong?” I ask as we leave the kitchen.
“With her family, in Da Lat.”
“Catchin’ up, huh?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Is all her family from Da Lat?”
“Yeah man, they go way back. Her father was top military when the Yanks were here, got pretty fucked over by the commies though when the Yanks left.”
“I bet” I add, imagining a hard labour camp, somewhere in the hills, full of starving tortured southerners.
“So the first night she leaves you alone, you get people trying to burgle you. Ha! Sounds like she’s the best security system you got!”
We both laugh, and I sit by the coffee table in the lounge room and start rolling a joint. I feign my concentration on the joint rolling, and secretly dwell on the facts so far. I want to ask why Phuong is with ‘The Family’, but the question seems premature at this point, so I ask a more innocent question: “How long is Phoung seeing her family for?”
“Dunno, maybe a week.” His response is short, and vague, but that’s often Bludnuts style, so I can’t be sure if he’s stonewalling me or not, and I decide to come back to the issue later, and from another angle.
The mary-jane blazes up in thick, sweet, plumes and country music vibrates out of the stereo. “You like country?” Bludnut queries. I shrug my shoulders and answer honestly; “I try, but I just can’t relate. The only singer I’ve liked so far is Johnny Cash.”
“Yeah, he’s fuckin’ cool too. This is Willie Nelson, I love this album.” A CD case frisbees across the lounge room and almost knocks my beer over. The front cover is maroon with a big, green, pot leaf in the centre, and in thick yellow writing it states: ‘Willie Nelson. Country, Man!’ I giggle hysterically at the word play, and the memory that he was imprisoned for pot possession a year or two ago, and I’m suddenly impressed by his courage to slap a pot leaf on the front of a country album (Now, that’s punk!). “Well, turn it up. I gotta hear what this old hippy-cowboy has to say.” I listen intently to the lyrics which are both witty and deep, but the songs lack punch after my country-prejudiced ears process them. With my interest in Willie waning I begin investigating again. “Where’s Shadow?”
“Coming back now from HCMC. He should be here by now. He’s working heaps more now, coz he’s gotta get his team ready for when George Bush arrives. His team’s gonna be working with the Secret Service guys. He’s got C.I.A. guy working with him now.” My eyebrows jump, impressed by the news and my lips follow suit “Faaaark! Well you know the Secret Service is gonna do a complete background check on him. They’ll get all the info on him from the Aussie government.”
“They already have.” He says, looking cocky and smiling, then adding; “They don’t care either, C.I.A. pretty much only deals with dodgy fucks anyway. So he’s nothing new to them. He’s actually good mates with the C.I.A. agents, he stayed in their hotel room a few nights back. He thinks that after this, they’ll probably clean his record.”
“Get the fuck out!” I say, astonished, and with that Lucky starts barking at the shadow of two large feet under the roller shutters, at which point, the shadow’s voice booms; “Shut this fucking dog up, before I kill it!”
The shadow, which is Shadow, enters the room soon after, we crack open another beer each and Bludnut sparks up another joint. With each toke, my patience and investigative powers slip and I give up on subtleties. “Did ya hear about the old Italian guy that was killed?” I rush the question and end it with an odd tone, or at least I think so, and it lingers for a little bit longer than I’m comfortable with, but once again, I’m not sure if it’s just my paranoia.
‘Mmmm’ grunts Bludnut in a flat, despondent tone, and at the same time Shadow replies “Yeah” with a high tone and a quick glance at Bludnut. “You know who he was don’t ya?” asks Shadow to me.
“Maybe, was he the guy who put a contract on you?” Shadow nods and grins. I study his eyes, but I don’t see a twitch, nor a wink, or even an eyebrow raise that would suggest a secret.
“I heard he was stabbed.” I add curiously.
“They did a whole lot more than that!” Shadow adds in an ominous tone. “The boys I train said they stabbed him 22 times over about 12 hours, then threw him in the bathtub and tried to cut his head off with a machete.” My face screws up in revulsion and shock as he continues; “It was fucking wrong man, real sadistic shit, for twelve fuckin hours they strapped him to a chair and stabbed him.” Shadow’s face also speaks of disgust, but his eyes glint with fascination. His tone is excited, the tone he uses when he’s gossiping, but not when he’s confiding, which tells me he doesn’t have any personal knowledge of the issue. I look over at Bludut, he hasn’t said a thing during all this and his head hasn’t moved, just staring at the TV, which I now realise is turned off. “Bet you don’t know who it was who killed him?” Shadow asks excitedly. I realise then that ‘that question’ was conspicuously absent from my side of the conversation. I fight my eyes, but they nevertheless flit from Shadow to Bludnut and back again. Shadow doesn’t react to that which confuses me more because it was such an obvious giveaway. Instead, he exclaims: “His fucking whore girlfriend and her other junkie boyfriend! They tried to make him hand over three grand he was ‘sposed to have taken out of the bank, but he hadn’t, but they didn’t believe him, so they tied him up and started cutting him, trying to get him to tell them where the money was, but all he could say was the truth, which was that it was in the bank!” There’s certainty in Shadow’s voice, blankness in Bludnut’s expression, and caution and confusion in my mind, making me wonder if they both know different stories or not.
“He’s dead, so how do the cops know all this?” I ask, and Shadow replies succinctly: “They arrested the hooker and her boyfriend, they admitted to everything.”
“What?” I erupt. “Just like that. Caught the right people within a day and they confess they did all that sick shit for smack money. Smackies don’t sit around for twelve hours stabbing people for money. There woulda been plenty of shit in the house they could’ve taken; laptop, mobile, anything to get some more gear.” Shadow looks at me with a dubiously raised eyebrow, offended that I smelt bullshit where he didn’t, but I’m too close to a vein of truth to nurse his ego so I push my logic onwards. “Sounds like cop bullshit to me. Short, sweet, make the cops look good, and blame it on drugs. Same thing they do everywhere.” I see he senses the truth in what I say, but his pride won’t let him acknowledge it, so he scoffs back at me. “Whatever.”
“Well I guess you’re glad to know he’s no more.” I add, trying to tone down my scepticism. Shadow shrugs nonchalantly and looks at Bludnut while talking to me. “Doesn’t mean shit to me, he was scared of us.”
“Well not anymore.” I add jokingly. They both snigger, finally ending Bludnut’s silence. “I’m not happy!” begins Bludnut. “I wanted to smash that fucker.” He says with genuine disappointment while handing out a new round of beers. “I still needed to get even with him for fucking with you. Now that fucker gets away with it scot-free.” I spit half my beer out with an absurd laugh at hearing that, and remark, “I wouldn’t call twelve hours of torture ‘scot-free’, mate!” Bludnut then locks bloodshot eyes with me and speaks directly to me, “It’s the fucking principle, isn’t it. Isn’t it! I lost face and now I can’t get it back.” His speech rising in passion; “That slimy, wog, fuck is laughing at all of us now, and I can’t do shit about it, coz some junkie needed some gear or the cops, or whoever nailed him first. It’s a fucking shame is what it is!” I study him with a puzzled eye, and finally realise that he is honestly surprised as the rest of us. My thoughts swim in all this new information and emotion, both of them, caught off guard and clueless about the Italian’s death, and the newspapers unpalatably clean explanation.
“She’s one tough-mafia-bitch.” I think to myself, remembering Bludnut’s story in the pub a few month’s ago. “Crafty, too.” I add, smiling silently behind my Tiger.