Free Bangkok Hard Time by Jon Cole Page B

in the air on a flight to Thailand.
    During the next years, the fear of that certain day to come when I would have to dance to the tune of the withdrawal blues was always lurking in the back of my junkie mind. The trepidation of withdrawal grew stronger until it became the only thing that I truly feared. I would – and could – do anything to postpone the moment of its arrival.
    Maybe truly spiritual beings have no thought for the passage of time. Meanwhile, the wise man, the wife and the squirrel are concerned with providing for the unsure future. The average Joe exists from payday to payday, as he can. The poor man, the beggar and the young child live hand-to-mouth, day by day. But to the warrior, the prisoner and the junkie, life is measured by one uncertain moment to the next.

The Junkman Cometh
    The seed for an illicit enterprise was conceived years earlier at Bahn Pee Lek’s by some American army brats from ISB and a few GIs. On my third trip back to Thailand, I had stumbled into a couple of ISBers who had been among that original group. It was uncanny how the conversational fantasies we had engaged in those many years ago as kids sitting around a bong in that little shack were becoming a reality. One big difference was that back then we spoke of how to smuggle reefer, but now we were all adult junkies smuggling heroin. Through them, I was introduced to the others who had completed this same unenviable cycle and were involved in the same nefarious endeavor.
    In dozens of trips over the next four years, a similar scenario would repeat itself in various and slightly different ways. There were variations on the concealment tricks, differing quantities, sometimes different receivers or players.
    I usually operated alone, but at times worked with up to four companions. It was dependent upon whether I was working for myself or for the Group, a loose confederation of a few former ISBers and ex-GIs, most with a history of association with Bahn Pee Lek.
    The Group would find mules (couriers) to carry the contraband, then engage my services to score the dope, load them up and teach the expendables how to behave in order to get past Customs. I only lost two mules at the Dallas Customs search.
    Sandy was one of the American kids at ISB when I attended there. He was now living in Thailand, married to a local girl and working at a travel agency just down the lane from the Honey Hotel on Soi 19. Having no involvement with the business of the Group even though he knew some of them, he was way outside the loop. We would have dinner, a drink or smoke a joint together whenever our paths crossed, but that was it. I got the feeling that his Thai wife did not care for me, perhaps with good cause. It also seemed that she had him on a very short leash.
    When I told him about a list of former International School Bangkok students with their current addresses that I had obtained from one of the former bad boys at the school, Sandy suggested that we should give it to ISB in order to start an alumni association. He had money making visions of organizing reunions in Bangkok through his tour group. I agreed with him, but for different, and nefarious, reasons that had been vaguely inferred from suggestions by others in the Group. Sandy and I went together and spoke with the then school administrator, who accepted the list which was eventually used by another alum, Mimi. She followed through with the creation of an officially sanctioned ISB alumni association. Much to his trepidation, my acquaintanceship with Sandy would come in handy later.
    I had changed my cover from gemstone import – exporter to snakeskin import – exporter and was selling hand-selected python hides to bootmakers in El Paso, Texas as quickly as I could deliver them. Even my cover business was making money without much effort. The cash box inside an antique trunk at the Tulsa storage unit was at first growing to overflow levels. I even stopped counting how much I had put into