“It worked, but in this case there was a downside,” I oblige.

Vikorn raises a finger. “The spirit was female.”

I hold my palms together and raise them to my eyes in a wai to acknowledge his penetrating understanding while he resumes his seat behind the big desk. “Will you help him?”

He makes an expansive gesture with both hands. “Queers are a Western import. Katoeys are as Thai as lemongrass. I’ll protect him as long as I can, but we’ve got to get him more suitable employment.”

“He’s going to start taking the estrogen soon. It could be tough.”

Vikorn grins. “A male cop with tits? Is he going to have the full operation?”

“He’s not sure. Anyway, he doesn’t have the money right now.”

“So why the hell did he become a cop?”

“Same reason I did. He didn’t want to be a whore or a gangster.”

Vikorn nods. “I understand. Has he found an Elder Sister yet?”

“No. He’s asked me to talk to my mother about that.”

A thoughtful pause. “I don’t want him working the bars. Is he going to dance?”

“That’s what he wants to do. He’s looking for sponsorship. He practices all the time. He loves classical Thai, the Ramakien.”

He turns his head to one side. “I had a cousin who was a katoey. He died of AIDS. Actually, he wasn’t particularly promiscuous, but it was in the early eighties, before anyone knew about that disease. He was unlucky, I guess. Give young Lek one word of advice. If he doesn’t have the operation, tell him not to use Scotch tape. It’s unyielding and causes terrible sores over time. That woven elasticized plaster they use in hospitals is much better. Okay, you can go.”

As I stand up to leave: “Is there anything you’re not an authority on?”

For my exit he offers a dazzling smile.

When I get back to the bar, I find that my mother, who is nowhere to be seen, has abandoned control of the sounds to one of the girls:

I pinch you on the bum

I pinch you on the bum

You pinch me on the bum

You pinch me on the bum

Challenging stuff. I quickly switch to Chopin’s nocturnes and almost gasp with relief: real music is a taste I developed under the tutelage of a German who hired my mother for a few months in Munich when I was a kid-and who later ended up in our famous Bangkok high-security prison called Bang Kwan. My eleventh and twelfth years were crucial for me. My mother’s trade was unusually itinerant, and we spent nearly all the time abroad, in Paris and Munich where her sophisticated customers undertook duties as surrogate fathers. (I learned to love French cuisine and Proust, Beethoven and Nietzsche, Ermenegildo Zegna and Versace, croissants at Les Deux Magots and sunsets over the Pont Neuf in high summer, Strauss played by men in lederhosen while drinking steins of beer in a Munich Biergarten.) Unlike my mother, who loves the Doors (for reasons both sentimental and historic: Apocalypse Now is the only DVD she owns that is not a bootleg), I don’t much like rock or pop.

I lie down on one of the benches and more or less doze off until my mother walks through the door looking fresh as a daisy. We sit down at one of the tables while she smokes a cigarette and listens to my chat with Vikorn about young Lek.

“He doesn’t know any older katoey himself?”

“No. He’s fresh out of the police academy, and before that he’d never left Isaan. All he knows about katoeys is what he’s seen on TV and what he experiences of his own feelings.”

Nong shakes her head. “Poor kid. That’s a tough row to hoe. He won’t survive without the right Elder Sister, someone to initiate him, show him the ropes, warn him. He’s such a beautiful boy, too.” A sigh. “Katoeys got hit the worst during the AIDS epidemic. I used to know thousands. We girls used to drink with them after hours in the old days-they can be hilarious, terrific fun, but totally chaotic. No attention spans at all, worse than girls. He needs a retired katoey in her thirties or older, someone who made the whole thing work for her, big time. I want his role model to be a big success financially-that’s the only way to save him from what comes after the initial euphoria. We have to save him from the despair of those middle years. Katoeys don’t age well without a lot of dough.”

Mother and son exchange a glance.

My jaw drops. “You can’t be serious?”

“Why not Fatima?”

“She’s a killer.”

My mother blinks. “What’s that got to do with the price of fish?”

“But that’s how she got her money, that’s how she made it big, by killing her lover.”

“By killing her lover and using her smarts at the same time. Exactly what your little angel needs for his arrival on earth.”

6

Breakfast time: the street is full of early-morning cooked-food stalls. I’m pretty hungry, so I choose kuay jap, a thick broth of Chinese mushrooms and pork lumps steaming with nutrition as the hawker dips and raises his ladle, a great writhing knot of kuaytiaw phat khii mao (literally “drunkard’s fried noodles”: a stir-fry of rice noodles, basil, chicken, and a crimson tide of fresh sliced chiles), a single fried trout with naam plaa (a transcendentally pungent sauce made of fermented anchovy-an acquired taste, farang), a glass of cold, clear nongaseous water from the world-famous Krung Thep faucets, a 7-Up-and I’m all set. (Dollar fifty the lot, no charge for ice and water.)

Back in the bar I see from our computer diary that we are expecting a tour group. That’s what we’ve decided to call them, anyway. We don’t accept clients in gangs anymore, but there are about a hundred who benefited from our former advertising and arrive every three months or so in clumps of aging punks. These particular guys I remember well as representing maybe the DDD level of the retiree market.

A call from Immigration at Bangkok International Airport: one of the officers wants to confirm a statement that I have booked hotel rooms for a group of twenty old men who have been giving the Thai Air stewardesses a hard time for the past fifteen hours. They are all drunk.

“Yes,” I confirm.

“You think you can control them? Or d’you want us to refuse entry?”

“They’ll be fine.”

A grunt of disbelief, but he lets them through. A couple of hours later a bald, stooping sixtysomething giant in a black cowboy hat with silver studs, skintight stone-washed denims, and irrefutably genuine rawhide boots bursts through our swing doors, followed by a mob of similar rejects from the farang subconscious.

A whoop. “Sonchai, my man! Hey guys, here he is, Mr. Viagra himself. Gimme the coldest beer you got, kid.” Leaning forward, whispering with urgency: “Score the dope like I told you in my e-mail?” A side whisper from mouth-corner to his closest aides: “What d’you say, fellas, a few beers before we get into the joints? Sonchai won’t let us smoke on the premises, so we’ll have to take it back to the hotel-or bribe him to let us smoke upstairs.”

“Oh, he takes bribes? That’s just like the cops on Freak Street in the old days.”

“I don’t take bribes,” I say.

“That’s right, behave yourselves and act civil, this is a Buddhist country and Sonchai here is a yogi-he meditates every day.” Turning to me: “So you got it?”

I reach behind the bar and hand over a package about three inches by two by one, wrapped in brown paper. My mother and I both decided that no way was the bar ever going to sell narcotics, not even ganja, but Colonel Vikorn, after his first glimpse of this gang, decided that any tranquilizer was better than geriatric freaks on alcohol tearing the place apart. The old giant hands over two thousand baht (Nong took over the pricing-that’s roughly a thousand-percent markup), then grabs the package and disappears into the men’s room, together with a few others in the know. I remember that Lou Reed is a great favorite with this crowd and send Transformer blasting through the sound system. In less than ten minutes the big cowboy and his cronies are emerging from the toilets. Lalita has just arrived and recognizes the gang from last time but cannot remember anyone’s name. A brisk wave: “Hi guys, sabai dee mai?”