Behind the Night Bazaar by Angela Savage

Author:Angela Savage
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781921834714
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2006-06-04T14:00:00+00:00

Doug Kelly sat at the bar nursing a glass of single malt scotch. His upturned mouth, bald pate and patches of curly hair above his ears gave him a comical air at odds with his conservative clothing and bleak mood. He’d lost enough weight recently to need a belt for his khaki slacks, and his navy-blue shirt hung loose to conceal the bunched-up waist. Liver spots were appearing on the back of his hands. Checking his watch, he looked over the top of his glasses to scan the room.

Most of the tables were occupied and some patrons had already chosen a girl to sit with them. Other girls maintained a steady flow of traffic between the tables and the bar, placing orders for drinks while keeping an eye out for an offer. There was a spotlight over the stage at the end of the bar in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment. The club was doing a roaring trade, but Kelly was distracted.

At times like this he missed Pattaya. The port town had been good to him, but there was too much competition there, and the product had been spoiled. The girls were jaded—most spoke American English and seemed to be studying for diplomas in business—and the customers weren’t getting the service they’d come to expect from Thailand. Kelly blamed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Pattaya was fine when it was just the regular tourists and sailors on R&R. But then the Russians got in on the act and ran their operations like the mafia, undermining the accepted order of things and distorting the market.

The Russians undercut him in every respect but one: they increased the percentage paid in protection money to the Pattaya police. Up until then it had been like dealing with country cops in New South Wales where Kelly had grown up: provided he maintained regular payments things stayed civil, even friendly. After nearly ten years, Kelly thought he’d be exempt from any sudden price hikes. But he’d overestimated his own worth. As soon as the cops saw what the Russians were prepared to pay, they started leaning on Kelly; and in light of his already shrinking profit margins it wasn’t smart to stay.

So he sent out feelers through his networks, and picked up the buzz about Chiang Mai. The girls were reputedly unsophisticated—many coming from hill tribes and neighbouring countries—and the overheads were much lower. He was able to lease a venue in a part of town previously considered off-limits to non-Thais, and although the place needed work—it had holes in the ground for toilets when he took it over—labour was cheap and easy to come by.

There was no shortage of girls, and there appeared to be almost no limit to what customers were prepared to pay for them—the younger, the better. The first time a customer asked Kelly if he could procure ‘a virgin under thirteen’, he baulked. But the man was prepared to pay as much for one night as Kelly made in a week.

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