John Burdett - Bangkok Tattoo

I lie down on one of the benches and more or less doze off until my mother walks through the door looking fresh as a daisy. We sit down at one of the tables while she smokes a cigarette and listens to my chat with Vikorn about young Lek.

"He doesn't know any older katoey himself?"

"No. He's fresh out of the police academy, and before that he'd never left Isaan. All he knows about katoeys is what he's seen on TV and what he experiences of his own feelings."

Nong shakes her head. "Poor kid. That's a tough row to hoe. He won't survive without the right Elder Sister, someone to initiate him, show him the ropes, warn him. He's such a beautiful boy, too." A sigh. "Katoeys got hit the worst during the AIDS epidemic. I used to know thousands. We girls used to drink with them after hours in the old days-they can be hilarious, terrific fun, but totally chaotic. No attention spans at all, worse than girls. He needs a retired katoey in her thirties or older, someone who made the whole thing work for her, big time. I want his role model to be a big success financially-that's the only way to save him from what comes after the initial euphoria. We have to save him from the despair of those middle years. Katoeys don't age well without a lot of dough."

Mother and son exchange a glance.

My jaw drops. "You can't be serious?"

"Why not Fatima?"

"She's a killer."

My mother blinks. "What's that got to do with the price of fish?"

"But that's how she got her money, that's how she made it big, by killing her lover."

"By killing her lover and using her smarts at the same time. Exactly what your little angel needs for his arrival on earth."

B reakfast time: the street is full of early-morning cooked-food stalls. I'm pretty hungry, so I choose kuay jap, a thick broth of Chinese mushrooms and pork lumps steaming with nutrition as the hawker dips and raises his ladle, a great writhing knot of kuaytiaw phat khii mao (literally "drunkard's fried noodles": a stir-fry of rice noodles, basil, chicken, and a crimson tide of fresh sliced chiles), a single fried trout with naam plaa (a transcendentally pungent sauce made of fermented anchovy-an acquired taste, farang), a glass of cold, clear nongaseous water from the world-famous Krung Thep faucets, a 7-Up-and I'm all set. (Dollar fifty the lot, no charge for ice and water.)

Back in the bar I see from our computer diary that we are expecting a tour group. That's what we've decided to call them, anyway. We don't accept clients in gangs anymore, but there are about a hundred who benefited from our former advertising and arrive every three months or so in clumps of aging punks. These particular guys I remember well as representing maybe the DDD level of the retiree market.

A call from Immigration at Bangkok International Airport: one of the officers wants to confirm a statement that I have booked hotel rooms for a group of twenty old men who have been giving the Thai Air stewardesses a hard time for the past fifteen hours. They are all drunk.

"Yes," I confirm.

"You think you can control them? Or d'you want us to refuse entry?"

"They'll be fine."

A grunt of disbelief, but he lets them through. A couple of hours later a bald, stooping sixtysomething giant in a black cowboy hat with silver studs, skintight stone-washed denims, and irrefutably genuine rawhide boots bursts through our swing doors, followed by a mob of similar rejects from the farang subconscious.

A whoop. "Sonchai, my man! Hey guys, here he is, Mr. Viagra himself. Gimme the coldest beer you got, kid." Leaning forward, whispering with urgency: "Score the dope like I told you in my e-mail?" A side whisper from mouth-corner to his closest aides: "What d'you say, fellas, a few beers before we get into the joints? Sonchai won't let us smoke on the premises, so we'll have to take it back to the hotel-or bribe him to let us smoke upstairs."

"Oh, he takes bribes? That's just like the cops on Freak Street in the old days."

"I don't take bribes," I say.

"That's right, behave yourselves and act civil, this is a Buddhist country and Sonchai here is a yogi-he meditates every day." Turning to me: "So you got it?"

I reach behind the bar and hand over a package about three inches by two by one, wrapped in brown paper. My mother and I both decided that no way was the bar ever going to sell narcotics, not even ganja, but Colonel Vikorn, after his first glimpse of this gang, decided that any tranquilizer was better than geriatric freaks on alcohol tearing the place apart. The old giant hands over two thousand baht (Nong took over the pricing-that's roughly a thousand-percent markup), then grabs the package and disappears into the men's room, together with a few others in the know. I remember that Lou Reed is a great favorite with this crowd and send Transformer blasting through the sound system. In less than ten minutes the big cowboy and his cronies are emerging from the toilets. Lalita has just arrived and recognizes the gang from last time but cannot remember anyone's name. A brisk wave: "Hi guys, sabai dee mai?"

"Hey Lalita, just great to be here. Jeez, do you have to be so goddamned beautiful?" To Lalita with pleading eyes: "I'm suffocating over there, La, we all are. To be old and sick is bad, but suppose you ain't sick? Suppose all your bits are still in full working order, but you got a mug so craggy and out of date, people look at you like you're a Model T Ford?"

Now Om and Nat arrive, one in jeans, the other in a black dress with arabesque trimmings that dips so deeply at the back, you can tell she's not wearing underwear.

Nat's dress has sent the tour group into fantasyland. "Hey, guys, time to score the Viagra?"

Now the rest of the girls arrive.

The first thing each of them does as she crosses the threshold is to wai the Buddha statue in the corner above the cash register. He's a little guy no taller than two feet with, according to my mother's grasp of Buddhist doctrine, a gargantuan appetite for marigolds and incense and is liable to turn the luck off pronto if we let him go hungry.

All the girls have worked this gang before and manage them skillfully as they squeeze past hoary groping hands on their way to the lockers. They are all taking signals from me that the evening is not to start too quickly. After Chanya's adventure there is an increased police presence on the street. The cops are all controlled by Vikorn, of course, but appearances are important at times like this.

The bald giant calls to me: "What do we do about the blue pills, Sonchai? They on the house again?"

"No, not on the house. You can get them from a pharmacy. Any pharmacy."

"Okay, right, boys, policy change. We have to go buy our own Viagra. How about we do that, freshen up, raid the minibars, smoke a few spliffs, and come back ready to rock and roll?"

Whoops of joy at this magic phrase. It is only when they have all trooped out that I notice the stranger who must have slipped in when my back was turned. In his early twenties, big, broad-shouldered, long black pants, polished black shoes, stark white shirt, an intensity to his gaze that could be mistaken for a permanent frown. Not exactly a typical customer, especially when you take into account the black hair, pencil mustache, and brown skin.

All the girls have gone to their lockers now that the gang has left. He and I are the only ones in the bar. I switch the music back to Chopin.

The newcomer seems not to notice the distillation of high genius that emerges from the sound system in the form of infinitely tumbling and rising piano notes. He orders a can of Coke and sits on one of the stools at the bar. He looks at me, Thai to Thai.

"You're a pimp?" the stranger says in a tone of surprise, too innocent to be insulting. I do not bother to explain the technical difference between what I do and what a pimp does.