When they finally collapse onto each other, raw and hot and out of breath, he hears a Jimmy Buffett tune about changes in latitude seeping up through the floor from the liquor store downstairs. He smells fresh fish. Pictures the pale blue of Pleasant Bay, the indigo of the Atlantic beyond, a figure waving to him from a small boat.
“I’m thinking about buying a boat, Fil. Just for noodling around, maybe a little fishing. There’s a seventeen-footer and a trailer for sale down on Ryder Lane. If I got it today we could take a picnic to the outer bar or Monomoy Island. What do you say?”
“What’s wrong, Michael?”
Weeks pass, and she does not see him. She lives in Banglamphu with another showgirl named Mercy. She wants him to find her, beg her to come back. She wants him to tell his father and mother that he loves her no matter what they think, that they are going to stop living their life together like creatures of the night river … that they are going to be O-U-T with their love. She wants him to tell her that he is going to start making his videos, that he is going to stand on his own—without Pon, the limo, the River House. They do not matter. Only Prem and Tuki matter.
But he does not come; he does not find her. Something is wrong. This is not just a pride thing. She knows because all her pride runs away down her cheeks when she sings her sad songs at the Underground—gone with the dust on the floor, the smoke in the air. She just wants to see him, to smell his skin. He does not have anyone he can even talk to besides her. Something is terribly wrong. Maybe there is another girl!
The night she thinks this, she cannot help herself. Right after the show, she goes to the Oriental landing and takes a water taxi to the River House in Thonburi. She sees the low flames of candles burning like a funeral inside the house. There are no shadows of lovers on the walls. Only long, distorted shapes like monsters with a dozen legs. Lionel Richie is playing low on the sound system as she crosses the deck to the open door.
From the doorway she can see him curled up in the big hammock. Passed out. Naked. A syringe sits between the fingers of his right hand. The hand lies cupped palm up just above the black bush of his pubic hair. She moves closer, walking on tiptoes. She moves like she must not disturb the dead. She can see the spoon on the floor, a strap of surgical tube, a bloody glass of water. Even when she bends over him, sniffing, looking at every curve of his body from inches away, he does not move.
Pung chao, she thinks. Heroin. But how bad can it be? She thinks that she knows this body right down to the pits of his arms. She has never seen needle tracks. So, really, how bad can this be? Where has he taken his poison?
His hand with the syringe moves a little and the syringe rolls out of his fingers into his bush. Without thinking, she reaches to grab the needle before it hurts him. Then she sees the marks. Down there under the luxury of hair are the dark purple lines of needle tracks going into the veins at the root of his sex. Dozens of holes. Maybe more. The skin is hard and swollen to the touch like the holes have been used again and again.
He stirs to her touch, and smiles a little smile in his chemical dream.
How could she have not known about this? How could she not have seen? It is like the movie M Butterfly. After all those years with Butterfly, how could the French diplomat not know his lover had a penis? Well, here is the sad truth. Lovers see what they want to see, need to see. And mostly they keep their eyes closed, mostly they make their love in the dark. They are just thankful for a little pleasure and company. Why is she any different?
“Butterfly … daughter?” he asks suddenly.
His eyes open. He spreads his arms for an embrace.
I am not your effing daughter, screams her mind.
But her heart says, My poor, poor River Lion.
THIRTY-FOUR
“Why do you want this boat? Are you trying to run away from something? Is it me? The wedding?”
He nuzzles her neck. “No. I love you. I’m going to marry you. It will be the best wedding Nu Bej has ever seen.” He hears himself say these words, but part of him wonders whether he is lying to her, to himself. It is a scary thought.
“I don’t know if I believe you anymore. You think I can’t tell something’s going on with you. You’re a different person every time I see you. More and more distracted. And kind of manic.”
He kisses her cheek. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be.”
She strokes his head. “I know. But you are. It’s this case isn’t it? It’s taking you away from me. Tuki is taking you away from me.”
This is the first time Filipa has ever called his client by her name. He does not know what that means, except that something has changed. Things have gotten personal.
He rubs her thigh with his hand.
“Please. Can we talk about this later? I don’t want to drag my client into our bed.”
Filipa reaches, finds his hands, tightens her fingers around his. “I’d kill the bitch first. I swear!” she says. Then she kisses him so hard he thinks his lips are bleeding.
He looks over her shoulder, out the window at the blue sky. He hears the gulls taunting him, knows that there will be no boat buying today. But Jesus, wouldn’t it be fun to get that boat? They could be alone on the outer bar on the far side of Pleasant Bay in an hour. Take their clothes off, dive in the surf, dry off in the sun on the beach, go for a long walk. Then. Then they could talk about the case and Tuki and all the crazy things in her life, too. All the insane things she sees go down in the clinic. And they could deal with the wedding plans. Just plain deal with all the other stuff they need to get off their chests. He is a planner. Maybe they could come up with a loose plan to help them get through the days and weeks to come, then—
She jumps to her feet, pulls on her panties.
“I can’t do this anymore, Michael. I just can’t! How long have you known me? Five years since we met in Cambridge at the Plough and the Stars when you were starting law school. Isn’t that long enough for you to know I’m the kind of girl who needs real intimacy, not just mad sex? Really, you are not here, except in body. Where are you?”
He thinks about last night. The stories about Prem and his pung chao. Shooting up in his … damn! Nikki coming in beaten up, claiming she had been attacked by the INS. Tuki’s immigration status. Christ, there is a new wrinkle to the case. When the court finds out she is an illegal, they may well send her straight back to Thailand, where it seems she has charges pending, too.
Meanwhile, this shadowy figure Prem is lurking in the wings somewhere, with an alleged death wish for himself and Tuki and anyone who gets in his way.
So why is he bothering with any of this? Why does his gut still tell him Tuki is the pawn here, that she is innocent? Why did he spend the better part of the night in the same bed with a drag queen? Nothing happened. But, still, Filipa would just freak. His father and Tio Tommy would probably disown him.
“I just want to get out on the water, go fishing.”
“How much is this boat?”
He thinks he hears some sympathy in her voice. She is standing in front of the window, naked except for her panties, fiddling with the bra in her hand.
“I don’t know. I think I can get it for about thirty-five hundred.”
She shakes her head, cannot believe he is considering spending that kind of money for a boat when they could use every penny they have saved to get started on their life together in the North End. “What are you really thinking about, Michael?”
“Vietnam,” he says before he even has a second to reflect. It is the weirdest thing. Suddenly, he realizes there is a tape playing in the back of his head, so faint he does not see it unless he really looks. It is something like a scene he saw once in The Deer Hunter, a scene shot in a dark Saigon Bar. “Midnight Train to Georgia” plays on the jukebox. A B-girl is dancing on the bar. Her hips pumping to the rhythm. A soldier sits at the bar watching, nursing a Budweiser. The GI’s face is lost in shadows. But something about him seems familiar, almost …
“Michael?”
“What?” He stares at her. Coming out of the Twilight Zone.
She flips her sports bra over her head and torso, adjusts it around her breasts, stretches out the back strap to get the kinks out. “What?” he says again.
She grits her teeth. “I need to go running.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Monday before noon he is heading back to Provincetown. He cannot believe it, but he has started driving with one eye on the rearview mirror in the Jeep. He is not sure what he is looking for. Maybe an Asian guy with murder in his eyes.
He is standing in the hot sun outside the entrance to the Lodge at Shangri-La when Ruby shows up in a golden silk robe looking a little like an alley cat with makeup smeared all over her cheeks and her hair going twenty directions.
She swings open the door and ushers him inside with a sweep of her hand. He tries to introduce himself, but she has turned away and starts to groan.
“Rough night,” she sighs. He follows her into the kitchen, watches her pour a big glass of tomato juice with a shot of vodka, before squeezing in the juice from half a lemon.
He just nods and smiles like he knows the feeling.
“Want to kick start your day?”
He thinks about the jumbo latte he scored in Orleans for the drive up. Feels his eyes already starting to pop out of their sockets, his teeth on edge.
“I’m good, thanks.”
They sit down at a table out on the deck. Her head is bent, but she is staring at him like a person peering over the top of her glasses.
“She looked so cute in her tennis dress a half an hour ago when she left for her walk … like a China doll.”
“Who?” he asks, thinking he is in for the saga of how she came to be hung over.
“Tuki.”
He closes his eyes and purses his lips. What’s this viper thinking? “Don’t play coy, buster,” she teases. “I saw you leave Saturday morning. So … are you smitten?”
“She’s my client.” He knows his words sound defensive and hollow the minute they leave his mouth.
She takes a long sip of the Bloody Mary. “What ever you say, counselor. But you came here to talk about her didn’t you? I can see it in your eyes. You’re on a mission. You want to rescue her from the Blue Meanies.”
He hears an accent in her voice. Irish maybe.
“I just want to talk. I want to understand the situation around Shangri-La in the days leading up to the fire and Mr. Costelano’s death.”
“It’s all in the police reports.”
“Somehow I don’t think so.”
“Why? They interviewed all of us for hours. They got what they were looking for. Hey, I feel sorry for Tuki. She doesn’t deserve this mess. And Alby shit on her. He was a pig. But, bloody hell, they’ve got her on the security tape, stealing the murder weapon. By her own admission she tried to set the man on fire the same night he died and P-town went up in smoke.”
He is getting the sinking feeling he used to have aboard the Rosa Lee when they were hauling back and he could just tell by the way the net was coming in that it was empty except for some trash fish.
“They barely mention the presence of Tuki’s ex-boyfriend from Thailand. There’s nothing in the report about blackmail. There’s nothing saying that everyone here is an illegal, that Costelano kept you all in his harem by threatening to turn you in to Immigration.”
Her head jerks up. Her eyes sting him.
“You’re speculating, love.”
“What are you trying to hide? Who are you trying to protect, Ruby? Not Costelano. He’s dead. So who? Come on. Cut Tuki a break. Give me something to work with.”
She stands up.
“Leave me out of this. You’re welcome to wait for your girlfriend down at her bungalow. But we’re through here, counselor. G’day!”
He is feeling stupid as he watches her sashay off the deck, wondering whether she’s a tranny or a female, when a question grips him.
“So why did you leave Dublin, Ruby?”
She stops, looks at him over her shoulder, then tosses a thick strand of her yellow hair out of her eyes.
“It was Melbourne, love, if you want to know. And there were too many bloody lawyers.”
She does not go to work or leave his side for a week. For the first three days after she throws his bag of pung chao in the klong, the screaming and the crying are terrible. She buys rice and vegetables, lots of durian and star fruit from the vendors who go up and down the klong in their boats. She makes stir fries, tries to force him to eat and drink the fruit juices. Nothing seems to work. He refuses almost everything she offers him. She is just twenty-three, but she is so tired she feels one hundred and eighty.
“Let me die,” he says in Thai.
Then one day a water taxi comes to the landing. Brandy and Delta get out, wearing the saffron robes of monks.
“This bad,” says Brandy.
“How long he like this?” asks Delta.
“Five or six days,” she says. She has no clue any more.
“He dying, la,” they say … and both look at her with empty eyes.
“You got choice. You want him clean or live? No both.”
Typical. Her mothers always see life as a simple choice. Maybe, at this moment, they are right.
They say he is too sick, too strung out on pung chao. He cannot quit his habit like this—cold lizard. No way. He needs a doctor, a hospital, to slowly eat into his dependence. Then maybe he gets clean. Now this poor little rich boy needs heroin to live. Tuki must choose.
“Pung chao,” she says. “Help him.”
Delta reaches in her cloth handbag, pulls out a little cellophane packet of brown powder, puts it in a spoon, cooks it up over a candle until it is liquid. Then she sucks it up in a syringe, shoots it into a vein in his forearm. His body turns grey as death for a minute. His skin blooms to a pale, milky color as he falls into a deep sleep.
“Where are you getting that?” she points at the empty packet and the syringe.
“We prepare for the worst,” says Delta.
“We worry pung chao maybe you problem, too.”
THIRTY-SIX
It’s two in the afternoon. The Tango is empty except for a couple of tables of guys, and Chivas is starting on the scotch and water. After his little interlude with Ruby, Michael is tempted, too. But he decides he is going to nurse his cranberry and OJ here at the bar, hopes the booze loosens the queen mother’s tongue.
“She’s a sick bitch, that one,” says Chivas. “Full of venom. But Ruby sure knows how to throw a party. And sometimes I feel a little sorry for her. She’s not even queer.”
“Really?”
“A flaming fag hag. She loves the queens. She came on to Tuki, you know?”
“No!”
“Yes, counselor. Tuki told me the whole story. She was a little freaked out, if you want to know the truth. It was back in early July. Ruby conned Tuki into joining her on a three-day shopping expedition to Boston. Top shelf stuff. They stayed at the Four Seasons on Ruby’s gold card. Their last night in town, the girls went clubbing and the hostess of Shangri-La got blotto on piña coladas. She nuzzled against Tuki’s shoulder during the cab ride back to the hotel. And when they got to the room, Ruby attacked.”
For some reason Michael can almost picture the scene.
“One second Tuki was sitting on the bed massaging a stiff calf, the next second the room was dark and she was on her back, pinned to the bed. Ruby was on top of her with her tongue down Miss Bangkok’s throat. Tuki got free. Neither of them moved for about five minutes.
“After a while, Ruby started to cry. Then she told Tuki that she was in love with the Queen of the North Pole.”
“Silver?” asks Michael.
“None other. And Ruby was feeling the distinct unhappiness of being second-string booty. Silver had hitched her wagon to the Great One’s star. Tuki was not only wigging out, she was starting to feel used. Like, she was Miss Drag Hag’s surrogate Silver … or maybe a me
ans to make the Ice Queen jealous. Who knew at that point? But Tuki split and caught the next ferry back to P-town.”
“Damn!”
“Ready for that drink yet?”
He nods. He’ll take a sea breeze, light on the vodka.
“Let me get this straight. Big Al had the hots for Tuki. Silver wanted Alby. And Ruby had a thing for Silver. Is that right?” Chivas slides him another sea breeze.
“We call it a daisy chain here in the Magic Queendom, honey. And things can get real interesting when you get everybody in the same place at the same time. Can you say J-E-A-L-O-U-S-Y?”
“Or murder?”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the story on Silver and Alby?”
“She was his girl. She lived, lives, in his house at Shangri-La—the glass jobbie. This was her fourth summer in a row. But this summer things got a little weird … because Miss Tuki rolled into town shaking some tail feather. Next thing you know Big Al was two-timing his main squeeze.”
“Dicey.”
Chivas shakes her hand like she’s flicking sweat off her brow.
“You have no idea.”
“There’s more?’
“Of course, cowboy. But information like this doesn’t come cheap.” She gives him a wink. “So, what do you want?”
“How about a date?”
It’s the last week of July. Tuki steps from her outdoor shower at Shangri-La, wearing nothing but her robe to find Ruby waiting like a lost puppy. Her gold necklace and perky little tube dress seem out of place with her pale, sad face. Tuki really has not seen her since their close encounter in Boston. And she is just fine with that. But now Ruby is tugging on her sleeve and saying they need to talk.
Suddenly, Ruby bursts into tears and settles into a deck chair on the porch of Tuki’s bungalow. For a long time Tuki leans against the doorframe and stares out at the duck families paddling across the inlet. Ruby cries.
Finally, Ruby catches her breath and says don’t shoot the messenger, but Alby is …
Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery) Page 13
