John Burdett - Bangkok 8

I told the kid on the bike to take me to Nana Entertainment Plaza, a short ride away. It was eleven minutes past 3 p.m. when we arrived, and the plaza was still sleeping off the night before.

Pichai would always make fun of the way I could not stand to work Vice. I guess his background didn't affect him the way it affected me, but just now, with the courtyard mostly empty and the three tiers of bars, short-time hotels and brothels quiet in the hot afternoon, I appreciated the feeling of familiarity that came over me. I may not like it, as someone may not like the street where they were brought up, but there's no denying the depth of understanding, the knowledge, the intimacy. Maybe on such a black day this was the one place that might bring some relief?

A few girls were already hanging out at the street-level bars, chatting about the night before, comparing stories of the men who paid their bar fines and took them back to their rooms, moaning about the ones who just flirted and groped, then disappeared without buying them a drink. I knew how they liked to talk about the quirks of farangs whose preferences can be so different from our own. Great macho men who only want to suck big toes, or even be whipped. Men who cry and talk about their wives. Men who, fully clothed, look like the very best the West has to offer, yet somehow collapse at the sight of a naked brown girl waiting on a hotel bed. I knew every story, every nuance, every trick of the trade in which I have never partaken, not once, not even when Pichai went through his whoring phase. I paused to watch the girls coming to work, each of whom raised her hands in prayer to her forehead in order to mindfully wai the Buddha shrine which stands festooned with marigolds and orchids in the north corner of the courtyard, and I could not help thinking of my mother; then I climbed the stairs to the second tier.

I was looking for one of the larger bars which had already opened their doors and found Hollywood 2, one of its double doors propped open with a wastebin, houselights bright inside while women in overalls wiped the tables and mopped the floors. The aroma of pine cleaning fluid blended with stale beer, cigarettes and cheap perfume. There was a big two-level turntable with stainless steel uprights for the girls to cavort around while it turned, but it was empty and motionless at that time. I walked in and knew that the woman who was replenishing the beers on the shelves behind one of the bars was the mamasan who organizes the girls, advises them on every aspect of the trade, even the most intimate, who listens to their problems, helps them when they fall pregnant or contemplate suicide. She would tell the girls to walk out if the client refused to use a condom, and to demand extra for unusual services-or decline (Italians, French and Americans especially are known for their sodomizing ways). A good mamasan looks ahead to when the girls will have to retire in their mid-thirties, if not before; some of them even teach the girls English and pay for secretarial courses, although such enlightenment is rare. It was not enlightenment which shone from this woman's eyes: broad, tough, about fifty with a nut-brown face and a permanent scowl.

"We shut. Come back sik o'clock."

She had taken me for a farang. "I'm a cop," I said in Thai, flashing my ID. A change of attitude, but not much.

"What you want, Khun Cop? The boss pays protection, you can't hassle me."

"This isn't a bust."

She looked around for more cops. Finding none, she sneered. "The girls aren't ready yet. The ones upstairs are still asleep and the others haven't arrived. Why have you come so early? You want a free fuck, just because you're a cop? What if my boss tells his protector?"

"I just want a favor."

"Sure. Every man wants a favor."

"I want a Lao girl."

She smirked. "Lao girl? We got thirty percent Lao girl. What kind you want? Tall, short, big tits, small tits-no blondes, though." She cackled at her own joke. "No blond Laos here. If you want blonde you got to have Russian."

"I want one who can read and write. Actually, read is good enough."

"You mean not a tribeswoman straight out of the jungle-we have a few of those, like all the bars do." She frowned. "What you up to, Khun Cop?"

"Can you help, yes or no?"

The mamasan shrugged and yelled out the name of a girl. Someone yelled back, and a young woman appeared dressed in a white towel tucked under her arms, her long brown legs ending in bare feet. "Get Dou, she's in room three," the mamasan told her.

Ten minutes later Dou appeared in a cotton frock, a pleasant-faced young woman about twenty years old, with a broad, friendly smile and a thick Laotian accent. She was excited, thinking me an early customer. I smiled back, showed her a hundred-baht note and the photocopy Nape gave me. She scanned it quizzically. "I only want to know the date on it."

She made big eyes. This was the easiest hundred baht she had ever earned. "2539 May 17." She read it off in the order in which it was printed.

"Thanks." I handed over the hundred baht.

I told the mamasan to dig out her telephone, which she produced from behind the bar. In my head I worked out the year in the Christian era; farangs never like to realize we are five hundred years ahead of them.

Rosen had given me his business card with his mobile telephone number. I dialed the number and when he answered said: "May 17, 1996."

A pause. "If Quantico confirms, I owe you a thousand." Another pause. "Did you say 1996?"

I confirmed and hung up. It was 3:31 p.m.

Out on the street I made my way through the heat to the sky train station, past stalls selling rip-offs of designer handbags, T-shirts, jeans, shorts, swimwear. This stretch of stalls was owned and run by deaf-mutes who communicated across the pavement in their vivacious sign language as I passed. There were illegal copies of CDs, DVDs, videos and tapes, too. The whole street is a mecca for anyone seriously interested in law enforcement, but the deaf-mutes never seem to worry.

Like a lot of people, I'm a fan of the sky train on the rare occasions when it's of any use to me. The logic of the system is unimpeachable: to beat the traffic, rise above it. It was one of those ventures founded on foreign capital and foreign expertise for which our politicians developed a suspicious passion. For what felt like decades whole sections of the city's roads were clogged or shut off while armies of men and women in yellow plastic hats built their concrete pillars and their state-of-the-art elevated tracks. Now the project is complete in its first phase and the gigantic city has swallowed it up as if it weren't there at all. We all scratched our heads. All that for only two lines?

Riding it is a distinct pleasure, though. You get a great view of the city from a flying compartment with glacial air-conditioning. It's also a study in bankruptcy if you take note of the great skeletons of unfinished high-rises that loom out of the chaos from time to time, monuments to a building frenzy that chilled with the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and never heated up again. Now these new Stonehenges are home to beggars and bag people. From the train you can see their hammocks, their dogs and their washing in the honeycombs of concrete caves, sometimes a monk meditating in his saffron robes. Even though a taxi would have been cheaper, I ride the train all the way to Saphan Taksin and get a boat to take me the rest of the way up the Chao Phraya River to Dao Phrya Bridge. The river is noisy and busy with barges and longtail boats and I cannot help but remember the fun we used to have on it, Pichai and I…

It is early evening by the time I reach the bridge. The Mercedes is cordoned off by means of iron stakes and orange tape, guarded by two young constables who sit on the car, one on the hood, the other on the roof. The one on the hood sits cross-legged and stares as I approach. I snap at him to get off the car and look like a real policeman. Now the two cops are scrambling to wai me, placing their palms together mindfully near their foreheads and bowing. "How long have you been here?"