The Girl Who Threw Stars

By Peter Alexander

Khantida, a spirited young Thai courtesan, once married to a handsome but ruthless police major, finds herself desperately seeking sanctuary in her rural childhood village, Phayu.

Wrathful ghosts and angels are drawn to the battle between the former lovers as the village suffers.

The fates of Khantida, her 6-year-old daughter, Noi, her sister, Som, and numerous other citizens of northeast Thailand are all played out in one shocking, often horrifying, week.

Much of the world undergoes terrifying changes attracting the spirits of the dead as well as angels from Nirvana to a tiny Thai town that nobody ever heard of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jul 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482823936

Peter Alexander

Peter Alexander, an American living in Thailand, is an author, award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist and publisher. He formed his entertainment production companies, Kennebec Entertainment and Kennebec Publishing in 1999. Earlier, he was owner, manager and creative director of a leading Bangkok advertising agency, Redford International associated with Saatchi & Saatchi in London. A graduate of Boston University, he began his career as a sports writer for The Worcester Telegram in Worcester, Mass. He was also a sports stringer for The New York Times. He later worked for the Fairfax Sun Echo in Fairfax, Virginia. He next wrote and directed the documentary film The Animal are Crying, which won first prizes at The San Francisco Film Festival as well as at festivals in Columbus, Ohio and New York. The film was shown on the Phil Donohue television show and was picked up by Columbia Pictures for distribution. During his career in advertising, he wrote and directed more than thirty television commercials, one of which won the Silver Medal (2nd place) among all Saatchi & Saatchi agencies throughout the world at a time when the London agency was ranked either first or second in the world. During the past eleven years, Mr. Alexander has written seven children’s books, four for another publisher, and his three famous “Mubu” books published by Kennebec Publishing. They are Mubu and Mu-Mu, the Little Animal Doctor, Mubu and the Ghosts and the Tiger, and Mubu and Hoot the owl. The latter is being reserved to become retailed as an ebook. Besides Ruthless, which is being prepared to be an ebook, he has written two suspense novels, Beneath and The Girl Who Threw Stars. The latter has been retailed online throughout the world and received numerous five star reviews. Thus far, Beneath, self published, has been sold at book events. It is planned to sell it in the future as an ebook. Mr. Alexander is completing two new novels, Present Perfect and Burning Memory, which are currently being edited. He has one motion picture – a feature – presently undergoing development. It is entitled Finding Ruby.

Book preview

ONE

She hated to have to run, but Kan absolutely had to get out of town. She loved Bangkok. She hated to leave her fat cat regulars behind with all their bank. But the man she left in her bed with her homemade shiv in his belly and one wrist handcuffed to a water pipe, he would do something bad to her if he survived. And he would survive. She knew that about Duke.

Kan said goodbye to no one. Duke still knew some of her friends. He had his network of crooked cop buddies who could find most anyone. Someone would talk. Someone would be happy if Kan never came back to Bangkok. All her johns up for grabs.

The easiest thing would be to get Gummy to drive her to Chon Buri. From there she could grab a bus to her ultimate destination. But as devoted as Gummy was to Kan, he wasn’t nearly smart enough if Duke got hold of him. He would cave in if Duke inflicted pain or threatened his baby daughter. And now Gummy drove for Hiro, too. She didn’t want Hiro to know what had happened. Maybe some time in the future she could come back. If Hiro was still assigned to Thailand, he’d probably welcome her return. That 40,000 baht a month he paid her to stay at his apartment would be a tough hit. That fucking Duke.

She tried to think like Duke. She imagined him tracking her. She went to a wig store. Used one of her credit cards that he couldn’t trace. Bought a gray-haired wig. Put it on over her flashy red hair. Went to a Thai Military Bank ATM and took out 10,000 baht. The max. Traveling money from one of the accounts he wouldn’t easily find out about. She could get more later from an upcountry ATM.

She could have murdered him. It would have been the easiest thing in the world. But that was his way. Not hers. She didn’t even like to step on insects. When she saw them on the pavement, she stepped over them. Of course, she also had a thing about clean shoes.

She got on the Sky Train and went to Ekamai. She immediately found a bus to Pattaya. They left every thirty minutes. She took his cell phone and crushed it under her shoe. She threw it in a trashcan. Someone had probably found Duke by now. He couldn’t come after her immediately. He was losing quite a bit of blood when she left him. She wanted him to die. By all means, die, you mad bastard. But she couldn’t do it herself. She could defend herself, but she couldn’t take his knife and cut his throat. It just wasn’t in her. If he came after her and threatened little Noi, then, that might be the time she’d have to try to do something irrevocable.

Until this morning she hadn’t seen Duke in almost two years. She had thought she was well rid of him. What sacrifices she had made to lose him. One and a half years married to Gunnar, living in Norway, subjecting herself to two insufferable Scandinavian winters. Betraying Gunnar’s adoration, his patience helping his Thai bride adjust to the alien environment and culture. She was not an unfeeling girl, just pragmatic. She left Gunnar with plenty of memories that his buddies would never possess. Better for him as well as her than playing it out, she thought.

Kan had also recently heard that her infamous ex-husband had taken off for California again in another futile search for his mother. A Thai buddy had sent him news that she might be living in Long Beach, so reported a mama-san in Patpong who had some Thai cops among her clientele. The mama-san happened to see Kan in a coffee shop on Sala Daeng and hoped to ingratiate herself with her. Teenage Kan had once been under her control. Long ago. Perhaps not so long ago in years, but in stratosphere. Her gossip had proved regrettably inaccurate.

On the bus, she let people see her blazing red dyed hair. When she got off in the tiny village of Bang Bo, she put the dark wig on again before she found a motorcycle taxi to take her to Chachoengsao. She figured she was probably way ahead of Duke, but she didn’t dare underestimate him. He was a police major now in the Drug Squad. (What better place to move his bosses’ smack?) She imagined him, his belly bandaged, in a helicopter flying overhead. But she would do what she could do.

Riding behind the silver haired, grizzled motorcyclist, she had time to review. It was heading toward late afternoon. She wouldn’t reach Phayu until late tonight. Big Surprise for mom. She wouldn’t call ahead. Generally the element of surprise, if Kan controlled it, worked for the best. She hadn’t controlled it this morning, when Duke intercepted her. After the sex and bloodshed, she hadn’t taken time to go to Hiro’s apartment to grab any clothing or her cosmetics bag. What she held in her silver shoulder bag was invaluable. Her cash and ATM and credit cards were vital to staying alive and free. Usually the special cards were hidden inside the inner lining. With one of her cards she still could even get to some money she had in a bank in faraway Norway. She would fight to the death to keep her silver bag.

I’ve got business in Phayu, Duke had told her as he walked her, grinning at her dismay, toward the apartment she used for certain of her johns. Your hometown. Been back lately, sweetheart?

Why would he say that unless he intended to find Noi? Their daughter. He had never been interested in her dull village before. Noi was now almost six. Kan had been wise enough not to leave Noi with Pranee, her indifferent stepmother. The mother who
had, unwittingly she claimed, sold Kan to the mama-san from Bangkok when the girl was fifteen. (Bangkok will be so lucky for you, Kan. Sure, mom, why don’t you go? Not pretty enough anymore?) But Pranee knew where Noi was and who was caring for the child. If Duke found Pranee, whom he had never met, he would easily get the information out of her.

Yes, perhaps, she should have finished him at the apartment when she had the chance. But killing a Thai police major would have possibly brought on other severe repercussions. At least now, it might still be between the two of them.

She allowed her mind to wander off to how it had been, how it might have been tomorrow and for months to come, if Duke had not showed up while she was enjoying a peaceful ice coffee from Starbucks in the park this morning with nothing on her mind. Now she had plenty upon which to reflect.

She had had a 5 PM date with Aki at Hiro’s apartment. Aki was Hiro’s buddy, but when the cat’s away, the friends will play. Aki represented Mitsubishi Electric in Bangkok, while Hiro was a market rep for Isuzu throughout Southeast Asia. She knew Hiro also kept a girl in Manila. Kan couldn’t read Japanese, but neither could Julie who sent him love letters from the Philippines. Kan didn’t believe in love letters. Leave no traces. There had been something fairly solid at the Four Winds Hotel tonight with a Dutchman at 8, and a definite at midnight with Philipp. The German gem merchant was a regular who came to Bangkok every three months. A tear came to her eye when she imagined Philipp’s reaction when she wasn’t there knocking on his door tonight.


Duke had fucked up her business big time. But Kan had fucked him up pretty good, too. The lunatic bastard wouldn’t be eating too well tonight.

TWO

Their physical bodies had released their life. Their physical bodies had been cremated some days ago. Their earthly remains were nothing but dust. But here they still remained in non-physical form, waiting for a new home, their individual personalities holding true to the lives they had once led.

They watched the unconscious body lying on the floor of the apartment. It was still breathing.

We should enter while there’s still time, stated the female spirit. There are openings in his aura. It’s got a good color. In life, she had been a plump, sturdy middle-aged Thai woman whose given name was Suwimol. Most everyone who had known her well during her life had called her Su.

You said we’d get into your daughter, sneered the darkest sprit, the young foreigner who had been murdered in prison. I liked her. She sure fucked up this wanker. Now you want him, Su. He’ll probably die on us.

His aura is strong, the third spirit, named Yi, commented, quietly agreeing with Su. Human eyes could not see the three, not unless they belonged to a special kind of Buddhist monk or someone else empowered to see the disembodied. But they could see one another, these three spirits from such disparate beginnings. They saw everything on the earth, except that their home no longer existed here. Yi would be envisioned as a tall, morose, middle-aged mongrel, perhaps the result of sex between an Asian and a westerner of dark color. He wore a woman’s skirt with suspenders and a man’s shirt. He wore minimal gothic style makeup. He was still torn in many directions. I just want a body, he said. That’s all I care about.

The most recently living entity was the young foreigner, sometimes called Dandy Dan Ferber, from Chelsea, England. He had tried to get into the drug business in Thailand. The very dealers who sold the horse to him had turned him in. Dandy had become a very enraged young Brit. Even in prison he hadn’t learned. They gang-raped him and then bashed his head too hard on the floor of the cell. He was shocked to awaken in the street outside the prison. Everything he saw had some sort of glow around it. And he couldn’t feel his own skin. His own hand went right through himself.

Suwimol and Yi had been traveling together. Yi had suffered from the disease of sadness and had swallowed Drano to end it all. Su’s cholesterol had unexpectedly brought her down by attacking her arteries. The doctors pronounced her death was due to acute myocardial infarction. Su, in fact, had joyfully discovered the vast array of fast food outlets that had proliferated in Bangkok during the past fifteen years. Mr. Donut and KFC fried food were her favorites. She never knew what hit her. The two spirits had inhabited the bodies of several physical entities, but they hadn’t worked out well. Sometimes other spirits had come in first, and drove them out. When they discovered Dandy foundering in his afterlife bewilderment, Su and Yi realized the powerful, vitriolic energy required to take over a body. They became a team of ghosts.

When Duke regained consciousness, he immediately felt the painful tightness in his belly. Lying on his back he tried to remain still while he explored his condition. His left wrist was constrained. Without looking, he knew she had used his own handcuffs on him. Gingerly he felt the region below his stomach with his free hand. His hand became sticky with coagulating blood. Something that felt like plastic and was shaped like a pen protruded from his abdomen.

Kan was dead. This time she would surely have to be made dead. Now it was just a matter of time. Duke would survive this, somehow; and he would find her and kill her. He would figure out the method that would provide him with the greatest satisfaction. He had been a fool. He had allowed his dick to bring him to this shameful state. Lying in a pool of his own blood in a whore’s den. Soaking into the mattress on which he had forced her to fuck him. Dressed in just his boxer shorts. Shackled to the floor with his own handcuffs. She had been afraid to finish him off. Big mistake.

Suddenly he remembered the meeting scheduled tonight with Sorosan. The final briefing before the rogue policeman was to head for Phayu. The wave of panic that flooded through him exacerbated the pain in his gut. He groaned. Shut up, you pussy! He heard the voice in his head. Yes, he was acting like a pussy. The Duke was not an ordinary man. The wound inflicted upon him was not life threatening unless he allowed himself to believe such an outcome.

Very slowly he started to turn to his left, the only direction in which he could move because of the handcuffs. The pain came in waves. He stopped and took a breath. He was sweating from the pain: he could smell himself. It was revolting. What had she done to him? Propped up on his left elbow on the mattress, he could see his gut. Three-quarters of an inch of pink plastic protruded from him. He pushed on the skin around it, and winced. Fuck, what was it she stabbed him with?

Duke looked at his watch. 2:30 in the afternoon. Not much time to put this right. He tried to remember what had happened. Through all his exploits that had turned him into a frightening figure in the Bangkok underworld, he had never forgotten about Kan. His chilling reputation was not built alone on his swift, arbitrary execution of justice, but by loud whispers that he would work both sides of the street when it suited the purposes of influential people.

A beloved populist politician, Charnchai, had drowned when his boat sank near Sri Racha. He had spoken against Sorosan’s group. He was inconveniently stirring up voters in the northeast of the country when the keel fell off his sailboat, sinking the craft in the sea within minutes. A freak accident. Such a pity. Just four huge steel bolts held the keel in place. Loosened over time. An investigation of the accident revealed that maintenance work was being done on Charnchai’s boat weeks before he and his son went sailing. They never returned alive. Only Duke knew the name of one of the maintenance workers. The man was killed in a highway accident several days after the tragedy at sea. The whispers eventually began. Duke ignored them, as did his masters. In such ways a reputation is crafted.

Duke had a weakness, however, which sometimes made him vulnerable. Easy sex bored him. And it was easy sex that was offered to him every day. He could never let it be revealed that frequently he had trouble functioning sexually. Even those closest to him could not be allowed to walk the streets with such information. The wrong kinds of whispers could ruin him.

He had never completely forgotten Kan. Even though she had not been in his life for a long time. He first spotted her six years earlier when she was a seventeen-year-old fresh from the rural northeast. The 31-year-old police officer had plenty of women, both younger and older than this girl recently off the bus, but there was something about this one that made him stop. Made his mouth drop momentarily and his heart change its rhythm.

A tall, shapely, sloe-eyed girl with long, glossy black hair. Exquisite cheekbones. Cool limpid eyes that held his own when they met. It was the flaw he found on her face that created the stirring in his groin. A silvery scar across the bottom of her delicately sculpted chin hinted at something precarious. He flexed his muscles inside his tight brown uniform and followed her to the coffee shop near the bus terminal.

May I help you? he had smiled down at her. Duke knew how he appeared to most women. Tall for a Thai man, almost six feet. Slightly darker skin than high-class Thai women preferred. His head had a sleek look. His dark trimmed moustache gave him a movie star or piratical appearance, depending on one’s predisposition. His eyes were black and lively. Some had seen their cruelty. Others had only seen their shrewd humor.

The girl looked surprised. Do I look like I need help? Her voice surprised him. It was deeper and more mature than he expected.

You’re a lovely Isaan girl, he smiled. Easy to get lost in the big city.

Someone is meeting me, she told him, her eyes studying him.

How long are you staying?

Staying where?

In Bangkok.

I don’t know.

Who’s meeting you?

My sponsor.

Ah, your sponsor. You’re coming to work?

If I like it.

And where would you be working?

At a hotel.

What hotel?

I don’t know. My sponsor will show me.

Where is your sponsor?

Coming.

What’s in your bag? He gestured toward the duffle bag by her feet.

My clothing… and my personal items.

She drank from her iced coffee through a straw. Duke watched her ripe lips work the plastic. He wanted to suck on them. Why don’t you help that old lady? She nodded her head toward an old woman outside the window who tottered dizzily on the sidewalk, and had to hold onto a lamppost to keep from falling.

I prefer to help you. What’s your name?

Kanthida, she smiled, looking at his nameplate on his chest. Captain Worarat.

My friends call me Duke.

Duke? What kind of name is that?

It’s a long story, Kanthida. Where do you come from?

Phayu.

He shook his head. I don’t know it.

He had taken her to a very expensive restaurant in order to tell the long story of his nickname. There she experienced her first salmon steak. It was the first of many firsts. Though Kan had never heard of the late John Wayne, she was a smart girl. She got the picture when he showed her his .44 Mag. He put it on the table between them. He boasted to her he had shot and killed some sixteen bad guys in the line of duty. He boldly offered to become her sponsor.

No one messes with The Duke, he promised.

Why?

Don’t you have some idea?

About you?

Who else?

Kan laughed and put her hand in front of her mouth. She saw that her laughter had altered his eyes. His body stiffened. No. I mean, why would a big policeman sponsor a nobody Isaan girl?

Because maybe I think you’re not a nobody girl. But nobody men might try to get their hands on you.

Do you think I’d let them? Her cool eyes made his neck feel hot.

In Bangkok, you don’t always have a choice.

Duke had offered her an apartment. He had several available to him. Not so special, but better than most Isaan teenagers fresh from the provinces could ask for. She made an instantaneous decision, because she was a daring girl, and she certainly didn’t have anything better for the present. Kan’s experience over time would help improve her judgment. She had never met anyone like Duke before. Nor, most likely, would she in the future.

Duke was obsessed with his Isaan girl. It was a first for him. This kind of craving for a particular woman. After two days of heated passion at the apartment, he abruptly disappeared. He began to worry that he could lose his edge over this beguiling teenage temptress. He started to fear he was losing his Dukeness. Kan was a rough and tumble girl, he discovered. That facet of her delighted him, but he also noticed a certain softness that came with the girl’s touch that threatened to dissolve him, to diminish the aspect of himself that drove him to the extremes that distinguished his presence in the world.

That appetite for Kan had returned in recent months. Duke knew she had returned to Thailand. He knew that he wanted her again, despite the reports from his informants that she was with a rich Japanese. He needed to find out if that part of himself which seemed to be burning out could be rekindled.

Foolish man. That part of him that needed reawakening was now impaled with a pink, plastic spike. Get up, you bloody arsehole, Duke felt the enraged sentiment flash inside his head. Whatever it was in his gut, it wasn’t a bullet. It wasn’t a knife. His free hand found a washcloth lying on the bed. He used it to get a grasp on the slippery spike. He screamed with pain as he gradually pulled it out of him. He looked at it with disbelief. A toothbrush carved into a weapon. The bloody hellcat was a genius! More blood and mucilaginous fluid followed the exit of the toothbrush. It felt first warm and then cool on his groin.

Then he remembered what had happened. After sex he had cuffed her to the water pipe. Had slipped into sleep. Kan had gotten her six-inch spike. It must have been hidden around the sink cabinet next to the bed. Or it had simply looked like a toothbrush, and he paid no attention to it. She had plunged it into his belly. He had awoken with a cry. Angrily he grabbed her hair with one hand. Kan took the heel of her hand and jammed her spear deeper into his abdomen. The pain was intense. He had groaned and sagged back onto the mattress, losing consciousness.

The worst was over. He felt renewed energy spreading through him. He had no clue about the invisible new energies that now inhabited him, entering through crevasses in his aura. Livid, Duke kicked the water pipe to which he was manacled. He hurt his bare foot. Had Kan taken his Kimber? Probably, but he squiggled his body around so that his toes could probe under the clothing he had folded near the head of the mattress. She had taken his cell phone, but — his large toe felt his holster and cold metal inside it.

THREE

At about 7:00 in the morning, Ajarn Piya had finished his breakfast of mangoes and sticky rice with coffee, kissed his grandmother, and departed for school. His father had already been out in the fields with the buffalo for almost an hour.

On the bicycle he had owned since graduating from university ten years earlier, it would take him about twenty minutes to get to the school he loved. He carried a tatty black briefcase strapped to the carrier on the back. He would have another half hour to organize some of his teaching materials. He cherished that quiet time to settle his mind into the day, imagining his four dozen or so students, their voices, their eager eyes, their lively manner. Ajarn Piya loved his students. He spent much of his private time thinking about them, plotting how to make his lessons better. He would make another cup of coffee. He would exchange small talk with Ajarn Jariya, the tiny fifty-three-year-old widow who had made this school her home. She lived in a small building behind the school, which had been rescued from its prior status as a maintenance shack.

But now, on the dry dirt road that brought him across the parched solitary landscape, he had time alone on his bicycle to think about the foreigners who had invaded the town for a second time.

The tall blond-haired American who always wore sunglasses. Marvin was his name. Marvin Grissom, his business card said. He asked people to call him Marv. (In Thai people were calling him Big White or simply The American. Local girls were totally awed by him.) And the heavy, short, powerful-looking Chinese, Mr. Chin, in his fifties. Their coterie, usually a few steps behind, consisted of two broad-shouldered Chinese men wearing permanent scowls. Those two looked like they might break down a door rather than knock on it. In their first visit the four entered the town in two Mercedes cars. The first two such cars seen in the town of Phayu, according to citizens who had lived here all their lives.

Mr. Bae, who owned a small guesthouse at the end of town, was the local Thai who represented the foreigners. He took them door-to-door to meet the owners of the land. He translated the message Marv Grissom wanted to communicate to the humble, shy homeowners. Because most of the men were away protesting at the dam, it was primarily the wives who looked up at the tall blond American visitor with bemused eyes.

Bae translated his words with a bubbly gleam in his eyes.

The American and the Chinese gentleman will pay you a lot of money for your home. Much more than you could ever dream of. They want to turn this town into a resort. They want to revive our river. They have the money to make Phayu a paradise. You are so fortunate today that Mr. Chin and Mr. Marv have chosen Phayu to make this poor village a paradise.

Mr. Marv and Mr. Chin and their two followers eventually visited Piya’s father, Uthai, who owned a sizable parcel of land where he grew cassava, even though his soil had become desperately less fertile in recent years. Piya had been present when the American and the Chinese came the first time, representing Lucky Golden Land Development Co. Ltd., a Chinese company with a subsidiary registered in Thailand. On behalf of Lucky Golden, Mr. Bae translated the breathy offer to Piya’s expressionless father.

Lucky Golden would buy up his property at a generous price. They would help relocate the impoverished landowners to some undisclosed site. They would upgrade the village of Phayu and its Moon River at the cost of billions of baht, and then they would build a golf resort for wealthy foreigners, presumably citizens of China, for the most part.

We would have a new village? Uthai asked Bae in Thai as Piya listened.

Of course. Yes.

Where would it be?

I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s