Timothy Hallinan - The Queen of Patpong

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."

The mama-san says, "That would be nice."

"Get your cell phones," Arthit says.

The women go behind the bar and come out carrying purses, all of them battered and worn. Working ten-hour days on their knees in this cesspool, they're making barely enough money to eat. In a moment each of them has a phone out.

"Key in this number." Arthit recites his cell-phone number. "Save it. Name it whatever you want, as long as you'll be able to remember it if he comes in here. If he does, one of you goes back into the short-time room and calls me, is that clear? Just treat him like any other customer. He's never hurt a girl while he's in a bar, as far as we know. But call me."

The mama-san stores the number and takes another, longer, look at Horner's face. "If he comes in here," she says, "we'll kill him ourselves."

By nine-thirty they've burned through all six of the bars on their list and there's a light drizzle falling, creating flaring halos around the lights in the night market and softening the lurid hues of the neon. Big sheets of blue plastic have been stretched into place above the stalls and tied to the metal frames to keep the merchandise dry, and water is running in the gutters, but the damp hasn't interfered with business in the bars. The street is jammed solid on both sides.

Arthit's phone has rung eight times, with Rafferty practically jumping out of his skin each time. Six of the calls were sign-offs from the women who were showing the photos, finished with their task. No one had definitely recognized Horner. Some of the women had decided to meet for a late meal at the Thai Room, a restaurant on Patpong 2. The other two calls were news: Women had identified Horner as a customer in the Kit-Kat and Bar Sinister, both relatively nice downstairs bars that feature younger women, relatively new to the life. In both cases he'd been there within a few weeks but hadn't been taking girls out.

The ninth call, coming in now, is from Nit, who had the longest list of bars. Arthit listens and says to Rafferty, "The Office?" He squints like someone trying to read small print. "The girl he's been taking out works at the Office. Where the hell is that?"