Private Dancer (26 page)

Matt shook his head.

“And there's no doubt, Matt? She couldn't have been going out to buy cigarettes?”

He shook his head again. I guess we both knew I was clutching at straws. "I know the difference between a girl going out for cigarettes and a girl who's had her bar fine paid, Pete.

She'd changed into her jeans, for a start."

Yeah, he was right, of course. I tried not to show how upset I was, rang the bell to buy everyone a drink, and ending up getting pissed out of my skull.

I went around to Zombie just after midnight. Joy was there, playing with the laser I'd bought her. She grinned and ran over and gave me a big hug. “I think about you too much,” she said.

“I love you, Joy,” I said.

“I love you, too much,” she said.

“Don't ever lie to me, Joy,” I said, hating myself for sounding so pathetic.

“You drunk,” she said. “I never lie to you, Pete. I love you, too much.”

JOY I told Park it was a stupid thing to do, that Pete was sure to recognise him if Park started working in Zombie. Park slapped me and told me he didn't care, that he wasn't going to allow a farang to dictate his life. I said that he was being dumb because Pete had his photograph, but Park slapped me again so I stopped arguing.

Sure enough, Pete spotted Park and I was the one who had to cover up. My heart was racing as I walked across the bar to shout up to Park. I nearly burst out laughing when he said that his name was Gung. Prawn? Park hates prawns. Calls them sea insects. Pete believed me, though,

so maybe he's as stupid as Park seems to think he is. I told all the girls to say that Park was Gung if Pete asked them, but I don't think he did. Park kept pressing me to go with other farangs, even though I warned him that Pete's friends all drink in Zombie and one of them would be bound to see me. Park didn't care, but he said that if I was worried about getting caught I should take the farangs into the short time room. I told him how much I hated the short time room - it smells and the bed's got ticks, all the girls complain about getting bitten, but Park wouldn't listen to me. Sometimes he can be so stubborn.

It's not as if we needed the money. Pete was giving me about four thousand baht a week, and I was earning at least five hundred baht a day in tips. I was paying for our room, and our food, and I was giving Park money for beer and cigarettes, and I was paying for his motorcycle.

Sometimes men can be so ungrateful. I mean, Park was only getting three thousand baht a month for playing records. It's not even a real job. The DJs don't get to choose their own music, the farang who owns the bar, Damien, he decides what they play. Most of the time he just puts on one CD and lets it play right through. The farangs don't care, they're in the bars for the girls, not the music. I know the real reason Park wanted to work as a DJ again: it was so that he could be around the girls. I saw him making eyes at Wan and I gave him a piece of my mind. There's no way any man of mine is getting away with being a butterfly, not in front of my friends.

PETE I left it until the end of the month before going around to Zombie to see the owner. I'd gotten his name from Jimmy. Damien Kavanagh, his family are big in double-glazing back in the UK,

that’s what Jimmy had said. But there were other versions of his life story floating around Fatso’s, too. Bruce had heard that he’d once been a barrister in Belfast but had done a runner with clients money. Rick said that Kavanagh wasn’t his real name, that he’d changed it by deed pole after he’d been convicted on paedophile charges a decade ago. Big Ron was sure that he’d spent time in a Thai jail for trafficking women into Europe. No one seemed to know for sure.

Whatever the truth about Kavanagh’s past, I found him in a cramped little office off the back of the room where the bargirls changed. He was crouched over a computer keyboard, peering at the screen through thick-lensed spectacles. He was a shifty-looking man, in his fifties, I guess, with thinning grey hair and a habit of licking his lips when he listened, like a frog contemplating its next meal. I introduced myself and told him what I wanted to know, and he just grinned and shook his head.

“Why didn't you just walk away?” he asked.

I shrugged. “She wants to change. She doesn't want to dance any more.”

Damien chuckled and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Pete, Pete, Pete, these girls are here for one reason, and one reason alone. They're hookers, and they're hooking.” “Joy's different...” I began but stopped when he started shaking his head.

He leaned forward as if about to share a secret with me. “You're wasting your time,” he said.

“And what's more, you know you're wasting your time.”

“Okay, but I need to know for sure,” I said. “I need to see her card.”

The card was the key. Sure, I knew there was no reason for Matt and Jimmy to lie, but if Joy's bar fine had been paid, it would have been recorded on the card that she used to clock in each day. The cards were stored in a rack by the side of the lockers.

“You used to be a journalist, yeah?” he said.

“That's right.”

“Well, me showing you a girl's card would be the equivalent to you revealing a source,” he said smugly. “I just couldn't do it. I'd have a revolt on my hands. The girls wouldn't stand for it.”

“But Joy said...”

“They'll say anything so long as they can get money out of you. Why can't you just accept that? They're hookers.”

“She says she loves me...”

He started laughing again and I felt my cheeks go red. He took his glasses off and began to polish them with a grubby handkerchief. “Pete, that's what they all say.”

I wanted to slap his smug face, but I didn't. I tried to reason with him. I explained that she could earn much more money if she was dancing and going with customers, that it had been her idea to work as a waitress.

“The waitresses go short-time, too,” he said. "Some of the waitresses get screwed more than the dancers. It's the black and white uniforms, makes them look like schoolkids. Big turn on,

that."

“But Joy's...”

“Different,” he finished for me. “Yeah, you said.”

“Look, Damien, I know what you're saying, but do you know for sure that Joy has had her bar fine paid? Have you looked at her card?”

“I don't have to,” he said. "Look, have you any idea how many guys like you come into this office and tell me exactly the same story as you've told me? I had a Danish guy here last week.

He'd fallen in love with a girl, Need, the one with big knockers. Now, Need's been hooking since she was twelve years old and she's almost thirty now. She's got three kids and a Thai husband who hits her around. But this Danish guy, he comes in here convinced that she's the Virgin bloody Mary. Says he's going back to Denmark and wants Need to work as a waitress while he's away. So Need winks at me and I say, sure, fine, whatever. He gets back on the plane, she takes off her kit and starts dancing again. He'll probably send her money every month and she'll give it to her old man so that he can go out and get drunk and slap her around."

I started to say that Joy was different, but even before the words left my mouth I could see him start to grin.

“Look, you've more than a hundred girls working here, do you actually know which one Joy is?” I asked him.

He put his glasses back on and blew his nose on his handkerchief. “Saw her a couple of weeks ago and I asked the mamasan who the pretty new waitress was. She said it was Joy, that she used to dance.” “But it's not as if you know her personally?”

“She's not one that I've fucked, if that's what you mean.”

"No, that's not what I mean. I mean, maybe, just maybe, she's keeping her side of the bargain.

Maybe she hasn't had her bar fine paid."

He shook his head.

“Look, do me a favour,” I said. “Just have a look at her card. You don't have to tell me what's on it, but maybe when you've looked at it you'll realise that she is different. And if her bar fine has been paid, all you've got to say is that your advice to me hasn't changed.”

He sat back in his chair. “Suppose I do that,” he said. “What do you plan to do?”

“I'll walk away,” I said. “If I'm sure that she's lied, I'll walk away.”

“You won't be able to,” he says. “You'll tell her that I showed her the card, and she'll give you any one of a hundred excuses why she went out. She was sick and paid her own bar fine, she went out to eat with friends, blah blah blah. She'll convince you that you're mistaken, then I'll have a riot on my hands when she tells everyone that I let you see her card.”

“I promise you, Damien, on my life, that I won't tell her.”

He picked up a chipped mug and sipped something brown. He put the mug down. “If I look at her card, I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

"If I see what I know I'm going to see on that card, I want you to never talk to her again.

Forget about her."

“No problem,” I said. “I've got to go to Cambodia next week. Phnom Penh. I just won't tell her when I'm getting back.”

He looked at me for several seconds and I thought he was going to change his mind, then he pushed himself up out of his chair and went over to the rack of time cards. He ran his finger down them. “What number is she?” he asked. “There are a few Joys here.”

“Server 127,” I said.

He found the card and sat down. He studied it, then turned the card over. He put the card in the top drawer of his desk as if he was scared that I'd make a grab for it. My heart was racing, but I tried to look as unconcerned as possible. “Pete, I don't see anything on Joy's card that changes my opinion.”

For a few seconds I couldn't breathe, it was as if a steel belt had been tightened around my chest. I forced a smile. “Right,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

I didn't want his pity. “Nah, it doesn't matter. I guess I knew anyway.”

I laughed but the sound caught in my throat. I don't know why but I started telling him about the DJ, about how I thought it was Joy's husband but that she'd denied it. Damien nodded.

“That's him,” he said. “The mamasan said he came back to Bangkok with her.”

I stood up. “Yeah, I knew I shouldn't trust her. It's like you said, they're all hookers.”

He scribbled something down on a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was an address. He leered at me. "When you're in Phnom Penh, try this place. They've got the prettiest Vietnamese hookers you've ever seen. All of 'em under fourteen. Great place Phnom Penh, real Wild West.

Like Bangkok was thirty years ago."

I smiled, trying hard not to show how upset I was inside. I shook his hand and left.

DAMIEN That Pete, what a sad fuck. He'd obviously fallen for the girl in a big way and when he came into the office he was wound tighter than a watch on a wanker's wrist. I could see it in his eyes. He was trying to be cool, trying to pretend he wasn't that worried, but he kept fidgeting in his seat and a couple of times I thought he was going to cry.

I didn't know Joy, I've more than a hundred girls in Zombie alone, probably up to a thousand working for me in Nana in total. Me and my partners have seven bars, and Zombie is just about the biggest and most profitable. The girls there are the best, they're the prettiest and the hardest working. I didn't know Joy personally, though I'd seen her. Beautiful girl, great body. Had that young, unsullied look that I go for, but her skin was too dark for my taste. Her sister I know,

Sunan. One of the hardest working girls in the Plaza, is Sunan. Two or three times a night, every night. Her sister, Mon, was another good worker. They were a good source of new girls, too.

Every few months they'd go back to their village, show off their new clothes and their gold, and they'd come back with three or four new girls who wanted to work in the bars. Sunan would teach them how to dance, how to put make up on, how to talk to customers. Some of the girls we get are so shy they wouldn't say boo to a goose, they dance all right but then they sit together in groups talking to their friends. But the girls Sunan brings down know how to go up to a customer and introduce themselves. It doesn't take much, all they have to do is smile and say hello. The customer'll do the rest. Sunan tells them how to act with customers, how to get them to pay the bar fine, and how much to ask for afterwards. I tell you, Sunan should think about starting up a bargirl school. She'd be a great mamasan, too. I've asked her a few times but she knows she can earn more dancing. How much does she earn? The bar pays her about six thousand baht, she earns another six thousand or so from her share of bar drinks, and her bar fine gets paid an average of thirty times a month, I guess, so she gets another three thousand from that. So there's fifteen thousand baht right there, which is more than a teacher gets. Plus there's the money she gets from the punters themselves. I doubt she does it for less than fifteen hundred baht, so that'd be another forty-five thousand baht. That means Sunan's probably pulling in sixty thousand baht a month, which is about ten times the national average wage. Pretty good, huh.

Now, one look at Joy's card and I could see that she'd been at it. Her bar fine had been paid five times during the previous month, and she'd been to the short-time room twice. I've never understood why anyone would want to take a girl into the short-time room, but it gets used half a dozen times a night. It's a horrible place, a room without windows or aircon, a single bed with no pillow and a sheet that gets changed once in a blue moon, and a wastepaper basket for the used condoms and tissues. We charge four hundred baht every time the room's used, and punters seem happy to pay it. They could go down the road to the Penthouse and for the same amount of money have a night in a decent room with a TV and clean sheets and mirrored ceilings. The girls love it, though, because it's quick and easy money. They don't even have to get changed.

Pete was asking for trouble trying to change Joy. She's a hooker, she was born a hooker and she'll die a hooker. The best thing for him to do is just to accept that fact. Pay her, screw her, and let her go home to her husband. When he gets bored with her he can find another regular girl. No one gets hurt.