A Killing Smile Read online

  “That’s just bullshit. You fucked her over. Dress it up any way you want. Bangkok hasn’t improved your character, Bobby.” Lawrence followed Noi’s backward-looking eyes as she left through the back entrance. The Ratman dragged her along like a child.

  “Another F in my report card,” Tuttle said, glancing at Noi one last time before she disappeared. Tears streaked down her face. It all depends who sets the questions, marks the answers, and the standard of what is passing; and beyond, the meaning of conduct that passes and that which fails, thought Tuttle. He decided to leave Lawrence with that warm feeling of vindication.

  Every safari-shirted waiter who passed the table paid Tuttle respect, and addressed him by name. The same waiters who wouldn’t know the names of more than a dozen people, including their own family called him Khun Tut, his nickname. They automatically brought him his beef in oyster sauce and white rice and Mekong and tonic. This was his club, his life, the place where a million dreams had passed through the still point, and became part of the dance that never moved but never stopped. Why was it that he felt so strongly Sarah’s spirit that evening? Lawrence’s physical presence, of course, was the obvious answer; the conservative lawyer who held up the mirror to his past and he no longer recognized his own face in that old glass.

  Twenty-one years was a long time in a place like Bangkok for a farang; sufficient time for his life to wrap endlessly around the coiled lives and hearts of people to whom he would always remain an outsider.

  “That one in the far booth. Nice girl. I’ve known her since about ’75. Sometimes I help her out with a letter. And that one over there with the ponytail. She’s inside the booth with the black guy. I’ve got photos of her ten years ago. She has a nearly perfect body. And the one in the yellow dress. I never had her, but an old roommate of mine did. He said she was very sweet. You can see it in her face.”

  “I see a lot of sadness,” said Lawrence. “In her face. Forget the cute girl smile; it doesn’t fool me. Not for a minute.”

  “Count yourself a lucky man. You’ve never been fooled by a smile or a frown. I haven’t been so lucky. Not even with Sarah. Sarah used to hide letters from her mother. She said her parents were out of her life. That she was standing on her own two feet. That there were just the two of us. Of course, it was a lie. The whole time she was plugged into this secret channel open to her past. Right under my nose. I told her how brave she was. That it took real guts to put me above her own family. To cut herself off from them and their guilt.”

  Lawrence said nothing, turned and ordered another drink. He had decided to order doubles from that point on. Another plate of food arrived: hamburgers and French fries. Lawrence’s eyes lit up; at last, here was some food he could recognize. A secret channel, thought Lawrence. If only Tuttle knew the underground passage Sarah had built beneath their married life a few letters would seem trivial. He wished he had implied Tuttle was a fool; he wished Tuttle hadn’t admitted it so quickly.

  “The burgers are from that guy at the bar,” said Tuttle, motioning over at Crosby who was deep in conversation with a girl, no more that sixteen, in an old ballroom gown. “He thinks Americans only like hamburgers. It’s one of his little jokes.”

  * * *

  THERE were strange connections between the circles of Bangkok farang. Wisdom was allocated in scattered pockets of memory. Tuttle often acted as the memory exchange; at times, he appeared to know more than the individual parts that had been stored in his mind over the years. Sooner or later, all their paths crossed in Zeno’s, their common hunting ground. The old hands knew the good places to spot fresh game. They talked like hunters, stalked like hunters, bragged and lied and drank like hunters. Some of the expats were smarter on the hunt than any other compartment of their lives; others excelled at their job but never developed the instinct for the hunt.

  The key was learning how to track, how to patiently wait out the prey, and how to aim and fire at the target from the hip. With unlimited game and an open season, it didn’t take an enormous amount of natural talent to have success. A generation below was a new breed of younger male hunters. A male peu-un pods of farangs. And Andrew Crosby acted as their unofficial leader. A young Englishman born in Bangkok. His father ran a successful trading company. Crosby had been born into wealth, the large house, servants, and fast cars.

  His pod members, like Crosby, were in their mid-twenties but more cynical than any forty-five-years-old. Farangs didn’t come any more hard-core than Crosby; at twenty-six, he had slept with over one thousand women. An impressive number until compared with a popular fifteen-year-old brothel girl who worked behind a plate glass window in the back streets of Isan towns like Udon Thani or Nakhon Ratchasima. She might run up Crosby’s lifetime number in six months of work. In Crosby’s case, the exercise of the night was less like hunting than it was shooting fish in a barrel. He could find a whorehouse blindfolded.

  Crosby timed his move to the booth carefully. A couple of minutes after Lawrence had finished one of the hamburgers, he strolled over to the booth. He had a fleshy round face, receding hair where blue veins were visible just below the skin as if his head was one of those wristwatches that allowed the wearer to look at the moving clockwork inside. Crosby stood on one foot, smoking a Lucky Strike cigarette, his nicotine-stained hands dug into his trouser pockets. His small double chin gave him an elflike quality, giving the appearance of a world-weary choir boy with eyes as bright as polished chrome. Crosby’s narrow, rounded shoulders and the makings of a potbelly were physical characteristics most responsible for his premature middle aged look. His smoky, pale complexion suggested too much time had been spent inside closed rooms. He nodded back at the sixteen year-old in the ballgown.

  “You had that one? ” asked Crosby.

  Tuttle shook his head and glanced over at the youngster who stood with her back leaning against the bar as Crosby carried out his intelligence mission.

  “She admits only to three days on the game,” he said.

  Tuttle stepped in to the girl’s defence. “It’s possible. New girls show up every week, Andrew.”

  “But she could have splayed toes? ” asked Crosby. “I hate that. Or even worse, is she a floor-pisser? I hate floor-pissers because the maid raises hell in the morning. And I can’t blame her.”

  Lawrence had stopped chewing a French fry and stared up at Crosby.

  “A friend of mine from the States. Lawrence Baring.”

  “What is a floor-pisser? ” asked Lawrence, swallowing the half chewed fries.

  Crosby’s eyes lit up; he loved explaining the more bizarre habits and customs of the girls who came on the overnight bus from a remote village in the far North.

  “What’s a floor-pisser, you ask? Upcountry they live in shacks on poles. When they have to take a piss they go and squat in the corner of the house. Everything drops through the cracks into the dirt below. When little Noi comes to Bangkok, and you take her home, and she has to take a piss, she goes over to a corner, hikes up her skirt, and before you know it, there is a large puddle on your floor.”

  “A cultural difference,” added Tuttle, trying to shift off the subject. But Crosby had merely warmed up as Lawrence sat spellbound.

  “It happened to me,” said Crosby, smiling at Tuttle.

  “You urinated on your own floor? ” asked Lawrence.

  Crosby nodded casually. “I was pissed. A girl was sound asleep next to me. She had piled her clothes on the floor. I dreamt that I was standing over a toilet. I ended up pissing on her clothes. Next morning she was very nice about it. Never mind, she said. I gave her one of my shirts; her shirt wasn’t exactly fit to wear. Mind you, she did take it away. Gave it a good wash and she had it on when she hit the street the next night. The girls tend not to get overly stressed. Not like your average American women who have been known to maul a man who forgets to put down the toilet seat.”

  Crosby was in a class of his own. He roamed through that broad expanse of bars, politicians’ statements,
and understood the sensitive chord in what drove that overheated sex itch seven days a week in thousands of locations through the city. It was not a push for him, or for anyone. He knew one of the secrets—there was no competition for women, every man crossed the finish line a winner night after night. On the flip side was the boredom of knowing one could always possess what one desired sexually any time of the day or night. Such knowledge could take a toll. But Bangkok was the only home he had known. He carried no emotional luggage from another place. This was a normal way of living as far as he knew.

  Crosby had so much contact with that reality during the crucial, painful growing-up period of his life. He had no delusions about the meaning of pleasure in Bangkok. About what the girls wanted, what they thought, or dreamed. Crosby had taken that small boat of dreams out from the shore many times with countless girls over the years. Nothing ever happened. The earth didn’t move. The sky didn’t dissolve into an immense choir of singing angels. Crosby’s truth glistened in the neon-lit eyes of bar girls, their bodies streaked with perspiration, and their narrow hips pounding to a ritual dance. The truth was a vision of a world that was small, stagnant, insipid, timeless, and savage. A colossal observation tank with thousands of tiny compartments, serving up girls with exceptional and gifted bodies. The Crosby peu-un pod had lost their memories altogether; all their women having merged into the night, faces they could never reclaim. All they remembered was the act of collecting; what had been collected was simply forgotten, shed like a snake’s skin down the road of the past.

  After Crosby had gone away, Lawrence shoved the plate of half eaten French fries out of reach. “He pissed on her clothes,” said Lawrence, shaking his head.

  “It was a mistake,” said Tuttle, reaching for a French fry. “Everyone makes mistakes. Even lawyers, Larry.”

  “But he doesn’t know me. How can you tell someone you just met that you were so drunk you urinated on a woman’s clothes? Doesn’t anyone screen their private acts? ”

  “Maybe Crosby doesn’t care one way or the other whether you like him,” said Tuttle, leaning on his elbows and watching as Crosby waved off the ball-gowned teenager. She had failed the standard interview; the screening process where the hard-core ask if the ceremony of innocence is drowned in her. Because it has long been drowned in him; and he still clutches to the belief that innocence can be reclaimed.

  “It’s not a question of liking him.”

  “What’s the question then? ”

  Lawrence paused, drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t know.” He cracked a smile and shook his head, as he was unable to escape from the intellectual corner he had parked himself. Tuttle had been throwing his shock troops at him. His personal life was filled with men sheared off from a normal life; men whose lives were not embroidered with the same pattern of obstacles, interests, or loyalties. They shared a dark struggle but Lawrence couldn’t locate the alley where they hung out their fears and doubts to dry. That’s what troubled him about both Crosby and Pablo; these men of ice who lived at an emotional altitude where everything was rock and dirt; a place where nothing of life grew, let alone flourished.

  “I simply don’t know,” repeated Lawrence, looking back at Crosby.

  For the first time Tuttle remembered why he had liked Lawrence in their college days. Lawrence was honest; pushed in the corner, he had never lied to get out. What Tuttle also remembered, the dark side, where Lawrence wasn’t above letting someone else lie for him.

  5

  George Snow danced over to the booth, his weathered face stretched tightly over his skull the shape of a light bulb. Snow was stoned and grinding his teeth in a twisted smile at a couple of HQ regulars blocking his path. A few sweating matted strands of chest hair sticking out of his Hawaiian shirt. Snow always wore the same uniform: an untucked Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. His thick glasses made his eyes appear two times larger than life. Snow’s short-cropped hair thinned at the temples, and the ragged edge of a cheap haircut curved around the base of the neck. He always looked in need of a shave. Sweat dripped from his chin and nose, and he was constantly wiping his face with tissues that he balled up and tossed on the floor. He loved Bangkok, the Beach Boys, and California. And he hated lawyers.

  “Tuttle, hey, man. I gave one of our old-time favorites, good ole Lek, two-baht for a golden oldie. Jukebox number? . . . number 215 . . . Man, you won’t believe what this guy knows! He’s the only man in the universe who remembers the number of every song on the HQ jukebox.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Lawrence, smiling at Tuttle.

  “He’s not wasted twenty years.” He turned to Tuttle, reaching over and scooping up a hand of French fries. “When you die they’re gonna put a bronze plaque with your name on it over the jukebox. It’s gonna say Tuttle knew every song and face by heart. Number 215. ‘Like a Virgin’. That ought to be the theme song on Friday nights at HQ. They should use some imagination. Come up with themes. A little inspiration. Something that draws in a better kind of crowd. And most of all, it gives you something to look forward to. If you can’t be a virgin, be like a virgin. There’s the theme for the ’90s. There’s always another way, man. There’s always another way in Thailand.”

  “I’ve been in Bangkok three days. And the advice I’m getting is all over the place,” said Lawrence. Tuttle’s eyes narrowed slightly, a grin appeared on his face, Lawrence was learning faster than he thought possible.

  “Forget everything Tuttle’s told you. Just listen to this plan; you follow it, and your life will be filled with women and the good life. Scout out a remote, a to-hell-and-gone Lahu village. Man, you gotta travel light. Tuttle here is the expert on packing the small bag and finding a girl to carry it. Put everything in a light shoulder bag. Staging is important. The most important thing in any fucking production. That and light and costume. What do you put inside the bag? All you pack are half a dozen magic tricks. You phone a speciality magic shop in Manhattan. It’d cost you fifteen bucks for ten minutes. Give them your American Express number and just fucking order and order. Make certain they courier the stuff or you’ll be waiting around HQ for years like Tuttle here trying to get your shit together and break away.”

  Tuttle raised his head and Snow stopped talking for a second. “Ask him what goes on the shopping list,” said Tuttle, giving Lawrence a wink as a nineteen-year-old who spoke no more than a dozen words of English climbed on his lap and kissed him on each eyebrow.

  “The shopping list? Okay, first buy that illusion of fire that leaps from the palm of the hand. It blows people away. They can’t explain it; they can’t fucking believe it. Fire jets. A crowd forms in seconds. Next go for the illusion called “Hot Lava”; mutant lava spits straight from your fingertips. And to keep your act in high gear, throw in a few multicolored scarves, some ropes that you cut into pieces and then with a move of your hand the rope is one piece again. And the clincher act is great, man. You swallow a handful of needles and about three feet of white thread. Then you slowly pull the thread out. Each needle is lined up like clothes pegs on the thread. Five minutes later you’re crowned as Lahu Godman. Your audience becomes your subjects. They only want to please you. There’s no future in pissing off a god.

  “You won’t be the first Lahu Godman to come down the pike. The Lahu got a fucked-up history of Messianic movements. Like clockwork every twenty-five years some wando stumbles into one of their villages, claims the title, leads them to revolt, and gets a large number of them massacred. The Lahu are overdue. It’s been more than twenty-five years, man. Show one or two of the illusions— magicians never call them tricks—to the headman of the village, and you’re in business as Lahu Godman XIV.”

  Droplets of sweat rolled off Snow’s upper lip as he spoke. He drank two Klosters, and ordered a third as he laid out the Lahu Godman plan for Lawrence. Tuttle had heard Snow’s struggle with reality before. He was content to let Snow carry on uninterrupted. Lawrence had showed some interest in Snow’s planned compac
t with the devil. That intrigued Tuttle; this spore of interest in a mechanical device used for deceit. He tried to imagine Lawrence dressed up in hilltribe shaman clothing, and the troubled, awe-struck faces of the villagers as he pulled threaded needles out of his throat.

  “Why haven’t you applied for the job? ” Lawrence asked. “Why hasn’t Tuttle? ”

  It was one of those questions that carried the merchandise of their mutual past. At college Tuttle had led an exclusive group of students. He had the kind of power that people would have gladly relinquished their possessions or money to join his band, if he had asked that of them. Even after he had gone, his ghostly influence had remained; an underground voice that could never be ignored or dismissed. Tuttle had become a hard-core, another two-bit high-density Lahu Godman, Lawrence thought. Tuttle had forfeited his claim to the myth of a man who had fled civilization to find spiritual communion deep into the jungles of Southeast Asia. But when fully understood, Lawrence was convinced, Tuttle had not become some primordial explorer but another of countless farangs who had been stranded on the slime mould of Zeno’s.