Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery)

by Randall Peffer

  Ruby reaches over with a wet hand and brushes the hair off Nikki’s forehead. Calls Nikki “sweetheart.” Says why doesn’t she crash after her show? Nobody will disturb the little Russian tart.

  Suddenly Tuki is starting to get a picture. Nikki, Silver, Ruby. They all live here.

  Silver says, “For the moment, honey,” and growls, like maybe she is thinking about a change. She has a margarita going for herself in an ice-filled beer mug. Takes a long drink, closes her eyes, turns her back on Tuki.

  Nikki smiles again. “This is home, sweet home, padruga.” Tuki still does not get it. How can showgirls afford a plush place like this?

  Nikki says Richie works a deal. Takes a hundred a week out of their salaries.

  Tuki raises her eyebrows. That is peanuts. She thinks she smells rotten fish. She just does not know how rotten yet.

  Ruby says that the Great One, Alby, likes the girls to be around when he throws parties for his friends.

  Tuki feels something hard and heavy in her chest. Alby is a collector. Shangri-La is a tranny stable. Now she wonders what last night with him was really all about. And she is thinking that it is time to leave when Nikki catches her eye.

  She says Shangri-La is not what Tuki may think. You do not have to date anybody if you do not want to. The queens are Alby’s stars. He has other girls and boys for the dates.

  “We are hoping you might like to join our sisterhood,” says Ruby. “Say, the word, Number Three is yours for the summer, meals included.”

  Nikki gives a hopeful grin.

  Tuki still smells rotten plaa, but her body is whispering shamelessly in her ear, “Take a little risk, la. You can walk anytime.”

  NINETEEN

  The screeching of gulls outside the window wakes him. It is morning. He is still in his clothes, at his worktable, his face planted against a yellow legal pad. He rubs his eyes and stares around him at the shambles of his attic as if he has never seen it before. He still has one foot in a dream about riding out a wicked storm on Georges in the Rosa Lee. When he raises his head, his eyes catch on a note that he must have scribbled on the legal pad before he fell asleep last night.

  WHAT WENT DOWN THE NIGHT OF THE MURDER?

  He staggers to the sink, spoons two tablespoons full of instant Folgers into a cup, adds water, locks it in the microwave. When it is hot, he settles at his table and finds the police report about events leading up to Alby’s murder.

  Tuki gets to the Follies a little late. Silver is already onstage. Richie is running around croaking like a bullfrog, worrying whether she is ever going to show up, when Tuki comes through the door. His eyes shoot lasers. She gives him a look. She is in no mood to take any of his you-know-what.

  “Just let me put on my makeup in peace and quiet, la!”

  Nikki is in the dressing room adding the final touches to her Janis Joplin gear. She is in a panic to talk and sits down on the stool next to Tuki at the makeup mirror.

  Tuki is just about to brush some static into her dreddy curls. Tonight, for the new show, she is going with her own wild-woman hair. Nikki takes the brush. A little look, an understanding, passes between the two. Then Nikki starts stroking Tuki’s curls while she works on her eyeliner.

  Nikki says that things have gone from bad to worse at Shangri-La.

  Some kind of special knife or letter opener that Alby got in Vietnam is missing. His favorite thing. And Silver says she is missing two DVDs, her greatest music video gigs. The ones she uses for promotion. Tuki sighs.

  “Padruga,” says Nikki, “Silver is telling Alby and everyone at Shangri-La that she saw you sneaking around the Glass House when it was getting dark this evening.”

  Alby and Silver were having an intimate moment when Silver claims that she spotted Tuki coming into the room, taking the DVDs from the TV stand, the knife from the desk. But the Great One did not see. And Silver did not try to stop the robber because they were in the middle of having sex. And it was good sex.

  Tuki does not know what is cutting harder in her heart—news that Silver is accusing her of theft from the place where she has only been once in her life, or that the man who said he loved her just forty-eight hours ago is having sex with Silver.

  She is way past crying. She thinks her head is splitting from the sound of her screaming heart. But when she opens her mouth, nothing at all comes out. Her body is suddenly shivering all over … Nikki hugs her until they hear hoots and clapping for Silver’s last number.

  Nikki stands up and smoothes out her pink mini, gives her friend a big soft kiss on the lips. She says forget about the prick, Alby. Get out of town while there is still time for a clean escape. Then, like almost everybody else Tuki has ever loved, Nikki goes.

  Tuki is weighing her options when Silver comes back into the dressing room in a platinum wig and a blue sequined evening dress.

  “You are a lying rat,” says Tuki.

  “Come again?”

  “You told everyone you saw me steal his—”

  “Just stuff it, love, will you! Nobody is buying any more of your poor-little-miss-space-cadet bullshit. Your stupid little wannabee twat is toast, dearie.”

  The Ice Queen raises her chin, looks down her nose at Tuki, gives a real Sharon Stone, eff-you-for-ever-living smile. Then she reaches into her big sequin purse.

  “Here, darling, you might want this.” Silver throws a pink dildo in Tuki’s lap.

  “Go sit on it … when the cops lock you up, babe!”

  Tuki is beginning to taste blood. She has a rat-tail teasing comb in her hand, moving in, turning the tables on the Ice Queen.

  “Oh, bugger off, you cheesy wench,” says Silver. She is backing away. “You don’t have the balls to—”

  “You set me up, la!” She is closing in on Silver, holding the tail of the comb out in front of her. “You are jealous! So maybe you are the one who steals his dha. Maybe you take your own DVDs. Maybe you are saying you saw me do it because you are so—”

  “In your dreams, darling. Please, spare us this little scene. Just cut the crap. Face the facts, bird. You’ve been caught for the lousy thief that you are. I saw you, the new security camera saw you. Now Alby has seen you. You slipped right into his room in that stupid blue bathrobe of yours. Then you took my DVDs and the knife. Got it, love? Your skinny little mulatto ass is grass. Caught in the act. And if you think Alby is going to stand between you and the cops, you are dreaming!”

  Maybe she hears all this. Maybe she does not. But either way, Tuki’s head is spinning from the stench of this mound of dead river carp that Silver is trying to shove her way. The truth about where she was when the dha and DVDs were stolen? She was taking one of her long walks along the Race Point beach with her friend Prem. She was not even within ten kilometers of Shangri-La.

  So! So the Ice Queen is lying through her teeth about watching her steal … Alby seeing her … all of this new security camera trash.

  “Ja long thii nii,” This is where I get off.

  “Speak English, you stupid gash. Face it, you had him. But you lost him, Tuki, because you’re a greedy, jealous, vengeful, little low-class cunt who thinks jewelry and paint can make her what she ain’t. Just like bloody Ruby!”

  Smoke is filling Tuki’s head. Now she is backing the witch out onto the balcony that hangs over the alley. And when she has her up against the railing, she spits in her face.

  “That’s it, you stinking piece of bung fodder. I promised Richie I’d let you finish your show before I kicked your cunt all over Commercial Street. But that’s it, bitch. You lose. Kiss your ass goodbye!”

  The next thing she knows, Silver’s hands are around her neck. Her eyes are starting to pop out like a couple of plums.

  Her heart screams.

  Then she slashes. Really slashes! She feels the pointy end of the aluminum rat-tail comb sink into Silver’s left breast and rip toward her belly. She screams. Her hands fly off Tuki’s neck. Blue sequins shoot everywhere. The top of the dress tears open and
splits right down to the waist. Blood spreads across her torn white slip. And when Tuki pulls the comb away, it has a size-D falsie stuck on it.

  “I’m fucking cut!” Silver stands in the middle of the dressing room, screaming, looking down at her chest. She hugs her shoulders as if that will stop her Miracle Bra, her right falsie, and all the rest of her lies from falling out.

  Tuki stares at her with blank eyes.

  Silver collapses into one of the folding chairs at the makeup mirror. As her slip and bra fall away, she can see that the tail of the comb made a long, red scratch across her chest. Blood is flowing from the top of the cut. The rest is just red and swollen like a claw mark.

  Downstairs in the Follies, the crowd is cheering for Nikki’s last number.

  Tuki is thinking, “Buddha, be with me …”

  Scribbled at the bottom of the report are a detective’s notes:

  Aparecio has no witness to the alleged walk on beach when knife was stolen. The friend called Prem is nowhere to be found … and may well not exist. Image on security tape is shadowy but does appear to be Aparecio. Conversations with Richard Guilnor, manager of Provincetown Follies, and victim’s housekeeper (calling herself “Ruby”), confirm that Aparecio was involved in a heated love triangle with the victim and a transvestite called Silver Superstar. SEE SECOND INTERIEW WITH SUSPECT!

  Michael jumps up from his chair and stares out the window. He squints over the tops of the roofs to bring Pleasant Bay and the Atlantic into focus. A dark blue long-liner is heading out across Chatham Bars on a trip to Georges.

  “God, Tuki! How many ways can you paint us into a corner?”

  TWENTY

  By the time that the long-liner disappears over the horizon to the east, he has decided that while the case is looking more dismal than ever, there is still a chance that Tuki may have been framed. Silver sounds like a world-class vampire who might do anything to keep her claws in Big Al Costelano. But what about this alleged friend Prem, her alibi for the beach walk? Is this person fiction or real? And why can’t the cops find him/her?

  He has to go back up to Provincetown and start talking to a whole pack of people. But first he needs to digest the rest of the bad news about the night of the murder. He read this stuff the day the judge handed him the case, but now it all seems like confetti in his mind. This time he is going to pay better attention, there may well be something important here in a second interview the cops had with Tuki. Something that can clear her.

  The lights in the dressing room after the show are off except for the glow of the bulbs around the makeup mirror.

  She cracks open a Perrier that Richie sent up, sits on a chair in front of her mirror. She is wearing nothing but a Spider Woman teddy, G-string, and red satin robe that she bought in Chinatown.

  Then she sees Alby push open the curtain, come through the doorway. He has a strange look on his face. Maybe the look of a man come to get even. He is smiling, his front teeth biting into his lower lip.

  She stops breathing. The disco rocks downstairs, the bass line shakes the building with its pulse. No one will hear her if she screams.

  She shouts for him to get out, looks around for a weapon, maybe a fire extinguisher, to scare him off.

  But the fire extinguisher hangs on his side of the room. So ngom khem nai mahasamut. She may as well dive for a needle in ocean.

  He says he will make her a deal as he is walking toward her with his hard, killer face.

  She thinks, “Yes, sure, la. My booty or my life.” Her body is searching everywhere for some way to defend herself.

  “Xin loi …”

  “Don’t even start with that, la!” She shouts, because she knows from Delta and Brandy xin loi is how Vietnamese people always begin when they are sorry for something. She is not believing a word of an apology … not while he is backing her into this corner. The man is eight feet away and closing. He has a stony look in his eyes.

  He does not stop with the Vietnamese. And he is still coming and coming. She is just about feeling his breath and—

  “Back off!” She lets him have it. She makes a flamethrower just like she has seen them do in the movies, releases a fog from her can of hairspray toward his face. Fires the sticky vapor with the lighter Silver left by her makeup kit.

  POOF!!!

  The man wheels backward, his hands pressed to his eyes. Smoke rises from his head. The air stinks of burnt hair. Her mind staggers. What if I killed him?

  Suddenly, she feels a softening in her chest. And as he trips and tumbles toward the floor, she catches him.

  Now it is her turn to start babbling like the people in The Killing Fields. She says she is sorry in every language she can think of, all the while pressing a dry towel on his hair to crush out the last of the flames. She can hear him panting like a cat. If anyone wants a real reason to keep her locked up in jail, this is it. She tried to kill Alby. She did. An act of passion. An overwhelming desire. The Buddha must be very disappointed with her.

  For long minutes they lie together in the shadows of the dressing room. He is on his back. She is tucked up on her knees with her head on his chest, listening to his heart. Telling it to beat. He says nothing. She cries and mumbles. She is sure any moment the police will come in to drag her away. She is more than just a robbery suspect now. Downstairs the DJ has slipped into old-school mode. Barry White, “You’re My Everything.”

  “You sure do cry a lot.”

  She is so glad to hear him speak, she kisses him all over his face, starts mumbling again that she is so sorry. She kisses his forehead and his eyes and his nose and his cheeks and his chin because … because of lots of things. But mostly because the skin is still all there, not burned. Her flamethrower fired high and only got his hair.

  Now he is sitting up.

  “I want you to keep the dha, Tuki. Keep it as a souvenir of a truly great night when … But it would really sort of help me get out of a jam if I could give Silver back her DVDs and—”

  The hammer of his suspicion smacks her in the chest. Why did she ever care about this faithless eff?

  She curses him in Thai, throws her robe around her shoulders, runs down the steps of the Painted Lady … to the beach, to the fog. It is about midnight. And he is still alive.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Before he knows it, his fingers are punching in the numbers for a phone in Bangkok. It rings about eight times before someone picks up. The voice starts in with a machinegun barrage of Thai.

  “Detective Samset, please. This is attorney Michael Decastro calling from the United States.”

  A grunt.

  “You know what time it is in Bangkok, attorney?” The voice sounds ripped apart by a dream. “Middle of damn night.”

  He lifts the portable phone away from his ear. His finger is on the talk button. Part of him wants to hang up just like he did before, doesn’t want to know anything more about Tuki Aparecio. He wants to quit the case again. It is too much, especially with his own wedding looming.

  But now he has given away his identity. He swore an oath before the bar to do his duty for his clients. And there is something about his client that fascinates him. Everything about her and the world she lives in seems so alien, so decadent, so strangely familiar, ripe, terrifying to him. Beyond the makeup, the drag, the exotic settings, the lifestyle … there is a vulnerability and innocence about Tuki that he has never seen before. She almost seems like someone out of a fairy tale.

  “I … I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t realize the time. This was my first chance to return your call—”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Decastro. You think we do not have caller ID in Thailand? You called me yesterday and hung up. What’s the matter? Afraid of what you do not know? That little dragon ho got you spooked or wrapped around her finger yet?”

  “Look, I want to apologize for—”

  “Save it, attorney. Before your case is over you will be on your knees begging before more people than Varat Samset. Call me tomorrow morning … m
y time. I need my sleep.”

  “But what about the danger that you—”

  “I have a name for you. Prem Kittikatchorn. Ask your client if he has made contact. And duck if you hear shooting. Good night.”

  He feels adrenaline jolting through his head. So the mystery alibi has a last name. Kittikatchorn.

  He is marching along the beach beneath Highland Lighthouse, trying to keep pace with her. The sun is high. Hot. She is wearing a red bikini top and loose jeans rolled up almost to her knees. She’s walking right at the edge of the tide line, letting the water rush around her ankles with each new wave breaking ashore. She told him that if he wanted to talk today, he must come along while she gets her exercise, cleans her soul. So here he is in a faded old Red Sox shirt and his jams, chasing the dragon lady around the very tip of Cape Cod.

  “Hey, hey Tuki. Slow down, huh? You going to tell me who this Prem is or not?”

  “It is none of your business, la.”

  “Hell it’s not. Some detective calls me all the way from Bangkok to say you’re in danger. Asks if this Prem has made contact yet. Tells me to duck if I hear shooting. Damn right it’s my business.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Jesus. Did you or did you not tell the police you were with this Prem? Walking, when the security camera supposedly caught you stealing Silver’s DVDs and the murder weapon, the Vietnamese dha, from Costelano’s bedroom?”

  “I made a mistake. Forget Prem. He is gone now.”

  “So Prem is a guy?”

  She lowers her eyes, looks at the surf crisping on the sand.

  “He was here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”