Koko (26 page)

“Is same thing,” the driver said.

As far as Conor was concerned, this whole Bugis Street deal stank. Fifty feet from
its entrance, where the cabdriver from the restaurant had pointed to it, Bugis Street
looked just right for a guy like Underhill. Lots of flashing lights, bar signs, neon,
crowds of people milling around. But once you were actually there, you saw who those
people were and you knew that Tim Underhill wouldn’t go anywhere near them. White-haired
ladies with leathery, saggy upper arms holding hands with turtle-faced old parties
in baggy shorts and Supp-Hose. They had the lost, childlike air of tourists anywhere,
as if what they were looking at were no more real than a television commercial. About
half the people Conor could see walking up and down Bugis Street had clearly arrived
in the
JASMINE FAR EAST TOUR
buses parked outside the entrance to the street. Way up above everybody’s heads,
a pale blue flag drooped from the top of a long pole held by a breezy young blonde
woman in a crisp, starched-looking blazer of the same pale blue.

If this bunch of ham and eggers came traipsing through
South Norwalk, Conor knew he wouldn’t be able to ignore them the way the other half
of the people on Bugis Street were doing. Shifty-looking little guys darted in and
out of the bars and shops. Pairs of whores in wigs and tight dresses strutted up and
down the street. If you were a player in Singapore, this is where you came—Conor guessed
that they had developed selective vision, and no longer really saw the tourists.

Conor could hear the Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” drilling through some slow-moving
cowboy song from Porter Waggoner, both of them battling the strange caterwauling of
what must have been a Chinese opera—screechy voices beating up a melody that would
give a headache to a dog. This noise was piped out of different bars through little
speakers set above the doors, usually right above the head of a beckoning doorman.
The whole thing gave Conor a headache. Probably the brandy after their dinner at the
Pine Court didn’t help, even if it was XO, which Harry Beevers claimed was liquid
gold. Feeling as if cymbals were being slammed together next to his ears, Conor walked
along behind Beevers and Mike Poole.

“Might as well start right here,” Mike said, turning toward the first bar on their
side of the street, the Orient Song. The doorman straightened up as they approached
and began waving them in with both arms. “Orient Song your bar,” he yelled. “Come
to Orient Song! Best bar on Bugis Street! Americans all come here!”

Near the door a little old man in a dirty white smock twitched into life. He grinned,
showing sparse yellow teeth, and swept his arm theatrically toward the display of
framed photographs next to him.

They were eight-by-twelve glossies, black and white, with names printed in the white
space just above the bottom of the frame. Dawn, Rose, Hotlips, Raven, Billie Blue … parted
lips and arched necks, sex-drenched Oriental faces framed in soft black hair, plucked
eyebrows above willful eyes.

“Four dollars,” the old man said.

Harry Beevers grabbed Conor’s forearm and pulled him through the heavy door. Cold
air-conditioned air chilled the sweat on Conor’s forehead, and he yanked his arm out
of Beevers’ grasp. Americans, paired like Mallard ducks, turned smiling toward them
from their stations near the bar.

“No luck here,” Beevers said. “This is just a tour bus joint. The first bar on the
street is the only one these yo-yos feel safe in.”

Poole said, “Let’s ask anyhow.”

At least the entire front half of the bar was taken up by American couples in their
sixties and seventies. Conor could dimly hear someone banging chords on a piano. Out
of the general hum of voices Conor heard a female voice calling someone Son and asking
where his nametag was. He eventually realized that she was addressing him.

“You gotta get the spirit, boy, you gotta wear the tag. We’re a fun bunch!” Conor
looked down at the sun-tanned, heavily wrinkled face of a woman beaming at him and
wearing a nametag which read
HI! ETHEL’S A JAUNTY JASMINE!

Conor looked over her head. Behind her a couple of old boys in rimless glasses who
looked like the doctors on the flight over were checking him out less benevolently—he
was wearing his Agent Orange T-shirt, and did not resemble a Jaunty Jasmine.

He saw Beevers and Poole approaching the bar, where a stocky man wearing a velvet
bow tie was serving drinks, washing glasses, and talking out of the side of his mouth
all at once. He reminded Conor of Jimmy Lah. The back of the bar was another world.
On the far side of all the Jasmines, parties of Chinese men sat around round tables
drinking brandy from magnums, shouting jokes at one another, and desultorily talking
with the girls who drifted by their tables. Far at the back a black-haired man in
a tuxedo who looked neither Chinese nor Caucasian sat at a baby grand, singing words
Conor could not hear.

He squeezed past the woman, who went on mouthing cheerful meaningless sounds, and
got to the bar just as Mikey took one of the photographs of Underhill out of the envelope.
“Let’s have a drink, what d’you say, gimme a vodka on the rocks.”

The bartender blinked, and a brimming glass appeared on the bar before Conor. Beevers
already had one, Conor saw.

“Don’t know him,” the bartender said. “Five dollars.”

“Maybe you remember him from years back,” Beevers said. “He would have started coming
here around 1969, ’70, around then.”

“Too long ago. I was little boy. Still in school. Wif da priests.”

“Take another look,” Beevers said.

The bartender removed the picture from Poole’s fingers and flipped it over his shoulder.
“He is a priest. Named Father Ball-cock. I don’t know him.”

As soon as they got back out onto the humid street, Harry Beevers took a step ahead
of the other two and faced them with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised.
“I don’t care, I
have to say it. I get the wrong vibes entirely from this place. There isn’t a chance
in hell that Underhill’s still here. My gut tells me to go to Taipei—it’s more like
his kind of place. Take my word for it.”

Poole laughed. “Not so fast, we just got started. There are at least twenty more bars
on this street. Somewhere along the line, someone will know him.”

“Yeah, someone has to know him,” Conor said. He felt more confident of this after
having put down his vodka.

“Ah, the peanut gallery has an opinion too,” Beevers said.

“You got your rocks off in Taipei, so you want to go back there now,” Conor said.
“It’s so fucking obvious.” He stomped away to avoid hitting Beevers. Cries of “Best
bar! Best bar!” erupted from various doormen. Conor felt his shirt sticking to his
back.

“So it’s Swingtime next, is it?” Beevers had come up on the far side of Mike Poole,
and Conor felt a little flare of satisfaction: Beevers wasn’t taking any chances with
him.

“Yeah, let’s try out good old Swingtime,” Poole said.

Beevers made an ironic little bow, pushed open the door, and let the other two precede
him into the bar.

After Swingtime came the Windjammer, after the Windjammer the Ginza, the Floating
Dragon, and the Bucket of Blood. The Bucket of Blood was a real bucket of blood, Conor
thought—that had been his father’s term for any dive with rickety stools and ripped
booths, a floor too scummy to be visible, and crapped-out drunks lining the bar. Beevers
groaned when one of the shambling drunks followed another into the cubicle that was
the men’s room and, to judge by the noise, began tearing his arms out by the sockets.
The flat-faced bartender just glanced at the photograph of Underhill.

Conor understood why the Jaunty Jasmines stayed down at the end of the street.

Harry Beevers looked like he wanted to suggest giving up and going back to the hotel,
but Poole kept them moving from one bar to another. Conor admired the way he kept
on going without getting discouraged.

At the Bullfrog the guys sitting around the tables were so drunk they looked like
statues. There were moving pictures of waterfalls on the walls. At the Cockpit Conor
finally noticed that at least half the whores in the place weren’t women at all. They
had bony knees and big shoulders; they were men. He started
laughing—men with big tits and good-looking cans!—and sprayed beer all over disgusted
Harry Beevers.

“I know this guy,” the bartender said. He looked again at Underhill’s face, and started
smiling.

“See?” Conor asked. “See now?” Beevers turned away, wiping his sleeve.

“Does he come in here?” Mike asked.

“No, other place I worked. Good-time Charlie. Buy everybody a drink!”

“You sure it’s the same man?”

“Sure, that’s Undahill. He was around for a couple years, back in the old days. Spend
lots of money. Used to come in da Floating Dragon, before it change hands. I worked
nights, see him alla time. Talk, talk, talk. Drink, drink, drink. Real writah! Show
me a book, something about animal—”

“A Beast in View.”

“Beast, right.”

When Poole asked if he knew where Underhill was now, the man shook his head and said
that everything had changed from the old days. “Might ask at Mountjoy, right across
street. Real hard core over there. Probably be someone there who remembers Undahill
from old days, like me.”

“You liked him, didn’t you?”

“For a long time,” the bartender said. “Sure, I liked Undahill for a long time.”

Conor felt uneasy almost as soon as they walked into the Lord and Lady Mountjoy, and
he couldn’t figure out why. It was a quiet place. Sober men in dark suits and white
shirts sat in booths along the sides of the room or at little square tables set out
on a slippery-looking parquet dance floor.

There were no transient whores in this place, just guys in suits and ties, and one
character in a glittery blouse, sprayed piled-up hair, and about a hundred scarves
hung loose around his neck, who was cooling out at a back table.

“Loosen up, for God’s sake,” Beevers said to Conor. “You got the runs or something?”

“Don’t know him, never saw him,” the bartender said. He had
barely glanced at the photograph. He looked like a young Chinese version of Curly,
the bald stooge in the Three Stooges.

“The bartender across the street told us that this man used to frequent this place,”
Beevers said, pushing himself against the bar. “We’re detectives from New York City,
and it’s important to a lot of people that we find this man.”

“Bartender where?” When Beevers had said the word “detective” a lead shield had slammed
down over the bartender’s face, making him look a lot less like Curly.

“The Cockpit,” Mike said. He gave a fierce sidelong glance at Beevers, who shrugged
and began toying with an ashtray.

The bartender shrugged.

“Is there anyone here who might remember this man? Anyone who was around Bugis Street
in those days?”

“Billy,” the bartender said. “He’s been here since they paved the street.”

Conor’s heart sank. He knew who Billy was, all right, and he really didn’t want to
have to talk to him.

“In da back,” the bartender said, and confirmed Conor’s fears. “Buy him a drink, he’s
friendly.”

“Yeah, he looks friendly,” Beevers said.

At the back table Billy had straightened his shoulders and was patting his hair. When
they approached his table, carrying their own drinks and a double Chivas Regal, he
put his hands in his lap and beamed at them.

“Oh, you bought me a little drinkie, how dear of you,” Billy said.

Billy wasn’t Chinese, but he wasn’t anything else either, Conor thought. His eyes
might have been almond-shaped, but it was hard to see them under all the makeup. Billy’s
skin was very pale and he spoke with a British accent. All of his gestures suggested
that a woman had been trapped inside his body and on the whole was enjoying herself
in there. He raised his drink to his lips, sipped, and set it down gently on the table.

“I hope you gentlemen are going to join me?”

Mike Poole sat down opposite Billy, and Harry Beevers drew up a chair beside him.
Conor had to sit on the bench beside Billy, who turned his head and flicked his eyelashes
in his direction.

“Are you gentlemen new to Bugis Street? Your first night in Singapore, perhaps? You
are looking for entertainment of an exotic nature? Precious little left in our city,
I fear. Never mind—anyone can find what he wants, if he knows where to look.”

Another lidded glance at squirming Conor.

“We’re looking for someone,” Poole said.

“We’re—” Beevers began, and then looked up in astonishment at Poole, who had just
stamped on his foot.

Poole said, “The young man at the bar thought you might be our best chance. The person
we’re looking for lived or still lives in Singapore, and spent a lot of time on this
street ten to fifteen years ago.”