The Half-Child (11 page)

At the same time, after the anti-American paranoia of Laos, there were aspects of life in Pattaya he welcomed: familiar food, convenience stores, modern communications. His grounding in Lao made it easy for him to learn Thai— they were closely related languages—and he applied himself diligently to his studies.

Frank also made a careful study of Pattaya's sex industry in the spirit of ‘know thine enemy'. Different sources suggested there were anywhere between six thousand and twenty thousand Thais working in the sex industry in Pattaya, including girls and boys as young as ten years old. His own observations put the figure towards the higher end of the spectrum. In addition to brothels, prostitution operated out of nightclubs, discotheques, beer bars, massage parlours, karaoke clubs, garden restaurants, short-time hotels, even barber shops and hairdressing salons.

The prostitutes—he'd never warmed to the politically correct term ‘commercial sex workers'—in the low-end brothels tended to be among the poorest and least educated, earning as little as one American dollar per ‘session', the euphemism researchers used to refer to the exchange of sexual favours for money. They were often in bonded labour, their meagre earnings going to the brothel owner to pay off their debt.

Prostitutes in the middle and higher ends of the market tended to be better off, receiving a base salary in addition to commissions and fees that could amount to as much as one hundred dollars per session. They were morally impoverished: with higher levels of education and working under less compulsion, these were women who should have known better—who had choices.

Frank supplemented his desk-based research with fieldwork. Posing as a tourist, he visited a go-go bar where women danced stark naked around poles on a stage while patrons ogled them. A topless woman young enough to be his daughter grabbed at his crotch and rubbed hard tiny breasts across his face. Caught off-guard, Frank was revolted as much by his spontaneous erection as he was by the girl's lewdness. He left quickly, muttering invocations to restore his self-control. Frank had chosen a celibate life, and no teenage whore would jeopardise that.

Worse than the go-go bars were the ‘live shows' where women squeezed ping-pong balls from their private parts like they were laying eggs. Or inserted all kinds of objects inside themselves: bananas, fire-spitting sparklers, even razor blades. He'd once seen a woman squat over a birthday cake and blow out the candles with her vagina. It disgusted Frank not only that people treated such profanity as a spectator sport, but that the women—many of them mothers, judging by their stretch marks and caesarean scars—allowed themselves to be so degraded.

Pattaya thrived on degradation. They could blame it on the Americans based in Thailand during the Vietnam War— Pattaya was a sleepy little fishing village until the GIs started using it as an R&R port—but the Thais could put an end to that whenever they wanted. The war had been over for more than twenty years. Instead, they continued to hitch the town's economy to human depravity. The local authorities staged periodic crackdowns on prostitution and vice. And every now and then a billboard went up promoting Pattaya's ‘exciting diving destinations' or Jomtien's ‘family-friendly beaches'. It was all just for show—another tawdry Pattaya performance.

In the five years since Frank had arrived, Pattaya had only gotten worse. There was nothing that couldn't be bought or sold, no limit to the lengths that people would go to for a buck.

Frank needed to figure out how he could turn this to his advantage—the ends always justified the means when it came to saving souls—and to that end, he scoured the town for a workplace suited to his skills and mission. He'd worked briefly as an army chaplain, but spent most of his working life in the US as a pastoral care worker attached to an innercity public hospital in Detroit where he specialised in family counselling and foster care placements.

The New Life Children's Centre was the answer to his prayers. The Thai director had been looking for a qualified foreigner to assist in processing inter-country adoption requests and preparing the children for life with their new families. Frank was employed in the role of special adviser and, as the only foreigner on staff, given licence to develop the program.

The pre-departure program that paired individual babies with foreign volunteers was Frank's brainchild, as was the idea to use church networks to recruit volunteers. His work on the adoption program was deeply satisfying, his achievements measurable in the number of children he helped shepherd out of Pattaya. His only frustration was that the New Life Children's Centre could not meet the increasing demand for babies eligible for overseas adoption.

And then the Lord sent him Constance.

They met after a church service. Connie, as she liked to be called, was a nurse-midwife from Hong Kong who had worked throughout Asia, including a stretch in a slum near the US Naval Base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. She'd come to Thailand to take up a job in the maternity ward at the City Hospital. As the least expensive health facility, City Hospital was where most pregnant prostitutes went to deliver their babies.

‘My role in the clinic in Subic Bay,' she told Frank, ‘was to counsel pregnant women against illegal
abortion
—' she dropped her voice, as if the word itself was too terrible to mention ‘—and support them to give birth and adopt the baby out.'

For Frank, it was the missing piece of the puzzle.

The New Life Children's Centre had an existing relationship with the City Hospital. Babies found abandoned at the hospital entrance or in the car park were brought to the centre following medical clearance. Frank sought to strengthen links between the two organisations. Connie alerted him to the possibility of counselling women while they were still in the maternity ward and encouraging them to relinquish their newborns. Those who persisted in keeping their babies were referred to a new mothers' clinic at the New Life Centre, not so much to help them care for their babies as to keep them in Frank's sights. Almost invariably the women failed to cope with the demands of motherhood, and the new mothers' clinic became a conduit for babies to be placed in the centre's institutional care facility.

It wasn't enough for Frank. His mission was conversions. Not in the first instance from Buddhism to Christianity— though that remained the ultimate goal—but to convert babies and toddlers languishing in institutional care into orphans eligible for inter-country adoption.

Frank initiated a range of methods to increase the conversion rate. First there was the hospital-based counselling program; the poorer and younger the woman, the more likely she could be convinced to relinquish the child. Secondly, Frank made sure the new mothers at the clinic were given a full tour of the facilities; they got to see the orphans being looked after by foreign volunteers and could envisage the opportunities this afforded them. Thirdly, Chaowalit, the eyes and ears of the place, alerted Frank when any boarders were visited by family members, so Frank could take the opportunity to work on them. He had a similar arrangement with Ittiphol on the centre's investigation team, who let Frank know when an abandoned child's family had been located and could benefit from his counselling.

With the steady influx of converts from boarders to orphans, Frank experimented with deploying a volunteer into the boarding house facility to begin acclimatising the children to foreigners before they officially entered the pre-departure program. Maryanne Delbeck had been the first to put up her hand.

Frank sighed at the thought of Maryanne. He opened his filing cabinet and took out her personnel file. At the front were a copy of
The Bangkok Post
article into her death, a file note on his meeting with the Australian Embassy consultant, and a letter of condolence from the Young Christian Volunteers.

Time had not dulled Frank's grief. He held himself partly to blame for the loss. How could it have escaped his notice that she was clinically depressed? It took Doctor Somsri to point it out to him
after
her death. Of course, he corroborated Somsri's account for the purposes of the investigation. It was the only face-saving thing to do. But it would always sadden him that he'd failed to see what was wrong in time to save Maryanne from committing such a grave sin. She'd seemed like such a bright, spirited young thing.

Frank was more vigilant about the wellbeing of his volunteers these days. That was Maryanne's legacy. While it wouldn't save her soul from the fires of Hell, it was something positive to remember her by.

His phone rang. He restored the Delbeck file to its place in the cabinet and closed the drawer.

‘Frank Harding, hello.'

‘We've got a problem,' a voice said in Thai.

‘What is it Doctor Somsri?' he answered politely.

‘Seems your midwife friend overdid the painkillers.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't understand.'

‘Girl you saw last night,' Somsri said, ‘sixteen-year-old from Kalasin. She didn't make it.'

‘Didn't make it?' Frank crossed himself. ‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘Sorry doesn't cut it with the people I answer to,'

Somsri said. ‘They said to tell you there are penalties for incompetence.'

Frank bristled at his tone.

‘But—'

‘Body to dispose of, cops to be compensated, forensics paid to lose blood-test results. Someone's got to pay for all of that.'

Frank clenched his fist around his crucifix. The people behind Doctor Somsri had wealth beyond Frank's imagination. This was not about the money.

‘Surely your superiors are aware of what a delicate operation we run here,' he began.

‘As far as they're concerned, if you can't do the job right, they'll find someone else who can,' Somsri said.

‘You can't mean—'

‘I know how hard it would be to replace someone with your skills,' he added, his tone softening, ‘but that's not how they see it, Khun Frank. We have no choice. We have to make amends. Anything on the books we could expedite?'

Frank hesitated. On the rare occasions he stepped outside legal boundaries to speed up adoption cases, it was because the best interests of the child were being served, not because of the money. Frank wasn't naïve. He knew Somsri answered to people higher up the chain of command who treated their overseas adoption service as a profit-making enterprise. Nothing ever happened in Thailand without high-level patronage. Frank didn't dwell on it, sleeping sound in the knowledge that his own intentions were pure.

‘There is one,' he said, ‘a boy. I've already matched him to a couple in the US. I'm sure if I can work on the mother just a little longer—'

‘No time,' Somsri said, ‘unless you want
them
to work on the mother.'

Frank heard the echo of a laugh in the background. He shivered.

‘Reassure your superiors that won't be necessary,' he said, keeping his voice steady. ‘We'll take care of it.'

‘Yes, we will,' Somsri said.

Frank's hands were shaking. He took a deep breath.

‘It's in the best interests of the child,' he murmured to himself.

11

A
s Mayuree's
songthaew
pulled into the kerb, a motorbike slowed alongside her. She clutched her bag to her chest but relaxed when she saw her friend Wen descend from the pillion seat.

They exchanged a smile.

‘On time for work this evening,' Wen said.

‘Making up for yesterday,' Mayuree answered. ‘What brings you to my part of town?'

‘Late shift,' Wen said, yawning. ‘Thought I'd stop by for a chat.
Okay na
?'

‘
Ja
,' Mayuree nodded. ‘It's still early.'

They walked towards the Coconut Club. Wen teetered in her stilettos and clutched Mayuree's arm to regain her balance.

‘You all right?'

‘Just tired,' Wen said. ‘The boss is putting pressure on us to work double shifts or take a cut. He reckons there's another crackdown going on.'

‘In the middle of high tourist season? I doubt it.'

‘Think about it, sister. Now's when everyone makes more money. The cops know it, and they want a piece of the action. That's what my boss says.'

‘You're so gullible,' Mayuree said. ‘It's just an excuse to keep more of the profit for himself.'

‘I've been getting forty-five per cent,' Wen said. ‘He wants to cut it to forty.'

‘That's not fair and you know it. You should be earning at least fifty per cent.'

‘Easy for you to say. You're out of the main game. These days we're competing with Russian girls for the good jobs.

Russian girls. In Thailand. The world's going crazy.'

She shook her head.

‘Tell me about it,' Mayuree said, nodding towards the bar.

The Russian men from the day before had colonised the same table, this time with several surly young women in tow who might have been their daughters or their mistresses. It was hard to tell as all Russian women seemed to dress the same: tight, short and shiny. The air around the table was thick with cigarette smoke. Next to them a young farang man with a yellow hammer and sickle on his red T-shirt was chatting up a Thai girl in a strapless gold dress.

Not for the first time, Mayuree was thankful to be out of the main game, as Wen put it. Working in the beer bar meant less take-home pay, but she had a regular salary that didn't require navigating the agendas of bosses, clients, competitors and police. Best of all she got to go home alone and safe, not in the arms of some stranger.

‘The boss says everyone has to take a cut and if we don't accept forty, he won't have enough to pay off the police and they'll shut the place down,' Wen said, sitting down at the bar.

‘
Jing reu
?' Mayuree called from behind the partition.