Timothy Hallinan: The Queen of Patpong

The boy who has been assigned to watch the door to the Lap Bar looks at the policeman and fails to recognize him. Patpong is a very profitable beat, and the police assigned to it have paid dearly for the pleasure. They know the rules. A new cop means trouble. The boy abandons his post and does a discreet fade, stopping a few yards away to watch. From that vantage point, he sees the policeman climb two of the four steps to the door. The door swings open, pulled from the inside, and a tall man comes out, followed by the youngest and newest of the girls in the bar-what was her name? — Toy.

And the policeman puts an arm up, resting his hand against the edge of the door, to block Toy and the tall man from coming all the way outside. Toy makes a scrabbling move backward, but the policeman snakes his other arm out and grabs her wrist. This is completely outside the boy's frame of reference: a policeman interfering with a customer and a bar girl at the door the boy is supposed to be guarding.

The boy decides it is time to go home.

The policeman looks past the farang, directly at Toy. "How old are you?"

"She's eighteen," the tall man says.

"Shut up," says the policeman in English. "I asked her."

"Hey, listen," the foreigner begins, but the policeman stops him with a look. Then, deliberately, he reaches down with his free hand and unsnaps his holster.

"No problem," the customer says immediately, bringing his hands up in front of him, palms out. "You want her, she's yours."

"Come out here," the policeman says. With one hand resting on the butt of his pistol, he backs slowly down the steps leading up to the door, dragging Toy with him, and waits on the sidewalk. After a long moment, during which his eyes remain locked on the policeman's face, the tall man comes down the steps.

"This is ridiculous," he says, but his voice is thin.

"I told you to shut up," says the policeman. "Put out your hand." A crowd has begun to form about them, mostly Thais drawn by the spectacle of a policeman actually enforcing some sort of law on Patpong. His eyes darting around the circle of faces, the tall man puts out his right hand, and the policeman snaps a cuff on it, a chilly metallic click in the tropical air. The other end of the cuff closes around the metal pole against which the policeman had been leaning. The tall man stands as though dumbfounded, and a murmur runs through the group of Thais.

"I asked how old you were," the policeman says in Thai.

"Eighteen," Toy says. She seems even more disoriented than the customer by the turn of events.

"Give me your card," the policeman says in Thai. Each bar girl who is legally employed must carry an identification card.

Toy looks for support at the circle of faces on the pavement-surely nothing very terrible can happen with so many people watching. Her tongue explores her lower lip. "I left it at home."

"You don't have one," says the policeman. "You don't have one because you're not old enough to have one. Do you know what the penalty is?"

"I don't care," she says, but it's almost a question.

"Two years in the reformatory. Up-country. No Bangkok, no movies, no discos, no bright lights, just big paddies for you to work in. Full of leeches. Nowhere to hide from the sun. Snakes everywhere. Spiders as big as dogs. They'll cut your hair off, like a boy's. No cosmetics. No pretty dresses. Rotten meat and rocks in the rice. There are girls there who will bother you. If you don't do what they want, they'll beat you up. Do you understand me?"

She starts to say yes, swallows, and then says it.

"Two years from now, you'll be black as a boot and your gums will bleed when you smile. You'll have wrinkles around your eyes. No one will even recognize you. You'll be lucky to make two hundred fifty baht a trick."

"I'm eighteen," Toy protests faintly. Her eyes go to the faces of the people gathered on the sidewalk, seeking help.

"Look at this man," the policeman commands, indicating the handcuffed customer. "What do you know about him?"

This is a safer topic. "He bought me out for the night," she says, eager to please. She glances at the handcuffed man, who is regarding the crowd uneasily. "He lives at the Tower." She lapses, her fund of knowledge exhausted.

"Look at him," the policeman says. "You're lucky to be alive."

"Oh, no," Toy says. "Mama-san told me I should always leave my shoes by the door so-"

"He hurts girls like you." The tall man stops trying to worry his wrist out of the cuff and begins to listen. "Last month he bought out a massage girl, almost as young as you. He took her to an apartment in Thonburi, and he used a razor to cut her face. From here," he says, letting go of her arm and placing a finger below her right eye and drawing it straight down to her chin, "down to here. You could see her teeth through her cheek."

Toy has forgotten the crowd; her eyes, on the policeman, fill half her face. "This man?"

"And then he cut her throat." His throat-slashing gesture, operatic in scale, draws appreciative gasps from the crowd. "He would have killed her, but she jumped though the window. She's not pretty anymore, but she's alive. You're a lucky girl." He lifts her chin with his fingertips and studies her face. "Now, get out of here. Go home. And I mean all the way home. If I ever see you in Patpong again, I'll make sure you're in the monkey house until you're a twenty-year-old farm girl with feet like shoe boxes."

The girl takes a step back.

The tall man handcuffed to the sign clears his throat. "Fifty thousand baht," he says.

"Wait," the policeman says. He reaches out and takes Toy's wrist again. Then he turns to the crowd. "Go, go. There's nothing to see here. You have things to do." The group backs up a few steps, and he advances on them, pulling the girl in his wake, and they retreat several paces more. When the policeman is sure he cannot be heard, he says to the American, "For what?"

"For letting me go," the customer says. His eyes travel to Toy. "And for letting me keep her."

The policeman knots Toy's T-shirt in his fist and forces her several steps in the tall man's direction. "You are insulting me," he says.

"You have me confused with someone else," the tall man says. "It's not surprising. Many men look like me. The salary of a policeman is small, and the hours are long. You're probably very tired. It was my fault that I have embarrassed you by taking this girl when you were on duty."

"You apologize," says the policeman thoughtfully. "And yet you offer so little."

The tall man doesn't even blink. "One hundred thousand baht," he says.

"No," says Toy, straining against the hand that holds her shirt. "Please."

"One hundred thousand baht," the policeman repeats. He shakes the girl like a puppy. "Stop it."

"Now," says the customer with some urgency. "In cash."

"Suppose you hurt her," the policeman says conversationally. He winds Toy's T-shirt tightly around his fist. "Suppose you hurt her and she reports it. It could interrupt the upward movement of my career. You understand, of course, that I could never seriously entertain a request such as this one."

"Hundred twenty," the tall man says.

"There is still the problem of the girl," the policeman says. "Not that I care personally what happens to her. You would have to guarantee she would not complain."

The American looks at Toy. "I do."

The policeman turns his head to regard the watching crowd. "How will you get her out of here?"

"You help me walk her to the corner. Handcuff her if you have to. I have a car waiting there."

"But, but…" Toy says.

The policeman swats her on the head. "Let me see the money."

Toy begins to scream. As people in the street stare, she twists against the hand grasping her shirt, striking out with both fists, hammering at the policeman's wrist and forearm, and then the nails come out and she rakes his skin. He grabs at her with the other hand, and she raises one of her heavy, steel-tipped cowboy boots and kicks his shin with all the force she possesses, so hard she staggers back after the kick lands. The policeman releases her and grabs his shin in both hands, hopping up and down and swearing a blue streak in both English and Thai, and Toy leaps backward, bolts into the crowd, and disappears from view. A ripple in the movement of the heads, visible down the bright street, tracks her path. Some of the people who are watching from a safe distance applaud approvingly.