“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you. I was just being frank, that’s all.”

“No, no, no.” He raises both palms to press his cheeks. Then in a whispered hiss: “My mother was too. That’s what has made me so petty. It was because I let rip with the sex instinct in a previous lifetime that my mother was a whore in this one. I feel I can never express who I really am in this lifetime. Even I think it’s weird the way I obsess about my car, when it’s just an ordinary Toyota. How can you rise above your karma so easily?”

Buddha knows where this might have led if Marli-stage name: Madonna-did not come over to join us. She is joined in turn by Sarli, Nik, Tonni, and Pong. They all once worked at my mother’s bar, where I still occasionally work as papasan. Girls grow out of dancing on stage at an early point in their careers; most don’t like to do it after the age of about twenty-seven, at which point they graduate to less strenuous forms of self-promotion, often going freelance right here at the Rose Garden. I introduce them all to Sukum, who, I know, is trying hard not to see his mother in their faces.

“Sonchai, so long since we’ve seen you, what are you doing here? Are you looking for girls to dance at the Old Man’s Club?”

“Sonchai, dear papasan, will you buy me a drink?”

I order beers all around. “I’m working,” I say. “You must have heard about the farang murder at the flophouse on Soi Four/Four?”

They all immediately drop their eyes-whether out of respect for the memory of a valued customer or fear of bad luck is hard to say. I nod to Sukum, who fishes out a navy-blue passport with an eagle on the front. It is hardly necessary to show them the photo.

“We were so shocked.”

“He was such a good customer.”

“He came about four times a year. He was a good payer. A really nice guy.”

“What was great was the way he would usually take two or more of us, so it was fun.”

“He was funny about being fat. He would say, You get on top, honey, I’m scared of flattening you. He wasn’t, you know, the other kind of farang.”

“That’s right. He wasn’t neua.” Neua means “north;” we use it to describe people who suffer from a superiority complex.

“Did he take you to a luxury apartment or a flophouse?” Sukum wants to know. He still can’t get it out of his head that someone would waste money on a flophouse; it wasn’t as if the farang had a wife or live-in lover back at the penthouse.

“It would depend. He would get the hots for a girl sometimes for a month, then he would take her back to his penthouse on Soi Eight. But most of the time, when he was just playing the field, he would use the flophouse. I guess he didn’t want people at the penthouse to know about his appetite.”

“It was incredible. Of course, he used the blue pill a lot. He was one of those farang who always have to stick their dicks in someone or other. He was an 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.

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 past Starbucks with the girls hanging around outside-it’s a favorite farang haunt, after all-keep the bookshop on our right and the martial-arts/porn stalls on our left, then find ourselves waiting at the famous intersection with Soi 4. All trades around here-the bars, the bookstalls, the hairdressers, the food stalls, the clothing stalls, the DVD stalls, the hotels, and the cops-thrive thanks to the cornucopia of business opportunities created by the most ancient profession. The girls on these streets might be despised in the larger society, but you’ll find most locals being polite to them. Looking a gift horse in the mouth is a definite no-no for anyone sensitive to the nuances.

We manage to cross the road at considerable risk to our lives, say hello to our brother cops manning the traffic-control box on the other side of the Suk, then pass the bars and cooked-food stalls of Soi 4 before we finally turn into Subsoi 4. At the flophouse we find two bored security guards sitting outside at a tubular steel table playing Thai checkers with bottle tops. They don’t challenge us, so we pass on into the reception area, which uses a minimum of space on the ground floor. The katoey behind the desk is tall, maybe six feet, seriously overweight (long hair tied back in a ponytail; mascara and rouge), and of the kind whose personality did not improve after he had his goolies cut off. He is also smart, sees we are cops before we open our mouths, and decides not to help.