Read Online Cambodian Book of the Dead by Tom Vater - Free Book Online

moist and pungent smoke rolled through the heavy air towards Maier. The proprietor was a small, fat man with hairy, tattooed arms that stuck out of an old, sleeveless Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. Born in the USA, no doubt about it. His lumpy face, in which two beady eyes threatened to drown, descended to several ridges of double chins. His voice had crawled out of a Louisiana backwater and forgotten to dry off. The thumb on his right hand was missing. He was a character.
    The establishment’s décor perfectly reflected its owner’s personality. In the Last Filling Station, the Vietnam War was celebrated like a nostalgic road trip. Behind the counter, the shelf crammed with mostly empty liquor bottles had been welded together from machine gun parts. A torn cloth of the Rolling Stones’ tongue hung like a pirate flag from a wooden pole that had been lodged, with the help of a couple of CBU bomb cases, into the ground in the centre of the small square room. The ceiling fan squawked like a tired seagull and barely managed to turn the air in the bar. Around the fan, spent mortar shells and hand grenades hung suspended from the ceiling. Willie Peter canisters, once the receptacles for white phosphorus, which burned through skin like napalm, served as ashtrays.
    It was too early to smoke and drink. Maier had only just started working.
    â€œFirst time in Kep?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut not the first trip to Cambodia, right?”
    The American had a good eye for people.
    â€œNo, I was here a few times between ’93 and ’97, came as a journalist.”
    The American’s tiny eyes lit up.
    â€œIs there anything to report from Kep that the world might be interested in?”
    â€œNo idea. I no longer work in the media business.”
    The man behind the counter shrugged.
    â€œThat’s probably for the best. Folks who ask too many questions around here end up floating in the soup pretty damn soon.”
    â€œYou’ve already asked me three questions, be careful.” Maier laughed and offered the American his hand. The bar owner’s thumbless paw was huge and badly scarred.
    â€œMaier.”
    â€œLes. Les ‘Snakearm’ Leroux.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œReally! My momma called me Lesley Leroux. And they called me Snakearm in Vietnam.”
    â€œSnakearm?”
    â€œBecause I could squeeze the life out of a python with one hand.”
    â€œNo shit?”
    â€œNo shit. Made a heap of money in some dark places in Saigon, right up to the day we abandoned ship and honour. That was three questions, buddy. One more and I’ll shoot you dead.”
    â€œVodka orange?”
    â€œBang.”
    The war vet was an instantly likeable guy. And the Last Filling Station was the perfect place to drink your troubles away on a lonely near-equatorial morning. Not that Maier had anything to be mournful about. Not yet. He was only just getting started on this case. Perhaps, in the absence of empathy or depression, he could drink his soul’s soul.
    â€œSo what happened here? Was the town destroyed in the war?”
    The American shook his head.
    â€œKep was the Saint Tropez of Cambodia. The French showed up in the late nineteenth century and started it off with a few hotels, churches and brothels between the jungle and the sea. In the Fifties, Kep became popular with Khmer high society who came down from Phnom Penh and built weekend villas. They had it all just the way they wanted it – waterskiing and cocktail parties, barbecues and rock’n’roll bands on the beach. But the good life ended with Sihanouk’s departure. Rich folks boarded up their houses and stopped coming. The KR were here from ’71 to ’77 and they did kill quite a few locals, but there wasn’t much fighting here. Then in ’79, when the Nam invaded, the harvest didn’t happen. People broke into the houses and stripped them, even chiselled the steel out of the walls.