Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

“Thanks for your understanding, man. It’s time for this young lady to have the experience of a lifetime. It’ll be nothing but disappointment for her after tonight, but that’s the price of a love-filled evening with Dox.”

I nodded. I knew if I tried to speak I’d be done.

He must have misinterpreted my silence. “Shit, man, there’s no need for you to spend the night alone. You’re not a bad-looking guy, and the ladies won’t know about your deficiencies until it’s too late, anyway. You could meet someone if you wanted to.”

Part of me, a bigger part than I cared to admit, wanted to let him go through with it. And I would have paid almost anything to be there at the moment of truth. But he was a good friend. Hell, he’d saved my life. I couldn’t do it to him, even if he did deserve it.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Dox. She’s a katoey .”

Katoey, or “lady-boy,” has a range of meanings, from a guy who likes to dress in drag from time to time all the way to a man who has had transgender surgery and is now effectively a woman. They can be found all over Thailand and are generally accepted, if sometimes difficult to spot, within the society. Regardless of the differences, what they all have in common is that presumably Dox wouldn’t want to sleep with one.

He scowled slightly and cocked his head. “Now that’s not like you, man. Don’t go trying to spoil my night just because you haven’t gotten one of your own.”

“You didn’t notice her hands? They’re just a little big for her frame, don’t you think? And did you get a look at her Adam’s apple? Women don’t have Adam’s apples, and she’s wearing that high collar to conceal it.”

Some of the color drained from his face. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said.

I shook my head and stifled a laugh. “I’m not.”

The girl walked back from the restroom as though on cue. Dox stood and turned to her. “Honey,” he said, “Dick over here thinks… he thinks…”

I smiled gently and said to her, “I just didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding. Bob didn’t know you’re a katoey .”

She smiled back, then looked at Dox, her eyes wide. “You no like katoey ?”

Dox lost a little more color. “I… I…” he stammered.

“Me, I think you know,” she said. “So I no say.”

“No, I didn’t know!” he said, his voice anguished.

“Most men, no problem. When it dark…”

“I ain’t like that.”

She smiled. “Please, honey? I like you.”

Dox’s expression was about halfway to physical illness. “Look,” he said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but could you just go?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Thank you for drinks with me.”

“You’re welcome,” Dox said, his tone the quintessence of forlornness.

She got up and left the club, no doubt disappointed that her investment of time had yielded so little. Dox looked gut-shot.

He slumped into his chair and looked at me. “When did you spot that stuff about her hands and her neck? You let that go on for an awfully long time there, partner.”

“Dox, I thought you knew. It was so obvious.”

“It was not obvious. No, sir.”

“You sure you don’t want to take her back to the hotel? If you hurry…”

“Hell, yes, I’m sure.”

“Because, c’mon, you had to know. At some level.”

“No, I didn’t know at any level, not until you told me.”

“Really? I mean, you pointed out that she was a little flat-chested. And I don’t know how you could have missed the hands and the Adam’s apple. Dox, she might as well have been wearing a sign.”

“No, she was definitely not wearing a sign, man. Although I think she ought to.”

I smiled. “Maybe you would have enjoyed it.”

“Stop it.”

“I mean, if she’d only given you a blow job, you would never even have known. You’d just think it was the best head you’d ever gotten. It would have become one of your most cherished memories.” I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. “You never would have stopped telling me about it.”

“Do you want another drink?” he asked. “I think I need one.”

“How many, Dox? That’s the question. How many times before.”

He signaled the waitress for two more, then shuddered. “Damn, that was a near thing. I’d thank you, if you’d stepped in a little sooner and were enjoying yourself a little less.”

“Enjoying?”

“Yeah, yeah. Very funny.” He drained his Stoli and shuddered again.

I thought about going on, something about how, with all his local expertise, he had still almost unintentionally gone off with a lady-boy. Or presumably unintentionally. But he looked so glum that I decided to give it a rest.

The band started up again. A few minutes later, Dox leaned over to me and said, “If you don’t mind, I’m ready to try something different. You’re welcome to join me, but I don’t know that where I’m going is apt to be your kind of place.”

“Topless girls with numbers attached to their bikini bottoms?”

“I’d say that’s likely, yes.”

“Good. If they’re undressed, you’ll have a better chance of making sure… you know.”

He scowled. “Are you coming?”

“No, I’d better let you go alone. I wouldn’t want to interfere with a man’s quest to recover his masculinity. On the other hand, who’s going to warn you if you run into another…”

“I’ll be fine alone, you Yankee degenerate.”

I smiled and held out my hand. “All right then. We’ll talk in the morning?”

“In the morning,” he said, and we shook. He got up, tossed a few hundred baht on the table, and headed for the door.

I chuckled to myself. It was going to be good to have something in my arsenal that I could bring up anytime Dox gave me grief.

I chuckled again, a little more softly. It was odd that she’d been in here, though. She seemed to have been on the make, and Brown Sugar was the wrong place for that. Sure, she could have come here to enjoy the music, to take a break, whatever, but the way she’d been looking around right away, the way she’d immediately zeroed in on Dox…

Maybe that was opportunistic.

Didn’t feel opportunistic. It felt focused.

I chewed on that. Then, in a sort of semiconscious shorthand that was more suddenly present in its entirety than deduced piece by piece, I realized:

If someone wanted to get to you and Dox, the first thing he’d look to do would be to separate you. To do that, if he were smart, he would employ some means that could distract, at least temporarily, your sensitivity to disparities in the local environment. Give you something you could focus on. A katoey, for example. Make you say, that’s what was bothering me-she’s not really a woman! Or, if you didn’t spot it, and one of you went off with her… boom, there you go, you’ve found your way to divide us.

Maybe it would have been easier, more straightforward, to use a real woman as the bait. But a katoey would have certain advantages. A lady-boy could take better care of himself in a scrape. And he’d be used to acting, to passing himself off as something he wasn’t, to fooling people, lulling them.

I felt the blood draining from my face, my heart begin to pound as an adrenaline dump kicked in. If Dox had still been at the table, he would have laughed at me. I didn’t care. There were certain things I would try to change about myself to accommodate our partnership. The way I go with my gut would never be one of them.

I stood up and walked briskly to the door, as fast as I could move without being obvious. I was hoping I was wrong, but I knew I was right.