Private Dancer (35 page)

Joy stood on the pavement watching me go. As I turned the corner, she blew me a kiss.

SOMCHAI Poonsak already had the engine ticking over when the farang came out of the restaurant. Sunan had given us a photograph so there'd be no mistake, but I didn't need to check it. It was him all right. I tapped Poonsak on the shoulder and he nodded. We were both wearing full face helmets just in case we were seen. Poonsak had stolen the bike and put false plates on, and once the job was done we'd dump it and set fire to it. I'd worked with Poonsak more than a dozen times, he was reliable and never panicked. I was with one guy once, much younger than Poonsak, and when the gun went off he damn near crashed the bike. Poonsak's as solid as a rock.

The farang and Joy stood together in front of the restaurant, talking. Joy stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek and he stroked her hair. How romantic. Poonsak said something but I couldn't hear what it was over the noise of the traffic.

The farang gave her something and she put it in her pocket. Probably money. Farangs are always giving money to Thai girls, but I've never understood why. Do they think they can buy love? Impossible. If a girl loves you, she'll give you money, right? Not the other way around.

The farang flagged down a motorcycle taxi and spoke to the rider. It was hard to see clearly from where we'd parked the bike, but it looked as if Joy was crying. I wondered if Sunan had told her what we were going to do. She hadn't said, and I hadn't asked. But Sunan had insisted that Joy wasn't near by when we did it.

I've killed twenty-eight people, but this would be my first farang. Because it was a farang, I'd raised my price, to ten thousand baht, double what I normally charged. Sunan had agreed to pay without any bargaining, half in advance, half when the job was done.

The farang climbed on to the back of the bike and waved goodbye to Joy. I tapped Poonsak on the shoulder. He put the bike in gear and headed down Soi 4 to Sukhumvit Road. We knew where the farang was going. Sukhumvit Soi 23.

I put my hand inside the jacket and touched the butt of my gun. There were six cartridges in the clip, but unless something went wrong I'd only use three. One to bring him down. One in the heart. One in the head.

VERNON I couldn't believe it when I heard what had happened to Pete. Unbelievable. I know how bad the traffic is in Bangkok and how dangerous it can be using motorcycle taxis, but you never expect it to happen to somebody you know. At least he didn't suffer. According to Sunan it was all over in a matter of seconds and Pete probably didn't even know what hit him. It was a cement truck,

Sunan said, and the driver was high on amphetamines. The guy ran a red light and hit Pete's motorcycle side on. Joy was totally distraught, of course. Hasn't stopped crying since, Sunan said. The family hasn't left her alone because apparently Joy keeps threatening to kill herself, says she can't bear to live without him. I wanted to go over to the funeral, but Sunan said he'd been cremated and his parents had taken the ashes back to England. There was no autopsy or inquiry or anything, but Sunan said the driver would probably be charged with manslaughter.

If nothing else, it made me realise how precious life is, how we have to grab everything we can in the all too brief time we're alive. One minute we're here, the next we're not. I'm going to make sure that I pack as much as I can into my life.

Sunan's arriving next month, and Joy's coming with her. Both their visas have been approved and I've paid for their tickets. It's going to be a whole new life for both of them. It'll be good for Joy, being here will help her get over what happened to Pete. They'll both be able to enroll on English courses, and I've already found a great place for a restaurant. It's a short walk from my apartment, with a bar on the ground floor and a small eating area upstairs. I reckon that by taking the bar out we'll be able to get another dozen tables in. The kitchen'll need fitting out but I think I can get everything straightened out for twenty thousand bucks. I've already sent photographs to Sunan and she's really excited.

Moving to San Diego is going to be the making of Sunan, I know it is. It'll get her away from bad influences of Bangkok, the bars and the bar girls. She'll have to settle down, and I'll know where she is every hour of the day. Okay, I'm not a hundred per cent sure that she loves me now,

not totally, not in the way that I love her. But I know that once she's here, once she has a business to run and a real home, she'll grow to love me.

She's so excited about the restaurant. She's already planning the menu and the table settings and stuff. As soon as she's over here and got everything ready, we're going to bring Bird.

Apparently he used to be a chef, and he'll be company for Sunan and Joy. It's going to be great.

We're going to be one big happy family.

BIG RON Was I surprised at what happened to Pete? Of course I fucking wasn't. He was on the road to ruin as soon as he let her get to him. A lost cause. A sad fuck. The whole saga was like a fucking fairy tale. Grimm.

Extract from CROSS-CULTURAL COMPLICATIONS OF PROSTITUTION IN THAILAND by PROFESSOR BRUNO MAYER Relationships between farangs and prostitutes rarely reach a satisfactory conclusion by Western standards. There is always a level of mistrust, based on the fact that the girl is an active prostitute when they meet and the fact that their initial sexual encounter is, almost without exception, paid for. The farang is thus never sure of whether the girl loves him, or his money, and while this is not a problem from the girl's cultural perspective, it is not something that the man can accept from his Western viewpoint. The farang who does take a bargirl as a regular partner, to the extent of living with, or even marrying, her, often fears that she will return to a life of prostitution. This remains a constant source of unease.

The girl, too, remains in a state of jealous tension. She knows that she met her farang protector in a bar and she is all too well aware how easy it would be for him to visit another establishment and meet a younger and prettier girl. The combination of mutual suspicion and mistrust, coupled with unending requests for money to support the girl's family, leads more often than not to arguments and the break-up of the relationship.

In an attempt to distance the girl from her previous life as a prostitute, a farang might decide to take the girl back to his own country. The radical change in the girl's environment almost always results in unhappiness and the eventual dissolution of the relationship. Unless she has travelled she will be ignorant of the man's country and customs, and will have only a rudimentary understanding of his language. This, coupled with the loneliness resulting from the forced separation from her family and friends, leads to tensions and conflict, resolved only by the girl returning to Thailand.

Either way, once the relationship has ended, the girl will almost certainly return to the bars and to prostitution. This is accompanied by an initial period of depression as the girl accepts that she has lost the reasonably comfortable life that comes of having the support of a farang and has to revert to the relatively unstable lifestyle of a bargirl. This period is quite short, however, and after a week or so she will once again be content in the disorganised and dissipate way of life, drinking bouts, drug-taking and card-playing,

funded by sexual encounters with strangers. Until, of course, she finds herself another farang provider.

BRUCE It's like the Buddhists say, right? What goes around, comes around. I was never happy with the way he treated Joy, making her jump through hoops like a trained animal. If he'd done the right thing by her at the beginning, if he'd just let her live with him, then I don't think any of this would have happened. Serves him right. Funny thing was, day of his funeral I found the watch. It was in the pocket of the jacket I'd been wearing when I got back from Nong Khai. I must have put it there without thinking, then hung the jacket up in the wardrobe. I still don't know what happened to the business cards, though. Right bloody mystery, that. Don't expect I'll ever find out where they went.

JIMMY The guys from Fatso's went to the funeral and there was a piss-up afterwards but it wasn't much of a send-off. There was a rumour going around that Pete had left everything to Joy but I don't know if it's true or not. I decided to pop into Zombie, and bugger me but who should I see dancing stark bollock naked but the girl herself. First time I'd seen her dancing in a long while,

she was always waitressing when Pete was around. There was a girl who looked just like her dancing a couple of poles down and I figured it was her sister. When their dancing shift finished I waved them over and bought them colas. Within minutes the sister, Dit her name was, had her hand on my thigh. I asked if I could barfine both of them and ten minutes later we were back in my apartment.

I always get a kick out of sisters, you'd be surprised how many there are working the bars. Joy and Dit had obviously worked together before: Dit stuck her tongue down my throat while Joy gave me a blow job, then they switched places. I wanted them to do a lesbian show for me and they balked at that, but I put a lesbian video on, and after watching that for a few minutes they got into it. Lesbian Lust, it's called, I got it in Hong Kong a couple of years back and it's never failed me yet. Joy and Dit started licking each other out while I wanked myself, then I screwed Joy while Dit kissed her. Did them both without a condom. Hate the things, they take all the fun out of screwing. They started moaning about wanting me to put one on, but I told them to fuck off, I know full well that they don't make their Thai boyfriends wear them.

It was a hell of a night, screwed them in all sorts of combinations, and by the end of the evening they seemed to be enjoying the lesbian thing, too. I went to shower and when I came back they were at each other like dogs on heat, fingering each other and kissing. I was too knackered to join in so I gave them a thousand baht each and kicked them out. I figured it was the sort of send-off that Pete would have appreciated.