The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,35
addict for sure.”
“If you did a good job he would tip double, sometimes triple.”
“What’s a good job?” Sukum asks with sudden urgency.
“Oh, nothing particular. Some customers can be sensitive. He was one of those. Maybe he was a bit pathetic, you know? He always wanted you to like him, maybe even love him, when you knew it was only for a couple of hours and then he’d want the next one to love him. If you did it in that way, though, like you were a real lover and not just a twenty-minute fuck, he would pay double. After a while every girl here knew that about him, so we all turned into passionate lovers when he hired us. It was kind of fun in a way.”
“Even in a group he was like that?”
“Oh, yes. Once on his birthday he broke his own rule and took a whole bunch of us back to his penthouse. It had a giant Jacuzzi, and we all got in with him and he was like the emperor of China with his adoring harem around him. There were ten of us altogether, the bar was almost deserted.” Titters at this.
“Did he, ah, do it with all ten?” Sukum wants to know.
Marli frowns in concentration. “I’m not sure. I know he screwed me that night.”
“And me.”
“And me.”
“And me.”
“That only makes four,” Sukum says with a kind of relief.
“But we all gave him blow jobs. That was standard.”
“He wasn’t into any kind of sadism, or masochism?” I ask.
All the girls shake their heads, one after the other. “He was a totally normal sex addict. He never talked about his life back in California, but you got the feeling it was pretty miserable. He was the kind you feel sorry for and want to help, you know? Not the aggressive type at all.”
“Real sex addicts never are. I mean, the ones who act it out like that.”
“That’s right. It’s the serious ones you have to be careful about, the ones who probably masturbate all the time and get all intense and stuck on one girl. The ones who fall in love are always the dangerous ones. I wouldn’t think he ever needed to masturbate in his life. He was so rich, there was always someone to do it for him.”
I let a couple of beats pass while we all drink beers, except Sukum, who sticks to mineral water. “Well,” I say, “who has been with him this week?”
Sukum and I watch intently while the girls all exchange looks and shrugs. “None of us. We hadn’t seen him in here for a couple of months, even though we knew he was in Bangkok because we used to see him in the street.”
“With girls?”
“No, but you can bet he was using another bar. No way he could live without sex.”
All this time Pong has been playing with the American’s passport, because she was the last to look at it, and Sukum has yet to ask for it back. To break the silence, Pong says, “Look at this giant visa, it takes up a whole page. It’s really beautiful. And there’s another. And another. I can’t read English. What country is it for?”
I grab the passport to examine the visa. “The Kingdom of Nepal,” I say.
14
There’s no reason to connect the dead American with Tietsin just because he visited Nepal a few times. You need to be qualified in the finer nuances of superstition to understand my frame of mind when we leave the Rose Garden and head for the flophouse on Soi 4/4. What the circumstantial evidence is pointing at, you see, is my personal connection with Nepal. The cosmos is telling me there’s no way out; I’m stuck with Tietsin and his mantra whether I like it or not. Anyway, I lead Sukum out of the bar and down a narrow alley filled with cooked-food stalls, which cater to the girls who work the bars. There are a few sitting at the tables who eye us as prospects when we pass. One, a new girl I’ve never seen before, tells me she loves me. Sincerity is the first casualty of capitalism.
We emerge out of the alley into Soi 5, which is famous for the Food-land supermarket, which also offers a small eatery, open 24/7 except on Buddhist holidays. (If ever you want to meet a girl when the bars are closed, farang, you know where to go, thanks to Jitpleecheep Personal Tours.) We now emerge into Sukhumvit, turn right