Authors: T. M. Hoy
The cell where the games were held was immaculate. The walls were kept freshly painted with thick white enamel. A sleek black Sony TV/VCR and stereo sat against one wall. It was the only cell with real furniture. Large silk cushions of brilliant crimson and indigo were piled on the floor by the walls—out of the way seats. Low tables of fine-grained teak lined the walls, and—sop to the vain, a beautiful full-length mirror framed in black lacquer ware from Japan stood at the back, reflecting the room’s action.
The cell contrasted sharply with the squalor and poverty of its neighbors. Cells normally held thirty Thais on average, but thanks to an astonishingly large bribe—said to top 25,000 baht a month ($1,000), held only ten. The casino owner and his ‘clan’ were the sole occupants.
Shortly after the completion of the afternoon count and the dorms are locked down for the night, the corridor-dwellers selling food or drinks prepare their wares and make the rounds to their regular customers. When these are satisfied, most circulate down to the end of the corridor to service the casino players.
Luxury items like Pepsi, Marlboro and Camel cigarettes, prepackaged snack foods, and other treats are purchased in quantity by the big-spending gamblers.
The casino was the only cell in the two-story dorm left open at night. Located at the end of the corridor, furthest from the stairs, the cell sat opposite the upstairs bathroom reserved for the blue boys, and afforded some privacy for the gamblers from the inquisitive gaze of the Thais, having no cell across from it.
The night Eddie paid 100 baht to the guards to stay in the casino, as was the custom, he played all night and then slept most of the next day. He could be seen sprawled unconscious in his lawn chair, in the ‘house’ he shared with a sybaritic old French Jew named Simone and two Iranians, David and Reza, who had lived in Paris and spoke French fluently.
Gossip is an endless source of amusement for prisoners. The day after Eddie’s denouement, several stories made the rounds. One of the grumpy old Germans reported Eddie had lost thousands of baht. A slightly crazed Iranian insisted, on the contrary, that Eddie had held his own against the Chinese. Singh, the unofficial town crier of the prison, retailed yet another version, the portly little Indian maintaining Eddie had lost a negligible sum.
The majority opinion followed Singh’s account, with Eddie enjoying a night of Pepsi, sweets, and premium smokes at no cost, the generosity of the casino with such things being legendary and a part of its lure.
The week passed uneventfully, and Eddie’s night out faded away as a conversational topic without any fuel for the fire. As Eddie was unperturbed and failed to discuss the subject, feigning boredom when it was brought up, the break-even version of things was held to be accurate.
Another weekend arrived, and tongues again wagged when Eddie paid the hundred baht ‘fee.’ Speculation was rife that a gambling addiction had been born, with potentially dire consequences. Several of the Germans who reveled in misfortune and disasters of any kind were delighted.
Singh bustled around the building minding everyone else’s business, made it a point to ferret out every bit of information he could on this new subject. Having a not inconsiderable attachment to games of chance himself, Singh wholeheartedly devoted his energy to collecting whatever facts were to be had. His enthusiasm was contagious, and a sympathetic and undoubtedly curious Chinaman gave him a few hundred baht to join in that evening’s festivities. Singh took on the clandestine air of a spy, happy in his work. The lazy Saturday morning that followed was much enlivened by Singh’s blow-by-blow retelling of Friday night’s events.
Eddie had nobly represented Occidentals, his Gallic hauteur standing him in good stead. He opened the evening by bribing a guard to bring in Pizza Hut pizzas—an expensive gesture suitably impressive to the roomful
of Chinese who shared in the feast. He had procured a case of Pepsi, kept in a garbage can filled with ice, available to any that wanted one. The crowning touch was a boxful of quite passable cigars from the United States he had handed around.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, Thai boxing matches were shown on TV, the weird discordant flute music played at the fights mixing with the crowd’s deafening roars of “Luat! Luat! Luat!” (Blood! Blood! Blood!). The early pre-midnight games were given over to betting on these matches, the Chinese acting as bookies to the Thai bettors. As the last TVs were turned off between 11:00 PM and midnight, the dorm settled down to sleep; the serious gambling in the casino began.
The most popular game involved dice, a variety of Hi-Lo that had simple rules, and, in theory, is purely random chance. As the night progressed, Eddie’s luck ran out. The big purple 500 baht notes flew like confetti at a parade, as Singh described it. As dawn broke, Eddie was nearly 10,000 baht poorer.
This so precisely matched the predictions of all and it was an anticlimax. Considerable sympathy was felt for Eddie, and most farangs hoped this would cure his gambling fever, before the patient “died.”
Eddie skipped the games Saturday night, but was back with a vengeance on Sunday. On Monday morning, people shook their heads and commiserated over the decline and likely fall of a good man. Best guesses had Eddie down by 30,000 baht. ‘Reliable sources’—mainly the Thai corridor-dwellers, confirmed that Fang and Youngman (two wealthy Hong Kong natives) held substantial markers for Eddie.
There was puzzlement when Eddie did not play during the week. Typical gamblers were obsessed, quick to jump into any betting to try and make up for their losses, until their credit was exhausted. Eddie stayed aloof, confounding his critics. An old German said it was a sign of his financial ruin, though most of us mocked him.
Wednesday’s visits brought a strange surprise. A woman—Thai observers said she was Japanese, visited Eddie. This was the first non-Embassy visit he had ever had. Exceptionally well-dressed, superbly coiffed and made up, wearing expensive designer jewelry, she radiated an aura of wealth and social position. She so awed the guards they allowed her to meet with Eddie in the room reserved for legal and embassy visits. What passed between them was, of course, private. But Veerat—the guard that habitually brought in contraband (cash) for prisoners for a five percent gratuity, slipped Eddie a thick envelope afterwards.
The news raced around the prison that afternoon when Eddie paid off the Hong Kong Cantonese to the tune of 35,000 baht, with brand-new blue 1,000 baht notes.
Friday came and went, and Eddie did not gamble. Was he cured? Was he afraid? The topic dominated conversations the rest of that Saturday. In the afternoon, at the last possible minute, Eddie paid his ‘fee.’ Several other Westerners, mainly the older Germans who acted like nosy old women, paid their own fees to watch.
In an unprecedented change in policy, the casino owner announced after the lockdown that the gambling den was closed. In glorious isolation, it was to be a private game between serious high-rollers, chiefly Eddie and the Hong Kong Cantonese.
Farangs and Thais alike spending the night in the corridor took an amazing number of trips to the bathroom, dawdling along the way as much as they dared to do a little spying. The Chinese, deprived of their usual haunt, set up an impromptu casino of their own halfway down the corridor. They paid an exorbitant amount to take over the space normally occupied by a couple of merchant’s bedrolls.
The upstairs dorm that night was a madhouse. The Thais were screaming and gambling on the boxing matches. The Germans and the other Westerners unable to sit in on the real show at the casino meandered about,
making a nuisance of themselves. The Chinese spread out, shouting and leaping in overlapping circles over dice and cards. The corridor merchants were run ragged, and turned snappish from the non-stop flow of harried customers. And—ever the central focus and object of our intense curiosity— what was happening with the high rollers?
Few people got much sleep. Only on Sunday afternoon did anyone shake off the yawns and desultorily discuss the latest news. Dependable as the proverbial postman, Singh reported his ‘Eddie Update,’ another disheartening loss of 50,000 baht for Eddie.
Although not many farangs were lively enough to feel like chatting, those of us conscious agreed that this was awful news.
Periodically, junkies would run up drug debts in the tens of thousands of baht, and would then speedily change buildings to avoid their creditors. Since heroin and drug credit flowed through Nigerians, who had no solidarity among themselves and thus no real ability to reach outside of their own buildings, this was a sneaky and effective dodge. Though the guards made it difficult and expensive enough to accomplish it was an escape to be resorted to sparingly.
This did not apply to gambling debts. The Chinese have a much longer reach, exchanging debt markers between buildings and people are killed for reneging. Several thousand dollars is a fortune in an Asian prison. How Eddie could sustain such losses and cover his markers was cause for real concern.
Sunday night was subdued, and Eddie took a break, as did most of the Cantonese. The week that followed was also quiet, though somewhat tense with anticipation for those who liked Eddie.
When Friday arrived, an expectant hush was palpable among the Westerners. Eddie’s houseboy paid his 100 baht to the guard, and everyone took a metaphorical deep breath, wondering what was in store for the imperturbable Frenchman.
That night, as casually as if he were betting a few coins, Eddie joined the uneasy throng in the casino. He held a cable from Japan; its contents unknown, but apparently bearing a message capable of inducing the Cantonese to extend credit indefinitely.
The gossip began as an almost imperceptible whisper. Eddie started to win. Doubling his bets, he soon surpassed the limits of the smaller players, and directly engaged the Cantonese.
Well before midnight, he had erased his 50,000 baht in debt, and was rapidly reversing fate. Singh slithered from cell to cell, breathlessly imparting the latest developments, as excited as if he himself were winning.
Up 20,000. Up 50,000. Up 70,000. Up 100,000.
2:00 AM, and Westerners were held spellbound, so rare was a victory of such magnitude over the wily Chinese. We sat up on our bedrolls, drinking gallons of tea and coffee, unable to sleep until some conclusion was reached.
His beady eyes gleaming, elephantine ears spread wide, Singh took it all in. The Cantonese went into a consultative conference. Could they save face, yet cut off the game? They would be jeered; belittled by all for backing down. Nervous, sweating, they allowed the game to resume.
Up 120,000. Up 150,000. Then a brief but dramatic plunge down 100,000 heightened the tension. The setback proved temporary, and when Eddie was 200,000 ahead, the game was suspended due to lack of funds. As Singh passed the word, the corridor rang with our cries of outrage.
They were the drug lords of Asia and they claimed to be unable to pay a paltry few thousand dollars?! Unbelievable. The corridord wellers looked up sleepily at our explosions of contempt, our comments searing and sarcastic.
Yet the casino owner had only one way to cover so enormous a loss—to offer the Building 2 Coffee Shop as collateral. Negotiations were hastily begun; would Eddie accept the bet? For all their power, the Chinese are constitutionally incapable of enduring ridicule. The bet must be made.
The coffee shop was a monopoly, bought and sold among the Thai Chinese. The real earnings came not from the sale of goods, but from the cut it took from every penny put on a prisoner’s accounts.
Technically, cash is illegal inside the prison. The truth, however, is that cash is the only accepted way to purchase necessities and pay off debts. The coffee shop is the official holder of accounts, and anything sent by mail or dropped off at the front office, including cash, checks, money orders, and embassy funds are automatically placed in them.
This stranglehold on prisoners’ money gives the coffee shop owner a much-hated ability to charge for giving out illegal cash. He would charge ten percent of all money received—the standard charge for the coffee shops in the prison. Worse, still, the amount a prisoner can withdraw from his coffee shop account at any one time is limited to 100 baht per day, or 3,000 baht per month, thus forcing one to keep money in the account sitting there useless. This is another source of profit for the owner, who uses it to earn usurious rates of interest re-loaning it. The owner seldom allows anyone to take more than ten or fifteen days cash at a time. Considering that nearly a thousand people per building have no choice but be bled by these officially sanctioned leeches, and that all foodstuffs go through their hands, it is a guarantee of huge, perpetual profits.
The worst sort of chicanery is practiced by the coffee shop. Meat ordered has a price tag equal to the finest available cuts in retail shops; what are actually delivered are often more than half bone, gristle and fat, and the percentage of meat is further reduced by being soaked in water to bulk up the weight. This outrageous thievery results in profit margins of 300 to 400 percent, in a business that normally has a five percent margin of profit.
Rip-offs are an art form, and the creativity demonstrated in these frauds is amazing. If they applied it to legal business they could flourish. But this is not their forte—they prefer to be parasites.
This monopoly on prisoners’ income is sold to the highest bidder by the Building Chief, and profits are split between the Chief and the shop owner. Smaller cuts and freebies are also explicitly arranged so that lower ranking guards and officials get a share. The main, indeed, the only prerequisite beyond the owner being a Thai, is he must have a huge hoard of cash. The selling price for the lucrative Building 2 Coffee Shop was roughly 250,000 baht. In addition to the purchase price, the owner needs at least 300,000 to 400,000 in liquid capital to cover the outflow of cash throughout the month until accounts can be settled with the main office, and so start the cycle again.
The Cantonese started by offering Eddie a double-or-nothing bet, with the shop priced at 400,000. This grossly inflated collateral figure was rejected, and Eddie’s counter-offer of 150,000 was also swiftly turned down. After some good natured haggling, Eddie accepted the bet—the shop’s collateral value set at 275,000, double or nothing, the remaining 125,000 owed if he won he agreed to accept as markers.