A young ying in a polo shirt and loose-fitting pants shot out of the shadows. Her face, a tear-streaked mask twisted by fear, looked terrified. She ambushed Calvino, grabbed him, pulling at his arm, the arm attached to the shoulder with the shooting pain. He cried out but his wail of hurt didn’t stop her. Long red fingernails dug into his arm. She tightened her grip, dragging him along until they reached the front of the massage parlor. Then she pushed him through the entrance and into the swamp-green tiled reception room, and walked him down a corridor with orchid wallpaper, under a permanent set of flashing Christmas tree lights, and up a flight of stairs. The décor could have been copied from McPhail’s room, exhibiting, like his friend’s home, a gangster’s flair for year-round Christmas.

Calvino’s office was on the fourth floor of the building. The office below his had been vacant for more than a year. The One Hand Clapping massage parlor used the first floor to hook customers before reeling them in to the second floor for a massage. After dark, the red and blue neon sign spelled out the name in cursive script above the door. Some might have called it artistic. A neon image of a woman’s hand, the fingers splayed; each finger lit up, red neon for the fingernails, one light at a time until the entire hand was visible, glowing out of the blackness. With slender fingers this sensual hand beckoned to visitors.

When the sign was switched off, the hand didn’t move. But even when the neon sign was on, the hand didn’t look like it was clapping; it took a leap of imagination to see that. The name and the hand were the first things Calvino’s clients saw when they stood at the staircase leading to Calvino’s fourth-floor office. The massage parlor was one of many small businesses, including his own, which like a garden of perennials, had the neighborhood guessing which one would tank halfway through the hot season. Ratana, his secretary, prayed that the massage parlor, as the newest bud on that vine, would not blossom.

A couple of clients had been amused by the presence of One Hand Clapping below the office of a private eye. Others stopped in their tracks, turned, and walked out of the sub-soi, phoning later to cancel their appointments, saying they had resolved their problems. A massage parlor on the first floor was hurting his business. Tuesday would be the third-month anniversary of the massage parlor’s opening. Business hadn’t been good in that period. Yings had stood out front, handing out discount coupons to potential customers. His clients sometimes would lay one on his desk and ask if the discount applied to his services. Life was a series of small humiliations.

The area in front of the massage parlor, empty and quiet, normally bustled with yings advertising their services. But at the moment it was deserted, except for the ying who now had him in an arm lock and was pleading for help, her eyes wild, her hair flying as she pushed against him. She was shivering, her teeth chattering, as if she’d just stepped out of a butcher’s freezer.

In the corridor the mamasan waited, a lit cigarette held between the fingers of her trembling hand. Her nails had been freshly painted lizard green. The mamasan ignored the ying who had dragged Calvino down a corridor and stopped before a door. She knocked and yelled but no one inside answered.

“It’s locked,” she said.

“You don’t have a key? Come on. You must have a spare somewhere.” He looked around at the blank faces. Business at the massage parlor had been bad, but this was beyond a slump. He noticed there wasn’t a single customer on the premises. A deserted massage parlor was an omen, he told himself. Every time he’d ignored one of the universe’s signals to beware, he’d regretted it.

The mamasan couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years old but had the bitter determination of a combat field commander waiting for an attack. “The door’s locked from the inside. Help me open the door.”

“With what? You need a key to open it.” He set down his bag and rubbed his shoulder, still throwing off an electrical storm of pain.

She dropped the cigarette into an ashtray, letting it burn. Then she set the ashtray down on a table stacked with white towels. “No key. No time. I think a big problem inside. We must break it,” she said.

The royal “we” meant the singular farang. Gimp shoulder or not, he was a man, wasn’t he? Mamasans had an unrefined way to test a man’s valor.