Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

"Sure," she says, slightly affronted. "Have."

"Give it to me."

Her lower lip pops out, and for a moment he thinks she will refuse. She has no jewelry yet, no expensive clothes, just cheap, badly sewn junk from the vendors out at Chatuchak Market. At this stage of her life in Bangkok, her phone-the symbol of freedom, the first thing every girl buys-is the only trophy of her new career. She makes a sour face, forces a hand into a pocket in her hot pants, and brings up a thin silvery cell phone that Rafferty recognizes at once as the one Miaow's been asking for.

He has to tug on it twice before she releases it. He keys in his number, then hands it back. "This is me," he says. He puts a hand on her shoulder, a bid for full attention. "If you see him, just turn your back to him and push 'send.' I won't answer-just let it ring once or twice and then hang up. That way you don't have to go right back out again, or get anywhere near me, or talk on the phone, or do anything that might catch his attention. Don't get close to him, don't talk to him, don't do anything that makes him notice you. You go in, look around, and if he's there, you press 'send' and you hang up, understand?"

"Go in, look around, press 'send,' " she says with exaggerated patience, reminding Rafferty that she's just a kid. It's gotten darker now, and her makeup doesn't look quite so garish. He can see the mildly pretty, still-developing face beneath it. Not beautiful, not unforgettable, just the sweet, unassuming transitional prettiness so many young women share. She reaches up and pats the hand on her shoulder, then twists away and out from under it. "I go."

"Hold it," he says. "You had any customers today?"

She opens her mouth, closes it, and then says, "No."

"Okay." He pulls a fold of money out of his jeans and peels off a reddish note. "Here's five hundred baht."

She avoids looking at the money and shakes her head.

"It's for taking care of me. And for checking it out in there. Why should you do all that for free?"

She raises her upper lip and sucks air through her teeth, making a little squealing sound. Then she takes the bill and says, "Thanks."

"Tell me what you're going to do when you get in there."

She shakes her head, fills her cheeks with air, and puffs out. "You same-same my mama. I go in. I look like I want find somebody. If I see, I call you. Hang up. Not go close. Not look him. Okay?"

"Okay." He fights down the urge to tell her again to be careful and stands there watching her limp barefoot across the street, shoes dangling from her left hand, a girl from the northeast who'd been a village teenager six or eight weeks ago. Now she's been cast on the surface of the Bangkok ocean like chum. Food for sharks.

She's inside, and Rafferty fights off a wave of uneasiness. He picks up her can of Coke and finishes it without tasting it, his eyes on the entrance. Without looking down he puts his phone on the table so he'll see it light up in his peripheral vision. It doesn't, and he knows he's got to move or he'll jump out of his skin.

She'll be fine, he thinks, crossing the street. The Beer Garden is full of people. She'll be one girl among a couple of hundred. She's not going anywhere near him. Go in, look for somebody, push a button. It's simple. And even if everything goes wrong, even if John has somehow seen them together outside the Beer Garden, what could he do to her with all those people around?

Rafferty positions himself about half a block to the right of the door, on the Beer Garden's side of the street. He figures John will head right, toward Sukhumvit, once he comes out. He'll be able to get a cab more easily there. Rafferty settles in to wait.

The phone doesn't ring. He has an irrational impulse to shake it.

And then it does.

He checks it and sees

Unknown number, which is what he expects, so he puts it in his pocket and prepares to settle in and wait for John. But it rings again, and again.

He fishes it out of his pocket, but it stops. Then, just as he starts to put it back, it rings again. He opens it and hears nothing, then a high, thin "Oooooo" and a choking sound, and then a clatter like the phone hitting a hard floor. Then it disconnects.

Nam Pla Prik He's already running when the phone vibrates and then rings again, and he stops and answers, but no one is there. Instead he gets one of those twirling barber-pole lines that means something is downloading, and a moment later he's staring at an out-of-focus close-up of Pim, her eyes taking up half her face, looking like someone who's just opened the door to death.

He runs across the soi and jumps up the steps to the open-air restaurant where he and Pim had sat. The woman who waited on them looks apprehensive as she watches him come, moving behind her counter just in case.

"Nam soda," Rafferty gasps. "Soda water. In the bottle. Orange juice to go. Hurry."

"You take bottle? Extra baht if you take-"

"Yeah, yeah. Here." He throws another hundred-baht note on the counter and shifts helplessly from foot to foot as the woman opens the cooler at Thai speed and pulls out a bottle of soda.

"Not so cold," she says doubtfully.

"I don't care. Open it and give it to me. Get the orange juice."

The woman pops the cap, releasing a spurt of soda, a sure sign that it's warm. Rafferty snatches it from her right hand and plucks the cap from the counter. As she prepares the orange juice, he pours out about a third of the soda, making a bubbling puddle at his feet. He snaps the bent cap back on as tightly as he can, shoves the bottle into the center of the back of his pants, against the gully of his spine, and tugs the T-shirt free so it hangs loose over his jeans. In the meantime the woman has taken a clear plastic bag and filled it halfway with orange juice, then stuck a straw into it, twisted the bag around the straw, and with expert quickness wrapped a rubber band around the bag to create a tight seal. She hands it to him and watches openmouthed as he undoes the rubber band, pulls the straw out, and pours the orange juice onto the concrete floor. Then he turns to the selection of condiments and picks up a clear glass bowl of nam pla prik, fish sauce with hundreds of tiny, fiery red and green peppers floating in it. He upends the bowl of chili sauce into the bag, replaces the straw, and reseals the bag with the rubber band. He wraps his right hand loosely around the bag and takes off at a dead run toward the Beer Garden.

He veers left, into the alley. John and his friends, if he has any with him, will be watching the entrance. If Rafferty goes in through the entrance, he'll have no options at all.

As he tears around the corner of the second alley to the right, he finds himself at the base of the eight-foot wall at the back of the Beer Garden. The Beer Garden is essentially open-air, although a roof has been built over the central area, covering the bar and the restaurant booths to the right of the door. But the roof is raised on poles; it doesn't join the walls in most places, and back here, where the kitchen and the restrooms are, there's a gap between the top of the wall and the roof, to let out heat and odors.

If Rafferty can get in here, he'll be at the back of the establishment, near the kitchen and the restrooms and behind everyone in the main room who's facing the doorway.

But the wall rises eight feet, and eight feet is too high. He could jump and get his hands on top of the wall, but there's no way he could hold on, much less climb up.

The area at the base of the wall is shaded by the umbrellas of vendors-a shoeshine man, a guy who repairs disposable lighters for a few pennies, a barber, complete with chair and mirror. About five feet from the wall, a woman carefully sews the hem of a skirt that's apparently been plucked from an overflowing basket beside her. She's using an antique sewing machine powered by a foot treadle. It's a heavy machine, and the old oak table it rests on looks like it's supported its burden for decades without so much as a creak of protest. Rafferty grips the bag of nam pla prik between his teeth, setting the tip of his tongue on fire, says "Shorry," grabs the table, and drags it to the base of the wall.