BENEATH THE NEON LIGHTS of the Sheba Bar and the huge King Tut head with a striped headdress advertising it, three short, skinny Thai men in flip-flops and worn, patched clothing slowly maneuvered a baby elephant they’d brought all the way from Surin province. The men fanned out, selling bags of bamboo to tourists for twenty baht. No one used elephants on construction projects anymore; the forests were gone, so the elephants no longer had any logs to lift. Beasts with proud working pasts had become carnival sideshows in Bangkok’s red-light district.
Two of the men offered small bags of bamboo to a couple of bulky tourists who stopped to sort through their Thai baht. Turning them over, they squinted at the strange bank notes and tried to figure out in the neon light which one was a twenty. Hundreds of yings outfitted in hot pants and bikini tops with nylon robes slung around their shoulders paraded in front of their bars, holding signs advertising the cost of a beer.
“The cops said no elephants in Bangkok. What the fuck is this?” asked McPhail. He waved off one of the men who shoved a bag of bamboo into his face.
“That was last year,” said Calvino. He wasn’t looking at the elephant. “That’s her,” he said.
McPhail approached the elephant and touched its trunk with the back of his hand. “What do you mean that’s her?”
It was the woman from the train station who’d told him in so many words to get lost. She sat at a roadside table with a kid dressed like a whore. The vendor stood behind his counter, hacking up chicken and folding the meat over a perfectly formed scoop of rice. A couple of dancers sat at the table wolfing down bowls of noodle soup. Marisa watched Calvino as he approached. She stood up and smiled. With the young girl in tow, Marisa walked into the soi and threw her arms around Calvino, kissing him first on both cheeks and then with a long kiss on the lips. Pressing against him, she felt the hard steel of a .38 caliber police special inside his shoulder holster. Marisa knew the feel of a concealed gun on a man. Her father had been a police officer.
“Vinny, I’m so happy to see you.” Her voice was a little too loud, as if the volume was raised to make a point.
He grinned, glanced over at McPhail, who had a smirk that looked like it risked becoming a permanent feature.
“Never think it’s about you,” said McPhail, but his words were too soft to carry over the roar of the elephant that belched a huge cloud of gas from half-digested raw bamboo.
Only then did Calvino notice the flower girl holding packets of chewing gum in one hand and laser pens in the other. Marisa’s arm circled Fon’s shoulder in a motherly fashion, holding her in the tight possession of a mother or close relative.
“Please help me,” she whispered. “Those men behind you want to take this girl. I can’t let that happen.”
Calvino’s grin disappeared and he took one step back. “What are you talking about? What men want to take her away?” He looked around and only saw the usual milling crowd of touts, yings, farangs, vendors, and motorcycle drivers.
“Her name is Fon. She’s in danger. Please help me.” Her lower lip quivered. Her eyes were wild, darting from the kid to him and back. The woman who had looked in complete control at the train station had unraveled, and what was left was a terrified human being.
He was trying to understand what she and the kid were doing. Marisa had said the words “help me,” but help do what? Less than two hours ago she had brushed him off like a piece of lint. “Phone the police,” he finally said.
That wasn’t the response she wanted. She pursed her lips, shaking her head, afraid to let go of Fon. “It won’t work. I need to get her out of here. Believe me, the police won’t help.”
“I liked the kiss,” he said. “I made a mistake. I took it for something more than a cry for help.”
It wasn’t what she expected. He was a man, and men had to be handled in a delicate way. “All kisses are a cry for help,” she said, trying to smile. If guile was what was required, then she could play that game, too.
McPhail was the first to spot two Thai men closing in from behind Calvino and blocking their path. “If you’re going to help, now would be a good time.”
Calvino took Marisa’s hand and walked her and the child across the soi to the entrance of a bar where he knew the owner.
A thick curtain covered the entrance. Calvino slipped his fingers into the fold and parted the curtain wide enough for Marisa and the kid to slip inside.
Without looking over his shoulder, he followed them. McPhail spoke to the Surin men who owned the baby elephant and gave them a hundred baht to stay put outside the bar. A small crowd of yings and tourists gathered, and the two Thai men who had been on Calvino’s tail backed away, taking up a position behind the crowd. The Thais looked patient, arms folded over their T-shirts; one broke out a pack of cigarettes and passed it to the other.
Several more Thai men joined the first two, filtering in from the Asoke side of Cowboy. No one could enter or leave the bar without going through them. As a line of defense, McPhail admitted they looked impressive. A woman and a child would offer them little challenge. Calvino was packing, but pulling a gun on Cowboy was something that would make things even worse. McPhail curled his lips and spit on the ground before he slipped inside through the curtains.
“Man, there are at least four or five of them waiting outside. They ain’t going anywhere soon.”
“They want Fon,” said Marisa, squeezing the kid’s hand.
“Of course they want her,” said McPhail. “She probably works for them, don’t you sweetheart?”
“Is this your friend?” Marisa asked.
Calvino nodded. “He sometimes gets carried away.”
McPhail rocked back on his heels. The blues blared from speakers positioned like ceremonial Chinese urns hung in the family cellar. The lyrics got to him, giving him the crazy sensation that the song had been written just for him. “I was in trouble around midnight, and you were on my mind. Yeah, I love you baby, and if I get out of here alive, I’ll tell the whole wide world that you’re mine.”
A half-dozen dancers dressed only in cheap high heels huddled onstage, watching a kickboxing match on the TV suspended from the ceiling. They weren’t listening to the blues. The kickboxers, a Thai and a farang, circled each other in the ring. Every time the Thai landed a kick, the yings cheered.
Calvino pulled Marisa to the back of the bar, where the owner, Reno, sat in the DJ booth singing out of tune into his microphone: “I love you, and if I get out of here alive, I’ll tell the whole world that you’re mine.” Reno grinned, keeping time with one foot as he stuck his head out from the booth and waved his cigar at Calvino. He crossed the floor and gave Calvino a bear hug.
“Vincent Calvino, where the fuck have you been?” He looked behind Calvino and saw that he hadn’t drifted into the bar alone. It was never a good thing when Calvino showed his face with a group that included McPhail. Glasses got broken, tables got overturned, yings cried and moaned. Then he registered the presence of a memfarang, and Calvino holding her hand. Reno pulled the cigar out of his mouth and put a hand over it.
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was a BYOY night.” A bring-your-ownying night. In Reno’s business, some guys showed up with beer they’d bought at the 7-Eleven so they didn’t have to pay the bar price, and then there were guys who showed up with a woman for much the same reason. Cheap Charlies, like rats, came for the fun, the slap and tickle, and sometimes raced away with the best meat before anyone could catch them.
“There’s a problem.”
“Brother, the world shuttles from one problem to another,” said Reno. “The trouble is if you don’t learn to jump out of the way, you can get run over.”
“The situation’s fluid,” said Calvino.
“Like fucked-up,” said Reno, expecting the worst. He looked at Calvino’s expression. “Okay, seriously fucked-up then. What do you need?”
“Help me get these two out the back way,” said Calvino. He walked over to the main bar and rang the bell. The yings watching the TV cheered. The customers applauded. The sound of the bell meant drinks for the bar, and the yings were parched from screaming in support of their man in the kickboxing match. Calvino peeled off three-thousand baht and handed it to Reno. It was just under a hundred dollars but it would cover the round of drinks he’d bought. Reno played a new blues song: “My happiness depends on my baby coming back home. It makes me so sad sittin’ here, thinkin’ you’re being bad. Tell me how I can bring you home tonight, baby. I’m missing you.”
Marisa had moved halfway down the main stage away from the door. McPhail stood at the curtains, holding them tight, peering out, shaking his head, then squeezing the curtains into his fist. “Mean-looking motherfuckers,” he said. “And it don’t look like they’re going anywhere soon, Vinny.”
“The police catch this kid in my bar, it’s gonna cost me.”
“Not if we get her out over the roof.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Reno, I just paid the bar.”
Reno rolled his eyes, fanned the three notes out and touched the body of the nearest dancer. He sniffed the money, then looked at the three-thousand-baht notes and signaled for Wan to join him. She looked at her boss, then tried to let go of Jarrett’s hand. He held firm.
“You don’t have to go,” he said.
“It’s okay. He’s my boss.”
“Not anymore.”
He saw that she didn’t agree with him, and he let go of her hand.
“I want you to show my friend the old Indian rope trick,” said Reno, an unlit cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“We won’t need a rope.”
Reno pulled out a lighter with a blue flame that rose a meter high. He pushed the button to shoot out the flame and sucked on the cigar. “Yeah, as if that’s going to make my life any easier.”
Calvino caught a glimpse of the customers sitting on the other side of the stage. Through the bare thin legs shuffling in high-heeled shoes, he thought he’d recognized her but decided she’d fit a general pattern he’d seen thousands of times, fooling his mind into believing that the ying’s face was familiar. The strobe lights on the stage reached to the end of the platform, and then the benches beyond were shrouded in muddy shadows. Reno cracked up the blues a notch, and the red and yellow lights flashed above the dance platform. Moving down the bar, he got a better look. A white guy and a black guy were on the opposite side. It was the same two early birds with the parked Benz in Washington Square. They pretended not to see Calvino and he looked away. It didn’t matter, he told himself.
Calvino listened as Reno instructed Wan on what she had to do to get the mem-farang and the kid out of the bar the back way. Wan said she understood the situation, even though she had no idea what she’d gotten herself involved in.
Calvino looked around in time to notice that Jarrett was staring at Marisa, looking at her like he knew her from somewhere. He didn’t have time to think about it. Distracted by the kid, she wasn’t aware of his attention. Calvino stayed close to her side, his arm brushing against her shoulder, “It’s fixed up. Let’s go.”
McPhail was at the entrance when one of the street enforcers used a knife to cut through the curtain, nicking the edge of his hand. He yelped, instinctively shaking his hand, blood going over his shirt, the ripped curtain, and the walls. Calvino ran back to the door, drawing his .38 out of its holster, and brought the butt of the gun down hard against the intruder’s head. He dropped heavy, like a stone from a third-story window. His knife, clattered along the floor. The lead ying on the stage screamed, her hands grasping her throat. She saw McPhail’s blood and fainted.
“Get the fuck out of here,” said Reno. He cupped his hands and yelled into his DJ microphone. Wan turned and looked at Jarrett. He nodded to let her go. He was the man who never took the same ying twice. Sending them off was the price of staying out of the zone of recurring obligation. There was no goodbye, because there was nothing between them that hadn’t been settled.
As Calvino, Fon, and Marisa ran up the back stairs, Reno wrapped a towel around McPhail’s hand and poured him a double Jameson. The men outside had no idea what or who might be waiting on the other side of the curtain. Trouble, they knew. But how much was yet to be determined. They hesitated the way hired thugs often did in the street. They had to make a hard decision without the adrenaline surge that high personal emotions pumped into the system, making a man act without any thought of getting hurt. By the time they got the courage to enter the bar, McPhail had gone, and so had Jarrett and Tracer. Most of the bar had paid up their bills and vanished into the night, leaving the mamasan to tell the Thai men that she hadn’t seen anything, and no, she had no knowledge of a kid and a memfarang. One lie after another said in calm, caring tones. They saw right through her, but searching the bar they found nobody except a covey of yings frightened out of their minds.