Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

"What's your full name?" Rafferty asks, kneeling beside him again.

"Fuck you," John says. He's looking past Rafferty at the wall.

Rafferty picks up the soda bottle, which feels like it weighs ten pounds. "If I hit you in exactly the same place, it's going to get your attention." He wiggles the bottle by its neck.

John closes his eyes and slowly opens them again. "Bohnert. John Bohnert."

"Spell it."

"B-o-h-n-e-r-t."

"What did you think you were doing today? When I saw you on Sukhumvit."

"Looking for a library. I'm a big reader."

"Who else was following us?"

The question provokes a surprised contraction of Bohnert's eyebrows, quickly smoothed away. Then he shakes his head.

"Was somebody else following Rose?"

Bohnert squirms for a moment, testing the strength of the belt, and Rafferty puts an open hand on the man's throat and presses down, hard. "Stay put and I'll let you breathe. I asked whether anyone was following Rose."

Rafferty lifts his hand, and Bohnert coughs. "Who's Rose?"

"Be like that," Rafferty says. "But listen. You're going to tell me what I want to know, and you really ought to do it the easy way. So I can feel good about myself when this is over."

"Have I said 'fuck you' yet?"

"Well, it's a good thing my self-esteem is solid," Rafferty says. "Otherwise I might regret doing this."

He picks up the bottle of soda and holds it to the light, checking the level. Still about two-thirds full. John winces at the sight of it and draws his head away, but Rafferty pops the cap with his thumb, puts the bottle down again, and pulls the straw out of the bag of chili sauce.

There's a murmur among the women gathered at the door. Three or four of them are whispering to others.

"You know this one, do you?" he asks them. Even Pim is watching now, although she looks puzzled. She hasn't been here long enough to learn the trick, which owes its existence to the limitless imagination and limited resources of the Thai police.

"A friend of mine who's a cop told me about this. It's not a complicated recipe," Rafferty says to Bohnert, who's working on looking impassive, his eyes once again on the wall. "The trick is to get the proportions right. Also, it works better if you can grind the chilies to a paste, but this is an improvisation."

He gathers the open end of the bag of chili sauce into a tight bunch and works it into the neck of the soda bottle. Then he upends the bag and squeezes on it again so the nam pla prik flows into the soda water, turning it the color of weak tea with lots of little red and green bits floating in it. To Bohnert he says, "You following this?"

Bohnert says nothing.

"One more chance," Rafferty says, hoping the man will cooperate. He's seeing little bright flashes at the corners of his vision, and he can hear his blood singing high and thin in his ears. His voice sounds distant, as though he's hearing it through a wall. "One more chance for us both to walk out of here feeling relatively okay. Where's Horner?"

Bohnert says, "You're dead. You and the whore and the midget. You're dead."

Rafferty says, "I'm sorry you feel that way." He puts his thumb tightly over the top of the bottle and shakes it vigorously as the women's voices rise in expectation. When he can feel that the pressure's increased as much as it's going to, he brings the Coke bottle up to Bohnert's nose, removes his thumb, and jams the bottle into the left nostril.

Coca-Cola spurts out of Bohnert's nose and over Rafferty's hand, and John's knees unbend spasmodically, scissoring in both directions. Rafferty rises and steps back as Bohnert thrashes on the floor, coughing and choking, and then the chili hits, and he roars and jackknifes and then straightens, kicking his feet out so fast that he cracks both shins against the vertical support of the toilet cubicle, and he twists back and forth, rocking on his bound arms, hacking and spitting and sobbing simultaneously.

Rafferty's voice feels like it's being forced through a sieve. "Where's Horner?" His phone begins to ring.

Bohnert's eyes are streaming water, but he pulls his mouth tight and spits at Rafferty.

As his phone continues to ring, Rafferty bends over John and says between his teeth, "There's lots left. Let's try again." He puts his thumb over the bottle and starts to shake it.

"No," Bohnert says. It's mostly breath.

The phone stops ringing. "Why were you following us?"

"See… where you went. Who you know."

"Why?"

Bohnert's nose is running, and he sniffs, which is a mistake that registers instantly. He blows out explosively and makes a retching sound that turns into another fit of coughing. When it's over, he lies still except for deep, shuddering breaths, and Rafferty says again, "Why?"

"Pressure points," Bohnert says. "Looking… for pressure points."

Rafferty's phone rings again. He looks at it and sees ROSE.

"What does Horner want with her?"

"Don't know."

"Fine." Rafferty puts the phone into his pocket and shakes the bottle again. John is pushing back with his legs, trying to scrabble away, under the wall of the toilet cubicle. A couple of the women laugh.

"He… he says she tried to kill him."

"Why?"

"Don't know. Really, really. He wanted-Howard wanted-to marry her."

"He…" Rafferty stands there, the bottle dangling heavy in his hand, feeling as if a building just fell on him. "Marry her?

"He asked her, she said yes. That's what he says."

"True or false?" He shakes the bottle again,

"True, true. Ask her. Ask her, not me." Bohnert's voice breaks like an adolescent's.

"And where is old Howard?"

"I… I can't."

"Sure you can. Unless you want to sneeze blood for the next week."

Bohnert's face softens, and he starts to cry like a child, and Rafferty, with no pleasure, recognizes a self-shattering sense of shame. "He's in… he's in Afghanistan," Bohnert says.

"Call Dr. Ratt," Rafferty says into the phone. "Tell him-"

"You went after him, didn't you?" Rose demands, her tone as sharp as broken glass. "That man, the one who was with Howard. How stupid can-"

"I'm not up for an argument." The sweat he smells now is his own, his T-shirt wet and heavy beneath his arms. "Call Dr. Ratt. Get him and Nui there now."

"And you got yourself hurt," Rose says. "You saw them, you saw how they were, and now-"

"It's not me. And will you please-" Beside him, on the backseat of the cab, Pim shifts her weight away from him and whimpers.

"Then who?"

"Goddamn it, will you please do what I'm asking you to do?" He is suddenly so furious that his mouth tastes like metal. "Will you just fucking do what I want?"

Pim pulls farther away, leaning against the door.

There is a long pause. Then Rose says, in a voice he's never heard before, "You sound like a customer."

He is trying to think of something to say when he hears her disconnect. ROSE'S EYES ARE stones when she opens the door, but the moment she sees Pim, her face softens. "You poor baby," she says in Thai. "You've been crying." Her eyes flick to Rafferty's bandage, but she makes no comment, just gathers Pim in.

Behind Rose, Dr. Ratt's wife, Nui, gives Pim a sharp-eyed glance. "It's a new one," she says in English, calling toward the kitchen. Rafferty can hear water running, so the doctor is probably washing his hands.

"How long have you been in Bangkok?" Rose has wrapped a long arm carefully around the girl. Pim's chin is dimpling at the sympathy.

"Three weeks," she says. Even less time than Rafferty had guessed.

"And what's the problem?" Rose asks in Thai. "Did my husband beat you up?"

"No," Pim says. "He was wonderful. He stuck a bottle right up the man's nose."

"Did he?" Rose says, without a glance at Rafferty. She guides Pim toward the counter between the living room and the kitchen. "Sometimes he's nice by accident."