He wishes he could understand it. But right now he has a more immediate problem. He has to find Prem Kittikatchorn and get him to explain how he killed the Great One and set the fire. Maybe he can still get Tuki, and himself, out of the spider’s web once and for all.
There is only one Kittikatchorn in the Nantucket phone directory. On Madaket Road. The house is somewhere out at the west end of the island. By nine o’clock in the morning they are hunting for the place in a rented Jeep. Michael has a small tape recorder in one pocket of his khaki windbreaker. It is still foggy. Very foggy. The headlights of oncoming traffic come and go, phantoms in the thick mist.
“There!” she says, after they have been cruising back and forth between the beach community at Madaket and Nantucket Town for almost an hour. The fog has only lifted slightly, but now he can see houses, set back from the road along driveways. There is a motorcycle parked in one. “That is Prem’s.”
His first notion is to jam on the brakes and make a sharp turn into the driveway. But that would eliminate the element of surprise. Who knows what condition this guy is in? He might come out shooting with that cannon of his.
“I’m going to stop farther up the road, okay?”
She nods. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that she has begun smiling like a crazy woman. This isn’t good.
They park the Jeep in the public lot on Madaket Beach and decide to hike up the strand, approach the house from the ocean side. Even in the fog, it is not hard to find the place. It is a stilt house with two wings and an A-frame in the middle, its seaside wall is an array of sliding doors and glass. Stairs lead up to a deck that surrounds the main floor of the house. You can take the stairs leading from the driveway or another set from the beach.
They approach the house on a path through the beach grass. Their shoes are in their hands as they circle around among the stilts beneath the house, listening for signs of activity. The melody of Lionel Richie’s “Stuck on You” seeps softly down over them. Tuki smiles, has a memory of a night in a limo in Bangkok. The River House. This is his music. His place. He is waiting for her.
Michael is getting a creepy feeling. When they retreat into the brush off to the side of the house, he pulls out his cell phone.
“What is that for?”
“I’m going to call the police. We’ve done our job. We’ve found him. Let them take it from here.” She grabs the phone away.
“Rit luat kap pu. You can’t squeeze blood from a crab. He won’t talk to them. He’ll kill himself either with the gun or too much pung chao. Then what, la?”
He sees her point. Prem is the lynchpin in his defense. Everything has been leading up to this moment, getting a confession out of him. If the man dies, the case folds. She goes to prison for about twenty years … or gets sent back to a death camp in Thailand.
“Let me go to him. Give me the tape recorder. He still loves me, he will talk to me. You go up to the deck from the beach side. I will get him to talk in the front room. You can watch us. If anything gets crazy, you call the police.”
He does not like the strange, high-pitched note of confidence and urgency in her whisper. She is faking it. She is scared to death. But he does not have a better plan.
She holds out the phone to him, flips it open. “Come on, Michael. Nam khun hai rip tak. When the water rises, hurry and collect it.”
He stares at the offered cell phone and scowls. This is bad.
Her eyes plead.
He turns his eyes away, takes the phone back, folds it closed, fishes in his pocket for the tape recorder, and passes it to her.
She leans toward him and kisses his cheek. Then she is just a silhouette in the fog mounting the stairs from the driveway.
He can hear them talking as he tiptoes toward the immense plate-glass windows and sliding-glass doors that look out on the deck and the ocean from the center of the house. Pressed against the wall at the edge of the window, he can see the back of Prem’s head as he sits on a couch. But most of the room is blocked from his view. Prem is smoking. The scent of burning tobacco drifts out through a screen door. He can hear her voice perfectly, but he cannot see her or understand a word. She is speaking in Thai. Damn. He cannot tell how things are going … or remember when he draws his phone, pointing the little antenna like the barrel of a gun.
For a while she speaks in soft tones. Her voice sounds tender, earnest. Maybe pleading.
Prem grunts, says something abrupt, disdainful, or sarcastic.
Tuki fires back at him with hot words.
He throws his lit cigarette over his shoulder with the whip of his arm. It strikes the screen door, leaves a smudge, falls to the wooden floor, and continues to burn. It is not ten feet from where Michael is hiding.
Suddenly Prem shouts something, just two or three words, then jumps to his feet. He comes around the couch. Starts jabbering again in fast short bursts. His voice rising with each new salvo. He looks as pale as a drowning man, scrambling for the fresh air as he heads toward the screen door, the deck. And he has a snub-nose revolver in his hand.
Michael presses himself back against the outside wall of the house, raises the phone in front of him, punches in 911. His right index finger is ready to press the send button.
Prem snaps the barrel of the pistol to his temple, closes his eyes.
Tuki shrieks. Just two words. “Mai! Chi!” Suddenly, she is at his side. Tears are running down her cheeks as she tears at the gun in his hand, hugs him, soaks his face in kisses.
Something claws at Michael’s stomach. She’s still in love with the man. Jesus Christ.
In the blink of an eye, the prick collars her around the neck with his free arm and presses the gun to her head. He is crying wildly as he pulls back the hammer of his pistol with his thumb. His face contorts like that famous photograph of a prisoner being executed by a Vietnamese officer.
Michael leaps—right through the screen door. His arms flailing. His body hitting Prem and Tuki with a loud slap. The gun discharges.
Now they are in a heap on the floor. He can feel a burning sensation shooting all the way up his left arm. But his right hand still holds the cell phone, and now he is shoving it up under the unshaven chin of Prem Kittikachorn like it is a weapon, screaming at this fucking asshole. The man is as limp as a sick child, and his breath stinks of tobacco and whiskey. His gun has flown from his hand, skidded away across the room.
Then it is in Tuki’s hand, and she is standing over the men. She is pointing the gun at Prem. He weeps softly.
“Come on, Michael!”
He staggers to his feet, looks around for a pool of blood to see who has been shot. But there is no blood. Unbelievable.
While Tuki holds the gun on Prem with one hand, she looks him in the eyes and holds up the index finger of her other hand as if telling him to wait. She says something quietly to him in Thai. Prem closes his eyes, tears still flowing.
“He didn’t kill Alby … but he told me who did.”
FIFTY
She is walking aimlessly on the sand flats by the cottages in the East End. It is just a couple of days after she gave that thug Joey his blow job in the back of a Lear jet. She is sick with shame. She’s wearing nothing but a pair of daisy print panties, when here comes Nikki just about out of breath in her sweaty gray sports bra, pink shorts, and Nikes.
“Where did you come from, la?” she asks. Her voice full of Vietnam, Delta and Brandy.
“When you didn’t show up for breakfast at the Lodge the last couple of days, I know something is wrong. So today I just came looking. It took me a while to find you, but I know how much you love water so … here we are.”
“Yeah,” Tuki smiles, “here we are, padruga.” She is almost brain dead at this point, but her heart is suddenly feeling big as a song.
The tide is out. They walk on the sand flats at the edge of the water all afternoon without seeing anything but crabs scuttling around, gulls digging for clams, sandpipers running back and forth ahead of little wave
s. Nikki peels to her panties, too. It is as hot as the beaches of Pattaya and Hua Hin. They do not have any sunscreen. So their bodies are just soaking in the ultraviolets. Tuki is starting to turn as black as her daddy, but she is not even caring.
She tells Nikki, unless some miracle takes place, she is out of here. Like on that midnight train to Georgia. Where ever Georgia is. After that she will regroup. Maybe head for Rio. She hears there is a lot of work for showgirls in Brazil.
“Don’t leave me, padruga!”
“How can I not?” Her chest is already aching with the thought of leaving Nikki and the Follies and her nest at Number Three.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way … but swallow some pride, like the rest of us. Alby protects you from Immigration. And a lot more. Just swallow your pride.”
She wonders what does a girl have if she does not have pride in herself? But right now she is thinking she swallowed every last drop of pride on the Lear jet to Montreal.
She knows what Nikki is talking about here … the escort service that supposedly would make no demands on her when she bagged into Shangri-La. The escort service that just initiated her into the Mile-High Club. If anybody but Nikki hit her with this proposition, she might spit in her face. Tuki has been down this road before, and there is not much along the way that she does not spell “H-O.”
But she thinks, maybe if Nikki can do it, so can she. And what is the alternative? A close encounter with Immigration and a swift trip back to Bangkok in handcuffs to face the mess she left behind?
She lets Nikki work out the details for the date. After the show a limo pulls up outside the Follies and honks two quick beats. The girls start down the steps in evening wear. They are not in show costumes, but they are still putting on the doll. Nikki is looking seriously seductive with deep plum lips and nails to match a long jersey dress of the same color. Black onyx pendants at her ears. She must be wearing four-inch heels because she is almost as tall as Tuki. And she has ditched her falsies from the show for a Miracle bra that actually gives her some cleavage. Her short hair is slicked back with gel, a racy look.
Simple elegance is the name of the game, and tonight Tuki has it in spades. She’s wearing a green and red kimono left over from her M Butterfly days in Bangkok. Her hair is pinned up in a French twist with a golden comb to hold it all together.
Stepping out into the streetlights, Tuki scans the scene. The chauffeur opening the passenger door in the limo is, as usual, the brother Justin.
When the girls are in the back, Nikki presses the call button to speak to Justin.
“How much are they paying for this masquerade?”
“Four bones a girl.”
Nikki whistles: “I guess they think somebody’s going to get laid. Crank the jazz, Justin.”
“Loud!” say Tuki, because she does not want to think about what is coming.
The men are waiting at a fancy East End restaurant that looks out on the bay from a little bluff above the beach. So maybe Tuki is a little impressed by the setting, half forgetting that this is a job until she see the dates.
They are not track-star types like Justin. But Jean—”Johnny”—Gauthier is about six feet five, thin, rangy, very sophisticated looking in a tux, with a deep tan, buzz cut, heavy two-day shadow, and one pearl ear stud. The guy gives off vibes like some kind of cross between Tommy Lee Jones and James Bond. He is in his late forties, and he kisses each of their hands when he meets them.
The second beau is Alby. All buffed up for a night of cheating on Silver.
“Oh no!” says Tuki.
“I swear I didn’t know,” whispers Nikki. “But help me out, padruga. He’s got me in a bind.”
Dinner goes by in a rush of Nikki’s funny stories and laughter about escaping from Russia in a shipping crate. The next thing Tuki knows, a motorized launch is carrying them out into the harbor to a gigantic black sailboat named Diana. It is bigger than the Lodge at Shangri-La, with all kinds of cabins, acres of oiled wood, polished brass, and a sound system to kill for.
There is a Jacuzzi built right into the deck, and all four end up here at one thirty in the morning, wearing matching red bikini bottoms, compliments of the ship.
Alby has made it clear from his greeting kiss on her neck that he wants to make up. Let bygones be bygones. He still has a crush on her.
Everybody but Tuki is pointing out constellations in the dark. She is thinking this escort gig is way more loaded with danger than getting deported. When you lose to Immigration, you just get shipped overseas in handcuffs. When you lose at the escort business, no one ever finds your body. What the hell is Alby holding over Nikki? Why does she not just split? Take her chances with the INS?
And why is Tuki still here? She is ho-ing herself again and spitting in the face of everything Brandy and Delta ever taught her about personal pride. Is this about more than helping out a friend? Is this about getting even? Maybe. People in Bangkok know: she is not real good with betrayal.
She waits for the first time he leans close through all of the foam and tries to give her a kiss behind the ear before she strikes.
As soon as his nose breaks into her personal space, she swings her face around to catch both his eyes in hers and says, “Tell me about Silver!”
His hairy chest heaves. She hears him choke.
Nikki winces.
The French guy actually laughs.
“Did I say something wrong, la?” Her perfect little Miss Saigon voice. Alby purses his lips and sighs, “Silver is a problem I came here to forget, Tuki.”
“Sorry.”
Nikki gives a desperate look like, “Chill, padruga.”
Tuki says she is boiling, pops out of the spa, grabs a robe, scoots to the front of the boat. There is a light wind blowing here. She is letting it dry her hair while she fluffs it with her hands … and waits to see if Alby will follow her.
He does, with champagne for both of them.
“I heard Immigration has been asking Richie some questions at the Follies.”
“What?”
She does not like his tone of voice. It is sharp, sarcastic. “Do not even start this, la. I need you to really listen to me, not be up in my face.”
He sits down on the deck, cups his hands together, blows a deep breath into them. Then he pulls a big cigar out of his robe pocket, sniffs it, starts working it in and out of his mouth.
“Maybe I feel a little hurt right now, Starbright. You just tried to make a fool of me.”
“You took advantage of me.”
“Like you had nothing to do with it? You made love to the idea … and then you made love to me!”
She feels something burst behind her shoulders like a dam.
“You had all the power. Always. The job, the house, the parties. Maybe you even put something in my drink that first night when you took me to your bedroom. And after you had your way with me, you passed me off to your pal Joey. You big greasy puu jaa. You, you”—she is searching for the English words—”stuffed crab!”
Then she is crying. And all of the time she is crying, she knows that these tears are not really for what has gone down between Alby and her. Or even for the game of cat and mouse she has been playing with the INS for the last five years. She is crying for other things, things back in Bangkok that her heart just cannot get into right now.
She leaves him sitting there sucking on his cheroot. Goes back to the hot tub and tells Nikki she wants to leave. Forget the four bones. To hell with his Brando voice, head massages from his magic fingers. His lies about Vietnam.
“Are you crazy?” Nikki is straddling the French guy’s lap. Her face looks torn between pleasure and terror. Sex in the bubbles. “Don’t do this, Tuki!”
“I want to go.”
“You have no idea what he can do. He can just squash us. Just tear you up in little pieces and—” “Ya ti ton pai kon khai.”
“What?”
“I’ll deal with the fever when it comes.”
“Bu
t what about me?”
FIFTY-ONE
“I cannot believe it was Nikki, la. Sweet Nikki. She is the last person to ever hurt …”
“But he said he saw her?” The rental Jeep is winding its way back toward Nantucket Town and the Jared Coffin House. The fog still has not lifted. The air is cold and wet. Inhaling feels like drowning.
Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues Page 20