KILLING PLATO (A Jack Shepherd crime thriller) by Jake Needham Page B

with me?”
    “Where do you have in mind?” I asked.
    “There’s a bar a couple of my boys like to hang out in. Up where the action is. I’ve never been there before, but they said it’s called the Blue Lotus and it’s right at the beginning of a street called Soi Crocodile. You know where that is?”
    Soi Crocodile, huh? Indeed I did know where that was.
    Maybe my evening was about to get interesting after all.

FOURTEEN
    IF PATONG IS the rat’s ass of Phuket, which it is, I don’t know what you can call Soi Crocodile.
    Objectively speaking, Soi Crocodile is one oh="yo>the rat&rf a half-dozen tiny streets near the center of Patong, all of which are lined with open-air bars where hordes of foreigners hang out every day and every night drinking an awful lot of beer. Pretty much Patong’s only real attraction is that thousands of young Thai girls, most of them fresh from tiny villages and poor farms far upcountry, constantly throng those same streets and bars.
    The girls are prostitutes, of course, but on the whole and in a different context, you might be hard-pressed to tell. Instead of the makeup-caked, crack-addled hustlers most western men can spot easily enough back home, these girls are mostly casually dressed and pleasant looking; they are friendly in a way that seems genuine; they laugh and joke easily among themselves; and they respond to even the stupidest comments from the tourists with smiles that appear unfeigned.
    When there are no customers to entertain, the girls eat the food they buy from the street vendors, drink cokes, watch television, listen to music, and gossip among themselves. Occasionally, in a modest effort to improve business one of them might call out, “Hello, handsome man!” or “Come talk me!” to any unattached males who wander into range, but mostly they appear unconcerned with commercial promotion and seem content to let fate shape their prospects.
    Soi Crocodile is one of the little lanes right in the heart of it all, and it is every bit as much a part of the action as are the other little streets in the area. But there is one way in which it is just a tiny bit different.
    The street is known locally as Soi Katoey, the Thai word for the men turned women for which Thailand is, in some circles at least, justly famous. Thailand has achieved international recognition for precious little in its history, but Thai doctors have become universally celebrated for at least one thing: their ability, with a few judicious snips here and there, to alter biological men into women indistinguishable from real ones, except of course that they frequently look a whole lot better.
    Thai
katoeys
are as distant from the lumpy, clumsy transvestites who lurk in the western sexual shadows as doves are from crows. On the whole, they are tall, slim, tanned, and toned. They generally wear stylish dresses and chic, take-me-tonight slingback heels, and they often sport refined jewelry and expensive handbags. They look, almost to a man, like elegant and sophisticated women.
    If CW was going to a bar on Soi Crocodile, I figured he had a huge surprise coming. I really wanted to be around to see him unwrap it, so to speak.
    WALKING TOWARD THE center of Patong we jostled through the evening crowds along Beach Road. On the whole, these were mostly people I wouldn’t have wanted to invite back to meet Anita.
    “Jesus, Slick,” CW muttered, reading my mind, “is this the parade of the fucking mutant tourists, or what?”
    A man who looked either Indian or Pakistani abruptly materialized out of the crowd right in front of CW, grabbed his hand before he could pull it away, and began pumping energetically.
    “Nice suit for you, sir? Welcome! Welcome! Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
    CW tried to extract his hand, but the little man wouldn’t turn it loose.
    “Best price for you, sir. Very best price.”
    “No thanks.”
    “But, sir, I am waiting for you. Welcome! Here is my card.”
    When the tailor held out a business