Lost in Pattaya (13 page)

“These are your
choices. Where will you settle with her?” Thuy Binh asked.

I could not settle
in Singapore with Li Ya since it would require legal intervention, prolonged
and excessively reported, possibly fracturing what I was building even before
it got sown. My dream was of building a normal, future family life. I could not
even be sure of a legal decision in my favour; after all, there was enough
incrimination on my plate for a judge to doubt the custody of a girl child in
my hands.

If I sought a
place overseas with Li Ya, it would mean confronting her parents and the
arguments that I would lose even before I began.

Such dead ends are
like chess situations where you cannot move without a sacrifice, yet you are
forced to move by your opponent, mostly leaving you heading backwards.

There was only one
path by which I could enrich my own life. I had to wait for her to turn
eighteen and then coax her to become a part of my life, on her own free will,
which at eighteen could only be influenced by her parents, not enforced.

Li Ya, her being a
part of my life, it was not like we had to live together under the same roof. I
simply wanted her to call me once in a while, allowing me to share dinners on
tables graced by her presence. I wanted her to ask me when she needed money for
a summer vacation, or when she went to school. I wanted her to seek from me,
answers to what needs clarity at some stage of youth, usually when we blunder
and need to pick ourselves up. I wanted her to reach me for all that she could
not share with her own parents. I simply wanted to become her parent, the one
she held herself close to, in her own thoughts, the same one whom the whole
world including her parents had conspired to remove from her life.

“Let us sail back
home to Pattaya tomorrow,” she said.

“I can’t leave
without getting my daughter back. You must be out of your mind even to suggest
it,” I was livid at the thought. I had to show anger. I mean, how else could I
express outwardly what I knew deep inside – other than observing them from a
distance, there was little else I could achieve in Singapore.

In an hour or so,
she let me convince myself. Thuy Binh was powerless in Singapore, and I was
powerless without Thuy Binh. Singapore was not her
turf
and the law in
this city was too straight for her to play cat or mouse.

“We can help bring
your daughter back to you, but not here. It has to be when she travels out of
Singapore. We can keep track, and when the time is right we will strike,
re-uniting you with her, for now you can be with us, if you like.”

It was the right
decision, not seeing Li Ya, at least for now, since she was bound to confide in
her parents who would simply create obstacles and traps too tough for me to
scale. In fact, they would plot to ensure that

I never saw my
daughter again.

But, if I listened
to Thuy Binh and waited for an opportune moment, Li Ya and I could be united.
The opportunity would come when they travelled overseas, passing through our
turf on which we dictated terms.

On the following
day, I simply pottered about the apartment block of Li Ya, seeing her walking
in and out on a few occasions. She seemed completely normal, and I felt
relieved that my daughter was okay and unharmed, at least in any discernible
manner.

At night I
returned to the Yacht where Thuy Binh was scattered about, trying to manage
remotely with phones her business of prostitution in Pattaya.

“I need to head
back,” she declared after getting off the phone. Sex mafia leaders are no
different from senior corporate leaders, they are both busy in similar ways
just that the commodity they vend crosses over the boundary of legitimacy.

“Can we stay for a
few more days?” I asked.

“No, I can’t.
There is a consignment that I need to accept, but, if you want to stay on in
Singapore, you can,” she started speaking into the phone again, obviously busy
with ensuring that her instructions were understood and followed. Most of the
conversation was in Thai, snatches of which I had begun to comprehend.

Consignment
in this case was of girls, a semi-annual
survey of prostitutes designed to let underperforming ones leave before
providing fresh flesh for the season ahead.

There was little
point in me snooping around Singapore. I simply had to bide my time and plot
carefully the claiming back of my little girl, and, it would involve moves that
could not be executed in Singapore.

I decided to
continue on with Thuy Binh; I knew she would play a significant role in the
plot that lay ahead.

To my surprise, we
never disembarked from the Yacht; we simply set course due north, sailing back
to Pattaya, she commandeering the
Cross
across the night.

* * *

The
consignment
awaited us upon return. There were about two thousand girls needing survey over
a period of about a month before taking in a few hundred for the season ahead,
replacing old meat for favourable new trade.

Yes,
our
trade, since on the cruise back, I crossed the line between us and them,
becoming a part of Thuy Binh and Miho’s world, starting to understand
our
trade, like an apprentice learning the ropes.

Before we
disembarked, Thuy Binh pulled me aside and sat me down to a glass of whisky and
a chase of coke, my first hit in weeks. “For your safety, remember not to show
any signs of affection or love towards me in the presence of Miho. She is
damaged and she will not tolerate you if she knows we have been together,” she
said.

“Do you love
Miho?” I asked.

“Yes I have to,
she is my most powerful weapon.”

It is common.
Prostitutes, a few of them tolerate a male client, but many eventually come to
submit their own sensuality in lesbianism. Most just lose the sensitivity of
sensuality, seeking instead the dream of lighting a stove for a man and his
family. In South East Asia, they easily achieve that dream after they are off
the shelves of Bangkok. The minority lesbians suffer, becoming too stale to buy
and too queer to enter polite society.

Not all of the two
thousand units in the
consignment
were physically waiting when we
berthed back in Pattaya. A large number were simply present on assorted paper
forms, with photographs prominently displayed, carried in files, images that
pimps put forth for selection. These girls on the forms, they were mostly from
the provinces of the mighty Mekong, fruits of the river, plucked from the trees
of Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

We went through
the catalogue of girls. For an untrained eye, searching for complexion and bodily
beauty may seem logical; it was the doctor who enlightened me to the criterion
of selecting girls for trade, from catalogues.

First, reject all
those who don’t reveal limbs, legs in particular, since they likely came from
parts still pocked by mines. A legless girl was not an object of pleasure that
could be traded in. In farm life, a limbless individual is a liability pushed
often into prostitution.

The history of
prostitution is learnt best from the disabled prostitute, who arrives hopeful
into the market before being shunned by the pimp, eventually rising to
favouritism of a few well paying customers.

A loveless-legless
prostitute, it is another of my long tales, a diversion here, since in the
honeycomb of my life’s tales I can’t wander about too much.

Second, look for
young girls and set aside any photographs that may look crumpled and old, well
used prints, thumbed by years that will not deliver the promise, a few moments
of young pleasure with no further attachments.

Other than that,
all girls were fine, for there is always one who will love you.

Once a stack of
girls was shortlisted, Thuy Binh and Miho stepped in, browsing perfunctorily
through the stash, negotiating prices with the pimps. The presence of Miho
seemed to steer conversations towards short, favourable trades.

Some portions of
the
consignment
needed physical picking, and, in the days ahead we moved
about the red light districts, inspecting girls presented to us, often touching
and feeling them, much to their delight before concluding upon trades. It was
an opportunity for Thuy Binh to meet with the brothel keepers, cadence of
business a couple of times each year.

There was not much
order, meaning or science with which the affairs of prostitution were put in
motion by Thuy Binh, her assassin Miho, and, the manager of all else, the
strange doctor who hovered in the background. They all moved about, paying for
and supplying girls to the brothels from where a steady income accrued each
year.

A good well
utilised whore can yield up to a fifty thousand dollars each year, most of
which whittles away in the hands of the keepers and the supply chain of the
pimps and mafia, leaving the girls almost permanently in debt, at least for the
first seven odd years after which they may manage to put money away for a life
after time takes its toll, leaving bodies un-vendible.

The economics are
no different from an office worker’s life.

I got immersed in
their business, since I saw what auditors see, metrics like dollar per
prostitute, details gangsters don’t bother with. And, when I meditated upon the
numbers, anomalies surfaced. Like at the largest brothel along the busiest
night strip,
walking
street,
where we had the largest
concentration of girls and the strongest collections, but, well below the mark
when one thought about revenue on a per prostitute basis. When I voiced my
concern to Thuy Binh, it was past sundown, meaning she was stoned and drunk,
and flew into a rage. She asked for the doctor and the chocolate Camry, grabbed
her shawl and soldier-maid, before we were speeding away.

Eventually, I felt
repentant of the math that school had nailed in me. The business logic of an
auditor, it is meant only to curtail enterprise, and in this case the
unleashing of a gangster’s wrath upon a profiteering culprit. In this world, my
new world, there was a consequence to what I unearthed: severe punishment. If I
knew that, I would have kept my math to myself.

At the brothel,
our path cleared, everyone bowing to us and disappearing hurriedly. Thuy Binh
kicked the inner den-door open and faced the brothel owner. He jumped out of
his large reclining blue chair bowing as he spoke incoherently, offering his
chair, on which Thuy Binh sat, throwing her ivory legs onto the table in front.
The silk of her sarong fell away on either side of her milk-naked thighs.

“Suay . . . you
should have sent for me, why did you bother coming all this way, I am your
servant and would have come, had I known you wanted to see me,” the man was on
his knees. A facial tremble struck him. Incense sticks stuck in rice cakes were
soon laid for us on the table. Miho undid the
Tanto
, releasing it from
its scabbard and moved behind the owner, her eyes trained on Thuy Binh,
searching for instructions or even hints of action that may quench her weapon’s
thirst.

“Is there anything
to confess, anything you think may require my attention,” Thuy Binh rocked back
and forth, flashing blue, an impatient look at the doctor who sprang into
action, laying huge lines of white, neat on a mirror he placed in front of Thuy
Binh.

The owner, still
on his knees, responded involuntarily to his fear, urinating, a small stream of
liquid flowing away from his soaking knees. Thuy Binh turned up her nose in
disgust as a faint ammoniac tinge rose in the air.

“Come, breathe
from my plate, it is a privilege that I don’t offer to many,” she motioned for
the owner to come towards her, passing him a large straw, from which he
insufflates the powder on the mirror. When he stopped, Miho pressed the cold
flat face of the
Tanto
behind his neck, forcing him to take in more of
the obscene coke on the mirror. He began crying, “Mercy, please, you are the
merciful one. I shall be in your debt forever, please spare me. I will make
good each and every dollar that I have taken. Please help me,” he begged
pathetically, with a graceless loss of reason.

An ornate Thai
doll entered the room, kneeled close to Thuy Binh, took a flute out of her silk
scarf and began to play soft tunes in which the owner’s tears flowed. The
doctor replenished the smooth surface of the mirror with many more lines of
white, bringing back the horror of my own overdose. Miho stood poised, directly
behind the owner.

“I fight with all
my might against the powers that threaten us, like Kawai and his plots of
taking over and defiling our peaceful existence. I am the protector of all who
work for us here, the shade that soothes and wards evil off,” Thuy Binh was
speaking gently into the mellifluous backnotes of flute that the Thai doll
produced, almost as if she were adding words to the flautist’s tunes. “Today, I
learnt there is a snake that suckles from me, right here amongst us. What
should I do with that snake?”

“Please pardon me,
take me in the shadow of your mercy. I will serve you forever, please spare
me,” the owner was pleading, his hands trembling while they remained folded in
front of Thuy Binh.