Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery)

by Randall Peffer

  “What does it matter?”

  “Because he’s your alibi. Because he might hurt you! How’s that?”

  “Prem is a cowardly lion. He cannot hurt anybody … except maybe …”

  “Stop, dammit, Tuki. Look at me!”

  She takes four steps out into the water. A wave rushes through her legs, soaks the thighs of her jeans as she turns to face her attorney with a squinty-eyed, resentful look.

  “I am looking at you now, Michael Decastro. What do you want me to see?”

  He is thinking, screw this. He is tired of playing twenty questions. “Well?”

  “Why are you protecting this Prem? We are down to the same old question we have been dealing with for three days aren’t we? What happened in Bangkok? Why is it coming back to bite you now?”

  He stares at her, waiting for an answer.

  She is sucking on her bottom lip.

  “All right, Tuki. Don’t tell me. I’ll get the story from that Thai detective when I call him tonight. He seems like a big fan of yours. Called you the dragon ho. In fact, I can’t quite figure out why he cares to warn us that you are in danger.”

  Suddenly tears are rolling down her cheeks. She is wiping her eyes with her hands.

  It is an instinct. He wades out to her and hugs her. He hugs her the way he hugs Filipa when she cries. He lets himself mold around her, the way his mother taught him.

  After a long time she says she met Prem Kittikatchorn in the Patpong. It is a long story. But she can start it for him if it is important. Khwan pha sak. Sometimes you have to call a snake a snake.

  One night after a show, a chauffeur in a baby-blue suit knocks on the stage door that leads from the dressing room right into the street. He asks for Tuki, presents her with a dozen flaming tulips and a note written in big smooth looping English words. Dear Miss Aparecio:

  I would be most deeply honored if you would join me for dinner at the barbecue on the terrace of the Oriental Hotel tomorrow evening. I have no illusions about your gender. But please do not think of me as one of those foul men who hoot and whistle at you or make you indecent proposals. Mine is not a hasty or lewd offer. Since I first heard you sing two weeks ago, I have thought of little else but the sound of your song. If your mind is as clear as your voice, and your heart as rich as your music, as I think they are, then you will know with what deep sincerity and hope I write these words.

  If you are agreeable to my proposal, please tell Pon where and when we can collect you tomorrow for dinner.

  Most Sincerely,

  Prem Kittikatchorn

  The Oriental. Many times she has heard that this hotel is the most glamorous hotel in all the world. And most of her life she has passed by the riverside deck of the Oriental on her way to the water taxi landing, dreamed of eating cold crab and grilled steak among all of those rich and beautiful people. But she is not accepting … even though she feels the truth and sincerity in this man’s offer.

  She tells the chauffeur in Thai, who is standing at attention all the time she is reading—and re-reading—Prem’s note, that she is very honored by the gentleman’s request. But she does not even know whether the fellow writing this letter is a prince or a frog. And he should understand that she must be introduced before she could consider such a request.

  He bows and strides back to the dark blue Mercedes limo. Pon opens the back door of the limo and says a few words to someone inside. Then she sees a tall, thin man in a cream-colored suit step out of the car. He is in his early twenties, with fine features, black hair slicked back from his forehead. His eyes twinkle in the streetlights even from this distance. As he walks slowly up the street toward her, she hears the click of his shoes on the pavement and sees a sad little smile on his face … like the look of a sick child coming to take his medicine against his will.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Everything seems to be happening in a great rush—but the world is in slow motion at the same time. It is a Monday, the quietest night in the Patpong. And even quieter tonight because Bangkok is in the lull of early December, a couple of days after all the craziness of the King’s birthday celebration when the Patpong was filled with crowds. This Monday is the calm after the storm, one of the only nights when a showgirl can get some time off. It is the dry season. For a change, the air feels almost fresh in Bangkok. The sun stays up until nearly nine at night. Tuk-tuks drone through the streets.

  He is coming at eight because she tells him she wants to watch the sun set over the river as they eat on the terrace at the Oriental. It is seven forty-five and she is wandering around the little fourth-floor apartment in a silk slip.

  “You very crazy crazy girl, la!” says Brandy. “Dinner at Oriental!”

  She shakes her head like this is something impossible for a Patpong queen.

  “Help me with my hair.”

  “Oh, now she such big shot she give us orders, too!” says Delta rolling her eyes. “She think she got a rich boy on kite string.”

  “Pa-leeeease!”

  Tuki is not much more than a kid. This is her first real date. Dinner with a man who looks like a tall, thin lion.

  “This no good!” says Delta. “This boy just want take advantage.”

  “I think we go, too. Chaperones, la!”

  Oh, dear Buddha, she thinks, why did I ever tell my mothers about this date. I could have just said I was taking a night off to go to the movies.

  “You not ready for this! You just baby.” Brandy grabs her comb and shakes it in Tuki’s face.

  She grabs her own comb and shakes it right back at her. Then she unloads. How stupid do they think she is? Do they think she can live here in the most famous meat market in the world for just about all her life and still be just a baby? Do they think she can strip to a G-string six nights a week in front of crowds of drooling men and not know what drives them wild, what crazy and terrible things they can do when they are following orders from the hard little general between their legs?

  Do her mothers think she has had her eyes closed when the live sex acts were onstage in some of the sleazier clubs where they used to work? Does she not see when the bar queens go down on someone in the dark corners of a club? Does she never hear the squeals of the hoes putting out in the lala rooms down the hall from her dressing room? Do Brandy and Delta think she really believes them when they come home from “dates” bruised or bloody or crying, saying they got mugged by someone on the streets? Does she not hear the cries of the young girls and little queens who have been “bonded” to the Patpong pimps? Is she not there when a dozen queens and whores they know whither away and die from AIDS? Was it some other Tuki who saw the body of Ingrid’s mother seeping blood all over the barroom floor?

  “I swim in this water, la!”

  “You know only pictures,” says Delta.

  “You not know how a man can feel in your heart or in your body.” Brandy shakes her comb. So you know nothing at all. Men like pung chao—like heroin, la. They always make feel good at first—”

  “Trust me,” says Tuki.

  “What else we do? We know you going? Girls always go.”

  “Right. Khi mai ma hom. New shit smells sweet to the dog.” Brandy arches her eyebrow and gives a sly smile like Eddie Murphy in drag.

  “Where we get such crazy girl?!”

  “Courtesy of one sexy little Saigon bar ho.” Tuki smiles. She pictures her mother, and suddenly she knows exactly what she is going to put on for this date.

  She makes Prem wait down on the street in the limo for fifteen minutes before she steps out into the street wearing a long gold shantung silk sheath with a Nehru collar. Pumps to match. Hair up off her neck in a French roll.

  Pon stands waiting in his powder-blue livery alongside the Benz. When he opens the back door she hears Lionel Richie singing “Stuck on You” over the sound system. There in the shadows of the car is her tall, thin lion in a tan suit and denim button-down shirt open at the neck. His hand shakes as he reaches out to grab hers. For a secon
d, she thinks he is going to kiss her hand like a prince in an old movie. But when she catches his eyes to give him permission, he quickly drops his gaze and guides her onto the seat beside him.

  “I … I must be dreaming.” He stutters in very royal-sounding English as if he is talking to himself. “You look so lovely. Your presence is a great honor,” he adds in Thai.

  There is a little sweat on his forehead. So she is already thinking that this man is more or less at her mercy. Even so, she is blushing and staring at her knees.

  “You really like Lionel Richie, la?”

  “All night long,” he says, echoing the title of one of Lionel’s classics. Now she can really see those dark eyes as he smiles.

  He offers her a glass of the white French wine he is drinking, but she sticks with Perrier. Prem is telling her that he has been totally addicted to Lionel since the days when his father sent him to a military high school in America to shape up, learn English, and be a man. He used to make his own mixes of Lionel’s songs instead of doing his homework.

  He says except for all the money and nice things he has, his life is hell. He is the only son among older daughters. The child of a man who owns a company that makes sleeping pills and ships them all over the world. A man who used to be high up in the Thai Navy. A man who calls his only son an art fag. His mother, he says, is easier. She collects. She is on the board of Bangkok’s museums, one in New York, too. Prem went to college there. He studied filmmaking. He says his father cannot understand why he spent his time in college working on music videos with a whole zoo full of Greenwich Village fairies.

  But Prem does not care. One of these days he is going to get his trust fund, be independent. Then he is going to tell his father where he can go, start making music videos and other films in Bangkok. Like, goodbye, Father. But first, after all of those years in school and all the stinking plaa he has put up with from his father, he is going to suck up a little of the good life. He thinks he deserves to give himself a little vacation at Daddy’s expense. And it is starting tonight.

  “Ya ching suk kon ham,” Tuki mumbles. Early ripe, early rotten.

  He gives a sad little smile like maybe he agrees. But then he laughs, raises his glass of wine in a toast, and says, “To the good life!”

  It is the first time she ever hears this expression. Thinks, give Tuki some of that!

  TWENTY-THREE

  “So now he’s here?” He thinks he has asked this question before but got no answer from her.

  “He came. He is gone.”

  “When?”

  “Two weeks ago, maybe. I don’t know, la.”

  “But before the fire, obviously. You were walking with him early on the night when—”

  “Three days before the fire. I thought I saw him out there in the audience. I told myself it cannot be. How did he find me here after all of these years? I wanted to die.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She looks around her. They are at lunch in a fancy West End restaurant called the Red Inn. After the beach, they changed into dry, clean clothes back at his Jeep. Tuki adjusts the new pink jersey shirt she’s wearing. She can still feel the salt left from the waves scratching at her body. Michael is back in his white shirt and gray suit, ever the young attorney at law.

  “I think he has come to settle some old business.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not important. That is very old news. Just something, la. Okay?”

  He grits his teeth. She is doing it again. Holding back. Like his cousin Alicia did after the night he ran into her at a high school keg party with a ring of love bites around her neck.

  “Did you see him after the show?”

  She shakes her head no.

  “The next day. Ruby came to me in the morning saying my boyfriend from Bangkok was in town. Alby had seen him. It seemed impossible to me that he had found me, that he had come all this way for me. I thought maybe Alby was lying to Ruby … or she had things mixed up. It could not be true. Prem could not be here …”

  She feels scared. She does not want to be alone. So right after her morning rehearsal, she heads to the Slip for sunlight, breezes, and lots of company. She has been there for maybe an hour when she hears a soft, shaky voice saying her name. She opens her eyes, sees a silhouette standing over her in a white bathing suit. She squints, stares to see him against the bright sunlight. It is him, her one and only cowardly lion. Live in the flesh, after more than five years.

  “Do you mind if I sit down,” he asks like they are strangers. He nods at a vacant chaise next to her, “Or are you with someone?”

  “Without someone,” she smiles. Then she remembers Alby. “At the moment!”

  He says maybe he should just leave her in peace.

  Yes, please just do that, she thinks, because she has been on one crazy ride with men in general, and him in particular.

  She stares out at the bay where the water is a deep blue.

  He says he is sorry. He has come a long way. He just wants to see how she is getting along.

  “Now you see,” she says in this totally neutral voice. Then she lies back in her chaise and closes her eyes. She can feel his eyes on her.

  He says that he has started working again. He thinks they should talk about a movie project he has in mind that would involve her. He wants to make a serious film about the queens in the Patpong. He wants her to come back to Bangkok to do it.

  “I will make you a deal,” she hears her voice saying, and is already regretting her words for about a thousand reasons. “Maybe you understand why I am still feeling more than a little hurt, and I will try forgetting about how you just stopped calling me. I will try not remembering how you, your pung chao, and your nonsense about always and forever danced on my heart and rubbed my soul in the mud. And … and … then the River House—”

  “Forget about the house. It is not important,” he says. “Look, Tuki. I have been a fool. My father made me stop. My mother said he would disown me, turn me out on the streets. I still loved you. I always—”

  “No,” she almost shouts, “you cannot do this!”

  Then she closes her eyes and covers her ears and counts to about fifty in Vietnamese, which is not easy for her. When she opens her eyes, her mind is telling the rest of her that they have no past with this man. They have no interest in this coward. What they think they remember is just a sad movie with people who look like them.

  “I never knew you,” she says. “Okay? I have a new life now, la. An important boyfriend and boss. He will send you back to Thailand in a body bag if he finds you here.”

  He says he knows. He rubs his ribs as if they are sore.

  For a second he looks like he is going to cry, but he does not. The more she thinks about the film project he is describing, the more she thinks exploitation. And cheating heart, too. Now that the blush is off his marriage, rich boy, big-shot film director wants to walk on the wild side again. He is thinking a film project is maybe just the bait he needs to hook into her heart again.

  “So, where are the wife and kids?” she asks. She think this shot to the chest will send him running … and she will soon be chilling in solitude once again, free of any illusions about a film he will never really make.

  He says they have rented a place on the beach at Phuket. His marriage is a big mess. He walked out last month. “That’s not my problem!”

  The man looks beaten. But he is not standing up and walking away from her tongue. So maybe he really is not here for revenge. Maybe it is not a mistake to give a care again, she thinks. Especially because she suddenly gets this strong sense of pain from him as she drowns in his black eyes.

  “She does not know about you? She thinks you are straight?”

  He shakes his head, right. And she knows he is trying to tell her marriage and kids have not settled his restless heart. He feels locked in a golden closet, afraid of what will happen if he tries to break out again.

  “Oh, la,” she sighs. “You need
a big shot of courage.”

  He gives her a sad smile. She cannot help herself. She just slides over onto his chaise and hugs him. Fifteen minutes go by before he comes out of his daze, shakes his head, asks, “Will you come back to me?” He sounds so sad, so sincere. She does not yet know he is already stirring up a whole pot of trouble with Alby.

  “Do the police know about all of this?” asks Michael.

  “No. It is no matter now. Leave him out of this. You find the real killer. Prem is gone. This time maybe forever.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  She should remember every detail of her first dinner on the river terrace at the Oriental, but she does not. All she recalls is the heaviness of the water glasses, more forks than she can use, the waiters in white jackets, tables full of farangs glittering with real diamonds, the sounds of a string quartet, the smell of grilled shrimp, a sunset swirling with violet in a sea of crushed roses. Mostly what she remembers are Prem’s big dark eyes taking in every inch of her, like she is the rarest angel in all of Bangkok. She thinks about the lime scent of his cologne and how she might take a bite of that long, hard neck and feast on his golden skin.

  He says that until he sees her at the Underground, he has been lonely since he has come home to Bangkok. He has spent the last ten years in America and Europe. He misses New York. The long nights, the Village, the clubs, the outrageous queens. The laughter of gay couples on Christopher Street. The crazy bums in Washington Square. And other things, like the subway musicians and the street-front restaurants of Little Italy, Chinatown. He finds himself coming to the Patpong to look for the things he misses in New York. He does not mention the drugs. Not yet.

  The next thing she knows, dinner is over. Prem is holding her hand like it is a jewel, begging her to not let the night end here. He is asking her to go for a ride with him up the river and look at the lights of the city.

  She loves the river, so they hire a water taxi and ride for hours. They go so far up the river they go beyond the Krungthon Bridge. Then they come back down to the Royal barge sheds where the boatman stops and shines a light so they can see the golden dragon heads on the King’s barges. They detour through all of the klongs in Thonburi, watch the charcoal fires going out, and the windows turning black in the stilt houses built out over the water. All this time Prem is asking her how such an exotic flower as Tuki Aparecio came to be in his city.