Read an Excerpt

The Queen of Patpong

A Poke Rafferty Thriller

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By Timothy Hallinan

Harper Perennial

Copyright © 2011 Timothy Hallinan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061672279

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Chapter One

Temporary Honeys
Old cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, sweat. The proven
architecture of soft pink light on soft brown skin. Bad rock
and roll, some mercifully forgotten tight pants, stadium
rock anthem from the 1980s, still being played in Bangkok, the town
where bad songs last forever. Shredded speakers, probably blown for
fifteen years. The bass notes like tearing paper.
The girls on the stage.
And there she is: Number 27.
The tall man sees her the moment he reaches the top of the stairway,
the symbolic barrier that prevents Bangkok's finest from enforcing
Thailand's strict anti-nudity law, news of which has clearly not reached
this room. Thanks to an elaborate, almost courtly, system of graft,
the cops pause downstairs long enough to let the doorman slip them
a couple thousand baht as he pushes a buzzer, and then they shuffle
slowly upward while the girls onstage wrap themselves in the cheap
taffeta slips that are normally knotted around their upper arms to display
the merchandise.
They're almost all naked now, four of the five on the stage and most
of the eight or so who sit on customers' laps, arms languidly draped
around the suckers' necks. The girls dazzle their temporary honeys
with honest, open Thai smiles and whatever lie will open a pocket. The
tall man at the top of the stairs does a quick scan of the room, making
sure no one he knows is there. Then he returns his gaze to Number 27.
She's tiny, plump-cheeked, sullen-mouthed, with cupcake breasts, a
child's round tummy, and straight black hair in a blunt schoolgirl cut
that's grown out just enough to brush her shoulders. Of the five women
on the platform in the center of the room, she is the youngest by at least
five years, and the only one who isn't naked.
The tall man stares at her long enough to draw a glance, but she
quickly turns her back. He crosses the dark, narrow room to the
banquette in front of the mirrored wall. Once he's seated, with little
squares of light from the revolving mirrored ball above the stage chasing
each other across his shirt, he glances down. The photo in his hand
is a smudged photocopy of a high school identification card. The girl in
the picture faces the camera with the hopeful insecurity of adolescence.
She had risen to the occasion with a smile.
She isn't smiling now. She dances as though she is underwater, her
eyes fixed unblinkingly on her reflection in the mirror. She might be
stoned, drunk, suicidal, or just exhausted. Her short, salmon colored
slip, a loop of elastic holding up a yard of some cheap synthetic, has
been tugged down below her baby's belly to bare the upper half of her
body almost to the pubic area. The round lap bar button with the
number 27 on it is pinned to the elastic band of the slip, directly over
her right hip bone. The number is her only identification, but the tall
man knows her name, which is Toy.
In the six months since the photo was taken, she has grown the
schoolgirl hair an inch or more and plastered her face with makeup so
she looks older, but no matter. The tall man knows her age. The tall
man is here, in the Lap Bar on Bangkok's Patpong Road, because of
her age.
Today is Saturday, the twenty-fourth of April. Two days ago Number
27 turned sixteen.
In the street below, the short, crowded road called Patpong 1, the
street market has sprung into noisy life. Beneath the smoky half glow
of the night sky, two straggling lines of over-illuminated stalls offer
curios, jewelry, eel-skin and leather goods, preserved tarantulas and
scorpions, and an impressive variety of forgeries: watches, sunglasses,
fountain pens, computer software, games, compact discs, mislabeled
designer clothes, acrylic amber, and plastic ivory that's been buried in
water-buffalo manure for that convincing patina of age. In a few booths,
less brightly illuminated, the discerning shopper can pick through an
assortment of Tasers, flick knives, brass knuckles, switchblades, and
other instruments of intimate aggression.
They're mostly male, the florid horde for whom these treasures
gleam. Ranging from half drunk to barely ambulatory, grim faced and
dripping sweat, they push their way between the stands, checking the
rows of counterfeits with one eye and keeping the other eye on the
open doors to the bars. Patpong Road at night is almost all bars: Kiss,
Lipstick, Safari, King's Castle, Supergirls, Pussy Galore. Through the
open doors, chilly air pours into the streets, pumped by the heartbeat
rhythms of trance and techno. Bar girls in cheap, fake satin wraps
stand in the doorways and call out cheerful, indiscriminate Thai greetings
to the nameless darlings in the street, pushing the paradise inside.
At the end of the road, where Patpong empties into Silom Road, a
man wearing reflective Ray-Bans and the tight fitting brown paramilitary
uniform of the Bangkok police lounges against the window of a
nondescript restaurant. The uniform sets off broad shoulders and narrow
hips while also making way, with a certain amount of strain, for a
small but ambitious potbelly. There is nothing soft about the potbelly:
it looks like something to avoid bumping your head on. He glances at
a heavy steel watch on a too large band, flips it around from the front
of his wrist to the back, and then checks it again as he realizes he's
forgotten to look at the time. Satisfied, he folds his hands over the round
belly—a practiced, comfortable gesture.
The policeman has a hairline receding on either side of a stubborn
widow's peak, medium dark skin, a disappointed mouth that turns
down at the ends, and broad, almost muscular nostrils. Behind the
mirrored Ray-Bans—genuine—he lazily scans the crowd, straightening
only when he catches sight of a heavyset white man in a loose shirt,
patched with sweat, who roughly tows a young Thai girl through the
throng. The girl—dark complected, tangle haired, flat-nosed, dressed
in a knotted T-shirt and cutoff jeans—pulls back, distracted by a bright
row of bootleg DVDs, and the heavyset man gives her hand a yank
that almost jerks her off her feet. Feeling the policeman's eyes on her,
the girl turns and frowns at him before breaking into a smile. After
a moment the policeman smiles back. The heavyset white man snags
a tuk-tuk, a three wheeled open-air taxi, and hauls the girl onto the
backseat behind him. He doesn't barter the fare, so he's in for at least
one unpleasant surprise during the evening. The tuk-tuk driver swerves
into traffic with a fine disregard for the possibility of death. The policeman
leans back against the window of the restaurant and looks at his
watch again.
"Thank you," says the young woman with the wandering eye. She's in
her middle twenties, plain and plump, with a wide Isaan nose. A fall of
red-dyed hair has been combed forward over the left side of her face to
mask the errant eye. She has tugged the elasticized slip modestly up to
her armpits. A thin gold chain around her neck disappears into the slip.
The tall man knows there will be a Buddhist amulet at the end of it,
which the woman will drag around to hang against her back when she
dances, so as not to expose it to the goings-on in the bar. She will also
remove it when she services a customer.
She puts the cola the man bought her on the round table in front of
him and gives him an expert glance. There is an Asian smoothness to
his features. He has straight black Asian hair and up-tilted eyes that are
almost black, the color of dangerous ice.
He says, "What's the baby's name?" He indicates Toy with a lift
of his chin. One of the other dancers leans over, laughing, and yanks
the girl's slip down, and now she dances with the slip pooled at her
ankles and her hands folded protectively over her shadowy pudenda.
She seems miles away.
"Toy," says the plump girl grudgingly. She leans forward and puts a
hand on his wrist as a demand for attention. "You no good for her. She
too young for here. You have good heart, you give me thousand baht,
I give five hundred to mama-san for bar fine and five hundred to Mai,
and she go home. You take other girl, I help you find pretty girl, not
like me. She baby, you unnerstan'?"
"Yes. Tell Toy I want to talk to her."
The plump girl has picked up the cola, but now she puts it down
and pulls the hair back from the wandering eye. It searches the mirror
behind the tall man as the other eye studies his face. Whatever she sees
there, she lowers the hair over her face again and turns her back on him,
heading for three very drunk Japanese men who have just staggered in,
their bright red faces upturned toward the stage. They brush past the
plump woman as though she isn't there, and she stands where they've
left her, hands hanging loose at her sides, looking at a spot on the floor.
One of them points at Toy and says something, and the others laugh.
The tall man checks his watch, sits back, and smiles at Toy.
AT 9 :2 2 by the policeman's watch, two beer-sodden Australians begin
to clobber each other in the street in front of a stand selling fake amber
beads. The Aussies throw their punches slowly and deliberately, as if
rehearsing for a fight that will be filmed later, but the blows land with
a flat, heavy sound, like cuts of meat falling to the floor. The prize over
which they are fighting—a slight, narrow shouldered, heavily tattooed
Thai female of twenty or so—chews thoughtfully on a hangnail as the
larger of the two men grabs the smaller by the hair and slams his head
against the edge of the booth. The small man starts to bleed immediately ,
even before the beads hit the pavement and begin bouncing among the
feet of the onlookers. The girl scratches her shoulder, snags the offending
fingernail on her T-shirt, and looks down at it with irritation.
The bleeding man emits a high, reedy, choked sound. He rips off his
football jacket and hands it to the girl and then leaps forward, wrapping
his fingers around his friend's neck. The two of them begin to topple
over. The policeman steps forward, arms spread wide, thoughtfully
clearing a space in the crowd for the struggling men to fall through. He
steps over the fighters without a downward glance and begins to help
the vendor pick up her beads. The girl takes a quick look at the fighting
men and rifles the pockets of the jacket. Whatever she finds there, she
slips it into the pocket of her jeans. She drops the jacket onto the street,
and her eyes meet the policeman's. He gives her a shrug, and she melts
into the crowd.
He sits back, watching her not look at him. Her glazed fascination
with her own reflection has been broken. She's even picking up her feet
a little, although she's turned her back to him, almost shyly. But he can
still see her face in the mirror on the opposite wall, and her eyes come
back to him again and again, and then they slide away and search the
room as if she's looking for an ally.
He orders a Singha beer from the mama-san, a thickset, brightly
dressed woman with gold on her wrists and fingers and nothing merry
about her. The Lap Bar is a typical upstairs joint. The bar is at one end
of the room, the women dance on a raised platform in the middle of the
space, and the customers sit either at stools pulled directly up to the
stage or on a long, cigarette scarred bench against the mirrored walls,
with a small table every few feet to hold their drinks. The tall man is on
the couch, and he keeps his eyes on Number 27.
Chased by his gaze, the girl has worked her way down the stage until
she's directly in front of the three drunk Japanese. One of them calls
out to her, placing both hands over his heart in a gesture of exaggerated
romanticism and then forming a circle with his right thumb and forefinger
and pushing his left index finger in and out of it. His companions
burst into raucous laughter, an explosion of sound that the tall man can
hear even over the loud music. The girl misses a step, as if she's tripped
on the laugh. She stands still for a long moment, not looking at the
Japanese men, not looking at the tall man who watches her, and then
she turns and trudges the length of the stage until she is in front of the
tall man again. She walks as though she weighs five hundred pounds.
The three Japanese men are drumming their hands on the bar, a rolling
rhythm over the music, to call the girl back down to them. They
flash fingers in the red light, playing a game of rock-paper-scissors to
see who will have her first, and Number 27 makes her decision. She
turns and forces a smile at the tall man.
It isn't much of a smile.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan Copyright © 2011 by Timothy Hallinan. Excerpted by permission of Harper Perennial. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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