Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery)

by Randall Peffer

  She raises her head to look at him. Her eyes are black and wet and dilated. Her mouth opens to talk, but no words come out. Tears are rolling down her cheeks. Then he sees her throat. It has not been cut, but it is already one huge, purple-streaked welt. Duke all but choked her to death before he switched to the knife. She throws her arms around his neck, and they both fall onto the soaked pavement. He can feel her struggling for breath. He is trying to soothe her, just reeling off words to keep her from fading before the EMTs get there. She is trying to tell him something. But all she can manage is a high, faint whistle before she falls limp.

  “Let her go!” shouts somebody. “We’re losing her!”

  Then three EMTs are on her with an intubation kit.

  It is not until the next morning that Michael hears anything. They airlifted Tuki off the Vineyard to Mass General’s trauma center in Boston. And they would not let him on her flight. So he found his way back to Chatham and got stinking drunk with a bunch of fishermen at the Squire. Now Votolatto is on the phone asking him if he wants the good news or the bad news first. “Just tell me she made it.”

  “She made it. I guess it was nip and tuck for quite a while. But she damn well made it. Serious condition but stable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a lot of damage to her larynx. They say it’s going to be a while before she can talk right. Nobody wants to bet on whether she will ever sing again.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I thought you might want to tell her.”

  “Christ!”

  “Exactly. Look, Rambo. I’m sorry as hell she got hurt, okay? She put on a great show. Right up until the end. I’ll give her that. Tell her we appreciate it. Tell her it was made for Hollywood. Tell her she is free and clear. I’ve spoken to the D. A. He’s dropping all the charges. And it seems like Immigration has misplaced her file….

  So do your citizenship thing. This case is a wrap as far as she is concerned.”

  For a second he forgets to breathe. He just sits there on his bed in his boxers staring at the phone in his hand. He thought victory would make him want to run to the window and shout its name. But right now it feels like nothing at all. Just dead space.

  Finally he inhales. “You got a confession?”

  “The Russian, Nikki, and her pal talked. After he came back to life … and everybody calmed down. You know, she really fucking clocked him with that frying pan. Major concussion. No doubt she saved Tuki’s life. The D. A. offered them a deal, no worse than Man One to give it up. Maybe a lot less, especially for the Russian. And we said we might be able to help out with Immigration. So they spilled. You had enough or you want to hear about it? You sound pretty fried, counselor.”

  “Tell me, okay?”

  “It’s what you’d figure. The stiff, Costelano, has these queens blackmailed into working escort duty. Threatening to call in the INS on them unless they hustle their tushies. The Russian wants out with her buddy Duke.”

  “But why steal the fancy knife and the videos? Why frame Tuki?”

  “Pretty much what Nikki told your client. The theft was an act for the benefit of the security camera. Tuki’s drag just a convenient tool. Nikki thought if Costelano got all distracted by someone stealing his trophies, he’d plumb forget about playing the heavy with her. Seems she was a popular moneymaker for the escort service. The guy slapped her around sometimes to keep her in line. Anyway, nobody was thinking about murder, or framing Tuki, says the Russian. Just distraction. I tend to believe her, seeing as how she came to your client’s rescue big time with that frying pan yesterday.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Nikki and Duke made plans to run off on the night of the murder. But before they left, our boy Duke had an attack of machismo. He’s a hothead, we saw that yesterday. And he’d had enough of Alby whoring, thumping, and threatening his little darling. Forget stealing off in the night. It was payback time. He took the stolen knife that Nikki gave him for credence and sneaked out from behind the bar in the Follies. He got the key to the big guy’s real estate office that they keep in the register. He let himself into the office. Just waiting to kick the shit out of Alby before splitting town with his honey. The car gassed and ready to go as soon as Nikki packed her stuff into it after work.”

  “But things got dicey.”

  “Next thing you know, here was Costelano coming down the alley from the Follies after his close encounter with Tuki and her flamethrower. He was swearing, kicking up clouds of dust. It’s maybe one in the morning. He went in his office. Turned on the desk lamp and saw Duke sitting on the couch.”

  “A showdown.”

  “Basically. Duke flat out told him that he and the Russian were history. The big guy was in total control-freak mode. This was not his day. Having problems with all of his queens. The whole fucking stable in revolt and at each other’s throats. Tuki and Silver, like fire and ice. Now Tuki was stealing from him. To top it off Richie was raising holy hell because he suspected his main man of plotting to run off to Neverland with the little Russian flit. ‘Screw that shit, my bald buddy,’ says Costelano. ‘I’m not going to drop a dime on your girlfriend. If you two so much as think of splitting on the Follies and me, I’m going to put her in a bag with a load of rocks and make you drop her ass in P-town Harbor. Stay the fuck away from her. Get back in there and tend bar.’ Tough talk, see?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This went on for several minutes. Escalating when Nikki walked in looking for Duke. Alby flipped out. Zapped her with his bullwhip. Knocked the lamp over into a metal wastebasket where it was sparking to beat the band. He tore into Nikki again with the whip. Then he got on Duke. Real Lash Laroo shit in the sparks and the shadows, I guess. He had Duke all wrapped up in that bullwhip and down on the floor. Stomping the shit out of him when Duke grabbed the stolen knife in his waistband and let Costelano have it in the gut. The wastebasket and a curtain burst into flames. And the whole office goes up.”

  “With half of Provincetown.” Michael finds his water bottle and takes a long gulp.

  Votolatto coughs.

  “So it goes, counselor.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  It takes Michael the better part of the day to get his head together, zip out to P-town to collect Chivas, and drive to Boston. But by three forty-five in the afternoon, he and Chivas find their way to Tuki’s bedside in Mass General.

  She looks like hell. Her skin is ashen. Someone has combed out her braids and most of her curls so her hair falls over her shoulders like Morticia in the Addams Family. She has an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. Her neck is a swollen mass of red and blue streaks. Her eyes are closed.

  When Chivas sees all this, she turns to Michael and rolls her eyes. The old queen has on her version of a gypsy costume, complete with a red silk headscarf and monster hoop earrings. She thought the outfit might make Tuki smile, but now she just feels like a fool. A Halloween party leftover.

  Michael can hardly believe this is the same person he met just three weeks ago in another hospital. But he tells himself, buck up, pal, it could be worse. She could be dead.

  He moves close. Takes her hand. “Hey, I brought someone to see you.”

  Her hand rolls slowly into his. Squeezes a little. Eyes open three-quarters. They look bloodshot and drugged. Now her lips are spreading. Starting to move. Saying words as she looks into his eyes.

  But he cannot read her lips. Not through the opaque plastic of the oxygen mask. And who knows if she is even speaking English. He feels something rising in his throat. He is about to gag when Chivas rallies, comes up right alongside the bed, bends, kisses Tuki on the forehead.

  “What a girl won’t do to get her name in the news, love. You are a scandal, you delicious little bitch! All the papers are calling you a heroine, an absolute superstar.”

  Tuki smiles a little, knows Chivas is bluffing, but does not care. She reaches up and runs the back of her right hand against the old girl’s cheek.
>
  “You’re free,” says Michael. “You broke the case. The D. A. dropped all charges.”

  Tuki does not seem to be listening. Her left hand is flailing around, searching for something on the nightstand next to the bed. He sees what she wants. There is a white erasable tablet, with a magic marker tied to it with a string. But it is just out of reach. He circles the bed and slides it into her hands. She blinks her eyes and mouths three words. “Thank you, la.” He sees that.

  She holds the tablet up in front of her, writing in big green letters.

  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???

  He tries to think positive thoughts. “You are going to be all right. It will just take a few days for you to get your energy and your voice back. You got a tough bruise on your neck.”

  Tuki scribbles something on the tablet, hands it to Chivas.

  I WANT TO GO HOME.

  “You’re going to be out of here in no time, honey. We’ve already moved your drag to my place. We are going to throw a victory party for you at the Tango, the likes of which the Magic Queendom has never seen. And a welcome home parade down C Street. The only question is whether pretty boy here, or yours truly, will be your escort. Personally I’d go for age over beauty, but you …”

  There is a pained, urgent look on Tuki’s face as she takes up the tablet and starts writing furiously. You can hear her wheezing through the oxygen mask. A shrill little alarm starts beeping.

  FIND MY FATHER. PLEASE!!

  “I’m already working on that, and I—”

  “You have to leave!” A nurse has Michael by the shoulder, steers him and Chivas toward the hallway. “She can’t take too much of this. She’ll go into respiratory distress again.”

  An intern swoops into the room with a syringe in his hand and closes the door.

  “Crap. Just crap!” Michael rocks back against the wall of the corridor.

  Chivas eyes him like she knows that as of today, as of the D. A. dropping all charges, the court stops paying his salary. Anything he does now, including this visit to the hospital, is pro bono. “You going to keep your promise, good looking?”

  “Are you?”

  “The long lost knight returns from the crusades!” Filipa stands in the entrance to her flat in Cambridge, one arm braced against the door jam as a blocking maneuver. It is after six on this steamy summer evening.

  “It’s over. They dropped all the charges. I’m off the hook. Tuki’s off the hook. I just have to make some calls, help her get documented as a U. S. citizen.”

  He searches her eyes for anger. But all he sees is sadness.

  “We need to talk, Michael.”

  He inhales. Steadies himself for what he knows he has to say. “Yeah, we do. This isn’t going to work out with us, is it?”

  “I told my mother this morning to cancel everything. You can deal with the apartment.”

  A sack of rocks drops in his gut. “This is a little awkward, standing out here, trying…. Can I come in?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t understand. It doesn’t seem right, after all these years to end it like this. Here.”

  “It was over yesterday. There is nothing more to say. You’ve already said your piece. I’ve heard it loud and clear. Goodbye, Michael. I’m all done crying.”

  “I don’t understand.” He is sinking.

  “Your cell phone. Don’t you remember? I called you yesterday. You shouted at me, ‘Not now!’”

  The rocks in his gut have turned to lead.

  “You didn’t shut off the phone. I heard everything!”

  “It was chaos. Cops, victims. People out cold. Crying. Screams. I couldn’t talk. I’m sorry. You wouldn’t believe it. Tuki almost died. It was crazy.”

  “It sure was, Michael. Especially the part where you started talking to her. Did you even listen to yourself? ‘Tuki, Tuki. Come on, sweetheart. Stay with me. Hold me. Look in my eyes …’ Jesus, Michael.”

  For a moment he wants to defend himself, say that she has misunderstood. Tuki was lying on the ground. In shock. Dying. Her throat swelling shut as he watched. He had no idea what he was saying. He might have said anything. He was just chattering, trying to keep her awake, alive, until help came.

  “Just tell me, what do you see in Tuki that you don’t see in me?”

  He does not know what to say.

  “Well?”

  “I’m so sorry, Fil. This is not about you. You’re an amazing person. You have been more than—”

  “Just shut the hell up, Michael. And leave me alone!” She steps back into her apartment. Slams the door in his face.

  For about five seconds he stands there staring at the aluminum numbers 302 screwed on the scratched and dented Luan door skin.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I made a terrible mistake.” He almost adds, I was lonely, and I wanted to be like my father. But he knows that this is no excuse at all. So he swallows the words. Then, he turns away and starts down the hall. His chest aches like he has just come up for air from the bottom of the sea.

  SIXTY

  Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, the last hoot of the summer. Pangs of saudade are tearing at him. No more case. No more fiancée. No more wedding. And no idea when they will let Tuki out of the hospital. He talked to her once on the phone. Her voice sounded raw, stony. An octave lower. Depressed.

  Since his big drunk at the Squire, he has been staying away from booze. Trying to keep busy. He has been working on Tuki’s immigration issues. Learning buckets about the Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982, the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1988, and new legislation in the works. He has found an advocacy group called the Amerasian Foundation online. Lots of links to other advocacy and support groups. A registry for children and parents searching for each other.

  Tuki’s father, Marcus Aparecio, does not turn up on the registry. But Michael has been in touch with advocates who have shown him how to use the web to find the guy. And last night he scored. Her father lives in Van Nuys, California. Runs a heating and air-conditioning service. Michael has the address and phone number.

  But the research has not been all good news. Some sources claim there are more than 150,000 Amerasian children with American fathers, mostly former GIs, who have not been repatriated. Among this group, many are homeless. Few marry. Drugs, alcohol, and prostitution are common themes. The suicide rate among Amerasians is more than forty percent higher than the population at large.

  It almost seems like Tuki is one of the lucky ones. But he needs to talk about all this with someone. Needs to decide how to present to Tuki all that he has discovered.

  So at nine thirty in the morning he ends up on Chivas Regal’s doorstep at the top of the stairs leading above the Tango. When the queen bee answers the door, he almost turns to run. Chivas is not in drag. What he sees is someone who looks a little like Danny DeVito with plucked eyebrows and a pink orchid-print robe, standing at the doorway. Bald. Wearing fuzzy white slippers.

  “Don’t you be eyeballing me all funny,” Chivas says. “When you show up at this time of the morning, you have to take what you find, darling. So get over it … I just look old and scary; you look like the victim of an airplane crash. Get in here before you catch your death.”

  P-town’s Mother Superior hands him a mug, nods to a steaming pot of coffee in the coffee maker, and disappears to get into her uniform of the day.

  He had almost no sleep last night. But after half a cup of Joe, standing out in the sun on a little deck overlooking the harbor, he is beginning to feel a bit of okay. The wind coming off the bay has a fresh, crisp feel. But it is definitely not helping his mood that Chivas has the soundtrack from Pretty Woman playing on the stereo. Could this be intentional torture? He thinks maybe he is going to throw his mug through a speaker if he has to hear “Fallen”—his old cuddle-dance song with Filipa—one more time.

  “Just go ahead. Yell and scream, cute stuff!” She appears on the deck looking very Liz Taylor with a big black shag wig, killer
blue eye shadow, a red satin pantsuit, black boa. And a little brown marijuana cigarette smoking from the end of a long gold holder.

  “Let the thunder roll!” she says.

  “Screw you,” he wants to say. Because he knows that sometimes beating your chest and wailing is no solution at all. So he turns his back on the queen, leans on the railing, stares out at the last piles of wreckage from the burned buildings just a few houses away from here. He thinks about Bangkok for some reason.

  “Try some of this, love. Sometimes it takes the edge off things.” She passes him the smoke. This is the first pot he has had since college. Dope was not his thing. He would never buy the stuff. But now he inhales and holds the serpent in his lungs.

  He is still imagining Bangkok. Its golden pagodas, its teeming heat, its chocolate river. He feels wings spreading from the roots of his shoulders … and wonders if this picture in his head is the place Tuki meant when she wrote on her tablet that she wanted to go home. Or did she mean P-town?

  A new CD comes on, Graceland. His mind is starting to smooth out into a jet stream of soft, warm air. He and Chivas lean on the railing of the deck and stare out at nothing. They pass the golden joint holder back and forth to the rhythm of Paul Simon singing about a road trip to Memphis, Tennessee.

  After a long time, he speaks up. “I feel really low.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “I was supposed to be getting married today.”

  “Go ahead, blame me if it helps; it may well be my fault, love. I saw that you had it in you to rescue her. I promoted you. I took you to the ball. I didn’t think about the cost to you.”

  He feels something hacking into the back of his neck. Someone is chopping off his head. Slowly. With a dull blade.

  “You used me …”

  “She was in trouble. Terrible trouble. Like crashing and burning in that madhouse. And then, suddenly, here you come. Sir Lancelot.”

  “I’ve found her father.”

  “Of course, you can do anything.”