Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues

by Randall Peffer

  “That is what he told me. I have it all on the tape. He saw Nikki. He said he was standing outside the dressing room at the Follies after the show that night. Waiting for me. He could not accept that it was all over for us. He could not accept that I had turned my back on him and left him standing on a pier. But then he saw Alby go in the dressing room. Heard us fighting, my crying, my apologies, my kisses. It was too much, and he dragged himself outside in the alley to shoot up more pung chao.

  “He was leaning against the dumpster, all but lost in a dream, when he heard me shouting at Alby. He saw me run out of the Painted Lady in my robe and disappear in the fog on the beach. That is just how it was. So he was there.

  “A few minutes after he saw me disappear into the fog, Alby came down the alley from the Follies, swearing and kicking up clouds of dust with his feet. He went into his office. Turned on the lights. He started shouting. Like he was having a conversation with himself … in different voices. Real angry. This goes on for about five minutes. Then Nikki shows up and goes into the office. More shouting. Smashing of furniture. Then the light goes out. Alby cries out like he is hurt. The next thing you know, the entire office just bursts into flames, la. The light is blinding, and Prem scuttles away to crash under a pier.”

  Michael takes her hand. It feels dry and cold. “You are still in love with him, aren’t you? That’s what you told him this morning. That’s how you got him to talk. Just tell me the truth so I can have a little clarity.”

  “I do not know, Michael. I do not know if I still love him. I do not think it is love anymore. He haunts me. I cannot ever quite put him out of my mind. But this is useless to talk about. You saw him. You have touched him. You know. He is just skin and bones. He will be dead soon. It is what he wants. And it makes me so sad. All he wanted was for someone to love him, for his parents to …”

  She pauses, then adds something odd for her, something dark. “The Buddha is right. Life is suffering.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She leans across the console between the bucket seats and puts her head on his shoulder. “Please hold me.”

  He wraps his right arm around her and draws her body to his chest. “What were you two fighting about back there at his house?” She raises her head and kisses his neck. “You.” He shivers.

  Her eyes look up, trying to read his face. “Now what do we do?”

  “Call the police,” he says. He is not sure he is really answering her question.

  Tuki draws back into her own seat and stares ahead into the fog. “Do you think Nikki set me up?”

  “We have to find her.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  “So now you want to talk. Now you want my help. It’s Saturday, my day off, Rambo. If you weren’t here, I’d be out fishing!”

  He cannot believe it. What bum luck! Of all the cops who might get the nod on this, they have to draw the same state dick who was working the shooting at Number Three. The wiry, middle-aged Italian, Votolatto. And here at the West Yarmouth barracks, he is on his home turf.

  “This is important. We know who the shooter was, we have proof that Tuki did not kill Costelano or set the fire. We have hard evidence.”

  Tuki pulls the tape recorder out of her handbag and puts it on the metal desk in the interview room.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a tape of the shooter’s confession about his attack at Shangri-La the other night. More important, it tells what he witnessed right before Big Al took a knife in the gut and the fire started.”

  “No fucking way! How’d you get this?”

  Tuki and Michael exchange looks. He gives her a nod.

  “I went to visit him. His parents have a house on Nantucket Island. He talked to me. It is all here. He saw the killer go into Alby’s office. He heard the fight. He saw the fire start, la.”

  “You can stop with this ‘la’ shit any time now, doll. It’s driving me crazy. Who is this guy? The killer?”

  “No. The shooter from the other night in Truro. His name is Prem Kittikatchorn.”

  The detective squints at Michael like, “Who’s asking you, buddy?”

  Tuki squirms in her seat. Stares at her hands in her lap.

  “Long lost boyfriend from Bangkok.”

  “Oh, Christ! How long have you been here, Tuki?”

  “Here?”

  “The U. S. of A. Freaking America.”

  “About five years.”

  “I don’t get it. Some guy from Thailand comes to see you after five years and just starts shooting. What the hell’s he after?”

  Michael pulls himself up to the table, assertive. “It is a domestic issue. Kind of complicated. He has been stalking her. I have the number of a detective in Bangkok you can call if—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Rambo. I know about the Thai dick; I’ve been in touch with our illustrious D. A. I’m talking to the doll. Did you invite this shooter, Tuki? Did you call him to get you out of a scrape with Costelano? Did he whack the big guy for you, is that what happened? Now you going to give him up?”

  She’s wearing a sleeveless sundress, feels the air conditioner and the cop getting to her. Gives a little shiver. Smiles nervously. Shakes her head no.

  “Then here’s what I’m thinking. This turd Costelano got you roped into his escort service. You couldn’t get out. He threatened you. You fought with the guy. Took him out with his own knife. Torched his place. Then when you get your ass in a sling with the law, you phone this old boy back in Bangkok, some kind of Thai wise guy. You call in the cavalry, so to speak. Because you got a lawyer who don’t know shit from Shinola and—”

  “Hey, hey! Watch yourself. You can’t talk to us like—”

  “Bite me, Rambo! This is my case. You come in here stirring up a hornets’ nest on my day off with a lot of nonsense about a taped confession, an eyewitness account. You take what you get. Now, you’re going to let your client talk to me, or am I going to slap you with obstruction of justice. Which is it, counselor?”

  “Why don’t you just listen to the tape.”

  “You. Didn’t I just ask you to shut the fuck up?” He is pointing his finger at Michael, doing a kind of Robert DeNiro routine.

  Michael raises his hands in front of him. Sits back in his chair. No problem.

  “Now, Tuki, tell me, did the shooter get gun-happy the other night ‘cause he saw you chilling with Rambo here? Is that how it was? You’re still in love with the shooter, aren’t you? That’s why you wouldn’t give him up the other night? So what’s changed? College boy here poking you now? Is that it?”

  Tuki is almost in tears, Michael is on the edge of his seat again. His eyes are burning holes in the cop.

  “Jesus Christ, detective. She comes in here of her own free will to give you key evidence that will break this case wide open for you. You ignore the evidence and proceed to bully her. What kind of professional do you call yourself?”

  “One who’s not porking his client, counselor. One who is just trying to get a feel for the dynamics surrounding this miraculous appearance of exculpatory evidence. Get it?”

  The detective picks up the little tape recorder on the table. Studies it for a few seconds, trying to figure out how you make the thing play.

  “It’s the green button,” says Michael.

  “Shut up, Rambo.”

  Votolatto pushes the button. For several seconds there is nothing but the sound of static. Then foot steps. A door unlocking. Door swinging open. A man’s voice says something in Thai. The voice is haggard, faint. Tuki’s voice responds. More Thai. Emotive. The sound of sighs, a hug, possible little kisses. Thai again. Him and her. The dialogue sounds like a soap opera playing from a distant room. You cannot understand a thing.

  Oh hell, thinks Michael. He can feel his cheeks starting to burn. How could he have forgotten they would be speaking Thai?

  For five minutes the tape runs on and on like this. Thai. The detective staring at the squeaking machine on the metal table.

&
nbsp; Finally he clicks it off. “You’re shitting me, right? This is the wrong tape? Gibberish.”

  “No. Prem. He is telling everything. He saw Nikki go into Alby’s. Heard them fight. Heard Alby call out hurt. Saw Nikki run away and the fire.”

  “Who is this Nikki? Where is she now?”

  Michael pulls a pink promotional flier for the Follies from his brief case. It has a picture of Tuki, Silver, and Nikki leaning back to back in evening dresses, flashing vampy, come-hither looks. He takes a pen and circles Nikki’s face. “She left P-town about a week ago with her boyfriend, a bartender from the Follies named Duke. They were in a big hurry. We think they were heading for San Francisco.”

  The detective takes a look. Nods like he remembers her from the interviews that went down after the fire and murder. Fingers the tape player in his hand.

  “This whole thing is in Thai?”

  “You want me to translate?”

  Votolatto rubs his temples with the thumb and index finger of both hands. “I hear my boat calling me! Get outta here. Go home, will you?”

  FIFTY-THREE

  His father is lying back down on the floor of the wheelhouse in the Rosa Lee. His head and torso are inside a cabinet under the steering wheel. He growls as he rips out a bundle of corroded wiring to the engine instruments. “Tommy?”

  “No, it’s Mo, Dad.”

  After the loneliest Saturday night he can remember—no Fil, no Tuki, suffocating heat and humidity, not much sleep—he has taken the detective’s advice. He has come home. Home to New Bedford. New England’s premier fishing port. A Portuguese colony on the fringe of America. He thinks that maybe, just possibly, he will find some answers here.

  “Cristo, the prodigal son. Perry Mason. I thought you were my brother.” The fisherman wiggles out from inside the cabinet, sits up. He is a man of spit and sinew with piercing black eyes. The Sox T-shirt and jeans give his taut body something of a James Dean look. Longish salt-and-pepper hair shags a bit over his ears. It takes his eyes a minute or two to adjust to the sunlight in the wheelhouse. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So to what do I owe the pleasure of seeing the distinguished young attorney aboard my humble barco de peixe? You ready to come back out fishing?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “I heard about your problems.”

  “Shit.”

  “Sorry, pal. Nu Bej is a pretty small town. Word travels fast when a nice Portagee boy gets cold feet on the eve of his wedding.”

  “I need to talk about Vietnam.”

  “Because of that flit client of yours?”

  “Hey!” He shoots his father a hard look. “Don’t be like that! I came here for help, okay?”

  Caesar Decastro gets to his feet. He sits down in one of the two swiveling captain’s chairs that look out from the wheelhouse. “Take a load off.”

  Michael drops into the other chair. “I’m all screwed up.”

  “You want to level with me? You got a thing for this drag queen client of yours?”

  “It’s not what you think. She’s from Vietnam. Her father was an American Marine. She is one of the boat people.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know. I think about Vietnam a lot these days.”

  “You were never there. You weren’t even born when—”

  “But you were there.”

  His father’s shoulders stiffen. “Yeah, so? You hear me bragging about it? You ever see me marching in any parades, hanging out at the Legion?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you got going between you and this client of yours, but leave me out of it. I’ve heard enough, buddy boy. You want to wreck your life and Filipa’s, too? You ever think what she must be going through right now? You ever—

  He squeezes his eyes shut. “Stop! Just stop it, will you? Come on. Can we please talk without you getting up in my face and judging? I’m in trouble here!”

  The older man rubs his chin, stares out through the windows at the harbor. Streaks of red are rising on the sides of his neck. He grabs a pack of Merits sitting beside the compass, taps out a cigarette, lights it with a silver Zippo. His hand is a little shaky.

  “Dad?”

  “Look, Mo, I’ve told you all of my stories of ‘Nam a hundred times over. I didn’t massacre anyone. I got no secrets. I was just a dumb kid in a soldier suit they told to watch out for our boys on liberty. I was an MP, for Christ’s sake. In Saigon. And not for long. I never got up country or into the delta. Worst fight I witnessed was when a couple of drunk Marines thought they could whip a whole bar full of grunts.”

  “But you were there. You saw things.”

  His father takes a long drag, flicks the cigarette out the open door into the harbor. He squints his eyes and stares at Michael, trying to get a handle on the source of his son’s uneasiness. And his own. “Look, I’m going to tell you the honest-to-god truth for once, okay, pal? ‘Nam wasn’t like those half-assed adventure stories I used to tell you when you were a kid. Not like the pictures you liked to look at in my photo albums. All those amazing temples, wise-looking monks with their shaved heads and orange robes. Not like those pictures of buddies hanging out shooting hoops in the sun on a ball court, or chilling with a cooler of brews on a beach. Smiling old men on bicycle rickshaws. Those pictures are a load of crap. Window dressing. Vietnam was one big cluster fuck from start to finish, Mo. You never knew what was going on there. Like nobody was accountable!”

  His father’s words come with such force that Michael squirms in his seat and wonders where this raw anger is coming from. Suddenly, he is sorry that he has come here, that he has started something that he cannot control. But he has to ask things. He has his questions. They have been burning a hole in the back of his head since he was just a boy. And now he cannot ignore them any longer.

  “So why do you keep those photo albums? Why did you tell me about what a sweet place it was? About how, in a way, it reminded you of the old country, Portugal. What great people, what amazing people, you used to say. So loving and carefree. So simple. Why?” His voice is starting to tremble.

  Caesar turns his head away, looks out at the lumpers toting boxes of fish off another trawler at the dock, loading them into a box truck. “I don’t know. Because I’m a Portagee, Mo. Because Portagees are dreamers. I need to tell myself that it was worth going over there. Worth giving up two years of my time on Earth to the army. Worth missing the beginning of my only son’s life. Worth all the trouble for our country. For everyone. Like your mother. I went over there and left her pregnant. And, damn me to hell, I knew. I left her without money or a wedding ring … any kind of support. My god, she waited for me. How the hell do you explain that?”

  “She’s a great lady.”

  “You got that right! And I was a stupid little shit, who thought he was a badass. Christ, I enlisted. I wanted to go. Join the army and see the world.”

  He looks at his father’s face. It seems gaunt, almost bone. And he feels a question that he has been avoiding most of his life tearing at his vocal cords.

  “I looked at those pictures in the album so many times. There was a picture of a girl dancing on a bar in a G-string. And two other pictures of her. One in a red dress standing in some kind of native boat, like a big canoe, waving. I remember how dark the sky looked. The other picture she was swinging in a hammock in a room somewhere. She had on a Red Sox shirt. There was a little kid with curly hair in her arms. They were stuck behind some other pictures. They fell out one time. And I found them. She was Vietnamese. I always wondered … Did you have a girl over there?”

  For about thirty seconds his father does not answer. It is so quiet on the boat, you can hear gusts of wind whistling through the antennas overhead. When he speaks again there is a torn note in his voice.

  “Her name was Meng. She was one of the Hmong people, the Montagnards. A refugee from the fighting in the hill country, a nursery school teacher. She had a place in Cholon. Up the B
en Nghe Channel. Chinatown.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  It is almost dark. The mist is starting to rise over the water. She is standing in a narrow wooden boat, nose to the landing on the river. The current sweeps rafts of flowering white water hyacinths downstream along with the muddy flood of the monsoon; egrets hitch rides on bits of broken houses, abandoned rice barges, the occasional body. Everything flows away to the South China Sea. The boatman sits in the stern in black pajamas, a paddle across his lap, staring at him with unmasked resentment.

  “Come, la. I take you home now,” she says. He cannot remember how long he sat in the bar watching her dance to the ballads of Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, talkin’ ‘bout my girl. But he feels drunk now. His service shirt is unbuttoned to the waist, the MP chevron on his sleeve is stained with lipstick, rice whiskey, and Budweiser. There is a green beret stuffed in his hip pocket, a .45 snapped into the black holster on his hip.