The Big Snatch, page 7
part #10 of Lady From L.U.S.T. Series
She finished in about half an hour, during which her clever fingertips roamed all over me from the nape of my neck to the backs of my heels. I was a brown beauty when she finally announced herself as satisfied.
"I'm glad you are,” I snapped.
Me, I was suffering from gynelimia. I was hot, as the saying goes. I could not help the compulsive motion of my hips, nor could I prevent my thighs from squeezing together. Pheng was kneeling behind me, wiping off her hands on a towel.
She leaned and bit my right buttock, then laughed softly.
"You feel mean, Eve?”
"I will until I get some attention where I hurt."
"Good. You'll be in a mood to kill the Monk, then."
"I will that." I turned around, looked down at her. "What about this Monk, Pheng? Where'll I find him?"
"In an opium den on New Road."
"Where's that?”
"Five blocks to left after you leave here, three to right. The Heavenly Gate opium den, it's known as though the sign reads only Heavenly Gate."
"Fine, so far. But how will I know him?"
"He wears the saffron robe of a Buddhist priest."
"Is he a Buddhist priest?”
Her sharp glance made fun of my ignorance. "Of course not! He is a very bad person, this bhikku, so he make fun of religion by wearing monk robe while he do bad things."
The Monk had a hang-up, it seems. I made a mental note of the fact. You never know when something like this may come in handy.
"Now, about my dress," I hinted.
Pheng nodded. “Yes. Need native clothes. You come.”
Stark-naked, she led the way out of the bathroom. I followed, more modestly arrayed in the bath towel. Neal Harding was standing in the kitchen doorway, hoisting a water glass loaded with scotch.
"Hey, you do look different," he hailed me. “But what about your hair?"
"Take time do that," Pheng murmured. “I get her started, then I come and get you started."
Neal raised his glass high. “I'll drink to that, love."
Pheng lifted out a pa sin of brightly flowered print cotton. She showed me how to wrap myself in it from the hips down so that there was enough left over to drape above my left shoulder. I would wear a white cotton chemise with it, to cover me from the navel up ward.
"You take in bathroom," Pheng hinted.
I caught wise. Pheng and Neal would be very busy in the bedroom when my hair was being tinted the right shade. I sighed. I obeyed orders and went into the bathroom, where I started running the hot water.
Two and a half hours later, my hair was a rich brown. As I stared into the mirror, I would never have recognized myself. I was somebody else, what with my darker skin tones and my long brown hair. I really did look something like a native Thai girl.
A haggard somebody else, at that. For those two and a half hours, I had tried to shut my ears to the giggles, the squeals, the bull bellows, the screeches, that were coming through the tissue paper walls from the bed room where Pheng Putar and her big Englishman were bumping bellies and whatever other portions of their anatomies that happened to be handy.
I am not a coprolaliac. I do not get my kicks from listening to certain erotic words or to words breathed out in a fit of passion. Yet I must admit that they did have a certain erotic effect on my system. I could do nothing about the effect, so I just suffered in silence.
The couple in the bedroom were starting in on an other session, so I decided I wouldn't even say good bye. I emptied the contents of my handbag, along with my Belgian Bulldog revolver, into a striped cotton handbag of the sort carried by the Thai women. I got my bod into the pa sin, and draped the end over my left shoulder so it hung diagonally across my torso.
I tiptoed out of the apartment.
Five blocks down and three across, Pheng had said. I beat feet that way, trying to stride along in the mincing trot so much adopted by Thai girls.
A sign reading Heavenly Gate, done in red and gold lacquer-work on wood, hung by iron chains over a door way ornamented like a temple gate. I pushed the door open and walked in. Instantly my nostrils were assailed by the sweetish smell of opium. I grimaced and wriggled my nose.
An oriental opium parlor is something else again. You go into the rooms by way of a long corridor, you push open a leather-covered door and there you are, in a big room lined with wooden benches along the walls, with a couple of cots placed here and there for smokers to sleep out their dreams. Beside these wall-hugging benches were scattered small tables holding a long stemmed pipe with a tiny bowl, a spirit lamp with matches, a steel needle, a thin strip of bamboo, and a small pill box. All this equipment is needed for the user of opium to "tame the tiger."
There was maybe half a dozen customers on hand, either sleeping or in the last stages of consciousness. One man was still puffing at his pipe; his eyes were glazed and he was unaware of my presence as I walked past him. The air reeked with the sweetish stink, and I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep my stomach from rebelling
Opium is derived from the opium poppy, a red and purple flower that also furnishes heroin. Opium smoke tastes a little like caramel, and is very sweet. United Nations statistics say that two million pounds of opium are grown annually in Thailand, Laos, Burma, and in the southwesterly sections of China. This opium is marketed to the west, through such outlet cities as Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore and Rangoon.
My destination was a swinging door on the far side of the room. The Monk did not smoke opium, he was too smart for that, so if he used this den as a hideout, he had to be in a room or an office connected to it.
Through the door, then, and down a little hall. There were doors here—maybe the Monk wasn't the only one who rented space at the Heavenly Gate, I thought—but I could not decide which door was which.
At random, I opened one.
A man and a woman were locked in the love embrace known as the viparita-bandha of the Hindus, in which the woman lay on top of the male, her breasts crushed to his chest, her hips working gently, then swiftly, more slowly, and then faster. I figured I was watching an ex pert in the art, for the woman at whose brown buttocks I found myself staring was regulating the pace like a clock-timer.
“Er—pardon me," I called out.
The woman turned her head and squealed at me in Thai talk. Her face was—or had been pretty, but opium had dulled her eyes and much kissing had swollen her lips.
The man was more cooperative. I think he was Italian. Or maybe Spanish. But he spoke English after a fashion, which he managed to do when the female buttocks stopped their jabbing motions.
“Who sent for you, lady?” he got out finally. "Bhikkhu. Bhikkhu send."
"Oh—him! Two doors down on the right.”
The brown buttocks were wriggling all over again, and the man's words ended in a sob of pleasure. I guess he figured I was a hooker on my way to an assignation. Just so long as I got into that room where the Monk lived, I didn't give a hoot in hell what he thought. I closed the door gently behind me.
Two doors down, on the right. My hand touched the wooden doorknob and twisted. The door opened. A man in the yellow robes of a Buddhist monk looked up from the table where he was standing, his hands holding a Colt revolver and a bullet which he had been about to insert into a chamber of the gun.
My eyes got a fast look at a small cot, a sink and a tiny stove to one side of it, a hanging drape. I did not spare the time for a look-around, I was too concerned with the tall man with the lean, hard face and the blazing golden eyes who stared at me.
He whirled, his gun came up.
I didn't bother taking the Belgian Bulldog out of my cotton handbag. I fired from inside the bag. My bullet caught him in the chest, where its passage made a bright-red stain on the yellow cloth. His eyes got very wide, they bulged as he rocked back on his heels. His left hand, which held the Colt, began to shake.
The weight of the gun must have proved too heavy, for his left arm fell to his side. He teetered a moment, then went backward on his heels. He crashed across a little chair, splintering it as he fell.
I whirled and ran.
We had made enough noise to wake the dead, I figured—what with the booming sounds of my revolver and the splintering chair—and the inhabitants of the Heavenly Gate were by no means dead. Heads popped out of opening doors to gawk at me as I ran for the front door.
I made the street, figuring that I had a few minutes grace. It would take the inhabitants of the Heavenly Gate that long to find out what had happened and to come after me. The sunlight was bright after the dim lights of the opium den. I darted in between the shoppers with their brightly colored pa sins, their equally gay shopping bags, bicycles, and even a couple of temple dancers in their jewel-flecked silk brocade costumes, their tiny brown faces pretty under the traditional celestial helmets.
I did not dare to run. I would have been too conspicuous. I walked fast, though, sliding past a street shrine, avoiding the darting rush of a Bangkok taxi.
"Catch her! Catch her!" a voice shrilled.
I looked around with the rest of the passers-by, for the woman wanted by the man in the floppy brown pajama suit standing directly under the Heavenly Gate sign. He was shrilling his words and waving his arms. Now he began to give out with some information.
“She has killed a bhikku—a holy monk!"
A wail of outrage lifted from every throat around me, so I added my voice to the outcry. Slaying a Buddhist monk was about as heinous a crime as you can commit in Gautama country, which stretches all across Japan and China, Tibet, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam.
"Where do you think she went?" I asked a nearby woman who was clutching her shopping bag with both arms as if she were afraid the killer might also prove to be a thief.
"Who knows? Oh, what a terrible thing!"
"Frightful,” I agreed, and turned to go.
Naturally, I did not want to linger. I could fool some of the people around me, but I couldn't go on with my pose if the man under the Heavenly Gate sign started coming my way. I started pushing a path between the men and women crowding close around the opium den doorway.
I made it to the corner.
Just as I was rounding the brick building standing there, I ran smack into the Cherub. There were three army men with him, in full uniform. The Cherub and I bumped and bounced back.
He had a good look at my face. I might have fooled him, even so, except for my blue eyes. No Thai girl has blue eyes.
He knew me before he recovered his balance.
CHAPTER FIVE
His face got red and his jaw dropped. "Grab her," he screamed. "It's the American girl!"
I was ten feet away by the time he found his voice, and I was legging it along as if I were an Olympic runner. I was maybe running even faster; Olympic runners race for medals, while I was fleeing for my life.
I held the skirt of the pa sin up to the middle of my things, because my gams needed freedom of movement. I darted through the traffic like an elemental spirit. My heels never touched the pavement, I moved along on my toes.
Babyface was after me with a whoop and a scream of maddened rage. I guess he had had just about enough of me. I heard more feet pounding as the three army men followed his lead. They did not dare to shoot, the Bangkok streets were too full of shoppers and sightseers to risk that. And believe me, I headed where the congestion was thickest.
It was comparatively easy for me, because all I had to do was keep the old legs moving and shove people out of my path. The Cherub had to keep sight of me while he did the same thing. For a few precious moments while I increased my lead, I hoped I could get away without any more trouble.
No such luck!
Naturally, I was heading away from the Heavenly Gate opium den by this time. I damn well didn't want to get involved in that hassle again. Unfortunately, my way led me into streets where there were hardly any people, just an old couple and a few giggling girls.
I ran like crazy, man!
It just wasn't fast enough. Babyface and his three army buddies rounded the corner, hollering and shouting at the sight of me. I expected a fusillade of bullets to mow me down. The opposition did not disappoint me.
The bullets fusilladed, all right, but they missed me. You can scarcely take aim with a rifle on the dead run, thank goodness.
To my left stood the open doors of a Buddhist temple. The temple facade was covered with gold leaf so that it glittered like a heap of gold in the late afternoon sunlight. I dove for the open doors.
I slammed them shut behind me. There was a metal bar there, so I hauled it out of its rack and slipped it through the slots on either side of the door. Then I turned and raced through the interior of the temple, hunting for the back way out.
The temple was huge, silent except for my footfalls. It was a kind of eerie place with the various statues of the Buddha in all sorts of poses filling up its vast floor space. There was a reclining statue, about fifty times life-size, to my right, with a frieze-work of worshiping monks below his stone form. To my left were smaller statues, of Buddha seated in the traditional cross-legged pose and with his right hand pointing ground-ward, which is the accepted posture of the Gautama when he called on the earth itself to stand witness to the stead fastness of his vows.
There were other statues behind these main ones, ranging side by side into a dimness where there was little light. I ran for the darkness, because I needed a hiding place, fast.
Behind me, rifle butts were thumping on the gilded wood of the temple doors. I slipped between a white marble statue of a lion, representing a temple guardian, and a silver Buddha about ten feet tall. I leaned my head against the marble flank of the lion and tried to get my breath back.
To my astonishment, I heard the slap of sandals.
A monk in an orange robe was moving toward the barred door. I sighed. The jig was up. I was going to die here in far-off Bangkok, and there wasn't anything anybody could do about it. My hand went into the cotton carryall and lifted out the Belgian Bulldog with the pearl butt-plates that had been my constant companion on all my L.U.S.T. adventures.
I was going to sell my life dearly, goddammit!
The monk was arguing with the army men, crying out, “You cannot come in to take a refugee! This is sacred property. There is the law of sanctuary!"
Sanctuary! Yeah, man. I had forgotten about that old doctrine that says a man is safe while on holy grounds. In the medieval era, it had been invoked throughout Europe so that even a king could be balked by this tradition. It had spread to the East, I was happy to see.
My sense of security didn't last long.
The Cherub was saying, his voice muffled by the door, “We come from General Thak Parphon. If you don't open these doors, I'll see to it that this temple is closed down and all its monks thrown into jail as traitors.”
The monk wailed, "You cannot do that!"
He knew better. He knew what the Communists had done to the holy monks when they had invaded Tibet in 1965. The youthful Dalai Lama, only fifteen years of age at the time, had to flee overland, guarded by Kham tribesmen, through Karo pass in the Himalayas. When the Red Chinese had come into Tibet, they had looted and tortured the monks in the most diabolical ways.
The monk also understood that General Thak Parphon was friendly to the Communists. He rationalized that if such were the case, the General would not hesitate to close the monastery and give the monks, including himself, to such tortures as had drawn screams of agony from the Tibetan monks.
Shivering, he called weakly, "I will undo the bar."
The bar came down, the Cherub and his three man army came into the temple. He had not bothered to send for reinforcements. I guess he figured that four armed men ought to be able to kill one girl.
Babyface waved his arm. "Spread out. Shoot to kill."
I shrank back into the shadows. I still held my cotton bag in my left hand, but the Belgian Bulldog was in my right. I waited, breathing through my open mouth so as not to make any noise.
A footfall sounded. I crept around the statue of the silver Buddha, gun at the ready. One of the soldiers was coming my way, bending to peer between the statues, his rifle half at rest. I slithered deeper into the shadows.
He came closer. I edged backward so the huge Buddha could hide me. When the faint shadow on the floor told me the soldier had passed, I stepped out.
I swung the Bulldog viciously, catching the soldier across the back of this head. He made no sound, his legs bent under him and he dropped. I leaped to catch him before he could hit the ground, and lowered him gently.
I bound and gagged him.
This soldier was wearing a braided lanyard at his left shoulder; apparently it was a decoration of some sort. It was long, of strong cording. I unfastened it gently.
With the lanyard between my hands and my Belgian revolver in my carryall, I moved forward. In nearby India, the thugs kill gently by the use of a strangling cord not unlike the length of braiding I held in my hands. I figured if they could do it, so could I.
I kicked off my shoes, left them beside the tied-up soldier. On my bare brown feet, I crept forward. The soldiers were making no attempt at keeping quiet, neither was the Cherub. They kept calling out to one an other.
One word they repeated a number of times. "Kilchak! Kilchak! Kilchak!”
It dawned on me finally that this might be the name of the man I had knocked cold. My brilliant deduction was rewarded a few seconds later by Babyface. "Somebody go find Kilchak. If he's found the girl and is raping her before killing her, I'll put a bullet in his brain. She's too dangerous to take chances with."
A man came pattering between the statues, looking left and right. He looked right when he should have looked left once too often, because I was there, leaping. My arms went around his throat, the braided lanyard dug into his neck, shutting off his breath.
The man bucked half a dozen times, but without air for his lungs he was unable to put up too much of a fight. In moments he was sagging weakly in my hands, then he went completely limp.
I let him down gently, withdrew the cording.
