Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery)

by Randall Peffer

  She wants to lie. She thinks he wants her to be something more than a common little Patpong luk sod. She is still scared that he only loves her illusion, that he is too straight for anything but dinner with a girl like her. She wants to make up a story about being the child of wealthy Vietnamese movie stars who the communists murdered. She wants to say Tuki is the survivor of the Killing Fields, the adopted foster child of a jade merchant … who tried to rape her when she was thirteen, so she ran away to the Patpong to do what is in her blood—sing and dance and …

  But she cannot lie, and she cannot admit the truth. So what she does is nuzzle her head deeper into the shoulder of his suit jacket. She says, “Kiss me.”

  He hesitates. Then he pulls his head back and looks at her with those black eyes that are soft and full of a thousand questions.

  She feels a rush of panic stiffen his body, and now she is wishing that she had listened to Brandy and Delta and never come out with this man. She closes her eyes and braces herself for whatever is coming … maybe a defeated little sigh or a look of disgust or the sting when he hits her, tells her to swim home with the rest of the river rats.

  But then she feels his breath on her cheek and his thin lips brush against hers.

  Does she remember her first real kiss? Does she remember the lightning bolt of electricity that stings her lips and tongue, races to the tips of her fingers and toes, and finally settles into a low buzzing between her legs? Does she remember thinking that she is suddenly born again, and the past is nothing more than a handful of dry rice scattering before the winds of a typhoon? She remembers every detail. She still remembers how it felt to have the most beautiful young lion in the world glued to her lips … in her twenty-first year … on that river in the city of angels. The colored spotlights blazing on the towering prang of the Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn. With Lionel Richie singing “All Night Long” in her head.

  And she knows how it feels to discover that by stepping into that river taxi with a young lion, she has cut herself free from her family. Whatever happens now—whether she is wounded or killed or becomes a movie star—it is only her business. No one else will know what she knows now. After this kiss she wants to cry and sing!

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He is down at the fish pier in Chatham watching the long-line boys and the lobstermen unloading their catches at suppertime. He knows how hard their life is, knows the sorrow, shame, frustration of coming home with an empty hold, a busted trip. But he misses it, wonders where his father and Tio Tommy are right now in the Rosa Lee.

  It has to be better than this mess he is in. He started today with high hopes that he might make some progress toward unraveling his client’s secrets, finding some alternate suspects, picturing his defense strategy. But now he is more confused than ever. This ex-boyfriend, this Prem Kittikatchorn, sounds like just the kind of obsessed son of a bitch who might do anything—like burn and murder—to make her his again. A stalker. Why is she still defending him? Is she still carrying a torch for the guy? And what’s with the passing allusions to heroin? Is there some kind of narcotics trade going on here? Another thing. This lying by omission is virtually pathological.

  So he is thinking that he has to start talking to people other than his client. He is starting to psych himself up to call Varat Samset tonight, when he feels an arm curl around his back.

  “Hey, sailor. Looking for a good time?”

  It is Filipa. He feels her soft, large breasts slide against his rib cage as she pulls him against her. He loves the way she feels. He cups the back of her head in his hand, draws her lips to his, probes for her tongue.

  “Wow! You want to go for it right here, big boy?”

  “I’m thinking the beach.” He is already feeling out of breath, kissing her again. One hand on her butt cheek. He can tell she is not wearing any panties. The fishermen are starting to notice the show, watching when she breaks the lip lock.

  “Take me to bed, or lose me forever.” It is Meg Ryan’s line from Top Gun that he has always loved.

  “You don’t have to ask twice.” He is thinking that there is nothing better than frisky sex to pull him out of his funk. Screw the case. Screw the dragon ho. Screw the stalker. Screw the call to Bangkok.

  They clamber down a trail to a narrow beach in front of the swank cottages of Chatham Bars Inn. It is still hot. The mid-eighties. The water looks like a field of golden leaves in the evening sun. He peels off his jacket and shirt, throws them on top of a thicket of beach plums. She clamps him in a bear hug, feels for him with her right hand. Sweat is soaking through the back of her green cotton shift. He drops to the sand and pulls her on top of him. Ten seconds and he is in her. She is riding high. Her eyes close. Head tilts back, rolling on her neck to the rhythm of their lust.

  “Jesus Lord, forgive me,” she chants. “Holy Mary Mother of God, I love this!”

  He closes his eyes, too. Thinks he can do this until the sun sets, pulls her hand to his mouth and sucks her fingers one by one.

  “G-g-g-goddamn it. H-h-h-have you no shame?!” A man’s voice rips him from a dream of dolphins swimming belly to belly.

  He feels Filipa freeze.

  His eyes pop open.

  “What?”

  A fat, balding fisherman is shouting at them from up on the fish pier.

  “T-t-t-take it indoors, will ya?!”

  Filipa rises up on her knees: “Eat your heart out!”

  She lowers herself back onto her man. Bends down over him until her hair covers his face, blots out the sun.

  She does not give up this balance. She does not take her lover beyond a thousand new kisses, nine hundred moans, until five more dinners at the Oriental go by … with five more rides on the river in the dark.

  Tonight, another Monday, everything happens very fast. The water taxi turns down one of the klongs in Thonburi near the Royal barge sheds, and stops at a house that looks like a small temple, peaked roofs of grey teak with a large deck on stilts out over the klong. There are red and green dragons carved into the woodwork like they live here. “Welcome to the River House,” he says.

  He takes her hand and leads her out of the boat. She has to carry her pumps in her other hand so she can climb the steps up to the deck. She hears the growl of the water taxi’s engine. Then it is gone. All she can hear are the songs of tree frogs and the hush of the currents around the stilts, along the banks. This is his family’s oldest house. His great grandfather built it to catch the breezes off the river and get away from the cholera raging in town during the wet season, back in the days when Thonburi was little more than a jungle.

  He says he loves the view of the Royal Palace and the wats from here, glowing like the Emerald City across the water. Then he opens about ten screen doors that expose the whole house’s face to the klong and the river beyond. There are cushions like a big bed at one end of the deck way out over the klong. She knows she can make love here. And she will. She just needs a little help because this is her first time.

  She stretches out on the cushions and waits while he brings the ritual wine and lights a fire, like an offering to the Buddha, in the charcoal brazier. In the flickering flames she undresses him, eats his soft flesh. It trembles to her lips. There is absolutely no talking. And this is how it has to be because she is surprised beyond words at her own boldness.

  When he is a burning torch, he struggles with her dress. She hears something tear. They both laugh. She takes off her bra so he can taste the new fullness of her breasts fresh from Dow-Corning and the reconstructive surgical offices of Doctor Maa.

  While her eyes are closed, he peels away the rest of her clothes. His hands skate over her skin with smooth, warm oil while she lies flat on her belly, feeling the oil spreading over the backs of her thighs. Then she opens her eyes to see flames of light shooting off the river as he curls around her back and makes love to her until he locks her in the pain. And then they melt together in the pleasure.

  He says that he loves her, he will a
lways love her, cherish her, protect her, buy her pretty things.

  Over fish and chips at the bar in the Chatham Squire, Filipa wants to talk about where they are going to live after the wedding.

  “I’m thinking the North End.” She is talking about Boston. “Don’t you just love it? It’s like Italy. Ethnic. Mediterranean like us, right?”

  He courted her in the restaurants along Hanover Street, proposed to her one night in a bistro facing North Square. The North End definitely has romance, and the harbor is right there when you need a boat fix. She would be close to Cambridge and her internship. Perfect, right?

  “How would I get to work, Fil? It’s sixty miles back down to the Cape and the traffic can be—”

  “You’ll have the reverse commute. It won’t take you more than an hour, hour and a half tops. I’m making the drive now. All the way out here to Chatham. Do you hear me complaining?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Well, come on, Michael, I’m here aren’t I? I didn’t hear you protesting on the beach an hour ago.”

  He cannot believe how fast she has turned on him. This wedding is starting to wig her out. Or is it him? What can he say? Driving two hours after work a couple of times a week to make love is a little different than schlepping off at rush hour five mornings a week. Starting off in snarled city traffic.

  “Hey, maybe we don’t need to talk about …” She bites her lower lip, looks like she is about to cry. “Do you realize that we will be married in less than a month? And we don’t have a place to live? Do think we’re going to shack up in that attic or with my crazy roommate? Don’t you know that I get a call almost every day from my mother? People want to know whether we are going for a house or an apartment, big or small. It matters. They have to buy gifts to fit.”

  The bartender hears the rising tone in her voice, catches Michael’s eye, and shakes his finger, a warning: Women, man, handle with care.

  “Hey, hey, Fil … I know we can work this out. I just need a few more days to get my head around this case of mine. Then we can call some realtors and—”

  “And what, Michael?” Her voice suddenly sounds shrill. “Tell them you’ve been so busy hanging out in Provincetown with the drag queens that you haven’t had time to figure out where you’re going to start a home with your new wife? Is that it? Is that how you want to start our life together?”

  Jesus, she can be fierce.

  “Can we please not get into this. It’s my first solo murder case. I’m a little overwhelmed. My client, she—”

  “She?! What the hell are you talking about ‘she’? Michael, your client has a dick. Have you forgotten? You know what they call someone like your client in Portugal and Spain? A travesti. Travesty. A freak. And yours happens to be an arsonist, a murderer, and a whore to boot.”

  Her voice is louder. People at the bar are looking at them now.

  He feels something burning behind his eyes, like a faded brown photograph of a boy in a man’s suit, with his dark, curly hair tied back in a ponytail. He takes a long gulp from his beer mug and hears the whine of jets. Suddenly, he wants to shout, My god, we are talking about a human being here. A life is at stake.

  But what he says is, “Maybe I should just shoot myself!”

  She looks at him as if she has never seen this strange side of him before. “Look. I’m sorry. I just want to be with you. Forget about your case for a while. Can you do that?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  For two days they shop for apartments in Boston’s North End and make love. He thinks Filipa is right. He needs to get off the Cape and just plain forget about work for a while. They rent a cozy one-bedroom walk-up, right down the street from Paul Revere’s house. It seems like an oasis away from the carnival of Provincetown, the loneliness of Chatham. Even though they won’t be moving in until September, just knowing the apartment is there lightens his mood.

  But now it is Friday. The week has rushed by, and he feels the case nagging at him. The trial starts in a little more than three weeks and he still doesn’t have a suspect list. On the drive back down to the Cape from Boston, he calls Tuki to see if she is okay. But he gets her voice mail.

  He wants to talk to the Thai detective about the stalker, Prem Whoever, but once again the time is wrong. Afternoon. The best he can do to break through Tuki’s veil of mystery is to head for P-town, track down some of her acquaintances, hope somebody feels like talking straight.

  A friendly cop at the desk in the P-town station tells him to check out a bar called the Last Tango on Commercial Street. Ask for Chivas. She pals around with Tuki a bit.

  Inside, the Tango looks like a dark little cave. His eyes are blinking as he tries to adjust them from the bright sun of the street, and he is staring at the outline of what might be a creature from Star Wars standing behind the bar. Otherwise the place is empty.

  “Take a good look, honey,” she spits. “I don’t bite!”

  Now the figure is coming into focus. She is posing for him with a hand cocked behind her head like a forties pin up girl. A plump, red headed, cartoon version of Bette Midler. Complete with river-green eye shadow, lashes like Betty Boop, rouge all over the cheeks, flame lipstick. A pink halter top is holding up breasts like melons. Below the waist, billowing green pantaloons. By the looks of the wrinkles around her mouth, she must be in her mid-sixties. The drag queen from hell.

  “Hey, good lookin’. Is that a rocket in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” It’s a tired old Mae West line. He knows this. But it kind of catches him off guard, and he laughs.

  She pulls a bottle of scotch out of the well, sets it on the bar with two shot glasses.

  “Tell me your troubles, partner.”

  He laughs again. The scene is so absurd. And it is like she is reading his mind. Something soft in her eyes catches him, and he sits down.

  By the time they finish their shots, he has barely said a word. But he feels like he has known her half his life. Her name is Chivas Regal, and she has been a queen in P-town since the fifties. She starred in the Follies back in the days of legend when the police raided the place about once every two weeks, arresting her for female impersonation.

  “In my day I did Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. Lip-synched to 78 rpm records and reel-to-reel tapes,” she says in a voice that sounds like Lucky Strikes. “But I was best at Ginger Rogers. Honey, Ginger could have taken lessons from me in how to turn up the body heat in an audience. And those were the days before silicone, hormone shots, and sex changes. God, we didn’t even have decent wigs. We made tits out of old socks. But we had fun. We packed them in … and there was never a shortage of creamy young boys like you.

  “Then I met Harry, and our lives took a turn for the moon. At first he fished on the day boats sailing for cod and flounder, but eventually he got a job tending bar in a C Street dive. From time to time, I came in and did a routine for the crowd. My drag show became a regular thing during the more liberal sixties and seventies. The money was okay, but it was time to look for a new career because I was not getting any younger. Harry and I took out a loan, bought the dive, named it the Last Tango. We started our own little drag club with me acting as hostess. Mondays and Tuesdays were amateur nights, which were a big hit because there was no cover and you never knew when a girl was going to trip in her heels or lose a falsie or a wig.

  “These days we get all kinds,” she smiles. “Vampires, Joan of Arc types with nothing but a floor-length wig to cover their birthday suits, the Queen of England, as well as Natassia Kinski wannabees with boa constrictors that have a tendency to get loose in the house. Recently, we have been getting a queen with a little goatee doing Hillary Clinton in a gold lamé bathing suit. And a seventy-year-old retired Air Force colonel from Truro who comes in once a month dressed as Tootsie and offers all takers a free ride.

  “But this may be my last season. Life at the Tango has not been the same since the day two years ago when Harry died of lung cancer. I am looking for someone to manage the clu
b full time, with an option to buy.

  “Then, dearie, I can move away from this windswept little sand spit and head on down to Rio, as in de Janeiro, and fiesta forever!”

  With this remark she stands, does a little rumba across the room with a pet Persian bobbing in her arms like a stuffed fox. She winks at him, “You can take an old queen out of the drag, but you cannot take the drag out of an old queen.”

  She is definitely not sulking. Neither is he. What does he really have to complain about? How does a slightly twitchy fiancée and a murder case out of the tabloids compare to what Chivas has been through? And she is still dancing. He can see why Tuki might be drawn to this person.

  “So you want to lock the door and get down and dirty? Or you want to tell me how you had the good fortune to become Tuki’s lawyer?”

  He is floored. “How did you know …”

  She taps the side of her head with an index finger. “Eyes like an eagle, mind like a steel trap, heart of a fairy godmother. Just like you, Tuki came to me when she was at her wit’s end and needed to talk. You want to know if I think she did it?”

  He nods.

  “Hell no! It’s a total put-up job. That girl …” Something seems to catch in her throat. “That girl’s one in a million. Heart of gold. Absolute soft gold. You hear me, Mr. Attorney?”

  “It’s Michael.”

  “Okay, Michael. You came to the right place if you want the straight dope. You think she’s lying to you? Trust me. It is not that she wants to mislead you. She’s just trying to protect her heart. The child has not had the easiest life, you know. You have to help her.”