There was no pulling the cheque out of Fawn’s hands. He had acted out of impulse, out of a sense of doing right, out of a desire to accomplish what both Asanee and Tuttle had wanted: Fawn quitting the go-go bar and taking a job teaching at the school. How did he know the sum was excessive? It was less than his law firm paid a file clerk. Crosby had left him with only one honorable way out, he thought.
“I’ll see to it you and the others are taken care of,” he said.
The gin had flushed Crosby’s face, spreading red splotches through his thinning hairline. “You know, it’s really much worse for the girls than you suspect. Tuttle’s been going soft on you. Perhaps he’s afraid you can’t take the real hard-core stuff. But if you are interested, Snow and I will show you some of the nasty bits.”
“Snow’s here at the hotel? ”
Crosby grinned. “He’s down in the lobby waiting for us.”
Waiting for the elevator, Crosby rocked back on his heels. He was relaxed, off guard. Lawrence plucked the racing form from Crosby’s pocket. “Hold on a minute, “ protested Crosby.
“What did you write down while I was on the phone? ” asked Lawrence, unfolding the paper.
“The second race tomorrow. I have an eye on a horse named ‘Charity.’ If you must know,” said Crosby. Watching Lawrence flip through the form, his eyes running down the column of horses running in the second race. Lawrence’s finger pressed against the name.
“Just curious,” said Lawrence, handing back the form as the elevator doors opened.
“You were watching me in the mirror,” said Crosby, as the elevator doors closed.
“I didn’t know you were a gambler,” Lawrence said.
Crosby took great pains to refold the racing form. “Aren’t you? ”
* * *
AS their taxi shot past the Sports Club on Ratchadamri Road, Snow, who sat in front, joked with the driver in Thai. Lawrence sat in the back with Crosby, who lit a cigarette and leaned forward, offering one to the driver. The driver’s head pivoted around, and he came within inches of smashing into a tuk-tuk. Everyone but Lawrence laughed as if nothing had happened.
“You wanna gross out Tuttle, talk about the skull bars,” said Snow, as they stood on Silom Road, their taxi driver cutting back into the heavy traffic, honking his horn. “Skulls. Not even the fascists in the old man bars in Washington Square like the skull bars, man.”
With Snow and Crosby flanking each side, Lawrence entered Patpong. A swirling sea of street-hardened touts, sun-burned tourists, old drunks with leathery faces, half-naked teenage bar girls draped around farangs who edged down the street with a half-witted grin on their faces. The middle of Patpong—an ordinary soi of wall-to-wall empty bars, discos, and night-clubs by day—was, by dark, transformed into a sexual Disneyland, complete with rides, shows, games, junk food, and hundreds of makeshift street stalls selling watches, cassette tapes, videos, T-shirts, belts, socks, and handbags. Snow and Crosby expertly navigated Lawrence through hell’s tunnel—the tiny, narrow footpath between the vendors and bar touts. A teddy bear vendor, with a misshapen nose and a cast in one eye, grabbed at Lawrence, and Snow stopped him dead in his tracks with his rapid-fire Thai; then a bar tout, his throat and arms covered with tattoos, reached for Lawrence on Crosby’s side.
In Thai, Crosby explained that Lawrence had VD; and he backed off. Street vendors and touts could smell a tourist. They had a look, a way of looking, walking, glancing at the bars and street wares. While the resident farang had learned to become invisible with a combination of language, dress, and the straight-ahead, expressionless, half-dazed look that signalled their hard-core status. Several of the touts, hawkers, flower sellers appeared to know either Snow or Crosby. Lawrence sensed they knew the inside workings of this self-contained world, the back room deals, discussions, decisions.
Patpong was the ultimate sexual consumer’s paradise: toys, sex, drugs, alcohol, and sports—if one counted tricks with Ping-Pong balls, cigarettes, and Coke bottles inserted between a girl’s legs as a sport. It was the ultimate duty-free shop. Halfway down the street, they turned into a neon-lit bar called Jasmine. Lawrence followed Snow and Crosby to the bar; on the surface, the bar was no different from a bar anywhere else in the world. There were no go-go dancers; no blaring music; no whiteboard with the numbers of girls. After a couple of minutes, Lawrence caught something strange out of the corner of his eye; he looked again, this time in the mirror over the bar.
Gruesome was an insufficient description. Opposite the bar was a series of four couches and a variety of chairs, including a barber’s chair. A dozen and a half seventeen, eighteen-year-old girls were on their knees giving blowjobs to bloated, cigar-smoking farangs. Old men with sagging jowls, liver-spotted hands, and white, flabby legs; they sat deep in their chair with their eyes glazed over. They looked as if they were passengers on some adults-only Disneyland ride. Minnie Mouse, her eyes closed kneeling on the floor, her head bent forward, not in a prayer, not even in sex, waiting until the customer had finished. The farang paid for the fare, and bounced up and down on a leather seat, holding a whisky in one hand.
Snow leaned over and whispered to Lawrence. “The true skullers don’t even put out their fucking cigars. The cigar hangs out of the corner of their mouth. The goddamn gray ash drops off onto a kneeling girl.”
The young girls worked in commando units of three on each customer. Two blockers in G-strings and bikini tops stood on either side of the skuller. The worker bee dropped down on her knees, closed her eyes, and prayed that the skuller’s ashes falling from above missed her face. A skuller tapped her on the shoulder, gestured for her to rise, pointed at one of the blockers, who rotated to the kneeling position. Then the third girl would be given the tap.
Round after round the girls went until the skuller’s breathing became irregular, his legs stiffened and he began the wheezing noise of an iron lung; his pale hips pumping, rocking the belt buckle on his trousers, creating the echo of a wind chime against the metal chair. Lawrence looked away from the mirror.
Crosby leaned over and spoke softly to Lawrence. “The girls are called ‘skulls.’ Not a pretty sight, seeing one of them go down on a slime bag. Work in the rice field or become a skull. Twelve hour days with the sun on her back, standing in water up to her ankles planting and weeding in the rice paddies. Or twelve hours in a skull bar. Forty baht a day in a rice paddy or four hundred baht serving skullers.”
Three girls approached Lawrence at the bar. One swung him around on the stool, and in a single action, another girl on her right knelt down, driving her head into his crotch. Out of the shadows, a dark-skinned Thai with a dozen long black spikes of hair on his chin, and a gold chain on his right wrist, stepped forward, squinted through the viewfinder of a Canon 35 mm camera. Lawrence, distracted by the girls, was caught by surprise. Eyebrows arched, he lurched forward from the bar stool.
“Get out of here with that camera,” shouted Lawrence.
The flash snapped three times in rapid succession.
“Hey, man, beat it,” said Snow, turning toward the photographer. “Get out of my face.”
“Not to worry,” said Crosby. “These buggers are into the hard-sell.” Crosby looked at the skinny Thai and barked three or four Thai phrases that Lawrence didn’t understand.
Lawrence struggled to free himself; he tried pushing the girl away from his lap. She clung on for dear life. The entire team, all three girls, held him tightly; each grabbed an arm or leg, as the Thai with the camera grinned widely, showing a crooked row of tobacco-stained teeth; then he ran out the door.
“That man’s a nuisance. He’s always sneaking up on customers,” said Crosby, seeking to comfort Lawrence. “He’s got himself a bit of a reputation on ‘The Strip.”
For the residents, the street between Silom Road and Suriwong Road known as Patpong was known as The Strip. And Lawrence had witnessed firsthand what it was like to run scared, chasing a tout with a camera and incriminating photographs th
rough the narrow lane between the stalls selling tapes, watches, clothes, lacquer on The Strip. The man vanished into thin air. Crosby and Snow, out of breath, caught up with Lawrence in front of the Golden Girls Bar.
“Come inside, handsome man,” said a young girl dressed in a superman’s suit, pulling on Lawrence’s arm. “Many pretty girls for you. Dancing. Come inside, now.”
“Forget it, man,” said Snow, panting and trying to catch his breath. “He’s gone. You’ll never find him.”
* * *
IT was Snow’s idea to stop in the bookstore in the middle of Patpong Road; the one cool, quiet sanctuary from the loud voices, the heat, the heavy action. He went straight to the rack carrying American magazines. Crosby had wandered over to the Thai travel guide section of the bookstore. A young farang couple in shorts and hiking boots, their backpacks on the floor, leaning against a bookcase, sat on the floor studying a guide. Lawrence, still shaken from the skull bar experience, stared at the street outside the window.
“You won’t see him,” said Crosby, stopping beside Lawrence. “They become invisible. It’s rather frightening.”
“Why did you take me to that bar? ” asked Lawrence. A bar girl stood outside, looking at Lawrence in the window. She smiled and gestured for him to come out. She blew him a kiss and stuck out her tongue. She opened her nylon robe and flashed him. But his expression didn’t change; because he was lost, looking at a distant spot somewhere above and beyond where she stood jumping up and down and clapping.
Given the nightly scams, fights, and other disturbance inside the rim defining Patpong, the incident with the photographer hardly ranked as even minor league. Crowds of hungry young Thai men roamed in wolf packs, aggressively pushing for a confrontation with lone tourists; raking the customers with machine-gun bursts of fighting words and provocative glances. They dived like falcons at their prey. The farangs appeared so white, slow, bovine, confused as the Thai touts and vendors encircled them, going in for the kill. The pure chaos of Patpong spun a mixture of fear, grudges, and nocturnal violence. Outlaws, whores, and merchants were competing for the attention of the crowd, selling to market their products and services. Somewhere during the long night, private enterprise found the pathways beyond the ordinary boundaries of disgrace and shame. There was no such thing as moral excess so long as profits flowed.
Crosby in his unconventional fashion blended on The Strip in a way Lawrence had only begun to see; and so did Snow, and he suspected, Tuttle surpassed them both. He glanced over at Crosby.
“I suspect you’re wondering why are the farangs the skullers? ” Crosby asked, reaching for a cigarette. “Why not the Thais? ”
“What’s the answer? ” asked Lawrence.
From across the bookstore, Snow groaned loudly. “Man, listen to this. Fifty reasons why American men are disgusting in bed. Another ball-breaking feature article.” He had shouted across the room. Several heads jerked up from a book or magazine and a number of eyes stared at Snow, who gave no indication of caring that a number of farangs glared with disapproval. He repeated the title, this time in Thai. This brought a series of giggles, whispers, and grins from the shop girls. Two of whom knew Snow by name and shouted back, again in Thai, that the article must have been written about him.
Lawrence turned to Crosby, who had lost his train of thought; he had that far-off one million miles into the outer universe look. “Why are only the farangs in the skull bars? ”
“You are interested,” said Crosby with emphasis, his attention snapping back to the moment. “Opinions differ. Over the years I formed my own theory.”
Crosby paused, waiting for Lawrence to request an excursion into this zone; into a region where outrage was practiced. Lawrence decided to play along. “Let’s hear your theory, Crosby.” Crosby carried a racing form and circled the name of a horse that had corresponded to a chance remark overheard on the telephone.
“All the skuller wants is the skull as a receptacle.
“I asked an old skuller once. He said, ‘I’m going to hell any fucking way. So what’s the big deal? The girls get into it. They get paid.’”
“Not much of a theory,” said Lawrence, opening a book called Thai Style and flipping through the pages of traditional teak houses in the north.
“It’s not the theory. But his answer aims one in the right direction,” Crosby continued, lighting his cigarette.” In the West people believe the soul survives death. There is a God who either pushes the up or down button in the elevator containing your soul. You go up or down. Once the doors close, you are sealed inside. You got a one-way ride. There is no second chance. You go out of the gate once; the race ends. Bets are turned in; winners and losers get their rewards and punishments. So any punter who knows his horse has already lost packs up and leaves. If you believe you’ve already lost in the next world, and there isn’t ever going to be another race, then nothing can ever scare or intimidate you in this life; no shame, no bad, no horror can touch you. And you’re reborn in this life as a skuller.
“Not the kohn Thai—a person of Thailand. In Buddhism, you will have a rebirth to this world. You keep coming back, life after life. So a Buddhist has an entirely different perspective of cosmic payback. It’s not a one shot judgement and you either go to heaven or to hell. We have all been here before. Now we are back. In this life there are the top acts with the minor billings, the small-time acts, the back alley shows, the stuff you can only see under a powerful microscope. When you die, you find a rebirth slot, and it is showtime all over again. Top billing is birth as an upper-class Thai male. From there, it is a rapid fall down the mountain slope. At the base of the mountain are the women. No one wants to come back a woman in Thailand; not even the women want rebirth as a woman.
“It’s a question of merit—and you get merit by becoming a monk for two weeks, feeding the monks for a few years, setting turtles or birds free. Gain merit and the next life is better than the current one. But you do something really bad, like deface a statue of Buddha, you’ve bought yourself five hundred consecutive lives as a woman. If you major league fucked up in this life, then you come out of the starting gates for the next fifty races on a skull-bar turf. Sucking off an old fat farang’s dick, that scares the Thais. You rarely see a Thai male in a skull bar. They don’t want to witness how far the descent is from one life to the next.”
* * *
TUTTLE occupied his usual corner booth at HQ. It was a heavy traffic night, new faces and old circling the jukebox; waiters pushing through with plates of noodles, rice, hamburgers, and drinks. He saw in the booth mirror Lawrence trailing half a step behind Snow and Crosby as they emerged from the back entrance. Over the years he had become an expert using the mirrors to explore the interiors of the booths, the narrow walk lanes between the booths and tables, and those off-guard moments when a girl, thinking she was alone and unobserved, displayed her true face.
“Sorry about running out earlier,” said Tuttle as Lawrence slid across the seat.
Lawrence shrugged off the apology. It had seemed like light-years since he had first laid eyes on Fawn and listened to her boss Riche talk about toilet paper in the wastepaper basket. “We made a minor detour through a skull bar,” said Lawrence.
“You’re picking up the language fast,” replied Tuttle, looking over at Crosby who sat smoking a cigarette and vacantly staring out at the floor and then at Snow, who flipped through a copy of Voguemagazine.
“Unfamiliar territory. The whole experience was weird. Public orgasm. Several girls hitting on me. And a guy starts taking pictures of me.”
Tuttle smiled, he knew the interior map of the skull bars. “How much did he want? ”
“Who? ” asked Lawrence.
“The photographer.”
Lawrence’s forehead wrinkled with worry lines. “He took off. He didn’t ask for money.”
Crosby shook his head. “It’s a bad lot on ‘The Strip’ these days. Crazies on pills, sniffing paint thinner. You can’t predict what
they will do. It’s all a gamble.”
Tuttle caught sight of the former bar girl who had come back alone on holiday from her husband and kids in Rhode Island. An old, familiar face. She and her American husband worked in a cannery. She had increased her knowledge of English substantially from the old days, Tuttle remembered. She knows all about the future, and she has arrived looking like her old self; she is dressed to kill, scouting the prospects among the farangs, looking to make a score, flashing a flamboyant smile, enjoying the moment, but most of all, like Crosby and Snow, thought Tuttle, she thinks that she is smart enough to have discovered a foolproof formula, one so tightly organized that no mark could ever escape.
Tuttle had talked to the girls at three-thirty in the morning. He had listened to their point of view on the HQ world; one not that different from Snow or Crosby. The girls had a love hate relationship with HQ as Snow and Crosby had with the school. He had known both men for nearly ten years; he knew how they thought. A freelance working girl, like working as a freelance English teacher, wasn’t anyone’s dream career. They had fallen into it along the way to someplace else, and stayed with it so long they had forgotten where originally they had been headed.
A Killing Smile Page 25
