Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery)

by Randall Peffer

  He has to get out to P-town, take care of business. But this time he is not going empty handed. He has a pellet pistol tucked under the waistband of his jeans. Tio Tommy gave it to him for his twelfth birthday. He used to take it on the Rosa Lee to shoot the birds raiding the net when they were hauling back. It is not really a gun. Not a Baretta or a Glock. And it would not kill a man. But it might stop him for a while, if you hit him just right.

  The traffic on Route 6 is hideous, and Michael does not get to the Follies until Silver is just wrapping up her act. The room is packed. But when Silver leaves the stage and the lights come up, a straight couple who have clearly seen enough of the lavender crowd vacates a table. It is down front just two rows back from the stage. Michael grabs it in a flash, before he has a chance to think things through. It is one of the best seats in the house if you want to watch the performers. But it sucks if you want to check out the crowd. They are at his back. In the dark. He is not liking this. A killer could be hiding there.

  When he sits down, he feels the barrel of the pellet pistol dig into his hip. It does not make him feel any safer, and he wonders what he will do if the shooting starts. Dive under the table maybe. Then he thinks, perhaps, there is some truth to what Fil said about him being certifiable. To hell with it. A double shot of tequila ought to cure that. Make that two. By the time the lights go down, he thinks he is ready for war.

  The sound system hums for a second, then the music cuts in. The song is Patti LaBelle’s “Lady Marmalade,” the story of one very foxy lady of the night in New Orleans. After the first three bars of the song, he can hear Lady Marmalade’s sales pitch playing in his head, lowdown and sassy: “Gitchi, gitchi, ya ya da da, gitchi, gitchi, ya ya here.”

  The spotlight picks up Tuki making her entrance with a sexy shuffle down the staircase. She has a look he has never seen on her before. She is wearing a gold kimono stitched with little red dragons. Her lips glisten bright crimson. Liner accents the Asian shape of her eyes, her hair is pinned up in loose geisha folds.

  Once again Vietnam is playing in his mind … taking him back to Saigon where the chorus of the song, “Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir” echoed from the bars in Saigon twenty-four hours a day. He imagines a bar girl named Misty, Huong Mei, singing to the juke box, dancing on the bar of a Saigon dive. A golden-skinned goddess.

  So what Michael sees coming down the stairs is not Patti or Whitney or Janet. This next groove is spinning out from a lost little lady named Misty, sending out the lala to the dark man in her life. A private dancer coming at you straight from Saigon.

  And she is smoking. Sashaying down the runway in that kimono, kissing up to the mike, showing some leg. Bringing it down. Rocking the poles. Working the steps.

  The crowd is already howling. The sound kid at his panel is up on his feet, jamming, into the lip-synch with Lady Marmalade. But Michael is losing sight of all of this because he has been spotted, and the lady with the mike is homing in for the table-sex thing. He does not even know what is happening until she has him pinned to his chair with a lap dance. The humid air shimmers. Smoke in the spotlights.

  But she has barely started. The kimono is still covering all of her surprises. So she struts away from him to sing the second verse … and now she shakes her hair out in a wild explosion of curls. Misty’s ghost struts. The shoes come off. The kimono is history. She works a pole dance in her black bra and G-string. Now she slips out of the bra and slinks back toward the new man in her life. Bump and grind. Like, eat your heart out, la. Her breasts are close enough to whisper in his ears, “gitchi, gitchi, ya ya here.”

  As she dances, as she sings, the air grows thick as fog in the room … and in his mind. The golden spotlight flickers across her skin. He feels a moist heat. He smells a place he has never been. The incense and the opium … the ginger and the charcoal fires … the water buffalo and the rice paddies … the river and the plaa … the sweat of men … the milk of mothers. Bangkok. Thonburi. The River House. Saigon—

  Lights on.

  The crowd howls. She bends over and kisses him on the mouth. He thinks this would be a good time for someone to take a shot at the two of them. Somewhere nearby, a waitress drops a glass. It hits the floor with a bang. He jumps up, hand going for the pellet gun.

  FORTY-FIVE

  A thousand times before coming to America, he warned himself he might find a fallen angel. But seeing this lap dance, watching her rubbing and kissing the farang, is too much for Prem Kittikatchorn. She is shameless. He thought the escort service and her midnight rendezvous with the giant, the dead man, were the worst of her shame. But see how she humiliates herself here under the spotlights? Before a cheering crowd? This place is worse than Bangkok. She could teach a Patpong whore how to slither in sewer filth. He used to like the Americans. But look what they have done to her. Monsters.

  His anger is beginning to tear at him, he is starting to care about something other than his dreams. Now he feels his hands starting to tremble slightly, and he knows that soon he will be crashing unless he shoots up more pung chao. But he left his kit twelve miles down the highway at a roadside motel in Wellfleet. And right now he has to save the queen of his heart from her shame. He thought he could swoop into America, win her back, and carry her off to a star where they could live happily ever after. This is the dream he always has when he feels the horse racing through his veins.

  But since that night almost two weeks ago when he lied and said he was going off to die like a cat, the night of fire and death in Provincetown, his dream is cracking. Fading out. He had hoped that after the death of the giant, he would see a change in her. An opening for him to make things like they used to be. But there is no chance. Look at her. She is too far gone. He is too far gone. The only way to end their disgrace is the way he saved his wife and little girls from the humiliation of his queer cravings, his addictions. With bullets. Unlike heroin, unlike Tuki, bullets are forever. They taught him that in military school.

  He has been lurking in the shadows, waiting for this moment of justice and redemption. Trailing her as best he can. Looking for his chance. But the farang lawyer has been in the way, the police and Immigration have been in the way. So tonight he has come out of the shadows. Brought himself and his gun—a snub-nose .357—right into the Follies. He will use this in front of more than two hundred witnesses.

  But he cannot get off the shot. He was not much of a marksman back in military school, and he still is not. She is too far away. And there are people standing in his line of fire. He got here too late for a table down front so he chose this seat at the bar where his head and torso are above the crowd. He thought she would see him, could not miss him. Come to him the way she used to back in Bangkok at the Underground. Then, when she was a few feet away, singing just for him, he would put a bullet in her head. And his.

  As she chants her Patti La Belle teaser, she looks right at him for a moment. Her eyes unblinking. But it is like she does not recognize him. He is just another John who would put dollars in her G-string. She is lost in her own dreams of Saigon, her mother, her father … and maybe of this lawyer for whom she lap dances, her breasts in his face.

  Suddenly the show is over. She slips off to her dressing room. The lawyer is getting up to leave. There is brusque purpose in the way he pushes through the crowd. The way a man on a mission moves. Maybe a man in love. He is going to meet up with the whore, to be sure.

  Now the man from Bangkok leaves twenty dollars on the bar for his drink, slides off the stool, and follows the lawyer out the door.

  FORTY-SIX

  What may soon be People’s Exhibit A, the videotape from the security camera at Alby’s Glass House, is rolling. It is almost one o’clock in the morning, and they are back at her bungalow at Shangri-La. He has popped the tape in the VCR while she is drying her hair after her shower.

  “Is this it?” she asks, dropping onto the bed where he is sitting. She is wearing her blue robe, her hair is wild and fluffy.

&nb
sp; “We’re just getting to the part.”

  The focus is terrible. But it definitely looks like Tuki who they see on the screen, slinking into view on the deck outside Alby’s bedroom in the same robe she has on now. Even though the face is shadowy, those curls sure do look like the ones he saw on her when she did her Whitney Houston thing onstage. A wig. Why? Unless this is not really Tuki who darts through the open screen door, takes two steps to the bureau, snatches up the DVDs, grabs the little jade-handled dha off the desk, splits like the wind. In the foreground, he can see the shadows of Silver and the master dancing a fugue on top of the sheets. Tuki lets out a sharp little cry.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I wish I had killed them right there.”

  He has a sinking feeling in the stomach. Is she confessing? He tries not to shout at her when he speaks, tries keeping a neutral voice. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was not there. That person looks like me … but she does not act like me.” She gets off the bed. Finds the remote beside the TV and shuts it off.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She sits down beside him again, her face a foot from his … those soft, dark eyes of a child staring right into his.

  “Would a girl who sees the man who makes every part of her body vibrate like a temple gong not look when he is down and dirty with Silver? Like my archenemy neung, number one, la? No way, Joe. Right? I would look. But the thief in the film never looks. Does not bat an eyebrow. And those are not my earrings.”

  He snaps the tape into slow rewind. “What?”

  There is only a second or so when the robber enters the room that you see a flash of an earring.

  “She is wearing dark pendants of some kind. Not mine, la.”

  He is starting to think she is on to something here, wondering if she sees any hint of who is wearing her drag—

  A shot rips though the picture window.

  Shards of glass sting his neck. Blood blooms at her right temple and starts to run down the side of her face. Even as the glass is still flying, he snags her around the shoulders with an arm and pulls her onto the floor. They hit and roll on the broken glass.

  Another shot cracks from somewhere outside, buzzes over their heads, and smacks the corner of the TV. Gray plastic splinters everywhere. Two more shots burrow into the bed with faint little thuds.

  He lays with his body half-covering hers, the damp hair towel in his hand. He is pressing it to her temple, trying to stop the bleeding. Her eyes are closed. She feels limp.

  “Christ, Tuki!”

  “What happened?” Her eyes open, dart side to side as if she is just waking up.

  He wants to tell her that she has been shot. But before he can push out the words, he hears hurried steps outside in the woods. Coming closer. A shot whacks the headboard on the bed.

  A sort of growl comes from her throat. Suddenly she is shouting in Thai. The tones are not the sound of someone who is wounded or afraid. She is scolding like a frustrated, impatient mother. And she does not stop. Although the only light in the room comes from the small lamp on the nightstand, the room suddenly seems lit with spotlights.

  Michael draws the pellet gun from his waistband, pumps up the pressure in its gas chamber. He does not know what kind of weapon the stalker has but the shots sound loud and heavy. He is guessing he’s up against some kind of traditional revolver. Like the police use. The shooter must be just about out of bullets now. The trick is to get him to empty the gun. Then jump him before he can reload or pull another weapon.

  Now he hears the scrape of sneakers on the porch. If the shooter comes right up to the blown out picture window casing, he will have a clear shot at them lying like fish in the glare of the halogen deck lights on the Rosa Lee.

  He reaches up to the nightstand, grabs the lamp. Rips its cord from the wall and flings it out the open window casing.

  The room goes dark. The lamp shatters with a crash on the porch outside as he pushes Tuki under the bed. He is rolling across the small room to the cover of the front wall when he hears a loud crack and sees the muzzle flash not even fifteen feet away at the window opening. As the bullet kicks up a little storm of glass from the floor, he hears the click of a hammer on an empty chamber.

  There is no hesitation. He rolls up on his feet, pellet pistol in both hands. But before he has a chance to fire into the dark, Tuki starts shouting in Thai. A new note has crept into her voice. It sounds pleading. But more than that … tender.

  Someone grunts. Then starts running. Michael can hear crashing through the bushes, heading away up the hill toward the parking lot. He takes up the chase. There is no moon and the starlight barely penetrates the woods. A fallen branch trips him. He goes down, the gun discharging when he hits. His knee hurts like hell. He is wondering if he shot himself, when he hears a motorcycle start and race away down the road.

  For a minute or two all he can hear is the chirping of crickets, frogs, and night birds. Then Tuki calls his name.

  By the time he limps back to the bungalow, she has turned on a light. She is looking at her face in the bathroom mirror, dabbing her head wound with a wet washcloth. But when she sees him limping, she drops the cloth and runs to him. She wraps him in her arms and says something in Thai. Just a couple of words.

  They sound soft. Apologetic. Her body squeezes him to her until he stops shaking.

  “This is bad, la.”

  “What?”

  “He is not dead.”

  “Is he supposed to be?”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  After he phones in the shooting, the police show up and immediately start to bust his chops about the pellet pistol, calling him Rambo. But the EMTs say later for that. These people need attention. It turns out neither one of them has been shot. She has a gash in her scalp from flying glass that the medics close up with some kind of fancy glue. He smacked his knee real hard on a rock when he fell, needs an ice pack and an Ace bandage.

  “You two are lucky as hell,” says a detective holding up the slug he has pried out of the floor with a penknife. “Do you know what this is? You know what one of these things can do to human flesh?” The bullet is spread out like a flattened, ragged mushroom.

  “I don’t know much about guns,” says Michael.

  The detective looks at the pellet pistol the patrolmen have confiscated, bagged on the kitchen counter. “No shit, counselor. But I’d say your visitor does. This is a man stopper.”

  He turns to Tuki, who is sitting at the kitchen table while the EMT finishes her job on the wound. “I don’t like how this is getting to be a weekly thing. You and the law. Who the hell’s been shooting at you, sweetheart? What have you got yourself into?”

  “She doesn’t have to answer that. She’s the victim here, not the suspect.”

  The detective is a statey, a wiry Italian-looking guy, middle-aged. White short-sleeve shirt, baggy brown suit pants. He wheels on Michael. “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. But, see? I don’t. I just want to know how Tuki here is feeling about almost having her gorgeous little self turned into Swiss cheese. Who did this, Tuki? Help me get this sick shit off the streets!”

  Her mouth opens a little. There is a name on the tip of her tongue. Then she closes it a second before answering. “I do not know, detective. I did not see him.” Her eyes flash a look at Michael. He cannot read it.

  “Come on. Don’t tell me—”

  “Hey! Leave her alone, okay?”

  The detective wheels on Michael, glares. “Fine, wise guy. Have it your way. I’m just the dumb cop. You don’t want to cooperate, don’t cooperate. Get yourself and your twiggy girlfriend blown all to hell. You think anyone really cares? But this is my crime scene. You can’t stay here.”

  Tuki suddenly has a sick look on her face. “This is my home.”

  “Not any more, darling.”

  “But where will I …”

  The detective rolls his eyes at Michael. “Why don’t you ask Rambo here.”


  When he wakes up on the couch, late morning sun is streaming into his attic. Tina Turner is singing, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” softly on the stereo. Tuki is standing at the stove wearing his powder blue dress shirt and pouring hot water into two cups of tea.

  He does not think that he did anything weird last night, even though they both got a little toasted on Sambuca when they finally got to Chatham. He still has his boxers on. And there is no way she got on this couch with him. Thank god.

  “I was having such a crazy dream.”

  She turns and smiles. “About me?”

  He nods.

  “Was I still alive?”

  “Very. You were standing in a boat.”

  “You want to go out in a boat?”

  He rubs his eyes. She hands him his tea and sits down on the couch. “Yeah, but … but why didn’t you want to tell the cops about your trigger-happy boyfriend?”

  “No more police. They do not understand.”

  “He tried to kill us!”

  “It is the pung chao. Not Prem. He needs help.”

  “Can I ask you why you want to protect him? Did he kill Costelano?”

  She kisses him on the cheek. “Later, I promise. Right now it is a beautiful day. We are alive. And I love boats. Sip bia klai mu.” There is a shrill giddiness in her voice that he has never heard before.

  “Pardon?”

  “Now or never.”

  By noon they have bought and launched Michael’s new boat. It is the Boston Whaler with a Johnson seventy and a trailer that Michael saw for sale down on Ryder Lane. He knows Filipa is going to have a fit, but he feels like he has scored big time. At this price the boat is a steal, even though both boat and engine are about twenty years old. And now he is taking Tuki on a picnic to Monomoy Island, the long, thin sand spit, the wildlife preserve, south of Chatham. She is so right. After last night, a little escape is in order. Damn, someone was trying to shoot him.