1.
Raindrops were running down in the gravitational direction outside my apartment windows. It was a damping morning. The gray melancholy sky was leaking. This gloomy scene was almost always the first conditions of reality that I had seen for the last two months. I took a glance on my bedside alarm clock. It was five forty seven in the morning, and yes, I was just awake. Is it going to sound oxymoron if I am going to tell you that the season at this time was in the mid of summer? Summer storm is an ordinary phenomenon here for the country, which is located in the tropical-climate zone like us. Oh, I almost forget to tell you that, that morning, I was in Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand.
Actually, from the forecasting of the Department of Meteorology, the day was supposed to be the hottest day in the year. However, in front of me, it was a deluge. For myself, if that goddamn department said anything about the weather forecasting. I just prepared myself the other way around. Believe me, it works just fine here in Thailand. My thirty-four years of experience attests.
The day was so young and I felt like I might need more time to huddle the pillows on my bed and dispelled her out of my mind for a prolonged while. She was the girl from my dream the last night. I considered the dream as a closest to reality dream I had ever experienced in my life. However, I knew I had no plenty of time this morning. I was supposed to be at my precinct quite early to attend the morning brief. It was the day after my day off, and showing some sign of diligence to your supervisors must be a smarter thing to do in the time like this morning.
I bounced myself up from my bed and staggered to my apartment’s balcony. Buried in the drowsiness, I burned the first cigarette of the day. It is the first thing that I always do every morning. Fainted smoke curtain was adrift in front of my eyes; I looked through it to afar. My apartment was located in the old-town section of Bangkok, on the area called Rattanakosin Island. It is a unique conservatory neighborhood. The area is packed with a long history of the capital city. It has national reserved sites and conserved communities scatter throughout it.
In front of me, Chao Phar Ya River Line looked vaguely like a big snake slithering through the grim and hazy city. The river could easily compare to the Theme River in London or the Hudson River in New York City. It cut straight through the heart of Bangkok and find its end at the estuary of the gulf of Thailand. Bangkok was now beginning to awake and so did I.
First of all, I think it is quite a decent manner to introduce myself to you, because we have just met for the first time. My name is Mark Wongthai. Mark is my name. Wongthai is my mother’s family name. It literally means ‘Thai family’, simply that. I currently am a police detective of the Metropolitan Police Bureau or MPB, which has its responsibility throughout the Bangkok area. MPB separates into nine sections. I was posted at the 1st precinct of MPB since I started my career as a police officer and based here since then. My rank is police captain, not as big as a captain in the western police world I would say. My specialized field, and I am proud to say, is every kind of homicide investigations. It is very easy for me to reckon that my name might pique your curiosity a bit about why it sounds more like a western name instead of a Thai name. My answer, if you care to hear, is because I am not a hundred percent Thai. My biological father was an US Marine lance corporal. Thirty-four years ago he came here to Thailand to attend the joint training program between the Royal Thai Marine and the US Marine Corps, which occurred every year in Thailand’s eastern seaboard area. However, I have never been so sure that it was my fortunate or unfortunate fate that I had never met my father even once in my life. Perhaps it is because I never have a chance to try the other choice. However, I am so confident to tell you that my life was perfectly fine, living only with my mother even though she was just an ordinary Thai girl.
My mother was a daughter of the guesthouse owner in Pattaya City. The city holds a long history about the relationship between Thai and the US militaries. The origin of the city could be traced back to the Vietnam War era in the mid 60’s. At that time, in order to satisfy all the US GIs desires for recreating venues during their duty-free times, after and before, going into the war zone. The local people there could see an opportunity to conjure the money out of their blue eyes guest’s pockets. They turned a small fisherman village into a city of nightlife. Nowadays, Pattaya City has every kind of happiness every human wants, from the pure white business, such as, restaurants and tropical spa until the downright shady like drug and human trafficking. Located near the Royal Thai Marine base just only thirty minutes by car, Pattaya City has always been the place where those Marines come to have their dopey contentment after the long arduous trainings.
So, that was how and where my parents had met thirty-four years ago. But please do not misunderstand about both people relationships. It was not just a short term non-serious one like it has usually been happening between those westerners and Thai girls in that city. According to my mother, my biological father asked her to escort him back to America the day his duty in Thailand was over. He wanted to marry her properly there in his home country. However, my mother turned down that to-die-for offering. For your information, in those days, almost every Thai girl in that city yearned for that kind of opportunity offered by my biological father. A new life in any western countries seemed to be the only ticket for them to running away from their poverties. Nevertheless, my mother told my father that she had a duty to take care of her ailing mother. She was too old and too sick to travel anywhere even just going out of the city let alone another country. Yes, I am talking about my grandmother. She died when I was very young.
During a short period of time before my father’s departure from Thailand, my mom found that her menstrual had been absent for sometime then. However, she decided not to tell my biological father about her pregnancy. She kept an existence of me as a secret for all that time. Even though after my father had already left Thailand, both people still kept in touch by mails for a short period of time. However, not long after my birth, my mother got a letter from her lover telling her that, he was about to marry a new girl in America. From that point on, my mother decided to suspend every kind of communication with her lover forever.
My mother was a strongest woman I have ever known in my life. I always hope that I will have my wife just like her one day. She raised me up in a single-parent fashion since I was born without any second lover. Again, according to my mom, my biological dad name was Travis. He came from the place called Brooklyn and I found it myself later that it is a part of the famous New York City. My mom told me that my dad was a big guy even compared to his fellow Marines and this quality must have been transferred to me by the fifty percent of his genes in my body. And I guessed they might have been the dominant genes. I am six feet four inches tall with almost two hundred pounds in weight. My body size is far beyond any standards of Thai mature male. I grew up and had my education in Thailand for all my life, even though my look is more like a ‘Farang’ than a Thai. Please allow me to tell you that ‘Farang’ is the term, which Thai people use to call any Caucasian foreigners. No matter you are an English guy, an American girl, a Russian lesbian or a Germen gay. You would be the same ‘Farang’ in Thai people’s eyes. I guess it was because of my distinguished appearance that created me many nicknames since I was in high school until I graduated from Thai Police Cadet Academy. Some of them were ‘I Hia Farang.’ which roughly translated as ‘a white bastard’ or ‘I Hia Yong’, which means ‘a tall bastard’. But please do not misunderstand that my friends hated or segregated me or anything like that. Quite contrary, I was one of the most popular and beloved guys among my friends, my teachers and even much more, among the female students. I was the head of the class since high school until the cadet academy. In Thailand, being the head of the class means statistically a lot about a child future. That recognition was supposed to be an adequate proof toward the love of my friends upon me. However, the reason behind those bad nicknames was because, it was a kind of youth cultures in Thailand at that time that we always called our closed friends with bad nicknames and called our closest friends with even worse nicknames. But for the people whom we were not acquainted with, we could be extremely polite with them. I have to admit that this look of ‘farang’, which actually means ‘guava’ in English, benefited me in many aspects of my life from that time until today. I reckon it is because Thai people have an embedded stereotype of adoring westerners. It happened more than five hundred years ago when we first contacted with the first group of westerners- the Portuguese. They had far more advance technologies compared to us in the military stuffs like, big vessels and superior firearms. That was the reason why we were quite intimidated by them. So, I have that effortless advantage from my biological father and I considered it as the only heritage he left me before his departure from Thailand.
However, it also has some kind of shortcoming inherited with it too. My appearance has always been an obstacle for Thai people who just met me for the first time. Those people had a tendency to avoid having a conversation with me because they thought I was a foreigner. They were afraid that our communication was going to be a devastated and annoyed one. But if they had only seen the stockpiles of my high school debating trophies, they would suddenly realize that my Thai was far better than them. Nevertheless, I thought it was because of my father's genes again that made my auditory system could automatically understand English language without any serious effort of studying it. I could understand it naturally like I could understand Thai language in my formative years. I began to understand English when I was five and when the time I graduated from the junior high school, I could speak English like a native speaker while most of my friends still painstakingly tried to memorize basic vocabularies. You may wonder why I have to tell you about my brief background. My answer is because, it is the key reason why I have been posted here at the 1st precinct of the MPB since the first day I began my law enforcement career.
The first precinct of MPB has its responsibility on the most cultural vibrant area of Bangkok. Almost every importance tourist attraction spots are under the nosy eyes of my precinct. I dare to bet you that, if you come to Thailand for the first time, especially for a pleasure reason, you must need to see the Royal Palace. Yes, it is located in my precinct responsible area and also the famous Kao San Road. Yes, you are right, the place was on the first scene of the movie ‘The Beach’ where Mr. Di Caprio huddled his pillow on his bed in one of those sleazy guesthouses on the road. Of course, the area is crowded by the foreigners mostly tourists. And in the eyes of the law enforcement officers like us, more tourists always mean inevitably more crimes. And when it came to foreigner interrogations in the 1st precinct area, I certainly was the one who would take that responsibility. It has been ten years now since I was first posted here in the 1st precinct of the MPB.
I have already mentioned that morning was in the mid of summer, right? In summer of every year, and to be more precise, it is in the mid of April. Thailand would definitely have a chance to welcome tremendous group tourists from all around the world in the festival called ‘Songkarn Festival’. During that time, if you were in Thailand, you don’t have to think about anything much, just buy a water-squirting gun or buy many of them if you want to be called a Squirting Rambo. After that, you just shoot your water gun to everyone or everything that appears before your eyes. The event happens a whole week of the hottest month of the year. The law that prevented you from infringing other people wellbeing or to be infringed by other people is expediently suspended for a whole week for the sake of fun. Even the police officers like us are also in the risky positions. My subordinates like the traffic control officers in my precinct experience the situation first-handedly every year.
The underlying concept of the festival is that you are in the hottest month of the year, so why not just splashes water to each other, simply that. The city’s famous spots for playing the ‘wet game’ as I always called it, is located in a couple of places around Bangkok inner area and Kao San Road has always been hoisted up on the top of the list. Three full crazy days and nights of non-stop splashing water to other people, the level of happiness is intensely high in the air for every tourist and civilian. However, for the law enforcement officers like us, especially for my precinct, it has always been our most terrifying time of the year. As you can imagine, it is a hectic week in the aspects of the crime rates both trivial and major from pickpocketing to murder.
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