The first course I tasted at Rynn was wholly unexpected: a bowl of icy cold summer sweet strawberries in a spicy dressing ($13), which I might have thought was a dessert. Instead, along with some Thai cocktails, it was a dish whose sweetness, sourness, seasonings and iciness was a fine spur to the palate and for all that was to come. I was hungry before I tasted it, then I was ravenous.
         Rynn, located amidst the myriad storefront restaurants in the East Village, is the labor of love conceived by Natchaya K., Serena T. and Hataichanok P., who serves as chef. I’m no longer surprised to find all female-run restaurants in New York, and this is evidently a very personalized space, with Natchaya and Serena hosting, serving and advising on a menu full of familiar and novel dishes, showing the same genteel rapport with guests I experienced in Thailand.
         The name Rynn “รินน์” means memories, specifically the three women’s memories of growing up in Thailand, which are translated in the colors and imagery of the dining room, right down to the dishware and glasses. A white pot of big flowers is set on the table. There are sea blue banquettes and bentwood chairs, a short bar to the right as you enter, where Serena concocts excellent cocktails, and a mural of a Thai couple enjoying one of them. It’s a small place and I was there when the place was fairly empty, so I couldn’t gauge the noise level, except to say that playing western pop music is hardly conducive to memories of Old Bangkok.
         Our party of four asked Hataichanok to make up a menu for us, family style, and we were richly awarded from the start with an array of beautifully presented and highly colorful foods, all in various ceramic plates.
         Fresh tender shrimp and pork la tiang were sauteed and cuddled in a delicate, pretty mesh of egg seasoned with pepper, coconut palm sugar and fish sauce  ($15). The dish is based on an 1800 poem called Kap He Chom Khruaeang Khao Wan, composed by the crown prince (who would become King Rama II) in praise of many savory dishes that evoked his love of Princess Bunrot.
         Frying is a delicate craft in Thailand, as done here with the crispy, garlicky chicken wings peek gai with a roasted rice dressing ($13). A delicious, plump steamed dumpling called kanom jeeb ($12) was filled with minced shrimp, crab and chicken. Rice crackers are swept with roasted chili paste ($10) and go well with everything.
         The broth of tom yum ta lay ($24) with shrimp, calamari and fish was not particularly flavorful, though helped by adding seasoning on your own.
         If you must have beef, almost always imported in Thailand, the nua yang jaew ribeye, a dish from Northeastern Thailand, takes well to its sweet-sour marinade and basil sauce ($30), but I loved the pang ped of roasted duck with pang curry and roti ($26). On the same level of high flavor were the fat crispy softshell crabs pu karee ($32) with a sumptuous golden yellow turmeric-colored crabmeat curry. Crab fried rice ($22) is another terrific dish using the crustacean. Maybe, just maybe, best of all was the rich,  wonderfully flavorful braised pork belly ($26), braised for five hours with anise-like five spices and shiitake mushrooms.
         For whatever reason, there are some self-appointed aficionados of Thai cookery who say that the ubiquitous pad thai of shrimp and noodles is a westernized cliché. But when I dined around Bangkok I found nothing could be further from the truth. Pad dishes were everywhere and beloved for their variety the same way pasta is in Italy. At Rynn there are four (all $18), with shrimp in tamarind sauce; pork and wide noodles in sweet soy sauce; kee mao with shrimp and calamari; and kua gai with wide rice noodles in light soy sauce. It’s tough to choose among them.
         Desserts at Rynn are pleasant at the end of the meal, the best a plate of ripe mango with butterfly pea sticky rice ($15).
         Whenever I’ve been away from Thai food for too long, I think of certain dishes I’ve always enjoyed. When I think of Rynn and the women who work so hard to define their cuisine, they and Rynn will now always be a part of my own memories of Bangkok and Thai food.

Open daily for lunch and dinner.

            Katie’s next visit was to a woman named Sharon Burns.
         “She’s a prostitute,” Sara Garrison told her. “Strictly a call girl, though, not on the streets. Goes under a false name, works for a pimp, one of the nicer ones, I hear, if there is such a thing. She was once quite beautiful, but she’s been knocked about over the past ten years and knows her time in the sex trade is goin’ to end someday soon. She told me she’d like to set up her own house, said she wanted ‘classy girls’ who needed her help.”
         “And was she badly treated in the Laundries?” asked Katie.
         “Yes, but more important to her story is that she got pregnant by a priest who’d visit the Laundries. The baby was, of course, taken away from her. Nothin’ happened to the priest. He’s still in the parish.”
         Katie met Sharon Burns at her two-bedroom flat, which she shared with two other women, paid for by their pimp. The flat itself was in fair shape, cheaply decorated but clean, the way the pimp demanded it be maintained for visiting clients.
         “The other girls are not here, so we can talk,” said Sharon, who looked older than her mid-thirties, the same age as Katie. Sharon was about five-six, her hair bright red—“The clients like that real ‘Oy-rish’ look,” she said—and she wore little make-up besides lipstick. She was dressed in sweats and a Guinness t-shirt.
         Sharon launched straight in, before Katie actually asked a question.
         “So you want to know about the murders, or about me? I know you’re writin’ an article for an American magazine, so you’ll need some colorful local characters like me, right? I’ll tell you what I know, but I’m not allowin’ any fuckin’ photographer in here.”
         “I’ve got nothing to do with photographers.”
        "No Jimmy Olsen hangin’ on your arm? You married?”
         “No.”
        “Nope.”
         “Seems a shame, girl like you. For me marriage was never an option. Anyway I learned to hate men a long while ago.”
         “And women?”
          “Case by case basis. You want some tea or somethin’?”
         Katie shook her head and asked, “Well, can you tell me about your own experience at the Laundries?”
         “By now you’ve heard it all, if you’ve been talkin’ to Sara. You’ve seen other girls?”
         Katie said she had and mentioned their names.
       “I knew some of the younger ones. Names are a little foggy. We all suffered to different degrees at the hands of the bloody Sisters of Charity. I got in there ass backwards. I wasn’t a whore—just caught in bed with my boyfriend, he was an altar boy—and I didn’t go in pregnant, I got pregnant while I was in the Laundries. Good Father Edwin Donnelly, the fat fuck! Of course, he was not the only one who—what do people say when they’re being polite about fuckin’? ‘Had his way with me?’”
         “Can I ask how many priests?”
         “Over the six years I was there? I don’t remember, maybe ten. They came from outside of Dublin. Some of them from other countries.”
         “And this went on right under the Sisters’ noses?”
         Sharon laughed, but only a little.
         “Well, Katie, I’ll tell you. They had this little game they played where they’d make each other believe there was nothin’ wrong with fuckin’ a Laundry girl since she was already spoiled meat. That’s what one of the good fathers called me. We were going to go to hell anyway, so fuckin’ us was what we deserved, part of our penance.  The good Sisters turned their backs and let the bastards have their way.”
         Having read and heard of such behavior, Katie found herself becoming nauseous when faced with a woman who had repeatedly been through it.
         “You said you thought some of these priests came from outside Dublin and Ireland?”
         “Absolutely. They spoke like Aussies or Americans or Brits. The nuns told us, ‘Oh, we have a visitor comin’ today from far away.’ Then we‘d be left alone with them in a room assigned to them for the night.  Some of them would bring us lipstick, told us to put it on, even tellin’ us we looked like angels. Then they’d hold us down and always tried to muffle us so we wouldn’t scream. I once bit one bastard’s fingers so hard he had to go to the hospital. Wish it had been his prick!”
         “I know this is going to sound condescending,” said Katie, “but you’ve got every right to loathe these people. Did you ever tell the police?”
    Sharon laughed again. “The Garda? There were a few of them in on the whole bloody thing! They’d tell us, ‘That nice Sergeant O’Rourke is comin’ over today, ladies, and you’d be lucky to marry a man like that if you ever get out.’ Bunch of snortin’ pigs. So, my answer to your questions is, no, tellin’ the Garda what was going on was like pissin’ in the wind.”
        “And how did you get out?”
       Sharon turned glum. “After the baby arrived, the Sisters decided it would be some kind of sin to be lettin’ the priests back in to fuck me. The priests knew it too. Must’ve felt guilty. Time went on and I think the times were closin’ in on them. Better to let me go and hope I wouldn’t make a royal stink on the outside.”
         “And how did you turn to the life you live now?” said Katie, who couldn’t bring herself to use the word prostitute.
       “You mean become a whore? Why, Katie, I’d been well trained for it! Knew all the positions! All the ways men like it! Either that or get a job in a laundry—maybe self-service, open one myself someday. ‘Twas easier to become a whore and make a lot more money quickly.”
       Katie sensed that Sharon knew the days were growing short for her to make any living in the sex trade.
        Sharon said, “It’ll all be over soon, but I’ve got some money saved up. I've been trying to help some of the girls out on the streets. And I’ve been able to live long enough to see three of the good Sisters sent to hell. That’s been something I never thought I’d see. Thought they’d just die a natural death in their bloody convent, with all the candles around them and the other old hags sayin’ their rosaries over them.”
        “So you have no thoughts as to who might have committed the murders?”
      “A hundred thoughts! When you’ve got a hundred enemies, you’ve got a hundred suspects. I don’t envy you findin’ the ones who acted on their hatred for those nuns. They’ve made a good start.”