The Queen of Patpong

Chapter 21

I was wondering where I Wasn't

Rafferty says, 'Pack. Everything you'll need for three or four days.' He's tugging at the hem of a new T-shirt, water dripping onto it from the tip of his chin, which he missed with the towel after splashing his face. His hair is damp from his having clawed through it with wet fingers.

Rose says, 'Where are we going?'

'Later. For now, pack.' To Pim he says, 'This isn't the safest place in Bangkok. You should probably go.'

Pim looks at Rose and then Miaow. 'Can I help?'

Rose says, 'I'll pack for me and tell you what to pack for Poke.'

'Don't forget the Glock,' Rafferty says, and Miaow swivels to stare at him. 'Both clips.'

'Where are you going?'

'Arthit's not in his office, and no one is answering at home. So I'm going to his house.'

Miaow says, 'With no one answering? Maybe he doesn't want to see anybody.'

'Of course he doesn't want to see anybody. I should have gone over days ago.' HE HAS to knock three times.

Standing there with the morning sun beating down on his shoulders, he has more time than he needs to see things he doesn't want to see: The tiny dead lawn, the stunted line of brown scrub where the flowers used to be. Three yellowing copies of the Bangkok Sun, lying any which way on the fried, brittle grass. When Arthit's wife, Noi, was alive, this little yard was as green and as immaculately tended as a Scottish golf course. Even after she got too sick to care for it herself, she would sit on the porch and direct Arthit as he planted and trimmed and raked and swept, grumbling happily the whole time.

It's been only eight months.

He's knocking again, harder this time, when the door opens. Arthit stands dead center in the doorway, blocking access. The house is dim behind him, the curtains apparently drawn. He does not smile at Rafferty. He glances at the graying bandage on Rafferty's elbow and the one on his thumb and says, 'What?'

'You're not at the office.'

'Thank you,' Arthit says. 'I was wondering where I wasn't.' He hasn't shaved or combed his hair, and he's wearing a dirty T-shirt and a pair of wrinkled shorts. The circles beneath his eyes have an actual depth; they look like they've been pressed there with the bottom of a glass. The smell from the house is as sour and musty as a bad secret.

'Well, I mean, you've been working time and a half since-'

'And today I'm not.' He looks past Rafferty as though making sure that no one else is coming. 'You got my message.'

Rafferty smells alcohol on his friend's breath. It's 10:30 A.M. 'Are you anything at all like okay?'

Arthit continues to look past Rafferty. 'Did you come here to talk about me?'

'Not really.'

'Good. Then let me start over. You got my message.'

'Yes.'

'That's why I left it,' Arthit says. 'Anything else?'

'What is it, Arthit?' Rafferty says, concern receding to make room for anger. 'Is solitude calling? Do you have plans or something? Is this an intrusion?'

Arthit's eyelids droop and then close for a moment. He leans against the side of the door. When he opens his eyes, he says, 'This isn't a good day for company.'

'Sitting around drinking in the dark isn't going to make it any better.'

'Poke,' Arthit says. 'Fuck you.' He starts to close the door.

'Wait.' Rafferty puts a hand against the door, expecting to have to push back, but the door just floats free of Arthit's hand and swings all the way open again. Arthit stands there, arms hanging down, hands loose at his sides, looking like a man who's just used all the strength he's been hoarding.

The pose is so naked that Rafferty can barely look at it. He looks down instead, at the porch between his feet. When it becomes clear that Arthit isn't going to spend any more energy trying to throw him out, he says, 'Horner killed a girl. He tried to kill Rose. For all I know, he's killed a dozen of them.'

Arthit doesn't say anything.

'I'm not expecting a rescue,' Rafferty says. 'But I could use some more information.' He looks back at Arthit and says, 'And you need to be doing something other than this.'

'All you farang,' Arthit says. He shakes his head. 'You lack delicacy. No Thai would criticize me like that. Not at this time.'

'I can't afford delicacy. And I have to tell you, Arthit, I'd probably be here kicking your door in even if I didn't have a problem.'

Arthit says, 'Precisely the point I was making. No Thai would.'

'But I do have a problem.'

'Wait,' Arthit says. He squeezes his eyes shut and lets his head fall forward until his chin hits his chest. He takes a long breath and fills his cheeks and blows it out like someone surfacing from the deep, then lifts his head and shakes it back and forth quickly, the way a sleepy driver does when he needs to clear his head and refocus on the road. When he's finished, he grabs another breath, heaves a whiskey-laced sigh, and looks straight at Rafferty. 'Tried to kill her.'

'And did kill another one, another bar girl.'

'Any chance at all she's wrong about him trying to kill her? Maybe he was just-'

'No.'

Arthit steps back. 'I suppose you should come in.'

'Probably,' Arthit says. He's sitting on the couch, next to a confused pile of clothes and magazines and DVD cases he'd swept out of his way before he sat down. 'The pieces aren't hard to assemble. Immigration has the dates he was in the country, assuming he's using only one passport. And the cops down south actually do keep records of bodies that wash ashore, although probably not for more than, say, ten years. The problem is that nobody bothers about missing bar girls.'

'No. Really?'

'It's not what you think.' Arthit looks at the table in front of him, jumbled high with unopened mail, plastic utensils, and used paper plates, and then he says, 'Well, it's not only what you think.'

'What else is it?'

He rubs his eyes with his palms, almost grinding at them. 'It's partly the girls. You know how it works. They go home. They go off with men. They get married to someone they just met. They move to a bar in Soi Cowboy or Nana Plaza. They decide it would be nice to work in Pattaya or Phuket and live at the beach. They get hired by a private club or an outcall service. They get sent to Singapore or Japan. They get a positive HIV test and don't want to scare their friends. They disappear all the time.'

Rafferty says, to his knees, 'Still.' He's trying to keep from looking at the house, which is filthy.

'Yes,' Arthit says. 'It stinks. But that's how it is.'

'Makes them ideal victims.'

'Prostitutes everywhere. Half the serials in the world focus on them.'

'No reason,' Rafferty says, 'for the Land of Smiles to be an exception.'

'No. Because you're right. The other part of the problem, here and everywhere else, is that the cops don't care.'

'Fine. So we forget asking about disappearing bar girls and concentrate on whether there's a pattern of women washing up around Phuket during or just after Horner's visits.'

'You're assuming that he'd go back to the same place to do the girls.'