The Queen of Patpong pr-4

by Timothy Hallinan

  Obviously ill at ease, she stammers a reply he can't catch over the music and wheels away from him, walking quickly, her back straight and stiff. He watches her go with a preliminary tickle of anxiety. She heads for the bar, but she seems to be looking all over the club for someone. Horner glances at her again and settles back to wait. He takes his first look at the women on the stage. Many of them glance away.

  He sees the one he'd been buying Cokes for before he found Wan, and he tilts his head to her, just a hello, and she takes a step back, so fast she bumps the girl behind her. The girl she bumped doesn't turn around, but when Horner looks in the mirror on the other side of the room, he finds her eyes wide, aimed at his reflection.

  In fact, all the girls in the row that's facing away from him are watching him in the mirror.

  At the bar the waitress who took Horner's order is told that the mama-san has gone down the street to Superstar to chat with that bar's mama-san. The waitress turns and runs out of the bar as though ghosts are after her.

  Horner watches her go and sits well forward on the bench. He surveys his surroundings, slowly and meticulously, and then he looks at his watch. Ten-twelve. In three minutes he'll know they got John.

  He lifts his eyes from the watch and, one at a time, examines every face in the room. There is no one who seems familiar. The customers are the invariable ragtag assortment of big-gut assholes, most of them half tanked. Almost all of the women are now assiduously avoiding his face, as though some telepathic public-address system has just made an announcement. When he feels eyes on him and looks to check, the woman turns away.

  The skin on the back of his neck prickles.

  Outside, the waitress who took his order barrels out of the King's Corner and fights her way through the crowd to run into a bar across the street. She's followed a moment later by a girl and a ladyboy, who have left the King's Corner so fast they haven't even pulled on the wraps they usually wear over their dancing costumes. They split up, one running toward Surawong and the other heading toward Silom. People in the street jump aside and watch them go.

  A song by Hall and Oates, an act Horner detests, blares through the speakers. Keeping his face expressionless, he pulls his feet, which he'd extended beneath the table, toward him and watches the women's eyes go to the movement. He stretches out an arm and feels the weight of gazes from all over the room. Then, very deliberately, he bends his elbow and looks at his watch again.

  Ten-fourteen.

  Slowly and loosely, keeping his gaze wide and unfocused to see anything that moves, he stands.

  Once, years ago, Horner had been on a plane that was struck by lighting, and an actual bolt of electricity had rocketed through the cabin. That's what the bar feels like right now. He can almost smell the ozone. Some of the girls on the stage stop dancing, just hang on their poles and stare at him.

  Hall and Oates give way to a snarl of static, and then a woman's voice, louder than the music, says something in Thai on the disc jockey's microphone. Two girls jump off their customers' laps and go out the door, moving fast.

  Horner lets his eyes wander the room behind the sunglasses, without turning his head. There's movement everywhere. A dozen women stream toward the door and through it. Another eight or ten stop at the curtain. They turn to face him, avoiding his eyes, clearly terrified, but sharing a kind of group bravado.

  Not good. And no John.

  He takes two steps, and half the girls on the stage jump down and scoot past him to join the women at the door. They stand there, maybe twenty-five of them, five or six deep, blocking his way.

  The disc jockey kills the music.

  For a moment the silence seems even stranger to Horner than the band of women between him and the sidewalk. He's never been in a go-go bar when the music wasn't blaring. Somehow its absence makes the place smaller and shabbier, brings into sharp relief the cracks in the mirrors and the cobwebs above the speakers, the pieces of tape covering the rips in the fake leather upholstery on the benches.

  The other customers are looking around as though they're not sure what has changed. One by one they turn their gazes to Horner, the only man standing in the bar. He dismisses them; there's no one there who worries him, but there are too many pairs of eyes. He says to the women at the door, his voice the sole sound in the room, "Get out of my way."

  None of them move. A few of them raise their eyes to his face.

  He takes a step forward, and they step back in time with him, forcing the ones farthest from him through the curtain and onto the sidewalk. Two more steps push more of them out of the bar until there are only five in front of him, in an arc only one girl deep and all of them looking at him, and when he makes his final move, those melt away outside, too, and no one is between him and the door.

  He goes to the curtain. For a moment he fingers the cloth, and then he takes one final look at his watch. Ten-fifteen. Good-bye, John.

  As he steps through, Horner looks behind him to make sure no one in the bar is coming at his back. When he's through the door, he drops the curtain and turns to the street. He has to blink to make sense of what he sees.

  At least sixty girls stand there, shoulder to shoulder, looking silently at him. They've cleared a half circle with a radius of about six feet around the door to the Kit-Kat, so they're all just out of arm's length. He stands there, weighing options for a moment, and over their heads he sees a girl run into a bar three or four doors down. Twenty seconds later she comes out at the head of a stream of girls, maybe another twenty or twenty-five.

  The Kit-Kat's door is opposite one of the little passages between the night-market booths that make it possible for customers to cross the street without having to go all the way down the block A large group of bar girls, all in their dancing costumes, are running through the passage, shoving their way toward him through the tourists.

  Maybe forty of them. In all, he thinks a hundred and ten, a hundred and twenty.

  The shortest way out is to his right, back to the stub road and then through that to Patpong 2. It's a distance of thirty or forty yards. He looks right and sees the sidewalk packed solid with women, with more of them pushing their way out of the two clubs he'd passed. Neon light bounces off bare shoulders and shining hair, glinting from the spangles and sequins on their costumes. He smells perfume, hair spray, dance sweat.

  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 sl
ow 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

  The 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.