Russell Blake - Betrayal

“Is there anything off limits here?”

“Not really. Welcome to Thailand.”

They approached Nana, and the crowd got thicker; sidewalk peddlers touted knockoff purses and pirated DVDs as brown uniformed police filtered through the throng as a deterrent to violence or theft. Australian accents echoed off the bar fronts as groups of rowdy partygoers bellowed drunkenly at each other, to the mingled invitations to come in and have a drink from the hundreds of bar girls dressed as provocatively as possible in the interests of luring customers.

“The joints look pretty shabby,” Jet observed. Perhaps at one time decades ago it had been a hotspot, but Nana had an air of decay about it — of an aging debutante long since past her prime, but still clinging to her partying ways.

“They are. Same with Soi Cowboy — one of the other big sex districts. Both Nana and Cowboy have seen better days, and now with the economic downturn, many of the bars are losing money.”

“Wow. So even the whoremongers are feeling the pinch?”

“I’m sensing a distinct lack of sympathy.”

Bar after bar with young Asian women beckoning to anyone walking by to sample their wares blinked with neon desperation in the perspiring night. Jet and Rob moved past the currency exchange and took the escalator to the first floor, where the motifs catered to every possible depravity — bondage and S amp;M, ladyboys, schoolgirl playpals, and straight go-go bars.

“The real kink is on the top floor,” Rob explained, “and at the private clubs in the area. Ping pong shows. That’s what our man Lap Pu specializes in, along with prostitution.”

They cruised the plaza and the surrounding streets, where everything imaginable was for sale.

“I had an acquaintance tell me that if I wanted a knock-off Chinese-manufactured Benz that looked like the real thing right down to the last detail, he could get me one. There are literally no limits here.”

She looked around at the hookers of all shapes and sizes. “How much worse could it get than this?”

“Much. You’ll see once we start hitting his clubs. They have shows in the front and whorehouses in the back. But it doesn’t stop there. Even though the official stance is that child prostitution is vigorously prosecuted, it’s well known that it goes on every day, and Lap Pu is one of the big names in the business.”

After another half hour wandering the streets, fending off propositions every few feet, she was done. “I think I’ve seen about enough for one night.” A man had just leaned towards them and made a distinctive popping sound with his mouth and inquired in English if they were interested in ping pong. Jet thought she would never be able to hear the words again without imagining his leering face, discolored teeth and wisps of black mustache framing his popping mouth.

“All right. You’re lucky it’s a Tuesday. If this was a weekend, it would be three times more crowded.”

“What about disease? AIDS has to be rampant.”

“It’s on the increase. For about a decade, condoms were mandatory for sex workers, but that’s become more relaxed as the economy has tightened. Some of the girls will do anything for a few more baht, and they wind up paying the ultimate price. Same for the boys. It’s an ugly situation all around.”

“How much does a sex worker make?”

“I think the going rate is anywhere from two thousand baht to five thousand baht. Depends on where you get them. In dollars, that’s anywhere from fifty dollars to couple of hundred, again, depending on where you pick them up and how long you stay with them. A lot of the tourists come here and want a girlfriend experience, a situation where she’ll stay with them for however long they want, twenty-four hours a day, and lay by the pool, go to dinner, the whole works. That costs more.”

“So maybe they can take home thirty to forty thousand dollars a year?”

“Again, depends. I’m not an expert at this, but what I’ve heard is that it’s a big piece of the Thai economy. Imagine if your options were making five or six hundred dollars a month as a bilingual schoolteacher, for instance. Starting to see where the financial driver is here?”

She was tired from the multitude of experiences and psychically drained by the exposure to so much corruption. Bangkok was a black hole, a dwarf star for energy. At the moment, it was hard to imagine that anything good existed in the world.

Jet said goodnight, and Rob promised to get in touch as soon as he knew something. They parted ways on the sidewalk in front of the Nana hotel, a multitude of older male tourists laughing loudly as they exited, on their way to the sex mall for a night of abandon.

Her hotel was only a two-minute walk, and she’d never been so happy in her life to be back in a small room with working air-conditioning and a sturdy lock so she could hose off the accumulated filth that seemed to have coated her entire being — and wake up to a new day that wasn’t steeped in toxicity.

Rob’s voice sounded excited on the cell phone the following afternoon. “We’ve got a lead.”

“What is it?”

“Lap Pu sighting late last night at his largest club. An informant slipped us the tip. Apparently, he’s got some meetings tomorrow night.”

“That’s great news. Whose informant?”

“Friend of one of the bouncers. Works club security on the evening shift. Saw the great man himself at midnight with an entourage. Overheard him agreeing to get together tonight and meet tomorrow. So we have two nights, at least.”

“How long since his last trip north?”

“It should be time for another one within the next week. He disappears for a week at a time. Nobody knows what he’s doing.”

“What do you suggest for tonight?”

“We meet up for dinner at nine, eat, then go to the club and throw some money around. I noticed you didn’t drink last night. Do you have a problem with alcohol? Because it would help if you could throw a few back in the bar.”

“No problem. I just don’t like it very much.”

“Have any preferences for dinner?”

“Anyplace but British cuisine.”

“I’ll call you later.”

Rob hung up, and she returned to her table, where a slew of photographs of the man known as Lap Pu were spread out on the table, courtesy of Edgar.

The dossier on Lap Pu proffered a paucity of real insight. Fifty-something years old, a Bangkok native, started out life with a couple of his family’s markets, gravitated to the sex trade in the late Seventies. Opened a bar in Soi Cowboy, then another in Phatong, and from there moved up the food chain until he was a major player in the business. Lived a lavish lifestyle, with homes all over the country, including several resorts on Phuket. Friendly with every administration, he had never been arrested and was considered a stand-up fellow. Except for the rumors that he was one of the top sex slavers in Bangkok and had an elaborate network of smugglers moving females from Myanmar and Laos to Thailand, many underage. But like so much in Thailand, rumored truths were not an impediment to his prosperity, and he had kept his nose clean — or at least as clean as someone in the sex trade in Thailand could.

His main enterprises were brothels catering to specialized tastes, the kinkier the better. Ping pong shows, ladyboys, every sort of domination and submission, groups…if you could imagine it, chances are that Pu offered it in one of his establishments.

The last team that had disappeared had followed Pu into the jungles at the northernmost edge of Thailand. But that was Jet’s only hope of finding their target. Other than Pu, the CIA had nothing, and even with him they hadn’t gotten far.