The Queen of Patpong (32 page)

Rose gets up and goes to Kosit. She takes the photograph from him and holds it up to the room and says, “We show them this one, too. We tell all of them that he did this. We show them. Even the girls who are on drugs will remember.”

“Will they believe you?” Arthit asks.

Rose starts to answer, but Nit pushes her way in. “We’re sisters,” she says. “Whether we like each other or not, we’ve all been through the same thing. We all have the same story. And we all know there are men like this one.”

“They’ll believe us,” one of the others says to Arthit, “faster than they’ll believe you.”

Arthit nods and says, “You haven’t finished, Poke. Go through the rest of it. And I mean step by step. What keeps these women safe?”

“First thing they do when they walk into the bar is say hello to anyone they know. The pictures will be in folders we’ll get at the copy shop so no one will see anything until it’s time. Second thing they do is sit for a few minutes with the mama-san and make sure he’s not there. If he is, she never takes out the pictures. She just leaves and calls us from outside. If he’s not there, they do the third thing, which is to show the picture of Horner to the mama-san and ask if she’s seen him. If the answer is yes, the next question is when. If the answer is this evening, or recently, they ask whether he’s been taking one girl regularly and, if so, whether she’s in the bar. If the answer to
that
is yes, then the woman with the picture gets the girl’s name and calls us and leaves without showing the picture around, and we go in a few minutes later and get Horner’s girl. If the answer is no, then we revert to normal procedures and we make sure all the girls see both pictures as they come off the stage. These women will never get near any action, if any takes place.”

Rose says, “Who here doesn’t want to do this?” There are no responses.

“You keep saying they’ll call us if he shows or if he’s just been there,” Arthit says. “Where are we going to be?”

“Right there, on Patpong. There are six bars that no one here worked at, so we’ll take care of those. Anand and Kosit, if you’ll let them, will show the pictures to the vendors in the street market and the touts working the sidewalk. If we don’t get him tonight, we’ll go back tomorrow, and the next night. My phone number will be written on the back of every picture.”

Arthit says, “My phone number.”

Rafferty nods, trying to conceal his elation.

“As if you didn’t know I’d say that.”

“Oh, well,” Rafferty says, and then dumps the rest of what he was going to say because of the way Arthit’s looking at him.

“If we find him, Poke”—Arthit’s voice is soft—“what then?”

“You guys are three cops,” Rafferty says. “I’m one me. I suppose it’ll be whatever you want to happen.”

“You know,” Arthit says, “I could do this without you. I could forbid you from getting anywhere near Patpong.”

“I guess you could.”

“Will it be necessary?”

Rafferty says, “I’d be more comfortable about answering your question if I hadn’t seen the picture of that girl.”

“But you have seen it. Am I going to have a problem with you?”

It’s almost a minute, with all the women looking at him, before Rafferty replies. “If you do,” he says, “I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

Chapter 28
It Used to Be a Good-Natured Sewer

A
bove the bright lights of the night market, the sky flickers chalky white and darkens again, like a loose lightbulb. A moment later a breeze kicks up, carrying the sweat of the crowd to Rafferty’s nostrils.

“Could rain,” he says.

“So what?” Arthit says, bulling his way through the slow-moving throng. “You afraid you’ll shrink?”

“Rudeness one, small talk zero,” Rafferty says.

Arthit grunts.

Rafferty says, “Not so busy, is it?”

“If you need to chat, it’s not busy because it’s early,” Arthit says. “Only seven-twenty. It’ll pick up.”

Ahead of them Arthit watches Nit go into a bar called Bamboo, her folder held against her hip in a businesslike fashion.

Rafferty says, “Don’t worry about them. They know what to do.”

“You’re the one I’m worried about.” Arthit stops, the shirt of his uniform already wet in back. “
Look
at this junk,” he says. “Patpong was always a sewer, but it used to be a good-natured sewer.”

Rafferty looks over his friend’s shoulder at a miscellany of murder weapons, gaily displayed in the shimmer of the spotlights: Gurkha knives, switchblades, gravity knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, ninja throwing stars. Behind the display, a cheerful-looking woman sheds some of her smile when she notices Arthit’s uniform and facial expression.

“They’re just for fun,” she says.

“You have an odd idea of fun.”

She brings both hands up as though the items on the table were red-hot. “Me? I wouldn’t have any of this in my house. They’re for
farang.
The
farang
like to kill each other. Look at the movies.”

Arthit says, “We shouldn’t let you sell these.”

“You could close some of them,” the woman says eagerly. “There are four on this street and two more on Silom. I could pay you a commission. You close them down, and I’ll give you one-third of the increase in my profits.”

“No thanks.” Arthit turns to go.

“Half,” the woman says. “I couldn’t give more than half.”

Arthit says over his shoulder, “I’ll think about it.”

“Sixty percent!” the woman calls.

“The respect is so rewarding,” Arthit says.

“If it’s any comfort,” Rafferty says, “I respect the hell out of you.”

“You’re nervous,” Arthit says. “You don’t usually natter.”

“It’s not nerves, it’s plain old hatred.”

“But you’re going to do what I tell you to do.”

“Oh,” Rafferty says. “Sure.”

Ahead of them Patpong runs from Silom to Surawong, the longest short block on earth, in Rafferty’s opinion. Arthit’s right: It’s still early, and a lot of the people have come for the night market that stretches down the center of the street, rather than the bars. There are
farang
women everywhere, flushed pink with their own daring, holding blouses up to their shoulders, wrapping belts around their midsections, ransacking faux-Vuitton bags like manic customs agents, and bargaining amateurishly for the privilege of paying three times more than the whatever-it-is is worth. Looking around, Rafferty sees a lot of future buyer’s remorse.

Two booths up, Anand is talking to a seller of counterfeit DVDs. He flashes both pictures, and the merchant grabs the iron-pipe frame of her stall for support.

Rafferty says, “They’ll all remember.”

“Here,” Arthit says, heading left, toward the sidewalk and a dingy-looking door beneath a small, stuttering neon sign that reads
BOTTOMS UP CLUB
. As they approach the door, a dark young man in a T-shirt and shorts materializes from nowhere, opens the door just enough to slip his hand in, and pushes something. They’re listening to the buzzer upstairs as he fades back into the crowded street.

“Don’t worry,” Arthit calls up the stairs in Thai. “No problem.”

The stairs are vertiginously steep and so narrow that the walls almost brush Rafferty’s shoulders. At the top he and Arthit find themselves in a long, dim, windowless room not much wider than a broad hallway with an unoccupied stage on one side, maybe two meters wide, adorned by a single pole that hasn’t been wiped down in years. Palm prints fog its shine and dapple the broken mirror behind it, the lower right corner of which has fallen away and is propped against the wall. At the far end of the room, framed by incomplete strings of Christmas lights, a small bar blinks at them, decorated with plastic chrysanthemums, the perfect advertisement for alcoholic depression. The bottles behind the bar are the only clean surfaces in sight. Rafferty inhales the smell of a hamper full of dirty laundry that’s been damp for weeks.

“Hello, hello,” says a woman of indeterminate years, crammed into a tight dress, the seam of which has popped open on her left hip. She thinks her anxious grimace is a smile. She might have been pretty once, but she’s used herself badly for a long time, and what’s left of her beauty has been broken into random fragments—a nice set of cheekbones, a mouth that was probably plump before it got fat. There are four other women in the room, all overweight and, by Patpong standards, overage. They’re all sheathed in the kind of tight, floor-length dresses that Rafferty associates with high gloves and big-band singers from the forties. All of them look nervous, but nowhere near as nervous as the two men sitting on the bench that runs along the wall facing the stage. They’ve obviously made hurried adjustments: One of them has half his shirttail hanging out of his pants. On the floor in front of each of them, a pillow has been placed. The pillows are permanently dented by years’ worth of knees.

“You two,” Arthit says to the men. “You need to go to the bathroom.”

“You bet,” says the one with half his shirt tucked in, jumping to his feet. He and his companion trot the length of the room and disappear into a dark corridor to the left of the bar.

“Give me some light,” Arthit says.

The woman who met them at the top of the stairs nods to the shortest and youngest woman in the room, and the younger one goes to a wall fixture and snaps on an overhead fluorescent. The light reveals whole new frontiers of dirtiness, as well as masks of makeup as thick as toothpaste, and Rafferty thinks for a second of Rose, working to help women get out of the bar life before they end up someplace like this.

“Seen this man?” Arthit asks.

“Ooohh,” says the youngest one. “Handsome.”

“Has he been here?”

“No,” says the oldest woman, who is obviously the mama-san. She looks at the other women and laughs. “And we’d remember. We don’t get many like him.”

“He’s killed at least five bar girls,” Arthit says. He holds up the second photo. The faces of the four older ones harden, but the youngest brings her fingers to her lips. “I want you to look at both these pictures. I want you to remember his face.”

“I’ll remember,” the mama-san says.

Rafferty says, “He might have some injuries to his face, might even have bandages.”

The mama-san says, “That would be nice.”

“Get your cell phones,” Arthit says.

The women go behind the bar and come out carrying purses, all of them battered and worn. Working ten-hour days on their knees in this cesspool, they’re making barely enough money to eat. In a moment each of them has a phone out.

“Key in this number.” Arthit recites his cell-phone number. “Save it. Name it whatever you want, as long as you’ll be able to remember it if he comes in here. If he does, one of you goes back into the short-time room and calls me, is that clear? Just treat him like any other customer. He’s never hurt a girl while he’s in a bar, as far as we know. But call me.”

The mama-san stores the number and takes another, longer, look at Horner’s face. “If he comes in here,” she says, “we’ll kill him ourselves.”

BY NINE-THIRTY THEY’VE
burned through all six of the bars on their list and there’s a light drizzle falling, creating flaring halos around the lights in the night market and softening the lurid hues of the neon. Big sheets of blue plastic have been stretched into place above the stalls and tied to the metal frames to keep the merchandise dry, and water is running in the gutters, but the damp hasn’t interfered with business in the bars. The street is jammed solid on both sides.

Arthit’s phone has rung eight times, with Rafferty practically jumping out of his skin each time. Six of the calls were sign-offs from the women who were showing the photos, finished with their task. No one had definitely recognized Horner. Some of the women had decided to meet for a late meal at the Thai Room, a restaurant on Patpong 2. The other two calls were news: Women had identified Horner as a customer in the Kit-Kat and Bar Sinister, both relatively nice downstairs bars that feature younger women, relatively new to the life. In both cases he’d been there within a few weeks but hadn’t been taking girls out.

The ninth call, coming in now, is from Nit, who had the longest list of bars. Arthit listens and says to Rafferty, “The Office?” He squints like someone trying to read small print. “The girl he’s been taking out works at the Office. Where the hell is that?”

“Patpong 2,” Rafferty says. “But the Office isn’t a go-go club. It’s just a hostess bar.”

Nit hears his remark, and Arthit puts the phone to his ear and listens. “That’s why she went there last,” he says. “She almost didn’t bother.” Into the phone he asks, “Is the girl there?” He looks over at Rafferty, who’s shifting from foot to foot, and nods an affirmative. “You what? . . . Good, that’s good. Smart of you.” He puts a hand over the phone. “She only showed them the picture of Horner. Thought they’d give themselves away if they saw the other one.”

“We need to get the girl.”

Arthit points to the phone, which Rafferty takes to mean,
Nit’s got her.
To Nit he says, “Most of your friends are over at the Thai Room, so you’re close to them. Why don’t you take her over there. We’ll see you in a minute or two. Stay away from the windows.” He lowers the phone and says to Rafferty, “Let’s go. The Thai Room. If he goes into the Office, we’ll be just up the street.”

“Sure. As you said, away from the windows.”

Arthit calls Kosit and, after that, Anand and tells each of them to head over to Patpong 2 once they’ve finished with the vendors.

“We should have sent people to all the hostess bars,” Rafferty says.

“And we will,” Arthit says. “Let’s allow them a few minutes to eat, though. But, you know, men who frequent the go-go clubs don’t usually visit the hostess bars. It’s pretty much one or the other.”

“ ‘Pretty much,’ ” Rafferty says between his teeth. “ ‘Usually.’ I’m an idiot.”

Seen from above, the Patpong district is a big capital H, with the two uprights being Patpong 1 and 2, named after the Patpong family, which has added considerably to its worldly riches, if not its store of good karma, by owning them. The cross stroke connecting the verticals is a nameless little stub of a street that’s housed a long string of failed bars and restaurants, including one upstairs clip joint that changes its name so often Rafferty long ago stopped trying to keep up.

Patpong 2 is considerably sleepier than its big sister, with three or four struggling go-go clubs, a few restaurants, and six or eight decorous hostess bars, ranging from intimate to relatively vast. There’s no night market. Where it can take fifteen minutes to plow through the people who pack the street from Silom to Surawong on Patpong 1 when the evening is in full swing, on Patpong 2 it can usually be done in one-fifth that time. Patpong 2 is less crowded. And a lot darker.

As they fight free of the crowd on Patpong 1 and enter the stub street, Arthit says, “I think we’ll set up at the Thai Room. We can stay out of sight, and it’ll take us less than a minute to get to the Office.”

“Fine.”

Arthit glances at Rafferty. “Problem?”

“Why was she there?”

“What do you mean?

“Why was she working tonight? Rose said he was with her constantly when they were together.”

“He had things to do today,” Arthit says. “Bust into your apartment. Kidnap Miaow, and maybe you. Find Rose. Kill everybody. Big day.”

“ ‘He does one thing at a time,’ Rose said.”

Arthit stops walking. He looks like he’s studying the air in front of him. “Maybe he just decided to put things on hold while he got rid of the only person who could tie him to the killings.”

“Then why not earlier? Why not the night he painted our door red? Why not just come in and kill us all? Why wait until now?”

“Rose said he was having fun. When he painted the door.”

A very drunk Japanese man bumps Arthit from behind and backs away, bowing, until he bumps into someone else.

“There’s someone who’ll be lucky to have a wallet tomorrow,” Arthit says. He starts walking again. “Don’t worry about it. Your idea was solid. We found the bar. We’ve got the girl. Everybody in Patpong is looking for him. He’ll show, and we’ll have him.”

“It doesn’t work,” Rafferty says. “He sees us in the restaurant, paints the door to scare us, and then disappears. Rose guesses he’s got a girl and he’s busy with her, and that’s apparently true. But suddenly he’s back, kicking in the door to kill us, trying to kidnap Miaow. I understand why he wants us dead. Rose is probably the only person who can tie him to the killings. What I don’t understand is why he’s suddenly got time to pay attention to us. I don’t understand why that girl is in the club tonight.” He pauses. “Maybe it has something to do with John?”

“How would he even know about John?” Arthit asks. You and Kosit said he was around the corner and in that cab, going in the other direction, by the time John got hit.”

“I don’t know,” Rafferty says again. “But there’s
something
I don’t understand, because she shouldn’t have been in that bar.”

“So,” Arthit says, “let’s go see her.”

They cross to the far curb on Patpong 2 and head left, past a decent French restaurant, a little hostess bar, a blow-job dump, and a pharmacy. On their left are a couple of open-air bars that do most of their business in the afternoon, before the go-go clubs open. The men occupying the stools constitute a representative assortment of
Caucasianus patpongus
, mostly in their forties and fifties, mostly overweight, mostly drunk. Someone who looks like Horner, Rafferty thinks, would have cut through the competition like a bright new scalpel. Even before he met Rose, Rafferty knew that some of the Patpong girls were as susceptible to a romantic fantasy as any starstruck teenager. For every ten who saw the customers as ambulatory ATMs, there was always one—usually a new one—who still had her illusions.