The Queen of Patpong Page 9

  Rafferty stands over him, panting, making sure the man is out. From beneath John’s head, blood begins to pool across the tile floor. The women standing in the doorway break into applause.

  Taking it one deliberate step at a time, Rafferty puts the bottle down carefully, not spilling the remaining soda, and kneels beside John. He pries the knife from the man’s hand, tosses the blade against the opposite wall, and puts a couple of fingers over John’s pulse, which is reassuringly strong and steady. As if on cue, the man moans, and Pim lets out a squeak of terror and scrabbles away from him, using her good arm to pull her along.

  “I need a belt,” Rafferty says in Thai to the women in the doorway. They’re pushing at each other now, peering in at the flattened man and the injured girl. A woman in front, older and tattooed and somehow familiar, unbuckles her belt, slips it free of her jeans, and throws it to him.

  She says, in English, “Here, Poke,” and Rafferty takes his eyes off the belt to look at her, and it falls at his feet, the heavy buckle making an echoing clank as it hits the tile.

  “Move,” Rafferty says to Pim, and when she’s scooted farther away, he rolls John over onto his stomach, yanks his arms behind his back, and makes a tight figure eight with the belt, wrapping it around and between the arms just above the elbows, Khmer Rouge style, where John won’t be able to reach it with his hands. When he’s tugged it as tight as he can, he secures the buckle and takes a quick look at John’s scalp. The bottle broke the skin, but there doesn’t seem to be any real damage, just the usual aggressive bleeding from a scalp wound. He rolls John onto his back again.

  “Hold still,” he says to Pim. He puts his hand on her left shoulder and probes it gently. She lets out a shrill yelp. “Dislocated,” he says. “Stay where you are.”

  Pim says, around a sniffle, “But—”

  “Do what I say. If you move around, it’ll hurt more.” He turns to the woman who threw him the belt. He’s suddenly immensely weary. “I’m sorry. I know you, but I can’t remember your name.”

  “Lan,” she says. “I dance King’s Castle long time. Before, me friend for Rose.”

  “Right, right. Sorry, Lan. Where’s security? They should be here by now.”

  “You want?”

  “No, I don’t. If they come, try to keep them out, okay?”

  “Okay. Him.” She points her foot at John, a gesture of contempt. “Him boxing her. Bang, take her hair, pull her.”

  “Well, he’s not going to enjoy the next few minutes.” John moans again, and Rafferty gets up, turns on the water in the sink, cups his hands beneath the spout, and throws the water at John. He does it three or four times, and then John’s eyes are open. He struggles once against the belt, takes a quick look around the bathroom—at Rafferty, at the huddled Pim, at the band of angry women. His eyes find the knife on the other side of the room, and he goes still. He’s not even looking at Rafferty.

  “What’s your full name?” Rafferty asks, kneeling beside him again.

  “Fuck you,” John says. He’s looking past Rafferty at the wall.

  Rafferty picks up the soda bottle, which feels like it weighs ten pounds. “If I hit you in exactly the same place, it’s going to get your attention.” He wiggles the bottle by its neck.

  John closes his eyes and slowly opens them again. “Bohnert. John Bohnert.”

  “Spell it.”

  “B-o-h-n-e-r-t.”

  “What did you think you were doing today? When I saw you on Sukhumvit.”

  “Looking for a library. I’m a big reader.”

  “Who else was following us?”

  The question provokes a surprised contraction of Bohnert’s eyebrows, quickly smoothed away. Then he shakes his head.

  “Was somebody else following Rose?”

  Bohnert squirms for a moment, testing the strength of the belt, and Rafferty puts an open hand on the man’s throat and presses down, hard. “Stay put and I’ll let you breathe. I asked whether anyone was following Rose.”

  Rafferty lifts his hand, and Bohnert coughs. “Who’s Rose?”

  “Be like that,” Rafferty says. “But listen. You’re going to tell me what I want to know, and you really ought to do it the easy way. So I can feel good about myself when this is over.”

  “Have I said ‘fuck you’ yet?”

  “Well, it’s a good thing my self-esteem is solid,” Rafferty says. “Otherwise I might regret doing this.”

  He picks up the bottle of soda and holds it to the light, checking the level. Still about two-thirds full. John winces at the sight of it and draws his head away, but Rafferty pops the cap with his thumb, puts the bottle down again, and pulls the straw out of the bag of chili sauce.

  There’s a murmur among the women gathered at the door. Three or four of them are whispering to others.

  “You know this one, do you?” he asks them. Even Pim is watching now, although she looks puzzled. She hasn’t been here long enough to learn the trick, which owes its existence to the limitless imagination and limited resources of the Thai police.

  “A friend of mine who’s a cop told me about this. It’s not a complicated recipe,” Rafferty says to Bohnert, who’s working on looking impassive, his eyes once again on the wall. “The trick is to get the proportions right. Also, it works better if you can grind the chilies to a paste, but this is an improvisation.”

  He gathers the open end of the bag of chili sauce into a tight bunch and works it into the neck of the soda bottle. Then he upends the bag and squeezes on it again so the nam pla prik flows into the soda water, turning it the color of weak tea with lots of little red and green bits floating in it. To Bohnert he says, “You following this?”

  Bohnert says nothing.

  “One more chance,” Rafferty says, hoping the man will cooperate. He’s seeing little bright flashes at the corners of his vision, and he can hear his blood singing high and thin in his ears. His voice sounds distant, as though he’s hearing it through a wall. “One more chance for us both to walk out of here feeling relatively okay. Where’s Horner?”

  Bohnert says, “You’re dead. You and the whore and the midget. You’re dead.”

  Rafferty says, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” He puts his thumb tightly over the top of the bottle and shakes it vigorously as the women’s voices rise in expectation. When he can feel that the pressure’s increased as much as it’s going to, he brings the Coke bottle up to Bohnert’s nose, removes his thumb, and jams the bottle into the left nostril.

  Coca-Cola spurts out of Bohnert’s nose and over Rafferty’s hand, and John’s knees unbend spasmodically, scissoring in both directions. Rafferty rises and steps back as Bohnert thrashes on the floor, coughing and choking, and then the chili hits, and he roars and jackknifes and then straightens, kicking his feet out so fast that he cracks both shins against the vertical support of the toilet cubicle, and he twists back and forth, rocking on his bound arms, hacking and spitting and sobbing simultaneously.

  Rafferty’s voice feels like it’s being forced through a sieve. “Where’s Horner?” His phone begins to ring.

  Bohnert’s eyes are streaming water, but he pulls his mouth tight and spits at Rafferty.

  As his phone continues to ring, Rafferty bends over John and says between his teeth, “There’s lots left. Let’s try again.” He puts his thumb over the bottle and starts to shake it.

  “No,” Bohnert says. It’s mostly breath.

  The phone stops ringing. “Why were you following us?”

  “See . . . where you went. Who you know.”

  “Why?”

  Bohnert’s nose is running, and he sniffs, which is a mistake that registers instantly. He blows out explosively and makes a retching sound that turns into another fit of coughing. When it’s over, he lies still except for deep, shuddering breaths, and Rafferty says again, “Why?”

  “Pressure points,” Bohnert says. “Looking . . . for pressure points.”

  Rafferty’s phone rings again. He looks at it
and sees ROSE.

  “What does Horner want with her?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Fine.” Rafferty puts the phone into his pocket and shakes the bottle again. John is pushing back with his legs, trying to scrabble away, under the wall of the toilet cubicle. A couple of the women laugh.

  “He . . . he says she tried to kill him.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Really, really. He wanted—Howard wanted—to marry her.”

  “He . . .” Rafferty stands there, the bottle dangling heavy in his hand, feeling as if a building just fell on him. “Marry her?

  “He asked her, she said yes. That’s what he says.”

  “True or false?” He shakes the bottle again,

  “True, true. Ask her. Ask her, not me.” Bohnert’s voice breaks like an adolescent’s.

  “And where is old Howard?”

  “I . . . I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Unless you want to sneeze blood for the next week.”

  Bohnert’s face softens, and he starts to cry like a child, and Rafferty, with no pleasure, recognizes a self-shattering sense of shame. “He’s in . . . he’s in Afghanistan,” Bohnert says.

  “CALL DR. RATT,” Rafferty says into the phone. “Tell him—”

  “You went after him, didn’t you?” Rose demands, her tone as sharp as broken glass. “That man, the one who was with Howard. How stupid can—”

  “I’m not up for an argument.” The sweat he smells now is his own, his T-shirt wet and heavy beneath his arms. “Call Dr. Ratt. Get him and Nui there now.”

  “And you got yourself hurt,” Rose says. “You saw them, you saw how they were, and now—”

  “It’s not me. And will you please—” Beside him, on the backseat of the cab, Pim shifts her weight away from him and whimpers.

  “Then who?”

  “Goddamn it, will you please do what I’m asking you to do?” He is suddenly so furious that his mouth tastes like metal. “Will you just fucking do what I want?”

  Pim pulls farther away, leaning against the door.

  There is a long pause. Then Rose says, in a voice he’s never heard before, “You sound like a customer.”

  He is trying to think of something to say when he hears her disconnect.

  ROSE’S EYES ARE stones when she opens the door, but the moment she sees Pim, her face softens. “You poor baby,” she says in Thai. “You’ve been crying.” Her eyes flick to Rafferty’s bandage, but she makes no comment, just gathers Pim in.

  Behind Rose, Dr. Ratt’s wife, Nui, gives Pim a sharp-eyed glance. “It’s a new one,” she says in English, calling toward the kitchen. Rafferty can hear water running, so the doctor is probably washing his hands.

  “How long have you been in Bangkok?” Rose has wrapped a long arm carefully around the girl. Pim’s chin is dimpling at the sympathy.

  “Three weeks,” she says. Even less time than Rafferty had guessed.

  “And what’s the problem?” Rose asks in Thai. “Did my husband beat you up?”

  “No,” Pim says. “He was wonderful. He stuck a bottle right up the man’s nose.”

  “Did he?” Rose says, without a glance at Rafferty. She guides Pim toward the counter between the living room and the kitchen. “Sometimes he’s nice by accident.”

  “Ahh, our patients have arrived,” Dr. Ratt says in what he imagines to be a soothing tone but has always sounded to Rafferty like the voice of an amateur who’s somehow gotten on the radio. “Who needs to be looked at first?”

  “Sorry to disappoint everyone,” Rafferty says, “but this is nothing.” He raises the bandaged elbow. “I’m fine.”

  “Oh, well. That won’t last long, the way you live. Who’s our little friend here?”

  “My name is Pim,” Pim says, looking dazzled. Dr. Ratt and Nui are dressed like a cross between medical personnel and slumming angels, he in a white tunic that looks like something Nehru might have worn if Nehru had been a doctor, with a stethoscope gleaming around his neck for effect, and Nui in the latest of a long line of hand-tailored all-silk nurse’s outfits. The two of them have made a fortune by defeating Bangkok’s fearsome traffic, putting multiple teams of doctors and nurses in cars twenty-four hours a day on the assumption that often enough, when a call comes in, there will be a team nearby. A lot of the profit has gone into clothes. Faced with their soigné urban elegance, Pim folds her arms around her middle to cover some of her bare brown skin and appears even more uncomfortable than before.

  “Mmmm,” Dr. Ratt says, giving her a closer look. “Dislocated, is it?”

  “It is,” Rafferty says.

  “When I need a layman’s opinion.” Dr. Ratt says, without glancing up, “you probably won’t be the layman I ask.”

  “When everyone hates you,” Rafferty says, “drink beer.” He goes into the kitchen and pulls the refrigerator door open.

  “Well, now,” Dr. Ratt says, with a “come here” glance at Nui. Between them they maneuver Pim onto one of the stools at the counter and then swivel the stool so she’s got her back to the kitchen and is facing into the living room. She sits there, hunched over protectively, looking from one of them to the other, as though she’s trying to decide which of them will bite her first.

  “This is going to hurt,” Dr. Ratt says, taking her left wrist. “Only for a second, though, and then it’ll be fine.”

  “But—” Pim says, just as Dr. Ratt brings the arm up, twists it slightly, and pushes, and it pops into the socket, accompanied by a squeal from Pim that goes through Rafferty’s ears like a smoking wire.

  “There,” Dr. Ratt says. Pim is bent double, holding her shoulder. “Better?”

  “Yes,” she says, “but it hurts.”

  “Well, I lied about that. It’ll be sore until tomorrow. But it doesn’t hurt like before, does it?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “He did this to her?” Rose asks. It is an accusation.

  “John,” Rafferty says. “The other one. John Bohnert. He’s not as dangerous as he thinks he is.”

  “Don’t you fool yourself,” Rose says.

  “He told me something interesting.”

  “Hard to believe,” Rose says. Dr. Ratt, Nui, and Pim are watching the two of them, unwilling to interrupt.

  “What?” says a new voice, and Rafferty looks around the kitchen door to see Miaow. “What was that noise?” Miaow gives Pim a glance that takes in the garish makeup and the cheap clothes, then dismisses her. “And who’s this?”

  “Her name is Pim,” Rose says, all ice. “Not ‘this.’ ”

  “You’re grumpy,” Miaow says, turning back toward her room. “And he’s got bandages on and he’s drinking beer. Call me when dinner’s ready.”

  “Hello,” Pim says, but Miaow keeps walking.

  “You were just spoken to,” Rose says to Miaow’s back.

  “Well,” Dr. Ratt says, “if no one else is hurt, we should probably be going.”

  “Yeah, hello,” Miaow mumbles, without slowing.

  “You turn around right now,” Rose says. “Who are you to be so rude?”

  “It’s all right,” Pim says.

  Miaow stops, wheels around, and impales Rose with a glare. “Why are you so mean?”

  “That’s it,” Nui says, grabbing her husband’s arm. To Rafferty she says, “Call us if this gets medical.” She hauls Dr. Ratt toward the door.

  “I haven’t paid you,” Rafferty says.

  “For that? Forget it.” Nui is already opening the door, but the doctor puts a hand on the jamb to keep from being towed out of the room. “If you get a chance,” he says, “mention us in one of those magazines you write for.” He nods to Pim. “Nice to meet you, young lady.”

  Pim gives a high wai of respect to the door, which is already swinging shut behind him. She calls out, “Thank you,” but the closing of the door cuts the phrase in half. To Rafferty she says, eyes shining, “He’s a real doctor.”

  “He is,” Rafferty says.
“And he’s got manners, too.”

  “Oh, blah, blah, blah,” Miaow says. “Why doesn’t everybody just yell at me?”

  “Miaow,” Rafferty says, “I know it’s hard, at your age, to believe that there’s anything that’s not about you, but it’s true.”

  “Oh?” Miaow says, and her chin juts out in challenge. “So you’re yelling at me because of what? Because of Rose? Or maybe her?” She flips a thumb at Pim. “Or the guys in the restaurant? Or whoever hurt your stupid arm? Like, what, it’s an accident that I’m the one you’re yelling at? If someone else was standing here, would you be yelling at them instead of me? Fine. I won’t stand here anymore. One of you can stand here and let him yell at you.” She turns and stalks down the hall, and a moment later the door to her room slams.

  Rose stands, looking after her as though she’d vanished through a wall. She seems distant enough to be reconsidering her entire life. Rafferty drains his beer and thinks about getting another. Then Rose says to Pim, “We’re not usually like this.”

  Pim glances at Rafferty, looking for help, but he’s staring into the refrigerator. She says, “Oh.” She makes fluttering gestures with her fingers, but no words come.

  “This is not a good job,” Rose says, her voice flat. “What you’ve come to Bangkok to do. It’s not good for you.”

  “My parents,” Pim says. “And there are five kids.” She puts a brown hand flat on her bare knee, fingers spread wide, and stares down at it. She swivels on the stool, and her hot pants glitter. “Everybody needs money,” she finally says.

  “I know,” Rose says. Then she says, “Poke. Get me a beer.”

  “Gee,” Rafferty says. “You’re speaking to me.” He pulls a Singha out of the refrigerator and says to Pim, “Want one?”