Banging the Monkey by Tod A

Author:Tod A
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2019-04-03T14:52:55+00:00

Longa’s main artery was Bangla Road. Branching off from Bangla were scores of gangs packed with karaoke bars, go-gos, discos and massage parlors. The music blared from all angles—a maelstrom of sound. Here, sex was served up like fast food. Everywhere you looked were girls—leaning in doorways, leering from tables, dancing on stages and bars, swinging from poles, suspended in cages, cajoling from verandas and windows and rooftops.

We tailed Cooney to the Whammy Bar, a country and western-theme dive, where the dancers dressed as cowboys and Indians, and a Filipino cover band mangled American classic rock standards. Cooney planted himself on a stool and the ladies swarmed in.

“You need drink, Mister? You want Oh-Cha?”

“Just keep ‘em coming, yeah?” he yelled. “And make sure they’re cold!”

The band finished ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ and kicked into a Steve Miller song.

“Fry rike an eager!” Cooney bellowed, mocking the singer.

I wouldn’t have called Cooney an ugly drunk, but he wasn’t a pretty one, either. At the saloon, he was forced to keep a handle on his intake. On a bender, he was a simmering volcano. With each successive drink the repressed rage bubbled closer to the surface. Normally, the question was whether he would erupt into violence before he passed out. Tonight there were hallucinogens in the mix.

Raj and I found a table near the street, as far as possible from the band, but where we could still see Cooney. Raj was preoccupied with work lately, less focused on romantic distractions.

“So what’s the latest on the temple scandal, man?”

“There are interesting developments. My police contact in Singy confided that some antique pieces looking suspiciously Madunese have turned up in recent stings. All trails now lead to a man named Yow. It’s rumored that Yow is the new head of the Ah Kong.”

“Ah Kong? The Singapore mafia?”

“The same. Based out of Singy, Bangkok and Amsterdam. They were supposedly wiped out in the nineties, but are seemingly now in resurgence. They’ve got their hooks into everything—heroin, prostitution, ivory, human trafficking—you name it.”

“Illegal teak?”

“No doubt. It’s a commodity like anything else.”

“What? Sorry, Raj, I can’t hear you.”

The couples at the next table were screaming with laughter. The men were mayat in their late fifties, sweaty and pitaya-pink from too much drink. Their much-younger Madunese dates looked like former bar girls.

“What’s your feeling about all of these …” I wasn’t sure how to finish.

“May-December romances?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Doesn’t it make you kind of nauseous?”

“It’s pure economics, Mark. Money is an aphrodisiac—the same here as anywhere else. The disparity between rich and poor is simply more manifest in Madu.”

“So, nothing to do with skin color?” I said. “Have you seen all the ads for whitening creams? And these guys aren’t millionaires. They look like bus drivers from Belarus.”

“Perhaps. But here, they’re the height of glamour. The girls probably hail from the outer islands—poor, illiterate, bored. Be honest—if you had the choice between a bamboo hut with mud floors versus getting out and seeing the world, having some

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