Passport to Death

by Yigal Zur

  “Not a very nice guy,” I muttered out loud. I sent the picture to the printer on the counter beside the manager. She was a tiny thing dressed in hot pants and flip-flops. As she pulled the sheet of paper from the printer, she gave it a quick glance. I saw her expression freeze. “You know him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, looking up at me. “Not good man.”

  That was enough for me. I fed the photo into the shredder beside the counter, sorry I had printed it out. But it was too late now.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THINGS QUIET DOWN in the early evening hours. The tourists have finished their sightseeing and shopping for the day and are heading for supper.

  Patpong 3 isn’t the prettiest street in the world, or even the prettiest in Bangkok. The difference between it and Patpong 1 and 2 is not that they’re long and it’s short, or that they’re lined with shops and here there are only bars with no other distractions. The difference is that Patpong 3 is the street of gays.

  Among the bars occupying both sides of the street, homosexuality has never been considered a disease or deviation. They don’t talk about it much, but it’s a legitimate part of life. Maybe not as legitimate as in Japan in the samurai era, when the only kind of love regarded as worthy of a true warrior was between two men, or in the Buddhist monasteries in China in the ninth and tenth centuries, when monks routinely had relations with their apprentices. But homosexuality is the essence of Patpong 3. Not that it’s my thing, but as far as I’m concerned, people can do whatever they want.

  From the top of the street I already saw my second passport—Micha Waxman.

  He was sitting on a tall stool at one of the bars open to the street. A counter with a few beer taps and pint glasses. A handsome well-built bartender in a short tuxedo jacket and bow tie stood behind it. Two young locals were sitting next to Micha. Another young man came down the street and leaned over to him. They kissed on the mouth with exaggerated sucking noises. I heard Waxman say effeminately in English, “Do you love me, sweetie?”

  Laughing, the man continued on to the next bar. The two men sitting with Waxman were totally indifferent. Micha was fresh meat on display, just like them, only paler.

  It was my turn.

  “Hi,” Micha said. The asshole didn’t even recognize me.

  “Last time I saw you, you weren’t in such a sociable mood,” I said.

  He looked different. Then his skin had been jaundiced and he was a sweaty wreck. Now he was stuffed into skinny jeans that accentuated his package. A black button-down shirt that tapered down to his waist was half open, revealing a smooth chest and the gold hamsa.

  I saw him tense up. Tense was good.

  He checked the street. “What do you want from me? Who told you I was here?”

  The sour odor of his fear reached my nostrils, which widened with a certain pleasure at the familiar smell.

  “Shaya, right?” he went on. “That maniac. Give him a little blow and he’ll sing like a bird. Israeli shitheads are a dime a dozen. Why are you following me?”

  “We have to talk,” I said. “I’m glad to see you’re looking better. Last time you were wasted.”

  “You can’t just come here and harass me.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  He scanned the street again. No one was paying any attention to us. They all knew what was going on. The two guys next to him had become extras, like the supporting actors on a Japanese kabuki stage. They didn’t exist, not even in their own minds. Waxman was becoming increasingly upset. The insipid smile of the male whore fishing for a client had been wiped from his face.

  “People know me here,” he said.

  “Great. So are we going to have that talk?”

  “Come inside. Put your arm around me like you’re a client.”

  I had no intention of doing any such thing. Just the thought of his needle-marked arm and sweaty shoulder, despite the inordinate amount of deodorant he had undoubtedly sprayed on himself, made me sick to my stomach. Very few things put me off, or affect me at all for that matter, but a gay drughead in Bangkok is one of them.

  We went into the bar, lit dimly with red bulbs. There was a DJ in the back, a transvestite with a large bosom in a long red kimono and heavy makeup. A few male couples moved on the dance floor. A foreigner with a huge pot belly was wrapped around a local boy with a flat stomach and ass. Two older men, both high, minced around the floor.

  “This is how you make your living?” I asked when we were seated at a table in the corner.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  Without knowing it, I had apparently touched a nerve. Or else it was just his way to elicit sympathy, like every other whore in Bangkok who tells you about the village she came from, the little boy she left behind, and the man who abandoned her in the cruel city to fend for herself. The story is always true, but they only tell it for one purpose: to pry open the client’s wallet. Micha Waxman was no different. He started whining.

  “You want to hear more? I used to be an actor. Mostly, I played clowns. The theater manager came on to me and in the end, I moved in with him. He was horrible. The meanest fag you’ve ever met. He used me, humiliated me, made me believe I was worthless, a nothing. After him, the only thing left for me was to sell myself. Once I seduced a flight attendant, another time I undressed a fisherman at the seaside. What brought them to me, what sent them away—what difference does it make? I only did it to earn enough to survive. Money, money, money. That’s all there is. Then I came here and did the same thing. It’s easy here. Everyone sells themselves. Everyone’s a whore.”

  “Cut the philosophy and self-pity,” I said sharply. “Where’s Sigal Bardon?”

  Telling his story had made him forget his fear. It returned now like a boomerang. He was having trouble breathing.

  “I already told you. I have no idea.”

  “You were the last one to see her.”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at the hand I had placed on the table. “What do you want from me?”

  “You know what I think?” I said. “I think you’re a fucking liar. You went to the train station with Sigal.”

  “Yeah, so what? I told you, she came to my room. We shot up together. She’s worse than I am. Real hard-core.”

  The past began to rise up in me. I was the old Dotan Naor from the Security Agency. Sweat started running down my arms to my hands, lighting them on fire. I could squash this bug in an instant.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “Nowhere in particular. Khao San.”

  “Liar,” I hissed, pressing harder. “If we weren’t in a public place, I’d punch you in the face. What was in the duffel bag?”

  “How should I know?” He squirmed in his chair in an attempt to distance himself from my fist, which was already clenched.

  “Where did she go?”

  He was at the stage when he was starting to feel the rug being pulled out from under his feet, the stage when you can’t let up. You push harder and harder, keep shoving him into a corner, until you see him break.

  “I think you’re so stressed out because you’re worried about what’s going to happen to you because you got involved with Sigal. I bet that after I came to see you yesterday you stuck the needle in as far as it would go and took the biggest hit you could get. Why don’t you give yourself a break? Just tell me what happened. I want to know where she is. You read me?”

  He started shaking, but this time it wasn’t the drugs. “Who are you? What are you getting out of this?”

  “I’m a private investigator. Her family’s looking for her,” I said.

  “I’ll give you a few thousand bahts. My parents are sending me money tomorrow. I’ll get you a free lay, boy or girl, whatever you want. Just leave me alone. I don’t know nothing.”

  Fucking moron. I grabbed him where his neck met his head and pressed down on the muscle. Just a little. Only two fingers. I could have pressed harder, but he wasn’t one of those muscle-bound gays. He was scrawny
, skin and bones from all the drugs he shot up. Drugs and AIDS have one thing in common—they eat your flesh. So I only applied a little pressure, but it was enough. He started writhing. The barman held his position behind the bar, ignoring us. Those people know when it’s best to turn a blind eye. The glasses suddenly needed his full attention. The transvestite DJ put the headphones back on and turned up the music. I increased the pressure slightly.

  “You don’t want me to hurt you, do you? All I want is the truth.”

  “What truth?” Waxman said. “Besides, you don’t scare me.”

  I took my hand away. Something had awoken in him. Experience told me it was time to ease off.

  “I’m dead inside anyway,” he said. “I’m trapped in such a dark hole that even if you hit me, or he does, I won’t feel it.”

  “Who’s ‘he’? Who are you talking about? Weiss?”

  “I’d tell you, but he’d find out, and that would be the end of me.”

  There was no doubt he was a worm, but he still had a remnant of spine.

  “I have your passport,” I said.

  He laughed wryly. “Keep it. Consider it a gift. As if I’ll ever need it again.”

  I tried another tack. “Don’t you want to help Sigal?”

  “Don’t you understand? You’ve got it backwards. Anything I say will just make things worse for her. If you find her, he’ll find her. It’s not just me you’re putting in danger. You can’t save her. If the people who love her can’t save her, how do you think you’re going to do it?”

  “Who’s ‘he’? You mean Weiss?”

  His hand was shaking. He lit a cigarette, drew in the smoke, and started coughing. “It’s too late for me. I’m a lost cause. I’m through talking. I need a hit.”

  I got up and walked out of the bar.

  Another mistake.

  I should have given more credit to whoever he was. After all, I was in Bangkok, not Tel Aviv. It took no more than twenty or twenty-five minutes from the moment I left the bar.

  I heard a scream, a long desperate wail of pain. I could tell it came from him. I hadn’t gone far, just three bars away near the end of the street. I was sipping on a beer at the French Kiss, a bar frequented by journalists, opportunist adventurers, and mercenaries looking for a war somewhere in Asia that would offer temporary employment. I was standing, leaning on the bar, when I heard it.

  I ran back, but I was too late. I went into the bar. The ground floor was empty. The dancers had vanished, along with the DJ. Only the barman was still there, indifferently wiping glasses. He picked up a glass, held it up to the light, and then used the towel on his shoulder to polish the rim. The dance music had been replaced by an eerie silence. The large speakers in the corners faced each other, abandoned. Giving me no more than a brief glance, the barman started hanging the glasses on the rack overhead.

  Now I had to decide. Do I go inside to the scene of the crime or do I turn around and leave? The second option was neater, but I knew it would take me farther away from Sigal. How much farther? I had no way of knowing. On the other hand, going in meant saying, “Hello, trouble, here I am.” So I went in.

  I climbed the stairs. The top floor was decorated in Moroccan style, with tiny mirrors embedded in the roughly plastered walls, arches, and dark intimate niches closed off by curtains, the lamps behind them casting a dim, seductive red light. I pulled aside the first curtain. Then the second. Nothing. Empty.

  He was in the next cubicle, a large space almost entirely occupied by a huge bed, a place for chance encounters of the type agreed on over a beer or a meaningful look on the dance floor. Naturally, the establishment provided all the amenities: a slender barefoot Thai boy to give you a foot massage, a Cambodian boy with large black eyes who’d been smuggled across the border for fifty dollars to bring ice-cold beer to you in bed. For a little extra you could have the boy in your bed as well. They’re very service-oriented in the East. I remembered the words of Yukio Mishima: “A woman’s beauty grows over time. But the life of a young lad is only a single day in spring, the day before flowering.”

  A sweet, heavy odor hung in the air, like the scent of honeysuckle. But Micha Waxman was no flower now. He was lying facedown on the bed half-covered in silk pajamas, his thigh, butt, and the crack between the white cheeks exposed. The dagger was stuck in the left side of his back, up to the hilt, and the blood had already spilled onto the floor, mixing with the water left by the small foot massage basin. It was so expected that I was furious with myself. I moved closer. His right hand was under his body while his left arm lay on the mattress bearing the dark red scars of the needle or maybe a recent skin disease. I leaned over, picked up his hand, and twisted it backwards to open the clenched fist. It worked. For a little while after death, the body retains its flexibility.

  In his hand was a dark business card with orange flames on both sides. In the middle was the word “Apocalypse.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE COPS ARRIVED sooner than I anticipated. I remembered seeing a Tourist Police post on the corner. It was too late to make myself scarce before they showed up, but I hadn’t been planning to do that anyway. There were too many people in the street, and too many people had seen me in the bar with Micha.

  When the two cops saw me beside the body, they exchanged words quickly, and then one barked, “You, passport.”

  I took out my passport and handed it over. He passed it to his partner, barking, “You, wall.”

  I faced the wall and raised my hands slowly. He patted me down in search of concealed weapons. By the time he gestured for me to turn around, the homicide squad was already there. Two young detectives in suits. They surveyed the scene. The tourist cops in their black uniforms bowed. One read out to them from his notebook, speaking in a whisper and throwing me a glance. The detectives nodded and looked at me. The cop bowed again and went back to his partner. They stood at the entrance, barring entry or exit from the cubicle.

  An officer marched in. He was built like a tank, nearly as broad as he was tall. His face was flattened like a boxer’s and covered in pockmarks. Standing in front of me, he announced, “I am Major Somnuk.” The jab of his two-way radio in my stomach almost sent my body into shock. I collapsed onto the floor. He remained standing over me in the same threatening pose.

  His men were pulling the place apart. One was shouting at a young gay who entered the cubicle, presumably the owner, periodically reinforcing his words with a slap across the face. The owner’s face got redder with each blow.

  I wasn’t in much better shape. Slowly, I pulled myself up. Major Somnuk had large ears with fleshy lobes. I learned a long time ago that, although ears like that on a statue of Buddha signify wisdom, on real people they’re a sign of an aggressive temperament, something like an elephant in heat. He gave me a cold stare, his jaws rhythmically chewing on something. Probably the last bite of meat from his dinner that he still hadn’t swallowed. There was nothing about him I liked.

  “What your story?” he asked. “You friend of him?” He gestured with his thumb toward the bed.

  “No, I never saw him before today,” I lied, not knowing how much they knew.

  He let out a sound that resembled an “aaah” and gave me a sharp look. One of the young detectives came over and glanced at me suspiciously while speaking to his superior. Major Somnuk listened. Not a single muscle in his face moved.

  “My detective tell me you talk to this fellow a little time ago,” he said, pinning me with his dark eyes. “You like queer bars? You like fuck them, macho falang, or you like slaps from boy with smooth face who make your eye swell up and break your jaw?” I passed a hand over my face. Were there any marks left? I wondered if I should say something about my rights as a tourist, a guest in their country, or if I should tell him I was on the job too. But the way he moved the radio in his hand made it clear to me it would be best to cooperate. Major Somnuk wasn’t pulling any punches. His descriptions were very graphic. I felt like asking him how he had acquir
ed his knowledge, but the trick in these situations is to shut up and take it. The opposite works too: take it and shut up. But you have to train yourself to take it. That also teaches you something about ego. Like all experienced interrogators, cops like Major Somnuk know how to squash your ego, how to make you feel smaller than a bug, as small as a microbe.

  “I talked to him,” I said.

  He didn’t seem interested in listening, so I shut up. He must have gotten fed up with the piece of meat stuck between his teeth because he spit it out into the corner. His icy eyes were empty. He went over to Micha’s body and turned it over slowly, as if he were afraid it might disintegrate. The light from the overhead bulb fell onto the small hamsa hanging from a gold chain around his neck and onto the flesh below the collarbone. Major Somnuk barked something at one of his men who barked something at the cops at the entrance. One of them left and came back dragging a boy by the arm. For the moment, the kid was still as pretty as a red hibiscus the day it blooms, but by the time they got through with him, he’d look like a dried-up leaf. He was dressed in tight shorts and a tank top that revealed the feminine curves of his shoulders. But as I said, in this world, beauty doesn’t last long. The cop hauled him over to Major Somnuk and let go. He stood there, cringing, struggling to execute a bow with his hands in front of him in the traditional wai gesture.

  Somnuk spoke to him in a voice that was unexpectedly soft, gentle, almost paternal. It came from a culture long familiar with flesh of every variety. The boy began to answer in Thai, but Somnuk cut him off. “Speak English so falang understand.”

  When the boy raised his eyes to me, his expression gave me an eerie sensation. It conveyed total acceptance of his plight, developed over years of experience. There was no need to guess his life story; it was written on his face. He gave me a long look. “Not him,” he said finally. “The falang big like him,” he said, pointing to me, “but fat and no hair, like egg.”