The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller

by Timothy Hallinan

  The stairs are vertiginously steep and so narrow that the walls almost brush Rafferty’s shoulders. At the top he and Arthit find themselves in a long, dim, windowless room not much wider than a broad hallway with an unoccupied stage on one side, maybe two meters wide, adorned by a single pole that hasn’t been wiped down in years. Palm prints fog its shine and dapple the broken mirror behind it, the lower right corner of which has fallen away and is propped against the wall. At the far end of the room, framed by incomplete strings of Christmas lights, a small bar blinks at them, decorated with plastic chrysanthemums, the perfect advertisement for alcoholic depression. The bottles behind the bar are the only clean surfaces in sight. Rafferty inhales the smell of a hamper full of dirty laundry that’s been damp for weeks.

  “Hello, hello,” says a woman of indeterminate years, crammed into a tight dress, the seam of which has popped open on her left hip. She thinks her anxious grimace is a smile. She might have been pretty once, but she’s used herself badly for a long time, and what’s left of her beauty has been broken into random fragments—a nice set of cheekbones, a mouth that was probably plump before it got fat. There are four other women in the room, all overweight and, by Patpong standards, overage. They’re all sheathed in the kind of tight, floor-length dresses that Rafferty associates with high gloves and big-band singers from the forties. All of them look nervous, but nowhere near as nervous as the two men sitting on the bench that runs along the wall facing the stage. They’ve obviously made hurried adjustments: One of them has half his shirttail hanging out of his pants. On the floor in front of each of them, a pillow has been placed. The pillows are permanently dented by years’ worth of knees.

  “You two,” Arthit says to the men. “You need to go to the bathroom.”

  “You bet,” says the one with half his shirt tucked in, jumping to his feet. He and his companion trot the length of the room and disappear into a dark corridor to the left of the bar.

  “Give me some light,” Arthit says.

  The woman who met them at the top of the stairs nods to the shortest and youngest woman in the room, and the younger one goes to a wall fixture and snaps on an overhead fluorescent. The light reveals whole new frontiers of dirtiness, as well as masks of makeup as thick as toothpaste, and Rafferty thinks for a second of Rose, working to help women get out of the bar life before they end up someplace like this.

  “Seen this man?” Arthit asks.

  “Ooohh,” says the youngest one. “Handsome.”

  “Has he been here?”

  “No,” says the oldest woman, who is obviously the mama-san. She looks at the other women and laughs. “And we’d remember. We don’t get many like him.”

  “He’s killed at least five bar girls,” Arthit says. He holds up the second photo. The faces of the four older ones harden, but the youngest brings her fingers to her lips. “I want you to look at both these pictures. I want you to remember his face.”

  “I’ll remember,” the mama-san says.

  Rafferty says, “He might have some injuries to his face, might even have bandages.”

  The mama-san says, “That would be nice.”

  “Get your cell phones,” Arthit says.

  The women go behind the bar and come out carrying purses, all of them battered and worn. Working ten-hour days on their knees in this cesspool, they’re making barely enough money to eat. In a moment each of them has a phone out.

  “Key in this number.” Arthit recites his cell-phone number. “Save it. Name it whatever you want, as long as you’ll be able to remember it if he comes in here. If he does, one of you goes back into the short-time room and calls me, is that clear? Just treat him like any other customer. He’s never hurt a girl while he’s in a bar, as far as we know. But call me.”

  The mama-san stores the number and takes another, longer, look at Horner’s face. “If he comes in here,” she says, “we’ll kill him ourselves.”

  BY NINE-THIRTY THEY’VE burned through all six of the bars on their list and there’s a light drizzle falling, creating flaring halos around the lights in the night market and softening the lurid hues of the neon. Big sheets of blue plastic have been stretched into place above the stalls and tied to the metal frames to keep the merchandise dry, and water is running in the gutters, but the damp hasn’t interfered with business in the bars. The street is jammed solid on both sides.

  Arthit’s phone has rung eight times, with Rafferty practically jumping out of his skin each time. Six of the calls were sign-offs from the women who were showing the photos, finished with their task. No one had definitely recognized Horner. Some of the women had decided to meet for a late meal at the Thai Room, a restaurant on Patpong 2. The other two calls were news: Women had identified Horner as a customer in the Kit-Kat and Bar Sinister, both relatively nice downstairs bars that feature younger women, relatively new to the life. In both cases he’d been there within a few weeks but hadn’t been taking girls out.

  The ninth call, coming in now, is from Nit, who had the longest list of bars. Arthit listens and says to Rafferty, “The Office?” He squints like someone trying to read small print. “The girl he’s been taking out works at the Office. Where the hell is that?”

  “Patpong 2,” Rafferty says. “But the Office isn’t a go-go club. It’s just a hostess bar.”

  Nit hears his remark, and Arthit puts the phone to his ear and listens. “That’s why she went there last,” he says. “She almost didn’t bother.” Into the phone he asks, “Is the girl there?” He looks over at Rafferty, who’s shifting from foot to foot, and nods an affirmative. “You what? . . . Good, that’s good. Smart of you.” He puts a hand over the phone. “She only showed them the picture of Horner. Thought they’d give themselves away if they saw the other one.”

  “We need to get the girl.”

  Arthit points to the phone, which Rafferty takes to mean, Nit’s got her. To Nit he says, “Most of your friends are over at the Thai Room, so you’re close to them. Why don’t you take her over there. We’ll see you in a minute or two. Stay away from the windows.” He lowers the phone and says to Rafferty, “Let’s go. The Thai Room. If he goes into the Office, we’ll be just up the street.”

  “Sure. As you said, away from the windows.”

  Arthit calls Kosit and, after that, Anand and tells each of them to head over to Patpong 2 once they’ve finished with the vendors.

  “We should have sent people to all the hostess bars,” Rafferty says.

  “And we will,” Arthit says. “Let’s allow them a few minutes to eat, though. But, you know, men who frequent the go-go clubs don’t usually visit the hostess bars. It’s pretty much one or the other.”

  “ ‘Pretty much,’ ” Rafferty says between his teeth. “ ‘Usually.’ I’m an idiot.”

  Seen from above, the Patpong district is a big capital H, with the two uprights being Patpong 1 and 2, named after the Patpong family, which has added considerably to its worldly riches, if not its store of good karma, by owning them. The cross stroke connecting the verticals is a nameless little stub of a street that’s housed a long string of failed bars and restaurants, including one upstairs clip joint that changes its name so often Rafferty long ago stopped trying to keep up.

  Patpong 2 is considerably sleepier than its big sister, with three or four struggling go-go clubs, a few restaurants, and six or eight decorous hostess bars, ranging from intimate to relatively vast. There’s no night market. Where it can take fifteen minutes to plow through the people who pack the street from Silom to Surawong on Patpong 1 when the evening is in full swing, on Patpong 2 it can usually be done in one-fifth that time. Patpong 2 is less crowded. And a lot darker.

  As they fight free of the crowd on Patpong 1 and enter the stub street, Arthit says, “I think we’ll set up at the Thai Room. We can stay out of sight, and it’ll take us less than a minute to get to the Office.”

  “Fine.”

  Arthit glances at Rafferty. “Problem?”

  “Why wa
s she there?”

  “What do you mean?

  “Why was she working tonight? Rose said he was with her constantly when they were together.”

  “He had things to do today,” Arthit says. “Bust into your apartment. Kidnap Miaow, and maybe you. Find Rose. Kill everybody. Big day.”

  “ ‘He does one thing at a time,’ Rose said.”

  Arthit stops walking. He looks like he’s studying the air in front of him. “Maybe he just decided to put things on hold while he got rid of the only person who could tie him to the killings.”

  “Then why not earlier? Why not the night he painted our door red? Why not just come in and kill us all? Why wait until now?”

  “Rose said he was having fun. When he painted the door.”

  A very drunk Japanese man bumps Arthit from behind and backs away, bowing, until he bumps into someone else.

  “There’s someone who’ll be lucky to have a wallet tomorrow,” Arthit says. He starts walking again. “Don’t worry about it. Your idea was solid. We found the bar. We’ve got the girl. Everybody in Patpong is looking for him. He’ll show, and we’ll have him.”

  “It doesn’t work,” Rafferty says. “He sees us in the restaurant, paints the door to scare us, and then disappears. Rose guesses he’s got a girl and he’s busy with her, and that’s apparently true. But suddenly he’s back, kicking in the door to kill us, trying to kidnap Miaow. I understand why he wants us dead. Rose is probably the only person who can tie him to the killings. What I don’t understand is why he’s suddenly got time to pay attention to us. I don’t understand why that girl is in the club tonight.” He pauses. “Maybe it has something to do with John?”

  “How would he even know about John?” Arthit asks. You and Kosit said he was around the corner and in that cab, going in the other direction, by the time John got hit.”

  “I don’t know,” Rafferty says again. “But there’s something I don’t understand, because she shouldn’t have been in that bar.”

  “So,” Arthit says, “let’s go see her.”

  They cross to the far curb on Patpong 2 and head left, past a decent French restaurant, a little hostess bar, a blow-job dump, and a pharmacy. On their left are a couple of open-air bars that do most of their business in the afternoon, before the go-go clubs open. The men occupying the stools constitute a representative assortment of Caucasianus patpongus, mostly in their forties and fifties, mostly overweight, mostly drunk. Someone who looks like Horner, Rafferty thinks, would have cut through the competition like a bright new scalpel. Even before he met Rose, Rafferty knew that some of the Patpong girls were as susceptible to a romantic fantasy as any starstruck teenager. For every ten who saw the customers as ambulatory ATMs, there was always one—usually a new one—who still had her illusions.

  The Thai Room is cold enough to hang meat in. Five of the women from Rose’s agency, plus Kosit, are huddled together for warmth at a long banquette. Trapped dead center in the row between the table and the wall is a girl of nineteen or so with the kind of whole-new-race beauty the Thai genetic stew sometimes produces. She has skin the color of maple syrup, luminous eyes that seem to have been imported directly from India, a tiny and perfect nose, and an impossibly long neck that looks like it was made to be hung heavily with gold.

  “Warm it up in here,” Arthit snaps at the waitress who greets them, holding menus of phone-book thickness. The Thai Room will take a slap at approximating any kind of cooking in the world, but their approach to the Thai food they cook for Thai patrons is more painstaking. “And bring me whatever you’re cooking for them.”

  “They ordered a lot.”

  “Pick the two items you’d feel most comfortable serving to a high-ranking policeman who’s in a bad mood.”

  The waitress blanches and retreats toward the kitchen, with a detour at the thermostat.

  Rafferty grabs a chair from another table, and two of the women shift their own chairs so he can sit opposite the girl from the Office. She looks everywhere but at him.

  He says, “What’s your name?”

  The girl doesn’t answer.

  “Her name is Wan,” Fon says. “She’s not happy to be here.”

  “You should be,” Rafferty says to her. Wan is busy moving her utensils around, trying to improve on the arrangement, her mouth a stubborn line. The plate in front of her is empty. He turns to Nit. “How’d you get her here?”

  Nit says, “I bought her out.” Two of the women laugh.

  “Where’s Horner?” Rafferty asks.

  Wan shakes her head.

  “This man,” Rafferty says, holding up the picture.

  “I don’t know him,” Wan says in Thai.

  Nit takes the utensils out of the girl’s hand. “Everybody in the bar identified him.”

  “I don’t know him,” Wan says again. She tries to push her chair back, but it bumps the wall. “I go now.”

  From behind Rafferty, Arthit says, “Tell you what. You talk to us or I’ll take you to the monkey house.”

  Wan says, “So?” But her eyes have widened at the words.

  “Where’s his hotel?” Rafferty asks.

  She offers a shrug so packed with resentment that it reminds him of Miaow. “How would I know?”

  “Why aren’t you with him? Why are you working tonight?”

  “It’s my job,” she says defiantly. “I work at the Office Bar.”

  “Wan,” Rafferty says in Thai, “Howard is a killer.”

  “Don’t know Howard,” she says in English. “I go.”

  “My wife used to work in a bar. He tried to kill her.”

  She’s shaking her head. “Don’t know—”

  “He killed a friend of hers. He killed at least five—”

  “Why you no listen? Don’t know Howard.”

  “His wife,” Nit says, leaning in, “is one of my best friends. She’s helped every girl at this table. Howard took her out into the Andaman—”

  Nit breaks off because Wan has whipped her head around to face her at the word “Andaman.”

  Rafferty jumps on her. “Phuket. He was going to take you to Phuket. Wasn’t he?”

  The girl is shaking her head again, but the certainty in her face is softening.

  “He took her—my wife, I mean—to the Andaman,” Rafferty says mercilessly, “to Phuket. He told her he was going to marry her.”

  Wan says, “No,” but the word has little behind it except breath.

  “Phuket was the first stop,” Rafferty says. “After that he promised her they were going to her village so he could meet her parents and he could—”

  She says, “No, no, no.”

  “—so he could pay the dowry. But instead he took her out in a boat and tried to kill her with a knife.”

  Wan says, “Not Howard. Not Howard.”

  “Where is he?”

  Her lower lip is moving as though she’s going to say something, but she shakes her head and sits back. “Don’t know.”

  “Where is he staying?”

  She shakes her head again, and it’s clear to Rafferty that she won’t tell him.

  “Is he coming to the Office later?”

  A pause, then, “No.”

  “Why not?” No answer, and Rafferty stands, leaning on his knuckles on the tabletop. “Why aren’t you with him? Why are you working tonight?”

  “He . . . he doesn’t want me.”

  “Why not?” He leans toward her. “Why not?”

  Everyone in the restaurant is staring at them.

  Nit says, “Poke.” She puts a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Come on, little sister. It’s not going to hurt anyone if you just tell us why he’s not with you. Why he won’t come to the bar tonight. And you know what? If we’re wrong about him, you might help us get things right.”

  With no transition Wan bursts into tears, not genteel sobbing but big, openmouthed, gulping howls. She cups her face in her hands and then pulls them away and slams her forehead against the tabl
e, so hard that all the silverware jumps. She lifts her head to do it again, but Rafferty slips his hand in, palm up, in the spot her forehead hit. She stares down at his hand, and the sobs deepen. She says to Nit, although Rafferty can barely understand the words, “I have my period. He doesn’t like it when—”

  The restaurant door opens with a bang. Anand looks in, finds them, and says, “Something’s happening. Patpong 1. Everybody’s running.”

  Less than a minute later, having bulled his way through a dense crowd on the stub road with Arthit a step behind him, Rafferty enters the throng on Patpong 1 and sees hundreds of heads, all craning to see something to Rafferty’s left. Rafferty, who is taller than most of the crowd, turns to look, and says to Arthit, “Holy Jesus Christ.”

  Chapter 29

  Perfume, Hair Spray, Dance Sweat

  He’s walking in the center of a red whirlwind, a whirlwind of rage and self-loathing. His bandaged nose and mouth hurt, and he raises his right hand and slams it open-palmed against his nose, sending an electric burst of pain vaulting through the circuits of his nervous system. His eyes watering, he’s about to do it again—God knows he deserves it—but he realizes that it will start his nose bleeding again.

  He looks freakish enough already, without blood all over his chin and shirt.

  It’s about two minutes to ten. He’s chosen to come into the area through the Silom end of Patpong 2, the first block of which is always dark. Sidewalk vendors, closed at that hour, own the first segment of the road, so there is no one to see him there. A go-go bar scatters its neon into the night on the right, but he keeps to the left, hands jammed into his pockets, shoulders rigid with fury. John had been right. They should have killed Rose and the others that first night, just minced them where they slept. But they’d seemed so harmless, the wispy little half-breed husband and that ugly brown kid. And he was busy setting up the last act with Wan, and he’d thought he could have his fun with her and then have a little more fun with Rose and that patched-together, pathetic little family.

  After all, it was about fun. It had always been about fun.