Bangkok Hard Time (11 page)

I awoke before dawn, like a train wreck, with hot flashes, then cold flashes, nausea and painful yawns. At dawn, when the cells were unlocked, I was pretty much a basket case jonesing for a fix. It was just a very bad start to the day: my chains felt heavier as I clinked and clambered down the stairs to the open day area. Breakfast charcoal fires were being stoked and hot water was being readied posthaste. Brad offered coffee and started talking about his case. I felt like puking and did.

Later that morning, as I was squatting in the open-air latrine, the intercom screeched to life announcing that at the tone the time would be eight o’clock … then a tick tock sound counted the seconds until the tone, which was a loud beep, followed by the Thai National Anthem. Others using the facilities there had scrambled to finish their business during the countdown and be ready for the anthem. I could not finish in time, but knew I was bound to stand regardless … so I did. As I stood there with my cutoffs around my knees, I was not sure if I was actually paying respect or not. No one seemed to notice though.

After the ceremony, a Thai prisoner–helper told me to go see the guard at the Building #4 gate, who sent me down the lane, accompanied by the trustee, to see the vice warden. The trustee and I squatted together outside the official’s open-fronted office till I was called inside by another guard and directed to speak with the Bumbat chief.

Squatting in front of his desk, I was eye level with my coveted bag sitting there tantalizingly just out of reach. He looked up from some papers and asked how I felt. “My eye hurts,” was my reply. He then pushed my bag towards me.

Not wanting to appear overly anxious about the bag, I asked about the fate of my money. He handed me a bank deposit receipt, which I placed inside my bag without looking at it, then dug out my eye drops and used them.

In the most proper Thai that I could muster, I expressed my gratitude for his kindness and asked if someone could possibly help me with my outside banking business in the future. Finally, with the assurance of his willingness to facilitate that, I was dismissed. While exiting the office, I fished out and sniffed the nose spray. Almost instantly, I was well again and thanking a higher power I could only call Dumb Luck.

My Thai inmate escort, still squatting in the morning sun there on the lane, seemed happy to see me. We walked the 100 meters back down the drive to the gate of our cell block section where my bag was briefly confiscated for inspection while we were both being patted down. I spoke up, telling the guard that the vice warden had just given the bag to me. He returned it and sent me to see the building chief at his desk in the middle of the day area.

The building chief was sitting on top of his desk, holding the now familiar four-foot rattan pole. To my continuing surprise, the prisoner who had roughly slapped me the previous evening was squatting in front of him.

In broken English, the pole-toting chief asked if this man had struck me. I apologized in kind to the chief, saying that I had provoked the incident by speaking rudely to this man and that I held no animosity. With an odd smirk on his face that expressed his irritation, he dismissed me. Walking away, I heard the unmistakable thwack of the cane. I turned and saw the prisoner nod, then smile at me even as he received another stroke from the cane. I returned his smile and hung my head.

For me, this incident defined the typical Thai prisoner’s serene acceptance of his own fate and the owning of his own karma. Most foreign prisoners never understood how someone could or would stand unfettered for caning. I was fairly sure that I myself could, but I was just as certain that I would not.

That afternoon I was invited to eat with Andrew and Fred, two Americans being held on a huge ganja case. George, an accused heroin smuggler from Canada who looked like your typical movie gangster, did the cooking, mainly because he preferred to. He owned a number of restaurants back home and was a world-class chef. In spite of his hard appearance, he was a sensitive, though outspoken, intellect and very straight.

Andrew seemed to know Sompong already and invited him to join us. At first, the conversation was about what I should order through the prison store to make my situation more comfortable. Later it devolved into a debate on the wisdom of fighting your case versus pleading guilty. It turned out I was the only one at the table copping a guilty plea.

Months later, after a year in Bumbat, Fred and Andrew would accidentally win their case on a technicality and go home. George would fight his case, lose, get life and be sent to Bang Kwan, the prison for inmates with sentences of over twenty-five years.

Unrequested and out of the blue, Andrew would send me money from time to time over the years … usually with no letter, just the cash. Meanwhile, I would see George a few years later in another Thai prison and once again happily enjoy his culinary skills as well as his clever banter.

But for now, what the future held seemed unclear. Finally, locked in the cell as dusk fell, I was able to safely take stock of my bag’s contents, which had been given another light toss by the guards on the way upstairs to the lockup. Missing was the bottle of aspirin and the Valium. The checking account deposit slip showed that I had not lost too much for the service provided. Further, my little nose spray bottle was half empty – or half full, as you please. Most importantly, the sewn-in leather false bottom concealing thirty grams of compressed heroin was still completely intact. I decided that I would leave it as it was for now. Eventually I would open, divide, and hide it in multiple separate stashes.

In spite of the fact that I knew I was set to be in a Thai prison for untold years to come, I felt damn lucky at that point. A half dozen terrycloth blankets purchased through the prison store sufficed for bedding, making the sleeping platform more comfortable. Another squirt of my nose spray and I slept well that night, using my precious bag as a pillow. If any bedbugs bit me, I did not notice.

Almost anything legal was available from the store – at a slightly elevated price, of course. If they did not have it, they would order it for you. Sompong helped find a cook who would prepare food for me in exchange for free meals and a tiny stipend. A small charcoal stove with a wok, a few bowls, cups and utensils (including a knife!) was rounded up for him to perform his duties. I told the store accountant to let him order what he required and put it on my bill. He was always frugal and honest in spending my money. Without speaking, he would make whatever he wanted for us, then take his bowl to a corner of the prison yard and eat by himself. He was a strange young man, but seldom made anything that was not excellent.

The third week there brought a visitor from America. Even heroin-smuggling junkies have mothers, and mine had come to see me. I sat on a bench in the visiting area, separated from the visitors’ bench by two barred screened partitions two meters apart. A guard down by the entrance way shouted “
Mort trong”,
then he and the other three guards in the visit area snapped to attention as a Thai Army major general walked in with my mother. He was General Y, one of my father’s former counterparts, who was obviously reluctantly escorting my frightened mom to the prison.

As a guard escorted them to the lawyers’ visit area, where we could speak more closely as there was only one partition between us, she almost started to bawl when she saw that I was wearing chains. General Y admonished her not to cry. It is a Thai thing. Crying visitors meant that they feared for you and did not think you had what it took to stay in prison. I never saw any Thai visitors crying.

The general told me that he had already explained to my mother there was very little he could do for me. I suggested that if the amount I was eventually charged with was less than twenty grams, then it would drop my charge from attempt to export for sale to simple possession with intent to leave the Kingdom. There was a great difference in the sentences. I had learned that the contraband would be sent to a chemist to determine the type, quality and quantity of the substance, and the accused would then be charged by the final weight of pure heroin. In my case, that should have been about 160 grams. He acted as if he did not even hear me.

After speaking with my mom for bit, mostly about getting my brother Steve to access and secure my property at the storage unit in Oklahoma, I sent her away with clumsy assurances that everything was going to be just fine. I begged her to please not come again. I realized that only time was going to fix my situation.

General Y stayed behind momentarily. Looking over the top of my head and not making eye contact, he spoke. Though his English was much better than my Thai, he addressed me loudly in Thai, as if for all to hear, saying, “You have shamed your family and lost face for my friend, your father. When you go to the court, say you are guilty and our King will send you home soon, maybe less than ten years.”

He then looked me in the eye and spoke quietly in English, dismissing me with the admonition, “I will not bring your mother back to this place. Now go back inside and do not speak too much.”

I replied, “Yes, sir.” And at that, he turned on his heel and exited with my mother. She left without crying.

A month later, I was taken for a court appearance and formally charged with possession of 16.3 grams of heroin with intent to leave the Kingdom. When asked how I plead, I told the judges that I wanted to hear the evidence against me before I plead guilty. My next court date was set for at least three months later, and I was sent back to Bumbat.

All I could figure was that perhaps a decimal point had been moved (inadvertently, of course) when the chemists’ report was typed. That dumb luck meant the difference between a minimum twenty-five-year sentence and a sentence of only sixteen years, nine months. Additionally, when time came to petition for a Royal pardon, I would look like just a pathetic junkie (which I was) instead of a miserable dope-dealing reprobate (which I also was).

The trip home to Bumbat on the prison bus was a bittersweet ride. I watched the passing Bangkok street activity with extreme longing. There were some empty tables on the sidewalks outside the noodle shops inviting the passersby to sit down for some fried rice and a cold beer. Down the road, lovely young girls with silky, long black hair and flawless rose-gold complexions shopped at the street markets. Further along,
tuk tuks
waited at the curbside to take passengers anywhere they wanted to go into the gathering dusk. It would be many hard years until I knew these things again was my thinking at that point.

About the time I got over feeling sorry for myself, the bus turned into the main entrance of Klong Prem Central Prison. A new foreign detainee, a Spaniard named Mariano who had been arrested at the airport with heroin, sat across from me. A large, easygoing man, he spoke very little English and I spoke even less Spanish. He initiated conversation about the intake process and appeared very anxious, finally confiding that he was still carrying something internally. Explaining to him that the “butt checker” from the clinic was also a prisoner and confiding that not everyone received a complete digital invasion seemed to calm him a little.

Lamely, I suggested that, “When it is your turn to be checked, smile and nod politely at the clinic helper, bend over briefly just out of reach, then walk away.” I also mentioned that getting toward the back of the line and being politely calm would maximize his chances of making it through the gauntlet of the intake process without a problem. Much of the outcome was dependent on how you were perceived by the Thai prisoner helpers.

Once off the bus and through the gate, all the previously held inmates passed straight into the guts of the prison, stopping briefly to allow the prisoner helper from the clinic to inspect them. Once again, I stood and bent over just out of the inspector’s reach, then walked away thinking that maybe my suggestion had not been so lame after all.

Because we had arrived so late, I could not return to my cell and had to spend the night in the intake lockup where I had stayed chained to the foot of the platform that first night back. This time though, my chains were taken off before showering and eating. Experiencing a profound sense of false freedom, with the heavy shackles removed, my legs were strong and light. I felt like jogging – and I never felt like jogging. Also, bathing was much easier now that I was a little freer.

The government food was laid out for those who wanted to eat, and most did. Soon, Mariano showed up clanging loudly with each clumsy step. In spite of the burden of his new chains, he appeared suspiciously happy. We were all hustled upstairs to the intake cell for new detainees and those arriving late following a court appearance. The Spaniard’s chains were wrapped around the bar at the end of the cell, there by the toilet. I was taken by one of the prison’s resident elders to the other end and invited to sleep in the aisle between the platforms. Sompong had sent my bedroll over with a word to the room captain.

The two eating circles were formed, and I was invited to join in. With permission of my hosts, I took a bowl down to my new buddy Mariano. “Tomorrow you will move to another building and the chains won’t be wrapped on the bar,” I told him. I went back to eat with the old guys and just before falling asleep, the visions of the Bangkok street scenes that day filled my head, uninvited.

Strung Out And Locked Down

Each day of the next few months till my court date arrived passed frustratingly slowly. Using my medication only sparingly so as not to attract attention from the other surrounding junkies had me almost constantly on the edge of going into a jones. The arrival of Mariano, who was a very sharing person, helped to throw the jackals off the scent. Pablo, another guy from Mariano’s smuggling group, came in a day later, likewise making it past the intake with an egg also, only to lose it to Thai prisoners once inside. (In junkie’s jargon, an “egg” is a rock-hard quantity, about sixty grams, of compressed heroin the size and shape of an egg. It is specially prepared and sealed for transporting internally – that is, rectally.) From then on, whenever I was perceived to be high, I took the easy way out and claimed that I got some little bit of dope from someone else.

From the window of another cell in our building, you could see part of the women’s prison across the moat. With a pair of binoculars that I had paid a guard to bring to me, one could see the second floor of a cell block that had a balcony enclosed with a chain-link fence. The girls would walk out from time to time wearing their damp sarongs as they hung laundry up to dry. Watching them was interesting for awhile, but in terms of real contact, they may as well have been on another planet.

The majority of
farang
prisoners were being strung along by their shyster Thai lawyers and fighting their cases on the flimsiest of threadbare defenses. Some were so silly that they would have been laughable if they had not been so pathetic. Drowning men do clutch at straws. I guess that if one day you feel like you are walking on water and the next day you feel like you are drowning, then a threadbare lifeline can look pretty damn good. Unfortunately, many of these inmates would spend almost all of their money on lawyers only to end up broke and with a sentence double that which they would have received had they pled guilty.

An extreme example was one young and desperate foreign inmate who had signed a confession upon being arrested, then let his lawyer convince him that in order to prove to the court that his confession had been coerced, he should burn his chest with a cigarette so he would have the scars to show the judge. Months later, the lawyer left the courtroom with the last of this client’s money in his pocket. The gullible young man, his chest covered with burn scars, went to Bang Kwan prison with a life sentence and shortly thereafter hanged himself.

At last, my day in court arrived. I sat on the prison bus with chains on my legs like all the others headed for their own day of judgment. I was preoccupied with trying to remember my rehearsed statement, which Sompong had helped me with. I intended to recite it to the judges following the presentation of my case by the prosecution. Unlike the previous trip, I paid little attention to what was happening outside during the bus ride. After waiting forever in the courthouse lockup, I was taken to the courtroom upstairs. I had no lawyer.

All judges are appointed by The King. There is no jury in a Thai court, only two judges, a prosecutor and a perhaps a defense attorney if you chose. My snakeskin business associate and friend Damrong made a surprise appearance and sat close by to help me since I only understood half of what the prosecutor was saying about my criminal actions. What I did understand sounded accurate.

The prosecutor first called a representative from the chemist who verified the quantity of the illegal contraband, then called Police Colonel Amarit to testify to the facts of the arrest. When the prosecutor had finished presenting his case, one of the judges pretty much took over the proceedings and asked if I understood what had been said. I replied that I had.

When he asked if I had any questions, I took the opportunity to ask the colonel if he had found a syringe among my possessions; he had. I asked if he had noted any injection scars on my arm; he had. I asked him how much sixteen grams of heroin cost in Bangkok. He estimated it to be about 8,000 baht (about $320 at the time). I then asked him the amount on the invoice for my seventy-kilogram shipment of snakeskins. The colonel replied that he was not sure.

At that point, the judge interrupted and brusquely asked the same question himself. Amarit, obviously now very flustered since he could see what I was trying to establish, answered that it was around 300,000 baht. When he tried offering more than the answer to the question by claiming that I actually had at least 230 grams, the judge cut him short.

I was allowed to ask additional questions and my first one was, “Was the heroin not mixed with water?”

The colonel replied, “Yes.”

Oh, I had him now, I thought. Here is a little payback for playing with my head by telling me you were taking me to ISB for my teacher to slap my head. That gratuitous little joke had stuck with me in a most unpleasant way. My next question was “Are you a chemist?” When no answer was forthcoming, the judge loudly repeated the question to the colonel and dismissed him in the same breath.

The prosecutor gave his summation in a calm and assured manner which sounded like the last word concerning this matter. I was an admitted criminal.

The judge said something unintelligible to me and lightly tapped his gavel. I thought that the whole process was finished until Damrong nudged me and said that it was now my turn to speak my last statement to the judges before final sentencing. Up until that point, I had been very nervous trying to speak extemporaneously in the court. When my voice bounced off the walls of the large room, it sounded like I was lying even when I was telling the truth. On top of that, my Thai language skills which were only mediocre at best were failing me under the pressure. I had been fortunate to have Damrong there to help me find my words.

The statement that Sompong had helped me with over the last few weeks was, however, well practiced and poured out with ease. “Your Honor, I was an honest business man. I also was a heroin addict who by necessity always had some small amount of heroin with him. I ask the Court to consider me as a person with an illness and not see me as a criminal.”

The judges were not buying that pile of half truths. One of them asked whether I was willing to plead guilty now that I had heard the evidence against me. I was. He inquired if I had known the seriousness and subsequent consequences of my actions. I had. Then, rebuking me, he said that I had failed to respect the law of the Thai people and therefore had offended His Majesty The King. The judge said that the prison would help me with my addiction and that I would soon learn to accept the consequences of my own karma. The sentence, he said, would be sixteen years nine months plus two months for overstaying my visa. With that, he brought down his gavel very loudly and with the sound echoing off the courtroom walls, justice (Thai-style) was served up.

On the bus ride back to the prison, I watched the profusion of delicious street scenes with the hungry eyes of a caged, starving dog. I was on the verge of withdrawal again and the idea of staying a long night in the intake lockup was something I had been dreading. Arriving inside in time to go to my regular cell was a kind, small mercy. At least I could get well and feel sorry for myself in relative peace.

A nearby elder spoke up sharing a gem of wisdom with me that I had heard before: “Don’t think too much,” he said. It made sense, I guess, if you didn’t think about it too much. Hauntingly, those had been the last words which Pee Lek had said to me more than seventeen years earlier and I still was not sure what was meant by that simple expression.

Only a few weeks before, two Australians who had been busted in Malaysia with a small quantity of heroin were executed by hanging. With that as a possible alternative fate, I suppose I should be happy to have been in prison in Thailand.

The next morning, Sompong tried to cheer me up by suggesting that the wine we had been fermenting in an ice chest was ready for consumption. After we had drunk our fill, sharing with the other elders from our cell, I made the mistake of giving the rest of it to some
of the farangs
who then became too obviously affected.

When I sent my cook kid to fetch the empty cooler, a guard walked over and busted him with it. The officer pulled out his rattan pole, threatening him to give up who owned the cooler or else. I felt obligated to intercede and either true courage or the bravery that comes from too much wine had me telling the guard that it was mine. Like I said, my mouth was always overloading my ass.

The building chief got involved and told the kid that he could choose to go to solitary for a week or take three strokes from the cane. The solitary cell was no more than a windowless metal room the size of a small closet with barely enough room to lie down and not tall enough to stand up in. He chose caning and stood almost unflinching as it was administered.

The head guard then turned to me and said that I should gather my bedding to go to the solitary cell for a week. The idea of being in that oversized metal coffin with no moving air for a week gave me a case of extreme claustrophobia just thinking of it. I argued to the building chief that I should be treated equally and at least be given the same opportunity to choose caning instead. He then ordered me to turn around and stand still. As sure as I was that I could stand for a caning, I was just as sure that I would not. I felt positive that he wouldn’t beat a
farang.
I was right, because when I called his bluff by turning around and standing still, he simply cursed, then dismissed me with a wave of the cane in the air.

It must have really ticked him off, because the following day I was quickly rounded up and transferred to Lard Yao, the long-term lockup maximum security section of Klong Prem Prison. With two guards standing by to facilitate my move, there was no opportunity to recover my multiple hidden stashes of dope. I was allowed to take only that which I could carry. Bequeathing my food and cooking supplies to my cook who had been willing to take a beating for me, I walked out encumbered with only my few clothes and bedding. Sompong said goodbye, adding that he would send for me later. I did not understand at the time what he meant. I left Bumbat with only a small balloon of my medication which was already concealed in my bedding.

Just before arriving at the entrance gate of the wall separating Lard Yao from Bumbat, I managed to retrieve the stash from my bedding and swallowed it. I was handed over to the guards there who lightly examined my belongings and sent me on inside with a trustee dressed in a blue uniform with short pants. If he had not been carrying a nightstick type baton, he would have looked like a middle-aged Cub Scout. I would see a lot of these “blueshirts” over the next years.

The blueshirt escorted me to the central control building, which was a round structure at the hub of six large, two-storey T-shaped buildings that radiated out from it like spokes on a huge wheel. The grounds were immaculately groomed.

The guards at the control building kept my belongings and sent me with a blueshirt to the vice warden’s office, which was about 300 meters down the drive that ran through the middle of the entire complex. There the vice warden summoned me into his very air-conditioned office where I squatted, on the verge of shivering, in front of his desk.

“You make problem Bumbat?” he asked in truncated English. I admitted that there had been a minor problem.

“OK, you go,” he said.

With a few words to the blueshirt, I was sent back to the central control building and chains were placed on my legs again.