The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller

by Timothy Hallinan

  Rafferty has to face the fact that his daughter is turning into a petit bourgeois. Surrounded every day at school by kids from middle-class and upper-middle-class families from all over the world, Miaow has been looking for the magic that would transform her into one of them. And she seems to hope that the play will help her make the transition.

  “Sir?”

  Rafferty looks up to see a waiter, maybe eighteen years old, with a carefully trained flop of reddish hair over his forehead, fine high cheekbones, and a waist narrower than Scarlett O’Hara’s. His eyes go to Miaow’s hair, widen for a split second, and then bounce back to Rafferty.

  “Do you need a menu?”

  “No,” Rafferty says. “Miaow, what did you have?” Miaow is more a red-meat expert than Rose, who thinks all beef should be cooked gray the whole way through, and then cooked again. And served to someone else.

  “The rib eye,” Miaow says, pushing the remains toward him for inspection, although there’s not much left. “It was good.”

  “The same,” Rafferty says to the waiter. “Medium rare. With some french fries. Cook the french fries until they scream.”

  The waiter says, “Sorry?”

  “I want them very crisp. Burned, even. And a Singha.”

  “Rib eye medium rare and a Singha, and french fries that scream,” the waiter says. His English is much better than Rafferty expected it to be, yet another sign of the ways in which Bangkok is changing. When he first got here, most people’s English was rudimentary at best. “Do you want them to scream in French?”

  “If you can arrange it, I’d like them to scream ‘Sacre bleu.’ ”

  “Of course, sir. Singha, coming up.” He leaves.

  Watching him go, Miaow says, “He’s cute.”

  “He’s an old man,” Rafferty says.

  “He liked your hair,” Rose says. For the first couple of days, she’d looked at Miaow’s blond chop with horror, but lately her gaze has grown speculative.

  Rafferty says, “Don’t even think about it.”

  Rose puts both hands at the nape of her neck and lifts the long, heavy fall of hair, then lets it drop again. “Do you have any idea how long all this takes to dry?”

  “To the second. I’ve spent some of my happiest hours waiting for it to dry.”

  “Look at Miaow,” Rose says. “She washes it, dries it with a towel, and then messes it up with her fingers. How long, Miaow?”

  “Three or four minutes,” Miaow says. “But then I have to keep messing it up all day.”

  “Of course,” Rose says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “It has to be messed up right,” Miaow says.

  Rafferty says, with some nostalgia, “It’s amazing how your part’s disappeared.”

  “It hasn’t,” Miaow says. “That’s why I have to keep messing it up. Andy says it’s—”

  Whatever Andy said it was, Miaow decides not to share it. She clamps her mouth closed and starts pushing around the remnant of her steak.

  “Who’s Andy?” Rafferty says, exchanging a glance with Rose.

  “This guy,” Miaow says. Nobody says anything, so she adds, “He’s in the play.”

  “When the play’s over—” Rafferty begins.

  “No.” Miaow ruffles her hair. “I won’t keep it blond, but I’m not going to start parting it again. I looked like a baby.” As long as she’s ruffling it, she grabs a tuft and tugs, as though she’s hoping to get another half inch of growth. “What do you think about it for the play?”

  “I think it’s great,” Rafferty says truthfully. “For the play.”

  “Since Ariel’s sort of a he,” Miaow says.

  “I guess so,” Rafferty says. As the only professional writer among the school’s parent population, he’d been asked by Mrs. Shin, the Korean drama teacher who’s directing the play, to cut it down to seventy minutes or so, mainly to get the roles to a length the kids could memorize. As a result he’s spent several months immersed in The Tempest. “But Ariel’s a spirit, not a person,” he says, “so I think it’s right for the character to be, you know, not really a girl or a boy. The costume and the hair—I think they’re going to be great.”

  “Caliban, though,” Miaow says, “Caliban has to be a boy, right? Even though he’s kind of magic, too. Because he tried to mess around with Miranda, and Prospero is pissed—I mean, angry—at him.”

  “Miaow,” Rose snaps.

  “Sorry,” Miaow says. “The kids all talk English, and they say that all the time.”

  “Well, you don’t.”

  Miaow changes the subject, asking Rafferty, “What’s an anagram?”

  “It’s a word that has the same letters as another word but in a different order. Like ‘eat’ and ‘ate.’ Or ‘life’ and ‘file.’ ” Rafferty watches Miaow visualize the words in her head and move the letters around. “Or ‘vile’ and ‘live’ and ‘evil.’ Is this about Caliban?”

  “Yes. Mrs. Shin says it’s an anagram for . . . for—”

  “ ‘Cannibal,’ ” Rafferty says. “It isn’t exactly, not the way we spell it now. But the Elizabethans were kind of adventurous about spelling.”

  “But if he meant ‘cannibal,’ it means he didn’t like Caliban, right?” Miaow says.

  “When Shakespeare wrote the play, new kinds of people were being discovered all the time,” Rafferty says. “There were all sorts of ideas about them. Some Europeans didn’t think the savages, as they called them, were human. The English were snobs, and as you know, a snob is someone who dislikes anyone who’s not like him.” He’s trying clumsily to make a point about Miaow’s school, but it sails past her. “Mrs. Shin is interpreting the play so it’s about colonialism. Remember, we talked about interpretation, how people at different times find different meanings in Shakespeare’s work. From a modern point of view—one point of view anyway—Caliban is the original inhabitant of the island, and whether he’s evil or not—”

  Rose drops her fork with a clatter on top of her cup, which tips over and spreads coffee across the tablecloth.

  A man’s deep voice says, “Well, well. Rosie.”

  Rafferty looks up to see a tall, very solid-looking white man looming over their table. He’s at least six-two, mannequin handsome, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a jawline so square it looks like a caricature. His pale hair is perhaps half an inch long and has been allowed to grow in front of his ears in squared-off sideburns. It looks like a helmet.

  From behind the man, another man, almost as big, says, “This the one that got away?”

  Rose hasn’t said anything. Rafferty looks over at her and sees astonishment and, behind it, like an electric current, a buzz of fear.

  “I suppose this belongs to you,” the man says, his eyes flicking to Rafferty and then away again. “The little hubby, maybe? The kid can’t be yours, though, can she? I mean, you’d have had stretch marks, and I remember real good you didn’t have stretch marks.”

  Rafferty starts to get up, but the man pushes the table back against him, trapping him partway up, without even glancing at him.

  The man says to Rose, “I think you met John.” He turns his head a quarter of an inch toward the other man. “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t. But you talked to him on the phone, remember? Out on the rocks.” Finally looking at Rafferty, he says, “Stay down, Hubby,”

  Rafferty shoves the table back and pushes himself the rest of the way up. He says, “I always stand when a lady comes to the table.”

  The man grins and extends a hand as though to shake. “Howard Horner,” he says, and there’s a blur of movement and a glint of silver, and Rose stabs Horner in the hand. She holds her steak knife close to her chest, ready to use it again.

  For Rafferty, time shudders to a stop. He sees Rose, motionless, the knife pointed outward, sees the blood flowing very slowly down Horner’s hand, sees Miaow, her mouth half open and both hands on the edge of the table as though she’s about to bolt and run.

&n
bsp; “Rosie,” Horner says, without even pulling his hand back. It’s dripping blood onto the tablecloth, but he doesn’t give it so much as a glance. The other man has taken a couple of steps forward and then stopped. “This is how you say hi?” Horner asks.

  A noise draws his eyes. Miaow is holding her steak knife, too, the serrated cutting edge facing Horner.

  “The kid knows more about knives than you do,” Horner says. “Slash, don’t stab.” His uninjured hand streaks out, so fast Rafferty barely sees it move, and Rose gasps and snatches her own hand back, but when the blur is over, Horner is holding Rose’s knife. He leans forward, and Miaow’s knife comes up. “Remember that,” he says to Rose. “From an expert, remember?” He puts the knife back on the table, handle politely extended toward Rose. She makes no move to pick it up.

  “I think the ladies would like you to leave,” Rafferty says.

  “Ladies,” Horner says over his shoulder to the one called John. Then he brings his pale gaze back to Rafferty and holds Rafferty’s eyes for a full minute without blinking, his expression absolutely flat.

  Rafferty says, “I’ll bet you giggle before I do.”

  Horner holds up the bleeding hand, his fingers spread out, the blood running down his wrist. “Pick a finger,” he says to Rafferty. “I’ll kill you with it.”

  Suddenly strangled with rage, Rafferty shoves the table back and starts to force his way around it as Horner, looking pleased and sleepy, takes a step back to let Rafferty come at him, but Rose, in a single sweeping gesture, pulls the tablecloth off, and plates, glasses, and silverware crash to the floor.

  The restaurant goes silent. Everyone in the place is looking at them. Horner glances around the room, sees the attentive audience, and nods appreciatively at Rose. He bends down, picks up a folded napkin from the floor, and wraps it around the bleeding hand. “We in your neighborhood?” he asks, backing away. “Great, great. See you again sometime. Got a lot to catch up on. We never finished our last conversation.”

  The restaurant manager and some of the waiters and busboys are on their way over. Horner says, “Bye, Hubby.” He looks at Miaow and makes a pistol with his unwrapped hand, points it at her, and drops the thumb that represents the hammer. “Keep your eyes open, cutie.” The two men turn and walk toward the front door, Horner in the lead. Watching them go, watching their carriage and the roll of their shoulders, Rafferty thinks, Military.

  Miaow is staring after them, wide-eyed, and Rose is apologizing to the manager, but all Rafferty can manage to say is, “Who the fuck was that?”

  Rose says, “Someone I thought I’d killed.”

  Chapter 3

  The Black Lake

  They sit for twenty minutes at the barren, grease-stained table, enduring the stares of the other diners. Rafferty and Miaow have been forced into silence by the intensity of Rose’s anger. She’s rigid with it. She sits with her back absolutely straight, both hands flat on the table with the fingers spread, the right hand resting on the handle of the knife, her breathing fast and shallow. She doesn’t look at either of them. Her eyes are focused on something invisible that’s one foot in front of her.

  When some internal clock tells her it’s time, she waves the waiter over and sends him out to secure them a taxi and then insists that three of the restaurant’s male employees follow them onto the sidewalk and surround them as they get into the cab. Once in, she orders the driver to lock the doors, including his own, before she allows him to pull away from the curb. The car feels pressurized to Rafferty, as though the emotion trapped inside it might blow out the windows. When they’ve gone four or five blocks, Rose orders the driver to pull over fast without signaling, hands him fifty baht, and hurries them all out of the cab. To Rafferty’s amazement, she grabs Miaow’s hand and drags her into traffic. Rafferty trails helplessly behind his wife and child as they thread their way between speeding cars and trucks and motorbikes and tuk-tuks to the center island, where they clamber over the knee-high barrier that divides the opposing streams of traffic on Silom. Then they dodge suicidally between vehicles, setting off horns all the way, to the far curb, where Rose flags a second cab. All the while she is looking back to see whether anyone is making a U-turn at the divider break. When she’s satisfied that no one did, she tells the new driver to make the first turn that’s a through street.

  “You look behind us,” she says to Rafferty.

  “Who was he?” Miaow asks, her voice well into its upper register. She sounds eight again. “You thought you killed him?”

  “I hoped I had,” Rose says. “Anyone back there, Poke?”

  “As far as I can tell, no,” Rafferty says. “But, you know, headlights are headlights.”

  “They would have had to cross Silom if they were on foot.” Rose says in Thai. Her voice is almost mechanically flat, the words precise and uninflected. “Or make a U-turn if they were in a car. I didn’t see anybody cross the street, and I know nobody made a U-turn.”

  “Well, then,” Rafferty says.

  The driver says, “Somebody following you?”

  Rose, in the front seat, says, “Let’s say yes.”

  “No problem,” says the driver. He punches the accelerator, and their backs bump against the seats. After a couple of blocks, he makes a sudden left onto a narrow street where only a pair of run-down restaurants, so chalky with fluorescent light they might be a chain of competing morgues, show any sign of occupancy. No lights follow them. The next right takes them onto an even narrower street, a vista of dark windows and padlocked gates except for a gaggle of hostess bars that signal their presence with pink neon and bored-looking clusters of evening-gowned girls, all curled hair and bare arms, sitting on plastic chairs. The cab turns right again and then makes another left immediately, this time onto a street parallel to Silom that runs behind a row of apartment houses, set above cavernous, sunken concrete garages. The driver peels, tires squealing, down a sloping driveway into one of the garages, takes a spiral ramp up one level, and then exits the garage on the front side of the building, which puts them on Silom again, a good mile or so from the restaurant.

  “Nobody back there now,” he announces. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Soi Pipat,” Rose says. Then she says, without turning to face Rafferty and Miaow, “Don’t ask me any questions, because I won’t answer them. I’ll talk when I’m ready.”

  Rafferty says, “Sure, sure. I had a wonderful time.”

  Miaow says, “You cut him.”

  “I said no questions.”

  “That wasn’t a question,” Miaow says.

  This time Rose’s head snaps around. “Then what do you want, Miaow?” she demands. “Do you want me to agree with you? Fine, I agree with you. I cut him. Is there anything else on your mind?”

  Miaow says, in English, “Jeez.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Rafferty says.

  “Both of you,” Rose says. “Stop. If you don’t stop, I’ll get out of this car and you’ll see me whenever you see me.”

  The driver says, “Want me to pull over?”

  There is a long pause, and then Rose says, “I guess not.”

  They make the rest of the trip in a chilly silence. At the apartment house, Rose orders the driver to take them down into the underground garage and all the way to the elevator so they’re not exposed on the street. After Rafferty pays the man, he turns and sees their eighth-floor neighbor, Mrs. Pongsiri, gowned and made up for the night, coming out of the elevator, on her way to the bar she runs. She smiles at Rafferty, but it’s a puzzled smile, and he looks beyond her to see Rose holding the elevator door open for him. Miaow is pressed against the elevator’s back wall as though she wishes she could push herself through it. Clutched in Rose’s right hand is a steak knife.

  THEY MOVE SILENTLY through the apartment, turning on lights in every room: three people, Rafferty thinks, who look like they barely know each other. The air in the living room feels as thick as syrup. Miaow stalks into the kitchen and takes
a Coke out of the refrigerator, pops it open defiantly in front of Rose, who would normally tell her to drink water instead, and heads for her bedroom, chin up and back stiff. The door closes behind her, not particularly gently.

  Rose stands at the opening to the hallway, her eyes on the point where it ends at Miaow’s door. The knife dangles heavily in her hand, elongating the smooth muscles in her forearm. Rafferty wants to touch her, but she seems to be at the center of a sizzle of negative energy. If the lights went out, he wouldn’t be surprised to see sparks chasing each other over her skin.

  “Sooner or later,” he says.

  Rose says, “Later.” He can barely hear her. She shakes her head slowly, as though it weighs a great deal and it hurts her neck to turn it, and then she goes to the couch and sits heavily, leaning forward like someone who’s going to put her head between her knees until a spell of faintness passes. Instead she straightens and tosses the heavy steak knife onto the glass coffee table, which has the good sense not to break. She studies the knife for a long moment, looking like she can’t remember how it got there. When she shakes her head again, it’s a decisive side-to-side snap, bringing herself into the present, and she widens her eyes, blows out a big breath, and opens her big leather bag. She paws through the clutter until she comes up with a pack of Marlboro Lights.

  Rafferty goes automatically to the sliding glass door that leads to the balcony and opens it. They’ve been on what he thinks of as a very limited health program: Rose has been trying to get them to drink their weight in water, and he’s been trying to rid the apartment’s atmosphere of some of its secondhand smoke. Standing in the flow of humid air from outside, he turns back to her and says, “I need to know whether we’re in danger. For Miaow’s sake, especially.”