Arthit says, "My phone number."
Rafferty nods, trying to conceal his elation.
"As if you didn't know I'd say that."
"Oh, well," Rafferty says, and then dumps the rest of what he was going to say because of the way Arthit's looking at him.
"If we find him, Poke"-Arthit's voice is soft-"what then?"
"You guys are three cops," Rafferty says. "I'm one me. I suppose it'll be whatever you want to happen."
"You know," Arthit says, "I could do this without you. I could forbid you from getting anywhere near Patpong."
"I guess you could."
"Will it be necessary?"
Rafferty says, "I'd be more comfortable about answering your question if I hadn't seen the picture of that girl."
"But you have seen it. Am I going to have a problem with you?"
It's almost a minute, with all the women looking at him, before Rafferty replies. "If you do," he says, "I'm sure you'll be able to handle it."
Chapter 28
Above the bright lights of the night market, the sky flickers chalky white and darkens again, like a loose lightbulb. A moment later a breeze kicks up, carrying the sweat of the crowd to Rafferty's nostrils.
"Could rain," he says.
"So what?" Arthit says, bulling his way through the slow-moving throng. "You afraid you'll shrink?"
"Rudeness one, small talk zero," Rafferty says.
Arthit grunts.
Rafferty says, "Not so busy, is it?"
"If you need to chat, it's not busy because it's early," Arthit says. "Only seven-twenty. It'll pick up."
Ahead of them Arthit watches Nit go into a bar called Bamboo, her folder held against her hip in a businesslike fashion.
Rafferty says, "Don't worry about them. They know what to do."
"You're the one I'm worried about." Arthit stops, the shirt of his uniform already wet in back. "Look at this junk," he says. "Patpong was always a sewer, but it used to be a good-natured sewer."
Rafferty looks over his friend's shoulder at a miscellany of murder weapons, gaily displayed in the shimmer of the spotlights: Gurkha knives, switchblades, gravity knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, ninja throwing stars. Behind the display, a cheerful-looking woman sheds some of her smile when she notices Arthit's uniform and facial expression.
"They're just for fun," she says.
"You have an odd idea of fun."
She brings both hands up as though the items on the table were red-hot. "Me? I wouldn't have any of this in my house. They're for farang. The farang like to kill each other. Look at the movies."
Arthit says, "We shouldn't let you sell these."
"You could close some of them," the woman says eagerly. "There are four on this street and two more on Silom. I could pay you a commission. You close them down, and I'll give you one-third of the increase in my profits."
"No thanks." Arthit turns to go.
"Half," the woman says. "I couldn't give more than half."
Arthit says over his shoulder, "I'll think about it."
"Sixty percent!" the woman calls.
"The respect is so rewarding," Arthit says.
"If it's any comfort," Rafferty says, "I respect the hell out of you."
"You're nervous," Arthit says. "You don't usually natter."
"It's not nerves, it's plain old hatred."
"But you're going to do what I tell you to do."
"Oh," Rafferty says. "Sure."
Ahead of them Patpong runs from Silom to Surawong, the longest short block on earth, in Rafferty's opinion. Arthit's right: It's still early, and a lot of the people have come for the night market that stretches down the center of the street, rather than the bars. There are farang women everywhere, flushed pink with their own daring, holding blouses up to their shoulders, wrapping belts around their midsections, ransacking faux-Vuitton bags like manic customs agents, and bargaining amateurishly for the privilege of paying three times more than the whatever-it-is is worth. Looking around, Rafferty sees a lot of future buyer's remorse.
Two booths up, Anand is talking to a seller of counterfeit DVDs. He flashes both pictures, and the merchant grabs the iron-pipe frame of her stall for support.
Rafferty says, "They'll all remember."
"Here," Arthit says, heading left, toward the sidewalk and a dingy-looking door beneath a small, stuttering neon sign that reads BOTTOMS UP CLUB. As they approach the door, a dark young man in a T-shirt and shorts materializes from nowhere, opens the door just enough to slip his hand in, and pushes something. They're listening to the buzzer upstairs as he fades back into the crowded street.
"Don't worry," Arthit calls up the stairs in Thai. "No problem."
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."