The Queen of Patpong (34 page)

He can hear them breathe.

There are fewer girls in front of him, between him and the vendors’ booths, so he takes a step in that direction, and the girls fade back, toward the booths. He grins, feeling the sharp tug of pain from the stitch in his lip, and takes two more steps, the women moving with him, maintaining their distance, and the fourth or fifth step takes him off the sidewalk and into the street.

Piece of cake. All he has to do is
walk
at them.

And he hears the curtains over the Kit-Kat’s entrance rustle behind him, and he turns his head to see the remaining girls from the Kit-Kat come through it. Sees still more women from both sides of the entrance close in to join them until they’re six or eight deep. He is at the center of a circle of women, and the circle continues to thicken in all directions.

Nobody says a word.

But he can hear the tourists complaining, their way blocked, until the oddness of the sight strikes them and they, too, fall silent. He sees a hand go up beyond the circle, now at least twenty women thick, and hold up a cell phone. It flashes as the tourist snaps his picture.

Horner stands absolutely still, his eyes roving over the crowd. He takes off the sunglasses to show them his eyes, drops them to the road, and steps on them.

In the silence the crunch of glass and plastic underfoot seems amplified.

When he’s surveyed the women in front of him and on either side, he lets his head fall forward and he studies the surface of the road. He lifts his foot and looks at the shards and the twisted frame of his sunglasses for a long moment, seeing the tips of the dancing shoes and boots less than three yards away. He counts to eight, takes a long slow breath, and jumps.

He covers the ground to the nearest girls before anyone can make a sound. He slaps his hands on the shoulders of the woman directly in front of him and starts to pivot her so he can get an arm around her throat, but she reaches up and backhands his broken nose and then balls up a fist and hits him square on the stitched lip. His eyes fill with tears, and he lets go of her and brings both hands to his bleeding face, bending forward against the pain, and a searing flash of heat erupts in his lower back. When he grabs at it, he feels the hard shape of a knife. He tries to yank it out, but it’s already being pulled away, and his fingers close on the moving blade.

He straightens, amazed, and stares at the ribbon of blood flowing from his hand. Fury seizes him and twists him around to find the woman with the knife, but he doesn’t see a knife, just women backing away from him, stone-faced, and then something slams against the base of his skull, hard enough to jolt his vision, and he whirls to see a woman dressed like an idiot’s erotic dream of a cowgirl backpedaling, with a set of brass knuckles on her right fist.

His lunge in her direction is brought up short by a stab in the back of his right thigh, and then a long burning river of pain down his back, a long swipe with the edge of a blade. When he turns this time, the woman with the knife is
right there,
and he wraps his fingers around her throat, ignoring her slashes to the backs of his hands, but then he feels a deep slice behind his right knee, severing one of the tendons, and he sags to the right and lets go of her and puts a hand down to break his fall, but he recovers his balance and stands there, his weight on his left leg, swaying slightly and starting to feel little sparkles in his head, a kind of fizziness that he knows means he is losing blood.

He lets his eyes rove over the line of women in front of him. There are knives everywhere, cheap switchblades and gravity knives, crap shiny Chinese steel that he knows will be sharp only once, will never take an edge after it’s dulled, and he thinks a complete sentence:
It’s sharp enough now.

He pulls himself to his full height, leaning left
.
There’s a scuttle on the asphalt behind him, and something else penetrates his skin, near his spine this time, the blow feeling dull rather than sharp, but he doesn’t even turn. He just stares across the tops of the bar girls’ heads to the tallest woman he sees, a full head above them, looking back at him. Looking at him as though he were already dead.

As the knife behind him seeks his spine again, she smiles at him.

RAFFERTY SEES HIM
go down, sees the center of the circle narrow and almost close, like the iris of a camera lens. Women grunt and pant with effort, and there’s a roiling at the center, heads darting in and then drifting back, replaced immediately by others. For a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees his wife, but then she’s gone, and he and Arthit are plunging into the crowd of women with Kosit beside them, both cops shouting “Police! Police!” and tossing the women aside. The women in front of them turn back to face them, and then, slowly, reluctantly, jostling one another, they part.

In the center of the circle, Horner is on his back on the pavement. His arms are thrown out, and one knee is drawn up. His head lolls to one side, and his eyelids are half closed, but Rafferty thinks he can feel the man’s gaze.

Arthit says, loudly enough to be heard to the circle’s far edge, “None of you move. There are police coming from all directions. Anyone who tries to run will go straight to jail.”

The women stay where they are, watching Rafferty and Arthit come. Rafferty sees the glint of steel in hands on all sides, and then, as the row of women in front of the night-market booths thins, he sees the unbroken expanse of white cloth where the knives and brass knuckles had gleamed in the light.

“You need to stay here, all of you,” Arthit calls again. “Everybody in the back, tighten up. Don’t let anybody in.”

Rafferty hears feet scrape pavement all around him, and the circle becomes almost solid, women shoulder to shoulder, staring at him and Arthit, more interested than afraid. Horner is a still figure at the end of the path that’s been cleared for them. Rafferty takes five more steps, and Horner is at his feet.

A knife stands upright in his chest. The blade had sunk in only an inch or two before Horner fell away from it, and four inches of naked steel gleam above his bloody shirt. At the edge of his vision, Rafferty sees that Arthit is looking at him, but when he turns toward his friend, Arthit slowly raises his eyes to the tangle of electrical lines above the street and stands there studying them. Rafferty waits until it is clear that Arthit is lost in contemplation of Bangkok wiring, and then, his pulse suddenly racing, he lifts his foot, puts the sole of his shoe on the handle of the knife, and presses down.

A sigh escapes the circle of women.

Without looking down at Horner, Arthit says, raising his voice only slightly, “Listen to me. Is there anyone who can’t hear me clearly?”

No response. Women in one-piece bathing suits, flimsy wraps, bikinis, T-shirts, cowboy hats, all looking at him.

“You all came out here because there was a rumor that this man was— Who’s your favorite movie star?”

A woman beside Rafferty—one of the heavy women from Bottoms Up—says, “Johnny Depp.”

“Somebody said he was Johnny Depp,” Arthit says. “You ran out here, and he wasn’t. He was just a drunk
farang
who fell down in the street. Is there anyone who doesn’t understand this?”

Once again no answer.

“That’s what you tell
everyone.
The customers in your bars, the cops if more come around. You came to see Johnny Depp, but it was someone else. And get rid of those weapons, now. All of you go back to work, except for the ones who are right here.” He makes a full circle with his finger. “Count the heads in front of you, in between you and me. If there are four, go away. If there are three or less, stay here.”

The outer layers of the circle peel away, women heading back to their bars. Not many of them bother to look back.

“I need you to stay tight around us,” Arthit says. “We’re going to take him to Silom.” He pulls his cell phone from his pocket, pushes a speed-dial number, and says, “Anand. Send Wan back to work. Tell her we’re through for the night. Meet us in the car in two minutes.” He repockets the phone. “Kosit?”

Kosit and Arthit kneel and get their arms under Horner. Each grabs one of Horner’s arms and hangs it over his own shoulders. Then they tug him upright. Horner’s head drops to his chest so sharply that Rafferty can hear his teeth snap together.

“Poke. Get that knife out of his chest.”

Rafferty grabs the handle of the knife and pulls it out. He’s suddenly dizzy with exhaustion, stranded by an outgoing tide of adrenaline. He has no idea what to do with the knife.

“Hang on to it,” Arthit says. He raises his voice again. “You women move with us. Keep the circle tight. We’re going to a car parked at the end of the street on Silom, and I don’t want anyone getting close to us. If anybody asks, he’s a drunk who got in a fight. Clear?”

A chorus of affirmatives.

“Here we go. One. Two. Three.” Slowly and clumsily, the circle begins to glide toward Silom. “Make noise,” Arthit says to the girls. “Talk, laugh.” To Kosit he says, “Anand will drive. You sit in back with our friend here and make sure he doesn’t die of his injuries.”

Kosit says, “Got it.”

“Poke,” Arthit says. “Give him the knife.”

Rafferty does.

“That’s the knife we don’t want him to die from,” Arthit says. With a glance toward Rafferty, he continues. “If he does die, there’s no point in taking up valuable hospital space, and we don’t want to bother the Americans.”

Kosit says, “The river.”

“Why not?” Arthit says. “It’s already polluted.”

Chapter 30
The Final Curtain

T
he level of audience enthusiasm, which had dropped off a bit when Ferdinand and Miranda came out for their bows, spikes sharply as Miaow runs onto the stage in her mirrored cloak. There are even some cheers, mostly, it seems, from kids. The follow spot hits her, making her the center of a blaze of light until the boy behind the spot snaps it off. He wasn’t supposed to turn it on in the first place; it’s Rafferty’s guess that it’s his way of applauding.

The whole cast is lined up now, and Prospero limps onstage, slowly abandoning his crouch as he goes, as though to amaze the audience by revealing that he isn’t really an old man after all, but the flourish doesn’t get the anticipated response. In fact, the applause drops off somewhat. It remains at a polite level as he takes his place in the center of the line, and then it increases slightly as everyone bows in unison, and the curtain falls.

They stand, Rose grabbing Rafferty’s arm and hugging it to her. “Wasn’t she wonderful?”

“She was,” he says. “And what about that adaptation?”

“It was long.”

“It was a lot longer before I got to it.” He stands in the aisle as she slips out of the row, and they edge down the slope toward the stage, threading their way between the people heading up toward the exits at the rear of the auditorium.

Rose looks over at him, wearing his one jacket and tie, and then down at the clothes she bought herself for the evening, a loose, off-the-shoulder blouse in a silvery material and a pair of midnight-black velvet pants. “We’re a handsome couple.”

“You raise the average,” Rafferty says.

She pats his cheek in a matronly fashion. “It was a great adaptation.”

He takes her hand and leads her toward the stage door to the right of the orchestra pit. Even before they get the door open, they can hear the hubbub of voices behind the curtain.

Rose had sat forward in her seat when the lights went down and the curtain went up to reveal the shipwreck, played way downstage to the accompaniment of wind and wave sounds, with airborne handfuls of silver confetti to simulate splashing water. But after the sailors staggered off the stage clutching their masts and sails and the silhouetted black rock of Prospero’s island had loomed in front of the gray cyclorama, she had sunk her nails into his wrist. Not until Luther and Siri were well into their eternal opening dialogue did she sit back and relax, only to claw him again when Miaow exploded into sight on top of the rock. Three or four minutes into Miaow’s scene, Rose had wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. When Trinculo and Stephano had stumbled onstage, she’d laughed.

“You told me the clowns were terrible,” she says as they climb the stairs to the stage.

“Well, they were until tonight. The kid who played Trinculo was great.”

“He was the little one?”

“In the big yellow cape.”

“He was funny. And he’s almost as little as Miaow.”

At the top of the stairs, Rafferty stops. “We’ve just seen the final curtain, right?”

“What’s that mean, the final curtain?”

“When the play ended, just now. Everything was solved, everybody was saved, and all the secrets came out. Didn’t they?”

Rose’s face assumes an expression Rafferty can only characterize as complicated. “Yes,” she says with some caution in her voice.

“So,” he says. “Were you or weren’t you in Patpong that night? And don’t ask me which night.”

Rose gives him a full and frank gaze and says, “You told me to stay at Arthit’s. So of
course
I stayed at Arthit’s.”

They stand there, looking at each other and listening to the cheers and laughter from the stage.

“Well,” Rafferty says, “I’m glad that’s settled.” He opens the door, and they step around a bunch of canvas rocks and find themselves far stage left.

“Oh,” Rose says, staring up. “Oh, my.”

From where they stand, the mighty rock is a jumbled construct of two-by-fours covered with heavy canvas, with three sets of roll-up stairs staggered beneath it to hold Miaow up. Looking at it from this perspective, Rafferty is happy he hadn’t known how fragile the structure actually is. He wouldn’t have been able to think about anything else whenever Miaow was on her path.

Rose says, “I wish I’d seen it this way first.”

Clumps of people have gathered all over the stage, each attracted by one of the actors, and Mrs. Shin trots from group to group. Luther So stands, theatrically exhausted and literally mopping his brow, in the middle of a mob that looks like half the population of Chinatown, while Siri clasps a funereal armload of flowers, undoubtedly presented to her by the mob of adoring boys that presses on her from all sides. Her onstage lover, Ferdinand, is playing to a coterie of boys who seem to be wearing discreet makeup.

Rafferty hears half a dozen languages: English, Thai, Mandarin, what may be Swedish from Siri’s parents, who are trying to elbow their way through the boys, Italian from somewhere, and a few he doesn’t recognize.

“She’s over there,” Rose says.

Rafferty looks and sees first a bulky cape wrapped around one of the scrawniest little boys he’s ever seen, a kid whose shoulders are barely wider than his neck and whose thick glasses, which he hadn’t worn on the stage, are the size of silver dollars. His parents, not much bigger than he is but just as studious-looking, flank him proudly, and in the middle, her back turned to Rafferty and Rose, is Miaow, still wearing her mirrors.

“Trink-something,” Rose says.

Rafferty says, “Wait a minute.” He opens the program and runs his finger down the cast list. He comes to Trinculo and follows the line of dots to the actor’s name: Andrew Nguyen.

He starts to laugh.

“What is it?” Rose says.

“Nothing.” Miaow has heard his laugh and turned, and she waves them to her, her face incandescent with happiness. When they reach her, she hugs Rose and then Rafferty.

“Where’s Pim?” Miaow asks.

“At Arthit’s,” Rose says. “Learning to be a maid. You were wonderful.”

“Thank you,” Miaow says politely, but it’s clear she has something else on her mind. She steps to one side, inhales, breathes out, and inhales again. “Mom,” she says. “Dad.” She swallows and turns to the kid drowning in the yellow cape. “This is Andy.”