The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller

by Timothy Hallinan

  On Sukhumvit he signals a cab and opens the door for Miaow. He has his hand in the small of her back as he leans down to tell the driver where to go when he feels Miaow turn to stone. He looks at her and finds her staring across the street. He can see the pulse slamming at the side of her throat.

  “Look,” she says.

  He follows her eyes and sees a long blue bus lumbering past on the other side of the street and then, as it passes, the only man on the busy sidewalk who is standing still, the man who is looking at them.

  Horner’s friend, John.

  Rafferty throws forty baht at the driver, says, “Go away.” He steps into traffic with his arm upraised and his palm down. A motorcycle taxi swerves sharply, barely missing him. Before the bike is fully stopped, Rafferty passes the driver a hundred baht, picks Miaow up—not even feeling her weight—and plops her onto the backseat, facing back. He takes her hands and puts them behind her on the grab bar between her and the driver’s seat, and says, “Face this way. If you see anything you shouldn’t see, any car or bike that’s back there too long, have him take you to Arthit at the Lumphini police station. Got it?”

  Miaow nods, her eyes on the opposite sidewalk. Rafferty slaps the driver’s helmet and says, “Take her to Soi Pipat, unless she tells you to go to Lumphini. As fast as you can.” The teenager on the bike looks down at the bill, shoves it into his shirt pocket, and jams the throttle. The bike does a little wheelie and lurches into traffic.

  Rafferty dives into traffic himself, pushing his way across the street, trying to get there before John disappears.

  Chapter 6

  Beer Garden

  He jumps when it becomes inescapably clear that he can’t possibly run fast enough, and that the truck driver has no intention of slowing. His leap carries him to the center island, the truck’s wind on the back of his neck and traffic screaming by in front of him and behind him, and he stutter-steps to keep from pitching face-first onto the pavement. When he’s got his forward momentum under control, he stands there gasping carbon monoxide and heat from the pavement, and he checks the far sidewalk. Fifteen yards to the right, an old man is down on his knees and elbows on the sidewalk, crumpled like a swatted spider above a spill of groceries. A knot of Samaritans is beginning to form around him, and one man is shouting up the street, hurling curses after John.

  Who has to be running. Rafferty lets his eyes roam right, and there he is, about two-thirds of the way down the boulevard to Soi 10: John, hauling ass at a good clip, running effortlessly, as though it were something he could do all day. Rafferty checks the traffic and plunges into the stream of vehicles, zigzagging through the moving maze to the curb and then loping along in the street, right at the edge, jumping up onto the sidewalk whenever a car comes too close. He’s gaining on John, who looks to be in much better shape but is forcing his way through the inevitable Sukhumvit pedestrian throng.

  On the other side of the boulevard, the side Rafferty just left, the vendors have already built their brightly lighted obstacle course, selling flick knives, pornography, Buddha images, and brass knuckles, the everyday Bangkok mix of veneration and violence. John obviously chose this side of the road, which is relatively vendor-free, in case he had to run, since it’s impossible to maintain even a brisk walk on the other side. So he’d thought he might have to run. Or maybe he’d set it up so he would have to run and so Rafferty would chase along after him, a good little lemming, into whatever snare Horner has prepared.

  But what’s the alternative? Rafferty picks up his pace.

  Ahead of him, John bulls his way to the curb and steps into the street, looking left—an American’s most dangerous Bangkok mistake—and just barely misses getting run down by a motorcycle, which swerves around him with only inches to spare. John does a little “can’t stop” dance, windmilling his arms and turning his head the other way to see what’s going to kill him, but he catches sight of Rafferty before his head has whipped all the way around, and the sight makes him pause just long enough for another bike to tear by, the driver giving him a gravelly horn. Then he looks in the correct direction, assesses the traffic, and dives in.

  He’s not even breathing hard. Where Rafferty feels as though the asphalt is jumping up to meet him, jamming his joints and making his teeth click like castanets, John seems to glide, running beside a car occasionally to get the speed he needs to slip between it and the one behind, and then he’s made it to the median divider, which has a thigh-high fence running down the center of it. He vaults the fence effortlessly, and a horn screams in Rafferty’s ear, moving up the scale as the source approaches in a lethal-sounding Doppler effect, and something clips his elbow—a Jeep, he sees, as it speeds past—and leaves him cradling an arm that’s suddenly gone numb, not a good sign, and as he plows toward the divider he cups the elbow in his hand and feels something wet and warm.

  Also not a good sign.

  Well, sure it’s blood—what did he expect?—but there’s no time to stop and survey the damage now, because John is off the divider, running with the traffic instead of through it, sticking to the edge of the divider and heading for Soi 9 and the lower numbers beyond. Rafferty gets to the island without knowing how he did it and runs on his side of it, watching John and leaving to the oncoming drivers the challenge of not running over him. He gets a lot of horns and some shouts, but everyone manages to avoid damaging their paint jobs, and Rafferty is feeling a burning under his lungs by the time John angles off to his right and into traffic, heading for the far side of the street.

  And the numbness in his arm is wearing off. It hurts significantly.

  But there’s nothing he can do about it, and he speeds up. John will have to slow for the vendors’ stands, but Rafferty continues his accelerated plod on his side of the road divider as John charts a course on toward the booths. John’s made another Bangkok duffer’s mistake, though, because he doesn’t know, until his ignorance almost kills him, that traffic in the curbside lane of Sukhumvit goes in the opposite direction from all the other traffic on that side of Sukhumvit, and a taxi misses by a couple of inches the opportunity to spread him over the pavement. John stumbles into the rear of a stand and nearly goes down.

  And Rafferty’s up on the divider, clearing the low fence without difficulty, figuring that John’s misstep has got to be good for five or ten yards. But the other man is already up and lengthening his stride. Rafferty figures he’s lucky if he gained ten feet.

  And now he has to keep up.

  The knot under his heart and the cramp in his side remind him that he hasn’t been going to the gym, but he discovers he can forget the cramp and the knot in his chest if he just concentrates on his arm, which hurts like hell. He risks a glance down and sees lots of blood running along the underside of his forearm and making a red octopus over the back of his hand. For a moment his head goes kind of bubbly and light and the day seems to brighten at the edges.

  Well, there isn’t time to faint, so he concentrates on his breathing—suck big gulps of air in, empty his lungs completely on the out breath—and he feels the weight returning to his body, and he registers again the solidity of the street beneath his feet. The elbow hurts like a newly orphaned son of a bitch, and he focuses on the long train of pain running up his arm and uses it to push him forward.

  He stumbles along for two more blocks, his breath in tatters and the clot of pain beneath his heart gradually narrowing into something focused and hot. Just as he thinks he’ll never catch the man, he sees John charge the curb and head to his right, into Soi 7.

  Rafferty knows Soi 7 from his earliest days in Bangkok, pre-Rose, when he occasionally browsed the city’s meat markets for temporary companionship. He’s at the mouth of the soi less than a minute after John entered it.

  But there’s no John in sight. Rafferty stands there gasping at the day, while he orients himself. Just behind the first row of buildings and shops, an alley angles off to the left, leading into a warren of little streets that are perfect for getti
ng lost in. Directly ahead the soi stretches into a straightaway, and John’s not in it. To the immediate right is a large outdoor restaurant. A couple of billiards bars face the street through darkened windows, one on each side of the soi, and halfway down the block on the left is the Beer Garden.

  If John’s spent much time in Bangkok, he hasn’t spent it wandering around on his own. He almost got clipped in the street because he forgot that Thais drive on the left, so he’s probably not aware that the alley leads to a maze. Scratch going left, at least as an operating hypothesis. Rafferty doesn’t see him at any of the tables in the outside restaurant, and he’s not dwindling into perspective down the soi. That leaves the pool-table bars and the Beer Garden.

  Most guys who come solo to Bangkok learn about the Beer Garden within a few days. In a town where the nighttime action is literally overwhelming, the days can seem positively dreary. For a man who’s in the market at 3:30 P.M., the Beer Garden is a shining exception.

  And a dangerous place to chase someone into.

  The problem is that there’s only one official entrance, and every seat in the place faces it. That wouldn’t be such an issue if there weren’t three hundred seats. The Beer Garden is enormous. On any day of the week, there are likely to be a hundred to a hundred fifty farang men and as many as two hundred women, many of whom are standing or circulating, looking for a free drink, a meal, or a welcoming lap. Plenty of room for old John, plus Howard and a dozen of their friends to be sitting there, watching the door, waiting for the rabbit to stroll into the trap.

  Rafferty pushes open the door of the pool-table bar to his right and sticks his head in, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness as the hostesses hurry toward him. There’s a herd of them, and a quick look around makes it clear that Rafferty will have all their attention, because there’s not a customer in the place. He waves off the women who are nearest and yanks the door closed.

  He turns, irresolute for a second: Check the other bar or brave the Beer Garden? The day brightens again, and he closes his eyes and feels the street start to move beneath his feet. As he opens his eyes, looking for something—anything—that’s standing still instead of spinning, he feels a tug at the back of his shirt.

  He whirls so fast that he nearly goes down, and the person behind him takes a panicked leap backward. The two of them topple sideways simultaneously, Rafferty coming to rest in a semi-standing position against the wall of the bar and the girl yelping as one of her towering platform shoes rolls sideways. When she finally stops moving, she’s bent double, both hands on her left ankle, going, “Oooo-oooo-ooooo.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rafferty says. He pushes himself off the wall and raises both hands to show he’s harmless, but she’s already taken a little hop away. She lands on the newly sprained ankle and emits a squeak so high it’s at the upper limit of Rafferty’s hearing. Then she drops to one knee and wraps both hands around her ankle again, looking up at him through a dry frizzle of badly dyed red hair.

  “You arm,” she says in English. “You arm no good.” She raises her right hand and points at his injured elbow as though he might be unaware of it, then grabs her ankle again and says, “You arm. You know you have problem you arm? You know you have ow?” She’s short and plump and dark-skinned and ridiculously young, maybe eighteen, wearing a chopped-off T-shirt, red hot pants with a wide white vinyl belt studded with rhinestones, and makeup so thick it looks like she put it on with the lights out.

  “I know,” Rafferty says. “No problem.” Just then his elbow lets loose a giant twinge of contradiction, and he catches his breath and expels it with a chuff like a steam engine. “What about you?” She looks up at him, clearly working on an internal translation. “Your ankle,” he says in Thai. “Is it okay?”

  “Not okay,” she says in English. “But not have . . . not have . . .” She thinks for a second and then rubs her heavily lipsticked lower lip with a fingertip, makes a red smear on her bare arm, and points to it.

  “Blood,” Rafferty says.

  She nods eagerly. “Not have blood.” She sticks out a pink tongue and licks the lipstick on her arm, then rubs it away with the palm of her hand.

  “Look,” Rafferty says, “I have to go over there for a second.” He points to the dark-windowed billiards bar across the street. “You get up and walk a little.” Although he’s speaking Thai, she just looks at him, so he imitates a limp for a moment. “You need to walk on it, before it swells up. Take your shoes off and move around. I’ll be right back.”

  She says okay to his back, and he turns at the sound of her voice, but she just smiles at him and says okay again. He starts across the soi, and when he glances back over his shoulder, she is watching him go as if he were her only friend on the playground. She waves but makes no move to get up.

  Rafferty nods at her, feeling oddly formal, and crosses the street. One last look reveals her still in a crouch, her hands still cupped around her ankle. When she sees him turn, she smiles again. Her little belly pouches out over the top of her hot pants, her belly button looking like the world’s deepest dimple.

  He pushes open the door of the billiards bar. It’s cool and dim, and neither of the two farang hunched face-to-face over one of the tables is John.

  Rafferty shakes his head to slow the approaching hostess and turns back to the street, hearing the door sigh closed behind him. It hits his elbow, and his arm blooms with pain. He grabs his shoulder, which seems to ease the pain slightly, and leans forward, blowing out all the air in his lungs. He stays there, staring at the sidewalk, until the tide of pain has receded to the point where he can breathe regularly. When he straightens and looks across the street, the plump little apprentice tart is right where he left her. She’s on one knee, with the injured ankle stretched in front of her, and she’s slowly wiggling the foot back and forth. The platform heel on the shoe she’s removed has to be six inches high. Rafferty stands there, waiting for the red heat in his arm to subside further, and sees a group of four cigarette-puffing women, older and more seasoned than the one across the street, go through the open space that leads into the Beer Garden. Then come the usual high-frequency cries of delight from their friends, who probably haven’t seen the newcomers for at least an hour.

  And here Rafferty is, halfway up the block. If he’d been right beside the door, he might have been able to slip in with the women, maybe hunched over a little. Maybe whoever is watching the entrance would have registered the girls and looked away, maybe turned to the person next to him to say—

  No. Not these guys. If John’s supposed to be watching the door, he’ll be watching the door.

  Rafferty pulls out his cell phone and pushes the speed dial for Miaow.

  “Nobody’s behind me,” she says, without waiting for his hello. “I’m getting sick, riding backward.”

  “Sick is better than dead. And you’re keeping your eyes open.”

  “What else have I got to do?” Miaow says. “But there’s nobody back there.”

  “Good. How long until you get home?”

  “I’ll get home about ten minutes after I throw up.” She disconnects.

  Across the street the plump girl wobbles to her feet, arms spread as though she’s on a tightrope. She takes a step, but when she puts her weight on the bad ankle, she straightens quickly, and Rafferty can hear her shrill squeak over the traffic from the boulevard. With a certain amount of relief, he resigns himself to not confronting John and goes back to her.

  The girl leans against the wall of the bar and watches him come. The soi is completely in shadow now, and multicolored lights begin to blink in the boughs of the enormous tree that grows just inside the entrance to the Beer Garden.

  She stands like an egret, the foot beneath the injured ankle raised slightly, letting the wall take all her weight. Rafferty kneels in front of her and slides his hands over the ankle, feeling the warmth of the swelling. “This is no good,” Rafferty says. “You have to walk on it.”

  She says, “Too many ow
.”

  “It’ll feel better if you put some weight on it. Come on.” He gets up and thinks for a second about how to help her without further damaging his bad arm, then goes around to her left side and puts his right arm around his waist. “Lean on me,” he says in badly pronounced Thai. “Put about half your weight on the ankle.” He starts to walk her in a circle.

  “Ooo,” she says. A moment later she says “Ooo” again, and he can hear the wince.

  “It’ll get better.”

  She says “Ooo” yet again. She has the salty smell of sweat, mixed with something that Rafferty can’t place, slightly fragrant, slightly medicinal. Talcum powder, he thinks, with menthol in it, the poor person’s cure for prickly heat.

  “In a circle,” he says, guiding her. “Come on. Put some more weight on it. Don’t just put it down like that. Bend it a little when you step on it.”

  “Buy me drink,” the girl says, stopping. “Hot.”

  “Make a deal. You walk another two minutes by yourself, just keep going in a circle, while I run over to the pharmacy and get some aspirin and a bandage, and I’ll buy you whatever you want.”

  “Want cola,” she says.

  Someone comes out of the Beer Garden, and Rafferty slows his pace to watch, but it’s not John. It’s a lanky scarecrow with a pair of women in tow, and Rafferty can almost see the thought balloon above his head, saying, Wait’ll I tell them about this back home. God, am I a stud.

  “Two lady,” the girl says flatly. “Two lady no good.”

  “Why no good?”

  “Ugly,” the plump girl says. “One lady, one man okay. Two lady, one man ugly.”

  “I agree. Walk a minute while I go over there. Then I’ll get you your Coke and you can go inside.”

  “Lady in there no like me,” she says, showing no sign of wanting to let go of him.

  “Why?”

  She shakes her head. “Don’t know. No like.”