The Queen of Patpong

Chapter 6

He jumps when it becomes inescapably clear that he can't possibly run fast enough, and that the truck driver has no intention of slowing. His leap carries him to the center island, the truck's wind on the back of his neck and traffic screaming by in front of him and behind him, and he stutter-steps to keep from pitching face-first onto the pavement. When he's got his forward momentum under control, he stands there gasping carbon monoxide and heat from the pavement, and he checks the far sidewalk. Fifteen yards to the right, an old man is down on his knees and elbows on the sidewalk, crumpled like a swatted spider above a spill of groceries. A knot of Samaritans is beginning to form around him, and one man is shouting up the street, hurling curses after John.

Who has to be running. Rafferty lets his eyes roam right, and there he is, about two-thirds of the way down the boulevard to Soi 10: John, hauling ass at a good clip, running effortlessly, as though it were something he could do all day. Rafferty checks the traffic and plunges into the stream of vehicles, zigzagging through the moving maze to the curb and then loping along in the street, right at the edge, jumping up onto the sidewalk whenever a car comes too close. He's gaining on John, who looks to be in much better shape but is forcing his way through the inevitable Sukhumvit pedestrian throng.

On the other side of the boulevard, the side Rafferty just left, the vendors have already built their brightly lighted obstacle course, selling flick knives, pornography, Buddha images, and brass knuckles, the everyday Bangkok mix of veneration and violence. John obviously chose this side of the road, which is relatively vendor-free, in case he had to run, since it's impossible to maintain even a brisk walk on the other side. So he'd thought he might have to run. Or maybe he'd set it up so he would have to run and so Rafferty would chase along after him, a good little lemming, into whatever snare Horner has prepared.

But what's the alternative? Rafferty picks up his pace.

Ahead of him, John bulls his way to the curb and steps into the street, looking left-an American's most dangerous Bangkok mistake-and just barely misses getting run down by a motorcycle, which swerves around him with only inches to spare. John does a little "can't stop" dance, windmilling his arms and turning his head the other way to see what's going to kill him, but he catches sight of Rafferty before his head has whipped all the way around, and the sight makes him pause just long enough for another bike to tear by, the driver giving him a gravelly horn. Then he looks in the correct direction, assesses the traffic, and dives in.

He's not even breathing hard. Where Rafferty feels as though the asphalt is jumping up to meet him, jamming his joints and making his teeth click like castanets, John seems to glide, running beside a car occasionally to get the speed he needs to slip between it and the one behind, and then he's made it to the median divider, which has a thigh-high fence running down the center of it. He vaults the fence effortlessly, and a horn screams in Rafferty's ear, moving up the scale as the source approaches in a lethal-sounding Doppler effect, and something clips his elbow-a Jeep, he sees, as it speeds past-and leaves him cradling an arm that's suddenly gone numb, not a good sign, and as he plows toward the divider he cups the elbow in his hand and feels something wet and warm.

Also not a good sign.

Well, sure it's blood-what did he expect? — but there's no time to stop and survey the damage now, because John is off the divider, running with the traffic instead of through it, sticking to the edge of the divider and heading for Soi 9 and the lower numbers beyond. Rafferty gets to the island without knowing how he did it and runs on his side of it, watching John and leaving to the oncoming drivers the challenge of not running over him. He gets a lot of horns and some shouts, but everyone manages to avoid damaging their paint jobs, and Rafferty is feeling a burning under his lungs by the time John angles off to his right and into traffic, heading for the far side of the street.

And the numbness in his arm is wearing off. It hurts significantly.

But there's nothing he can do about it, and he speeds up. John will have to slow for the vendors' stands, but Rafferty continues his accelerated plod on his side of the road divider as John charts a course on toward the booths. John's made another Bangkok duffer's mistake, though, because he doesn't know, until his ignorance almost kills him, that traffic in the curbside lane of Sukhumvit goes in the opposite direction from all the other traffic on that side of Sukhumvit, and a taxi misses by a couple of inches the opportunity to spread him over the pavement. John stumbles into the rear of a stand and nearly goes down.

And Rafferty's up on the divider, clearing the low fence without difficulty, figuring that John's misstep has got to be good for five or ten yards. But the other man is already up and lengthening his stride. Rafferty figures he's lucky if he gained ten feet.

And now he has to keep up.

The knot under his heart and the cramp in his side remind him that he hasn't been going to the gym, but he discovers he can forget the cramp and the knot in his chest if he just concentrates on his arm, which hurts like hell. He risks a glance down and sees lots of blood running along the underside of his forearm and making a red octopus over the back of his hand. For a moment his head goes kind of bubbly and light and the day seems to brighten at the edges.

Well, there isn't time to faint, so he concentrates on his breathing-suck big gulps of air in, empty his lungs completely on the out breath-and he feels the weight returning to his body, and he registers again the solidity of the street beneath his feet. The elbow hurts like a newly orphaned son of a bitch, and he focuses on the long train of pain running up his arm and uses it to push him forward.

He stumbles along for two more blocks, his breath in tatters and the clot of pain beneath his heart gradually narrowing into something focused and hot. Just as he thinks he'll never catch the man, he sees John charge the curb and head to his right, into Soi 7.

Rafferty knows Soi 7 from his earliest days in Bangkok, pre-Rose, when he occasionally browsed the city's meat markets for temporary companionship. He's at the mouth of the soi less than a minute after John entered it.

But there's no John in sight. Rafferty stands there gasping at the day, while he orients himself. Just behind the first row of buildings and shops, an alley angles off to the left, leading into a warren of little streets that are perfect for getting lost in. Directly ahead the soi stretches into a straightaway, and John's not in it. To the immediate right is a large outdoor restaurant. A couple of billiards bars face the street through darkened windows, one on each side of the soi, and halfway down the block on the left is the Beer Garden.

If John's spent much time in Bangkok, he hasn't spent it wandering around on his own. He almost got clipped in the street because he forgot that Thais drive on the left, so he's probably not aware that the alley leads to a maze. Scratch going left, at least as an operating hypothesis. Rafferty doesn't see him at any of the tables in the outside restaurant, and he's not dwindling into perspective down the soi. That leaves the pool-table bars and the Beer Garden.

Most guys who come solo to Bangkok learn about the Beer Garden within a few days. In a town where the nighttime action is literally overwhelming, the days can seem positively dreary. For a man who's in the market at 3:30 P.M., the Beer Garden is a shining exception.

And a dangerous place to chase someone into.

The problem is that there's only one official entrance, and every seat in the place faces it. That wouldn't be such an issue if there weren't three hundred seats. The Beer Garden is enormous. On any day of the week, there are likely to be a hundred to a hundred fifty farang men and as many as two hundred women, many of whom are standing or circulating, looking for a free drink, a meal, or a welcoming lap. Plenty of room for old John, plus Howard and a dozen of their friends to be sitting there, watching the door, waiting for the rabbit to stroll into the trap.

Rafferty pushes open the door of the pool-table bar to his right and sticks his head in, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness as the hostesses hurry toward him. There's a herd of them, and a quick look around makes it clear that Rafferty will have all their attention, because there's not a customer in the place. He waves off the women who are nearest and yanks the door closed.

He turns, irresolute for a second: Check the other bar or brave the Beer Garden? The day brightens again, and he closes his eyes and feels the street start to move beneath his feet. As he opens his eyes, looking for something-anything-that's standing still instead of spinning, he feels a tug at the back of his shirt.

He whirls so fast that he nearly goes down, and the person behind him takes a panicked leap backward. The two of them topple sideways simultaneously, Rafferty coming to rest in a semi-standing position against the wall of the bar and the girl yelping as one of her towering platform shoes rolls sideways. When she finally stops moving, she's bent double, both hands on her left ankle, going, "Oooo-oooo-ooooo."

"I'm sorry," Rafferty says. He pushes himself off the wall and raises both hands to show he's harmless, but she's already taken a little hop away. She lands on the newly sprained ankle and emits a squeak so high it's at the upper limit of Rafferty's hearing. Then she drops to one knee and wraps both hands around her ankle again, looking up at him through a dry frizzle of badly dyed red hair.

"You arm," she says in English. "You arm no good." She raises her right hand and points at his injured elbow as though he might be unaware of it, then grabs her ankle again and says, "You arm. You know you have problem you arm? You know you have ow?" She's short and plump and dark-skinned and ridiculously young, maybe eighteen, wearing a chopped-off T-shirt, red hot pants with a wide white vinyl belt studded with rhinestones, and makeup so thick it looks like she put it on with the lights out.

"I know," Rafferty says. "No problem." Just then his elbow lets loose a giant twinge of contradiction, and he catches his breath and expels it with a chuff like a steam engine. "What about you?" She looks up at him, clearly working on an internal translation. "Your ankle," he says in Thai. "Is it okay?"

"Not okay," she says in English. "But not have… not have…" She thinks for a second and then rubs her heavily lipsticked lower lip with a fingertip, makes a red smear on her bare arm, and points to it.

"Blood," Rafferty says.

She nods eagerly. "Not have blood." She sticks out a pink tongue and licks the lipstick on her arm, then rubs it away with the palm of her hand.

"Look," Rafferty says, "I have to go over there for a second." He points to the dark-windowed billiards bar across the street. "You get up and walk a little." Although he's speaking Thai, she just looks at him, so he imitates a limp for a moment. "You need to walk on it, before it swells up. Take your shoes off and move around. I'll be right back."

She says okay to his back, and he turns at the sound of her voice, but she just smiles at him and says okay again. He starts across the soi, and when he glances back over his shoulder, she is watching him go as if he were her only friend on the playground. She waves but makes no move to get up.

Rafferty nods at her, feeling oddly formal, and crosses the street. One last look reveals her still in a crouch, her hands still cupped around her ankle. When she sees him turn, she smiles again. Her little belly pouches out over the top of her hot pants, her belly button looking like the world's deepest dimple.

He pushes open the door of the billiards bar. It's cool and dim, and neither of the two farang hunched face-to-face over one of the tables is John.

Rafferty shakes his head to slow the approaching hostess and turns back to the street, hearing the door sigh closed behind him. It hits his elbow, and his arm blooms with pain. He grabs his shoulder, which seems to ease the pain slightly, and leans forward, blowing out all the air in his lungs. He stays there, staring at the sidewalk, until the tide of pain has receded to the point where he can breathe regularly. When he straightens and looks across the street, the plump little apprentice tart is right where he left her. She's on one knee, with the injured ankle stretched in front of her, and she's slowly wiggling the foot back and forth. The platform heel on the shoe she's removed has to be six inches high. Rafferty stands there, waiting for the red heat in his arm to subside further, and sees a group of four cigarette-puffing women, older and more seasoned than the one across the street, go through the open space that leads into the Beer Garden. Then come the usual high-frequency cries of delight from their friends, who probably haven't seen the newcomers for at least an hour.

And here Rafferty is, halfway up the block. If he'd been right beside the door, he might have been able to slip in with the women, maybe hunched over a little. Maybe whoever is watching the entrance would have registered the girls and looked away, maybe turned to the person next to him to say-

No. Not these guys. If John's supposed to be watching the door, he'll be watching the door.

Rafferty pulls out his cell phone and pushes the speed dial for Miaow.

"Nobody's behind me," she says, without waiting for his hello. "I'm getting sick, riding backward."

"Sick is better than dead. And you're keeping your eyes open."

"What else have I got to do?" Miaow says. "But there's nobody back there."

"Good. How long until you get home?"

"I'll get home about ten minutes after I throw up." She disconnects.

Across the street the plump girl wobbles to her feet, arms spread as though she's on a tightrope. She takes a step, but when she puts her weight on the bad ankle, she straightens quickly, and Rafferty can hear her shrill squeak over the traffic from the boulevard. With a certain amount of relief, he resigns himself to not confronting John and goes back to her.

The girl leans against the wall of the bar and watches him come. The soi is completely in shadow now, and multicolored lights begin to blink in the boughs of the enormous tree that grows just inside the entrance to the Beer Garden.

She stands like an egret, the foot beneath the injured ankle raised slightly, letting the wall take all her weight. Rafferty kneels in front of her and slides his hands over the ankle, feeling the warmth of the swelling. "This is no good," Rafferty says. "You have to walk on it."

She says, "Too many ow."

"It'll feel better if you put some weight on it. Come on." He gets up and thinks for a second about how to help her without further damaging his bad arm, then goes around to her left side and puts his right arm around his waist. "Lean on me," he says in badly pronounced Thai. "Put about half your weight on the ankle." He starts to walk her in a circle.

"Ooo," she says. A moment later she says "Ooo" again, and he can hear the wince.

"It'll get better."

She says "Ooo" yet again. She has the salty smell of sweat, mixed with something that Rafferty can't place, slightly fragrant, slightly medicinal. Talcum powder, he thinks, with menthol in it, the poor person's cure for prickly heat.

"In a circle," he says, guiding her. "Come on. Put some more weight on it. Don't just put it down like that. Bend it a little when you step on it."

"Buy me drink," the girl says, stopping. "Hot."

"Make a deal. You walk another two minutes by yourself, just keep going in a circle, while I run over to the pharmacy and get some aspirin and a bandage, and I'll buy you whatever you want."

"Want cola," she says.

Someone comes out of the Beer Garden, and Rafferty slows his pace to watch, but it's not John. It's a lanky scarecrow with a pair of women in tow, and Rafferty can almost see the thought balloon above his head, saying, Wait'll I tell them about this back home. God, am I a stud.

"Two lady," the girl says flatly. "Two lady no good."

"Why no good?"

"Ugly," the plump girl says. "One lady, one man okay. Two lady, one man ugly."

"I agree. Walk a minute while I go over there. Then I'll get you your Coke and you can go inside."

"Lady in there no like me," she says, showing no sign of wanting to let go of him.

"Why?"

She shakes her head. "Don't know. No like."

"Because you're young," Rafferty says. "Most of them are getting older. They're aunties."

"But lady in there," she says, and pauses, and he thinks she'll switch to Thai, but she finds her way in English. "Pootiful. Many lady Beer Garden pootiful. Have jewel, have watch. Have tattoo. Me no pootiful. Me fat."

"You're fine," Rafferty says.

"You take me?" She looks hopeful.

"No," Rafferty says. "I'm married."

"Ugly," the girl says. "Fat. Black."

"Oh, give it a rest," Rafferty says in English. In Thai he says, "Walk. Watch the door to the Beer Garden for me. Look for a man. Taller than I am." He lifts his hand, palm down, a couple of inches above his head. "Very short hair, flat on top. White shirt with blue stripes. This wide." He holds up thumb and forefinger, half an inch apart.

"Friend you?"

"No. He's not your friend either. If he comes out, don't get near him. Just watch where he goes, so you can tell me. And keep walking, okay?"

He waits until she starts to limp in a tight circle, toting her shoes in her hands and squeaking like a chipmunk, and then he turns and jogs to Sukhumvit. The pharmacy is about half a block to the right, exactly where he remembered it. He comes out a couple of minutes later, dry-chewing four aspirin and carrying a plastic bag containing some more loose pills, a roll of gauze, some bandages, and a tube of antibiotic cream. The young woman behind the counter had wanted to treat him right there, but he'd fought her off, although he was unable to prevent her from soaking some tissues in water and pressing the sopping wad into his hand. It drips down his bloody arm and onto his shirt as he works his way back through the crowd on the sidewalk, making pink stalactite-shaped stains on the front of his T-shirt like a souvenir of the Cave of Blood.

When he reenters the soi, the girl is at a table with a can of Coke in front of her, the can sweating in the humidity, and she's holding her left foot in both hands, turning it this way and that. She gives a little start when she sees his ruined shirt and then holds out both hands for the bag and the tissues. Even before he's fully seated, she's gently wiping his forearm with the wet tissues, folding them to get a clean surface and wiping some more, then patting the skin dry with napkins.

"Ankle better?"

"Small ow," she says. She places a hand on his upper arm, and with the other she takes his wrist. With a practiced air, she bends the arm at the elbow and then straightens it, taking it through the full range of motion and ignoring Rafferty's grunt of pain.

"Him not come," she says, indicating the Beer Garden with her chin. She returns her attention to his arm, pushing it so the elbow forms an acute angle. "This okay. Not break." To prove it she yanks the arm open and then closes it again, bringing Rafferty three or four inches into the air. "Baby," she says. "All man baby."

"Yeah, well, thanks for the help." He reclaims his arm and opens and closes it gingerly, the pain slowing him like rust on the joint, and then he rotates it for a look at the elbow. He's got a swelling the size of a tomato, and the skin is torn in a jagged three-inch pattern that looks like lightning.

"No problem," she says. "Only dirty. I clean."

"Wiggle your foot around," Rafferty says. "I mean, as long as we're playing doctor."

"Foot okay. Ow, but okay. Same you." With considerable precision she inverts the cap on the tube of ointment to puncture the top, lays a thin line of cream along the zigzag of the tear, and uses a small piece of gauze to spread the ointment on either side. She examines her work and then takes the roll of gauze and begins to mummify his elbow with it.

He says, "Not so tight."

She tugs the gauze a bit tighter and passes it under his arm again. Without looking up she says, "Name you?"

"Poke," he says. "And you?"

"Pim." She rolls the gauze around his arm four more times, nips the edge with small white teeth, and rips it neatly across. Then she folds the end under once, so no loose threads are exposed, smooths it flat across the mound of gauze swathing Rafferty's elbow, and expertly tapes it in place with two elastic Band-Aids. She eyes her work critically, smooths it again, and drops everything back into the bag. "You no die," she says.

"You've done this before," he says.

"Have," she says without meeting his eyes. "Have many baby, my house."

"In the bag," he says. "Three aspirin for your ankle."

"Not like."

"Nobody likes. But they'll keep it from swelling. Take them."

She grimaces in protest but scrounges in the bag until she comes up with the pills. Then she gives them a dubious glance, looks at the Coke in her hand, fills her mouth with Coke, and drops the pills in. Then she swallows convulsively and immediately burps, her free hand splayed out over her sternum.

"There," Rafferty says. "You did great, but don't make it a habit."

Pim puts the can down, blinking fast, and picks up the roll of gauze.

"I'll do it," Rafferty says. "Give me your foot." She puts her foot in his lap, and he starts to wrap the ankle.

"More harder," she says, and he tightens the spiral of cloth.

"Friend you, in there-" She jerks her head back, toward the entrance to the Beer Garden.

"Not a friend," Rafferty says.

She says, "No good?"

"No good." He tugs on the roll, passing it under and over her ankle. "I don't want him to see me, but I need to know where he goes."

"Short hair," Pim says. "Shirt same-same…" She draws vertical stripes down Rafferty's T-shirt, then burps again. "Old, not old?"

"Not old," Rafferty says, and puts in the little barbed clamps to hold the gauze in place. "But I don't think you should-"

"I look," Pim says. She gets up and then squeaks, both hands grabbing at the back of her chair. Says, "Oooo."

"Skip it," Rafferty says. "Not a good idea."

"You say I walking, yes?" Pim says. "So okay, I walk."

"Look." He gets up. "If you're going in there, make me a promise. Don't get anywhere near him. Go in, look around like you're supposed to meet somebody and he's not there. If you don't see him, come out and tell me. If you do see him-" He breaks off. "You've got a cell phone, right?"

"Sure," she says, slightly affronted. "Have."

"Give it to me."

Her lower lip pops out, and for a moment he thinks she will refuse. She has no jewelry yet, no expensive clothes, just cheap, badly sewn junk from the vendors out at Chatuchak Market. At this stage of her life in Bangkok, her phone-the symbol of freedom, the first thing every girl buys-is the only trophy of her new career. She makes a sour face, forces a hand into a pocket in her hot pants, and brings up a thin silvery cell phone that Rafferty recognizes at once as the one Miaow's been asking for.

He has to tug on it twice before she releases it. He keys in his number, then hands it back. "This is me," he says. He puts a hand on her shoulder, a bid for full attention. "If you see him, just turn your back to him and push 'send.' I won't answer-just let it ring once or twice and then hang up. That way you don't have to go right back out again, or get anywhere near me, or talk on the phone, or do anything that might catch his attention. Don't get close to him, don't talk to him, don't do anything that makes him notice you. You go in, look around, and if he's there, you press 'send' and you hang up, understand?"

"Go in, look around, press 'send,' " she says with exaggerated patience, reminding Rafferty that she's just a kid. It's gotten darker now, and her makeup doesn't look quite so garish. He can see the mildly pretty, still-developing face beneath it. Not beautiful, not unforgettable, just the sweet, unassuming transitional prettiness so many young women share. She reaches up and pats the hand on her shoulder, then twists away and out from under it. "I go."

"Hold it," he says. "You had any customers today?"

She opens her mouth, closes it, and then says, "No."

"Okay." He pulls a fold of money out of his jeans and peels off a reddish note. "Here's five hundred baht."

She avoids looking at the money and shakes her head.

"It's for taking care of me. And for checking it out in there. Why should you do all that for free?"

She raises her upper lip and sucks air through her teeth, making a little squealing sound. Then she takes the bill and says, "Thanks."

"Tell me what you're going to do when you get in there."

She shakes her head, fills her cheeks with air, and puffs out. "You same-same my mama. I go in. I look like I want find somebody. If I see, I call you. Hang up. Not go close. Not look him. Okay?"

"Okay." He fights down the urge to tell her again to be careful and stands there watching her limp barefoot across the street, shoes dangling from her left hand, a girl from the northeast who'd been a village teenager six or eight weeks ago. Now she's been cast on the surface of the Bangkok ocean like chum. Food for sharks.

She's inside, and Rafferty fights off a wave of uneasiness. He picks up her can of Coke and finishes it without tasting it, his eyes on the entrance. Without looking down he puts his phone on the table so he'll see it light up in his peripheral vision. It doesn't, and he knows he's got to move or he'll jump out of his skin.

She'll be fine, he thinks, crossing the street. The Beer Garden is full of people. She'll be one girl among a couple of hundred. She's not going anywhere near him. Go in, look for somebody, push a button. It's simple. And even if everything goes wrong, even if John has somehow seen them together outside the Beer Garden, what could he do to her with all those people around?

Rafferty positions himself about half a block to the right of the door, on the Beer Garden's side of the street. He figures John will head right, toward Sukhumvit, once he comes out. He'll be able to get a cab more easily there. Rafferty settles in to wait.

The phone doesn't ring. He has an irrational impulse to shake it.

And then it does.

He checks it and sees

Unknown number, which is what he expects, so he puts it in his pocket and prepares to settle in and wait for John. But it rings again, and again.

He fishes it out of his pocket, but it stops. Then, just as he starts to put it back, it rings again. He opens it and hears nothing, then a high, thin "Oooooo" and a choking sound, and then a clatter like the phone hitting a hard floor. Then it disconnects.