Koko

FOUR

IN THE

UNDERGROUND

GARAGE

1

Two days earlier, Michael Poole stood at the window of his hotel room, looking down at Surawong Road, so jammed with trucks, taxicabs, automobiles, and the little covered motorized carts called ruk-tuks that the traffic formed a seamless body. Across Surawong Road lay the Patpong District, where the bars and sex shows and massage parlors were only just beginning to open up. The room’s air conditioner set up a rattling hum beside Poole, for while the air was so grey as to be nearly grainy, the day was even warmer and more humid than Singapore had been that morning. Out of sight behind Poole and, like both the air conditioner and the traffic in full spate, Conor Linklater was walking around the room, picking up the guest book, looking at all the furniture, inspecting the postcards in the desk drawer, and all the while talking to himself. He was still excited by what the cabdriver had said to them.

“Right away,” Conor mumbled. “Can you believe that? I mean, is this place about getting your rocks off, or what?”

The driver had informed them that this hotel was very convenient, being on the fringe of the Patpong area, and then had permanently impressed Conor with both himself and the city of Bangkok by asking if the gentlemen wished to stop at a massage parlor before reaching their hotel. No ordinary massage parlor, no tank with skinny country girls who did not know how to behave, but a luxurious place, real sophistication, porcelain bathtubs, elegant rooms, full body massages, girls so beautiful they made you come two-three times before you even got going. He had promised girls so pretty they looked like princesses, movie stars, Playboy centerfolds, girls as voluptuous and yielding as the girls in dreams, girls with the thighs of drum majorettes, the breasts of Indian goddesses, the faces of cover girls, the silken skin of courtesans, the subtle minds of poet-diplomats, the agility of gymnasts, the muscle tone of swimmers, the playfulness of monkeys, the stamina of mountain goats, and best of all …

“Best of all,” Conor mused. “Best of all. No women’s lib. How about that? I mean, I got nothing against women’s lib. Everybody’s a free man in this world, girls included, and I know lots of women who are better men than most men. But how much of that stuff do you have to listen to? Especially in the bedroom? I mean, most of ’em already make twice as much money as I do, they run computers, they run offices, they run companies, Donovan’s is full of ’em, they won’t even let you buy ’em drinks, they make a face if you open the door for ’em, I mean, maybe we shoulda done what the guy said …”

“Umm,” Poole said. Conor himself was hardly paying any attention to his babbling, and any response was sufficient.

“…  do it later, doesn’t matter, hey, they have two restaurants in this hotel, nice bar too, I bet it’s nicer here than wherever the Lost Boss is now, goin’ around telling everybody he’s a cop or a secret agent or the Bishop of New York.”

Poole laughed out loud.

“Right! I mean, one hand feeds the other, but with that guy …”

If by four o’clock all of Bangkok seemed congested, the few square blocks that made up Patpong were already even more crowded than that. The usual traffic filled the street, and the sidewalks were so crowded Poole could see very little of the pavement. People milled around on the sidewalks before the bars and sex clubs, flowed up and down the stairs and fire escapes. Around them signs sparkled and flashed: MISSISSIPPI, DAISY CHAIN, HOT SEX, WHISKEY, MONTMARTRE, SEX, SEX, and many others, all crowding together and shouting for attention.

“Dengler died out there,” Conor said, looking down on Phat Pong Road.

“Yes, he did,” Michael answered.

“It looks like the goddamn monkey house.”

Poole laughed. That was what it looked like, all right.

“I think we’re gonna find him, Mikey.”

“I do, too,” Poole said.

2

After he and Conor returned to the hotel that evening, Michael waited while the Thai switchboard operator put through his credit card call to Westerholm, New York. He finally had something positive to say about what Beevers called their “mission.” He had seen something in a bookstore that confirmed his impression that he and Conor would find Underhill in Bangkok. If it took two days, they might be coming home two days after that—with Underhill in tow or not, however it worked out. Michael wanted to find some detox clinic where Underhill could straighten himself out and get the rest Poole was sure he needed. Anybody who had survived Bangkok for a long time would need a good rest. If Underhill had committed murder, Poole would find him a great lawyer and get him started on the insanity defense that would at least keep him out of jail. That might not be sufficiently dramatic for a mini-series, but it would be the best ending for Underhill and anyone who cared about him.

What Poole had seen in Patpong’s most uncharacteristic place of business, a huge bright bookstore called Patpong Books, had given him indirect proof of Underhill’s innocence and his presence in Bangkok. Poole and Conor had walked into the bookstore to get out of the heat and escape the crowds for a moment. Patpong Books was cool and uncrowded, and Michael was happily surprised to see that the fiction department took up at least a third of the store. He could get something for himself, and something to give to Stacy Talbot too. He wandered down the fiction aisles, not realizing that he was looking for Tim Underhill’s name until he found an entire shelf filled with Underhill’s novels. There were four and five copies of every Underhill novel, hardcovers interspersed with paperbacks, from A Beast in View to Blood Orchid.

Didn’t that mean that he lived here? That he was a customer of Patpong Books? The shelf of novels reminded Poole of the “Local Authors” shelf at All Booked, Westerholm’s best bookstore—it was as good as a signed statement that Underhill frequented the shop. And if he did that, would he also be going out and killing people? Poole could almost feel Underhill’s presence near his well-stocked shelf. If he did not come in, would the store stock so many books by a writer so obscure?

It added up, at least to Poole, and once Poole had explained it to him, to Conor too.

When he and Conor left their hotel earlier that day, Poole’s first impression was that Bangkok was Thailand’s Calcutta. Whole families seemed to live and work on the streets, for often Poole saw women crouching on a broken pavement, feeding the children that roiled around them while smashing up concrete with the hammers in their free hands. Down the center of every sidewalk sat a row of women hacking a trench with hammers and picks. Smoke from cook-fires drifted from the vents inside half-constructed buildings in vacant lots. Plaster dust and hard little motes that stung the skin, smoke and grease and exhaust fumes hung in the grey air. Poole felt the permeable membrane of the air settle over his skin like a cobweb.

Here was a great red sign for the HEAVEN MASSAGE PARLOR, and here were rising stairs of concrete