Read The Queen of Patpong Online
Authors: Timothy Hallinan
T
here are nine of them in all, and Rose’s partner, Peachy, makes ten. With the exception of Peachy, who’s wearing enough makeup to sing opera, the women are scrubbed and natural, their hair pulled back simply into ponytails or braids. Fon’s hair has been gathered on top of her head and rubber-banded, the hair exploding straight up and then fanning out like a little black volcano. Except for two of them, Fon and Rose, they retain little of the allure they’d once projected onstage in the bars of Patpong. Some of them are so determinedly plain it looks intentional, a way of erasing who they were in the past.
They’re sitting on the floor, most of them with their feet tucked politely to one side, each with a cup of tea or one of Miaow’s dwindling supply of Cokes. Five or six of them are smoking, as is Rose. Every time Miaow comes into the room, she fans her hand and makes a face. A few of the women blow smoke at her.
A piece of paper is being passed from hand to hand. One of the women scans it and says, “The Kit-Kat.”
“Good,” Rafferty says, writing it on his own piece of paper. “That’s twenty-seven.”
Fon says, “What’s that upstairs place up near Surawong? Used to be the Baby Bar?”
“The Lap Bar,” Rafferty says. “We’ve got it.”
“I’m getting old,” Fon says. “That’s where you and Arthit went to scare my little sister. I’ve blanked it from my mind. And it was only a few days ago.”
“Poke terrified her,” Arthit says from his chair at the dining-room table, where he’s watching the proceedings with a certain amount of bemusement.
“He has that effect on women,” Rose says. She looks at her own list. “I’ve got twenty-eight. The Lap Bar makes twenty-nine.”
“The Butterfly,” says one of the other women. “And Lolita’s, ugh. And I think Poke’s cute.”
Writing the names of the bars, Rafferty says, “I think I’m cute, too. I’ve only got twenty-eight.”
“So I’ve got one more than you do,” Rose says to him. “Why don’t I read my list, and everybody try to figure out if we’re missing any.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Rafferty gets up from the floor, feeling as if every muscle in his body has been hammered by dwarfs. He walks stiffly down the hallway to the kitchen, where Pim and Miaow are tossing paper plates and scraping leftovers into Baggies. “This is what I like to see,” he says. “The next generation of womanhood, turning its back on feminism.”
Miaow shows him a white container that holds about an ounce of some kind of chicken with sauce. “Is this worth keeping?”
“Was it good?”
She shrugs. “It was okay.”
“Gimme.” He takes it away from her and picks up a used plastic fork.
Miaow says, “Eeeeewww. Disgusting.”
“We are all one,” Rafferty says, wiggling his eyebrows mysteriously, and Pim laughs. “You’re right,” he says, eating. “It’s just okay. How’s your head?”
“If we’re all one,” Miaow says, “you shouldn’t have to ask.”
“I guess that means you’re all right.” He scrapes up the rest of the chicken, which has turned out to be lobster. “You were great today,” he says.
“When?”
“On the stage. As Ariel.”
The hand in which Miaow held the food container is still extended, but she’s forgotten it. She says, “Really?”
“Really. You’re the best thing in the play, and Mrs. Shin knows it.”
“Siri’s good,” Miaow says with a sideways glance at him.
“Miaow. She’s awful. She’s pretty, but she thinks she’s in a silent movie.”
“Are you really acting in a play?” Pim asks.
“Sort of.” Miaow is suddenly very busy wiping her hands on her jeans.
“I always wanted to be a movie star,” Pim says. She blushes a deep red.
“It’s only a school play,” Miaow says. She is talking directly to the tabletop. “Just kids.”
Pim says,
“Still.”
“She’s terrific,” Rafferty says. “You can come with us when we go to see it.”
Miaow straightens slightly, but then she gives Pim a quick look, sees just a normal, everyday, plump teenager in a T-shirt, and her shoulders relax.
“Can I really?” Pim asks. She directs the question to Miaow, not Rafferty.
Miaow says, “It’ll be boring.”
“Oh, no. I’ve never seen a play.”
Rafferty says to Miaow, “And you know when else you were terrific today?”
Miaow almost smiles. “Yes.”
“When you grabbed that guy’s balls.”
Pim drops a fork on the floor and stoops to pick it up.
“Street trick,” Miaow says. “Boo taught me.” Boo is the street kid who took care of Miaow when she was first abandoned on the Bangkok sidewalks.
“He’d have been proud of you.”
“Oh, no,” she says. “He’d have been a critic. He’d have told me I did it all wrong. He’d have given me lessons.” She takes the empty container out of Rafferty’s hand and reaches for the fork. Looking at the fork, she says, “The man got killed, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
She drops the fork into the container and drops the container into the trash. “Good.”
“And you know that Mrs. Pongsiri is going to be okay.”
Miaow nods. “Yes.”
“And you’re sure your head doesn’t hurt.”
She finally smiles at him. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m not supposed to. It’s my job.”
Pim says, “What is?”
“Being her dad. Not that she makes it easy.”
Pim says, “I’ve noticed.”
BACK IN THE LIVING ROOM,
Rose says, “Volcano Bar,” and two hands go up. She writes the women’s names and says, “Bangkok Strip.” One hand. Rose says, “Gosh, Nit, you really got around,” and the other women laugh.
Nit, who has chiseled, highly defined hill-tribe features and pale skin that betray her Chinese blood, says, “If I had a thousand baht for every bar I danced in, I wouldn’t be mopping floors.”
“Well, we’d miss you.” Rose looks down at the page. “So there are only six bars none of us ever worked in.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Fon says, and the women laugh again.
Peachy, who’s been sitting on the sidelines, says, “Were some bars better than others?” She’s the only woman in the room who’s never worked in the sex industry.
“Yes and no,” Nit says. “They were like the houses we clean, but smokier. Some people are good to work for and some aren’t. You know, some of them cheat you—”
“All the bars cheat you,” another woman says.
“But some are worse than others. Some of them steal your drink commissions or say you missed days when you actually showed up, so they can fine you. Some of them want you to go with every man who asks you. They fine you if they think you said no too often.”
Peachy says, “Oh, my.” She clasps her hands in her lap, a gesture that always makes Rose think Peachy would be happier wearing white lace gloves. “What
about
the men?”
“They’re the same in every bar,” Fon says. “They’re the same everywhere in the world.”
“Not here,” Rafferty says. “Arthit and I are princes.”
There’s a knock at the door. Arthit gets up, saying to Rafferty, “Sit. One gun is enough.”
“A gun?” Nit asks.
“Joking,” Arthit says, picking his way between the women. There’s another, louder knock. “Cop,” he announces. “Only cops are that rude.” He disappears around the corner of the hallway, and they hear the door open. Arthit comes back in with Kosit in tow. Kosit is holding a large manila envelope.
Rose says, “Let me see them.”
“Wait,” Kosit says. He opens the flap on the envelope and sorts through the pictures with a fingernail, without removing them. Then he pulls one out and holds it to his belly so only the back shows, and he hands the envelope to Rose.
She lifts her chin in the direction of the one he’s hiding. “What’s that one?”
“Not Horner,” Kosit says.
“Then who? I took the pictures, and I think they’re all of—”
“You didn’t take this one.”
“Okay,” Rose says, sliding the pictures out of the envelope. “Be mysterious.” She flips through them, her face rigid with distaste. “These are better,” she says. “This is the best.” She holds up a color photo of Horner, a medium shot that shows him sitting at a table in what appears to be an open-air restaurant. He’s wearing a T-shirt and leaning back in his chair, supremely confident. He’d been eating when Rose pushed the shutter, and he has a knife in his hand, point upward.
“Oh,” Nit says, looking startled. “I remember him.”
Arthit says, “Did he take someone from your bar?”
“A few girls, I think. I went with him once or twice.”
Peachy fans herself.
“You’re sure it’s the same man?” Arthit asks. “After all this time?”
“He’s handsome,” Nit says, as though that explains it. “I went with him.”
“Which bar?”
“Not in Patpong. Over on Soi Cowboy. The Play Room. It’s closed now.”
“Did all the girls come back? I mean, after they went away with him, did any of them disappear?”
“Maybe.” Nit looks over at Rose and then back at Arthit. “Why are we talking about him?”
Arthit says, “Before you go any further with this, Poke, I want to cover two things. First, I want to make sure that everyone here knows that this man has killed at least five bar girls.”
Peachy gasps theatrically, but the other women just look at one another. Nit, eyes narrowed, says, “Five’s a lot.”
“There are probably more,” Arthit says.
“Her name was Ploy,” Nit says. She shifts as though the floor has become uncomfortable. “He took her for a few weeks at a time for almost a year, and then he bought her out for a month and she didn’t come back.”
“Nobody worried about her?” Arthit says.
“She told us she thought they might get married and she wouldn’t be working anymore.”
Rose says, “Fon. Remember when we talked about me marrying him?”
“Yes. It was pouring. The rain ruined my hair.”
“That was his idea. He said it would be good for me to talk it over with someone.”
“So you tell Fon and Fon tells everybody in the bar,” Rafferty says. “And when the girl doesn’t come back, nobody pays attention.”
Arthit says to Nit, “When did he take Ploy?” He’s pulled a pad from his trouser pocket and is looking for a pen. Rose extends hers, and he takes it.
“Mmmmm, hard to say. Four years ago? Five? Maybe 2005.”
“Do we have one in 2005?” Rafferty asks.
“In the first bunch he found,” Arthit says. To the women he says, “We have a cop looking through unsolved cases to find women this man might have killed. What month did he take Ploy?”
Nit says, “I don’t know. Summer, I think.”
“She washed up in August,” Arthit says. He puts his left hand on top of his right shoulder and rubs, hard. “God
damn
him.”
Nit says, in a tiny voice, “Ploy was a nice girl.”
“Here’s the second thing,” Arthit says. “I want Poke to tell all of you—and me, while he’s at it—exactly what he’s got in mind for you. What he wants you to do, and why, and how he’s going to guarantee your safety.”
“Fine.” Rafferty sits. “We’re going to create a storm, and we’re going to wait for him to come to us.”
“A
storm
?” Arthit says. “It must be nice to have the time to be metaphorical.”
“Mapmakers used to use figures of gods or beasts blowing on the water to indicate prevailing winds and storm areas. That’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to blow on the water. We’re going to create a magical storm area just for Howard Horner, one that won’t affect anyone else. We’ll fix it so every bar worker and every vendor in Patpong, hundreds of people, will recognize him on sight. We’re going to find the bar his current girl works in, and if he hasn’t taken her already, we’re going to spirit her away. When he comes into the bar, he’ll be told she’s gone out to eat and that he should wait for her. Then they’ll call us. If he goes into a different bar, or if someone spots him on the sidewalk, they’ll call us.”
“Who will?” Rose asks.
“The mama-san. The girls. The only real problem is if he’s already taken her down to Phuket, but I doubt that, because we just saw him and we hurt him.”
“He’s not going to slow down because he’s hurt,” Rose says. “As long as he can walk, he’ll come up with some story and use it to make the girl feel sorry for him. Then he can flatter her, tell her only she can make him feel better.”
“Even if he’s on his way down there,” Arthit says, “there are two cops at the airport in Phuket with these pictures. He won’t make it out of the terminal.”
“So,” Rafferty says, “here’s what we’re going to do: In half an hour or so, we’re going to go to the copy shop on Silom at the foot of Patpong and make about ninety color photocopies of the picture Rose is holding. Then the women here tonight, the ones who agree to help, will go into the bars they used to work in and talk to the mama-san. The idea is to get the mama-san to let you stand at the edge of the stage as each shift comes off and to make sure all the girls see the picture. Every girl, even the ones who are in the restroom. If girls are out on short-times, the mama-san will show them the picture when they come back in.”
“And you think they’ll all remember him if he comes in?” Arthit asks.
“If we tell them that he killed those women. That should get their attention.” Rafferty looks back at the women. “Oh, I kind of messed his face up—”
“Good for you,” Nit says.
“So you should tell them he might have some injuries, maybe even bandages.”
Kosit, who’s been standing near Rose with the photo still pressed to his stomach, says, “Wait a minute.” He navigates between the seated women to the dining room and shows the picture to Arthit, then leans down and whispers into Arthit’s ear. When he sees the photo, Arthit’s upper lip lifts to reveal his teeth, and he darts a look at Rose. He turns his attention back to the photograph.
He says to Kosit, “Good idea.”
Kosit says, “This is ugly, but you should see it.” He holds up the picture as the women crane at it and, one by one, turn away. They look at the window, at the floor, at their laps, at each other. The room is completely silent.
“Girl number two, the second one we found in the files,” Kosit says. “From 2007.”
Even from where Rafferty’s sitting, the photograph is a window into horror. The woman is colorless and cold-looking, with skin like white wax. Her eyes are rolled back as though she’s seeing something high above her head, and her wet hair streams out onto the dented table. The water-puckered, fish-slick skin has been sliced to ribbons. The cuts, long bled out and laundered by the sea, open into more whiteness.