Calvino stared at her, then at the other yings. They were all waiting for him to do something. The crying registered a high note. He’d had enough. He turned, set down his camera bag, and slammed a shoulder into the door, breaking it open. Wood splintered. He was the first to go inside. On a chair near the window, a ying sat dressed in a red and blue china doll happy coat. The colors of the happy coat matched those of the neon sign. Nicely stitched above the right breast was the name of the massage parlor, along with a picture of a slender hand. This hand didn’t look like it was clapping. The mamasan shouted at the ying, calling her a stupid water buffalo for not unlocking the door. She inspected the damage, shaking her head. She threatened to fire the crying ying and to deduct the cost of repairs from her pay. Calvino ignored this sideshow of outrage over the costs of a door. On the single bed was a motionless, naked form with legs and arms sprawled out at odd angles. He knelt beside the bed, careful not to rest his knee in the blood.

Her eyes were wide open, still, and glassy. The veins in her wrists had been cut, and the bed was damp from her blood. Looking at her small body it was hard to believe it could have contained so much blood. She appeared to have done a thorough job opening her veins. Some blood had spurted and clotted on her chin and mouth. Sitting on the edge of a chair a couple of feet away, another woman rocked back and forth. Deep inside her own world of grief, she ignored the mamasan’s threats.

Calvino estimated from the temperature of the ying’s body that she had been dead for more than an hour. The air-conditioner hummed softly in the background. The yings watched as Calvino examined a heavy necklace, thick as a rope, she wore around her throat. It could have been gold or gold-plated. Other than the necklace, the naked girl was still warm. Calvino circled around the end of the bed. Her clothes were neatly folded on a table beside the bed. He squatted close to the body, watching that he didn’t step in the pool of blood. He started with the face and without touching or moving the body, inspected the corpse. He found no bruising. No evidence of a struggle. If she had been fighting for her life, there would have been evidence of a struggle on the body. Skin under the fingernails and black and blue impressions were trademarks of violence. He examined her arms, neck, face, and legs for a sign. He looked for ghost fingerprints on the skin. What he found was that the dead ying’s skin was smooth, unblemished, without a pimple or mark. Her body appeared to have been, until now, in perfect health; she was a young, fit, beautiful woman, who without the blood all around her might be mistaken for someone lost in deep sleep. Her clothes were neatly folded as if ready for her awakening.

The mamasan told him that the dead ying had had no customers the entire day. She’d locked herself in the room and refused to come out. The mamasan had a spare key, but the ying had locked the deadbolt from the inside. Not that it much mattered. The girl was already dead.

As he rose back up, sharp bolts of pain shot volley after volley, as if his shoulder were an artillery range. He grabbed his shoulder, massaged it. A ying who had been watching from the doorway silently moved forward—the mamasan had signaled to her—and massaged Calvino’s shoulder. One of the ying’s who followed him inside the room offered him a glass of water. He looked at the ying and waved away the glass of water. He turned to the dead woman on the small bed, lying in a shroud of rumpled sheets. Calvino was more interested in the ying, deep lines of grief etched on her face, who sat sobbing near the window. The small room had filled with the other massage yings.

“Mamasan, keep the girls out of here. Call the police.”

He looked around the room. None of them moved. He shouted for them to all get out of the small room. The VIP room smelled of sour som tam, the Isan dish made from hot chili peppers, raw papaya, cherry tomatoes, and fermented fish or crab. An overwhelming stench of garlic made the room suffocating.

“Have you phoned the police?” he asked the mamasan. The garlic and cigarette smoke made his eyes water. He wiped tears away with the back of his hand.

“Police no good,” she said.

Sometimes a mamasan could be so right and so wrong at the same time.