Asiatic Speed

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY: Al Culler on Smashwords

Asiatic Speed

Copyright © 2018 by Al Culler

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a strange and savage saunter through the Thai and Cambodian badlands

Asiatic Speed

Chapter One

The screaming in my head wouldn’t go away. A mad mixture of traffic noise, the gearbox's complaining whine and the unruly wail of the two-stroke engine down below my knees. Bangkok traffic at a standstill. Fuming cagers going berserk on their horns, puffed up visages about to explode into rage. The vast majority of drivers up to their necks in huge finance payments just to make some necessary face.

I took the Yamaha TZM150 along the pavement. Ped’s going crazy as I stared them down; used the wail of the degutted exhaust to clear a path. The front end flipped up a little as I hammered the throttle, a group of school kids scattered but smiling rather than scowling. Nearly took out the legs of a emaciated beggar who looked frightened out his tiny mind by the sudden, screaming, appearance of a motorcycle into his limited world.

Silom Road for a short stretch, going the wrong way against the traffic. Taxi and bus drivers out for my guts, but I floated like a butterfly, took the bike around their flanks and exited the maelstrom for the home stretch to HQ in Soi 10.

Somgrai was outside, as usual his tuned Honda in pieces on the pavement. A couple of far gone whores loitered nearby, not yet twenty but so out of it they might as well have been pensioners for all the joy they offered - having spent their youth in Chinese brothels where they were serviced by ten or so men every day. Somgrai an enforcer for the boss, the kind of malevolent presence that gave me pangs of remorse and fear even when I was completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

‘Bossy, wants to see you, boy.’ His leer indicated the time I’d sneaked a look at one of the packages I’d delivered might be about to catch up with me. Being only half Thai, and looking almost totally farang, I was the obvious scapegoat if anything went wrong - one of the major reasons for employing me as it was assumed that I had no face to lose. Having been educated in the States didn’t help, my Thai laughable even by the standards of short-stay tourists.

The boss’s deputy a wheelchair bound lunatic, permanently high on drugs and embittered from the time he’d been crippled by a taxi. A pile of hard-core porn mag’s kept him amused when business went quiet.

‘Where the f..k you been, farang. Could’ve gone across Thailand the time you take. His Highness wants to see you, like yesterday.’

Another leer. What was it with these people? The rumour, the boss some kind of transvestite, caught in the act, bent over his desk with Somgrai doing the business. But the guy who’d seen it had disappeared the next day, fueling the gossip but never confirming it.

It was hard to believe. The boss looked like a throwback to the apes, built like a sumo wrestler; excessive hair sprouted out of ears, nose and throat... if he didn’t shave three times a day he’d turn into a werewolf. He looked as feminine as a Russian shot-putter. A weird mixture of Thai, Malay and Filipino blood, judging by the overwhelming effect of the ugliness the latter in dominance.

‘Ah, Marky, how you getting on?’

I tried to look enthusiastic without appearing foolish. The boss had the kind of temper on him that would get him a job as the head of a deprived state run school somewhere on the marginal borders, where it was hard to tell if the kids were Thai or Cambodian.

‘I can’t get in contact with that company you mentioned, where you worked before. All sounds like a load of bullshit to me.’

‘I want to live a long time.’

‘That’s no good. Gotta live for the moment. Go for it! No sense holding back. I was in your position once but I was top dog. Fastest guy across town. A cager got in my way he’d end up dropping a load. Know what I mean?’

I’d told a pack of lies to get the job, didn’t know whether I was coming or going but it wouldn’t do me any good to admit that.

‘I’ll try to speed things up a bit, but it’s a matter of wanting to make it into my twenties without ending up in a wheelchair or on a life support machine. Bangkok traffic defines the meaning of the word insane!’

‘You can’t think like that, buddy. You think like that you’ll end up a basketcase. Not making much money, are you? You have to pay for the privilege of a job in Thailand... You want to make some serious money, we can work something out.’

All through the conversation he’d been fingering his crotch as if trying to find something there or as if he was in the throes of fighting off some disease. The rumours crept back into my mind.

‘Er...’

‘Well, it’s all a matter of risk and reward. No need for you to know the details - that could be dangerous for you. Let’s just say I need someone with discretion who isn’t part of the crowd here. You don’t mix well. I can understand that being half farang. What I’m saying is from time to time there are some packages I need picked up and delivered off the record. 2500 baht a throw for you, cash in hand. What do you say?’

‘Well, it’s not drugs is it?’

‘I told you not to ask any questions, didn’t I, you stupid little prick? Look, you’re either in or out. And if you’re out then you’re out. Well, your record here isn’t much cop. Somgrai will want to put you to rights. Understand?’

‘Okay, let’s do it.’

‘Good. Come over to my place tonight and we’ll get you started.’

He passed me a slip of paper with a Sukhumvit address and tapped my hand with clammy fingers that should’ve belonged to a corpse.

‘Eight o’clock’ll be fine. Be on time, I don’t like people who don’t come on time. Know what I mean? I can see you’re my kind of man!’

‘Er, I’ll be there. Will you want me on the bike?’

‘Course, I’ll bloody well want you on the bike. Ain’t f...king cocktail time for you, boy. Not yet. Go do some work now and don’t f..k up again!’

The deputy was drooling over a photograph of a white woman being taken simultaneously by three Cambodians, straining at the sheer size of them...

‘Hell, boy, I had a cock left I’d be in there like a shot. You know what the bastard got who run me down? 2000 baht fine! Just as well I’ve got connections in the Mafia, had the bastard kneecapped and castrated. He’s the same as me now, another no-f..king-hoper...’

Followed by a mad cackle that ended with the injunction to get over to Ratchadam to collect a parcel, like yesterday.

The TZM was looking like a war victim rather than a four year-old motorcycle. I was bone weary from a day’s work, with neither the energy nor inclination to look after it. Still, the 150cc single cylinder motor was one of the toughest in the business. And in Bangkok fast enough to make even the police look damn silly.

I breezed across Bangkok on the back of maybe getting ahead of the game, thanks to the boss’s offer. For sure he was into some kind of weird shit, but who wasn’t, these days? My euphoria suddenly shattered by some cager cutting his bus-sized Toyota estate into my path. I hit the brakes and gears, swerved out of the collision course without really thinking about it. An old hand at the survival game at a mere nineteen years old, living on the edge where nothing but pure instinct ruled.

The cage careered off down the road for ten yards before squealing to a stop, entombed in more traffic. I went along his side at about 20mph, running a screwdriver the length of the cage and grabbing the bars just in time to hold the bike steady as it tore his mirror out of its mounting. Came out with a bang like a shotgun going off. That noise always made me smile because I just knew the driver had jumped out of his clothes.

Before the cager could extract himself I was a half of a kilometre down the road, laughing like a madman. Even if he clocked my numberplate I’d never registered the bike in my own name. The only viable revenge was to stick a gun out of his window and blow me away. Given the jerk’s auto he might even have the connections to pull it off without suffering any kind of police retribution.

It was hard to believe that Racthadam Road was anything other than plain old hell on earth. I barged my way through the ped’s and squealed the back tyre as I skidded to a stop outside a small office block. Nothing like a bit of noise, as if the machine’s about to go out of control, to get the civilians all squeamish.

‘Hey,whitey, you watch where you put that machine. This ain’t no GP!’

I ignored the guy - some American black GI doing the shops and probably pissed because the Thai women wouldn’t have anything to do with him - despite the fact that he looked like he was high on crack-cocaine and twice my size. Once in the building, I was kneecapped into ecstasy by the sight of the receptionist... some Bangkok high-society frail with cheekbones that cut ice and lips bruised with lust. Her eyes were all cold fury; my lacerated leather jacket added up to zilch status, my entranced stare more an insult than a compliment. It didn’t stop me smiling like I’d won the lottery.

‘Er, come to pick up a parcel from Dobbermanley...’

‘No, Dobbley. Wait, not ready.’

‘You ever go on a motorcycle?’

‘What?’

‘What I’m saying is that if you’ve never been on a motorcycle I could take you out on mine. Kind of fantastic fun? Sanuk!’

I tried to keep the leer out of my voice and my smile, but it was hard going.

‘You crazy.’

‘Sure, sure, but the thing is you’ve blown my mind away and I couldn’t leave without trying.’

‘Impossible!’

‘Nothing’s impossible. Where you from anyway?’

‘Not talk. Go sit and wait.’

‘Look, I’m only trying to be friendly.’

‘Not want. I only talk for work.’

‘Jesus, what kind of shit is that...’

The next thing I knew, some jerk grabbing me by the collar of my jacket and throwing me across the room with enormous violence. I’d come off motorcycles enough times to know how to take a fall and bounce back on to my feet ready for more.

The guy was short but broad, planted on feet widely spaced. Hair cropped so sparse he seemed a dead ringer for ex-army. Looked like he’d withstand a nuclear blast. I picked up my helmet, appearing like I’d given up, suddenly coming up fast, flicking the thing at his head. Inspired by those old Kung-fu movies they keep showing. As he reared backwards under the onslaught, I charged his body. Off balance from the lid cracking into his face, by the time I reached him, he was flailing against the wall and I had all the time in the world to pump my knee into his groin. Die baby, die.

I picked my helmet up and decided to get out before the hooligan recovered.

‘You wanna ride, babe?’

The sudden adrenaline rush making me try once more, but she’d turned into an ice maiden and the thug was stirring on the floor. They were welcome to each other.

Outside, some kids were perched on the bike, making like racing stars... I screamed at them and they scattered; doubtless if I’d hung around for a few moments a pack of social workers would’ve accused me of child abuse, Asian children revered as little gods rather than obese pains in the arse. Kicked the bike into life, played with the throttle until the windows of the building threatened to shatter and skittered off the pavement into the traffic as if I didn’t have a care in the world, though I’d messed up another job and would have to avoid that area for a little while. No great loss.

Traffic impossible, five o’clock shadow across the city. Noise, smog and the odour of the brain dead but there was the narrowest of conduits between the stalled coffins and I took it as fast as I dared. Go too slow, some other biker would back end me, brain too fried by excessive speed; motorcycling and amphetamine both. I squirmed in the seat, making minute, high speed changes in direction to navigate through the protuberances poking off the cages, although it was sometimes fun to leave a trail of mirrors, door handles and aerials in my wake.

Home a cold water flat just off Rama IV, not far from the Klong Toey market. A five storey edifice, only twenty years old but fast fading and cracking up, the foundations subsiding and the excessive heat of the day running so deep into the concrete that it changed its molecular structure for the worse. A little room right up under the roof but with its own toilet and shower; only 3000 baht a month. The Yamaha sat in a bike bay conveniently opposite, secured with three locks and an extra loud alarm system... I kept a couple of bricks to hurl out of my window if I caught someone tampering with the machine.

I kept leering at my female neighbours, young and old alike, but it was difficult to overcome the language barrier even when they blew half my mind away with huge smiles. I think I pissed the community off the time I came home drunk out of my mind, spent the night screaming and being sick; the first I knew of it, a huge pile of vomit in the washbasin when I staggered out of bed the next morning.

Chapter Two

Sukhumvit a weird trip. I’d left the flat with a huge surge of optimism, skipped down the four flights of stairs with enough energy to charge the whole building with good vibes. I even got a grin out of the security guard, a surly youth who spent most of his time trying to seduce the mistresses of the aged, almost infirm, couple of foreigners who inhabited the