Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller pr-3

by Timothy Hallinan

  For the second time, Rafferty catches a whiff of something that is quite distinctly not the perfume of paradise. “What am I smelling?”

  The smile, such as it is, reappears. “That’s the other creation myth. You’ll see it in a moment.” The golf cart labors up a hill. “I must warn you, your reception will probably not be a warm one.”

  “I’m not expecting a corsage.”

  “He seems to regret the entire evening. And especially you.”

  “Oh, fuck him,” Rafferty says, and Dr. Ravi’s startled sideways glance makes the cart swerve. “I’ll give him whatever he gives me. And something really stinks. It smells like-”

  The furrows in Dr. Ravi’s brow are so pronounced that he looks like a basset hound. “I’m quite serious. He’s not at his best this morning. I would avoid offending him.”

  “Or what?” Rafferty says. “That’s the question of the day. Or what?”

  Dr. Ravi says, “Oh, dear.”

  “What do you care? I suppose you have to put up with him, but that’s not my problem. And you know what? You don’t actually have to put up with him. There are lots of jobs for a broad-voweled Oxford graduate like you.”

  “ Cambridge.”

  “Just checking.”

  “You really are a disastrous choice. I don’t know what he was thinking.” The cart crests the hill, and Dr. Ravi says, “There it is. Your other creation myth.”

  At the foot of the gradual downslope before them gleams a white marble mansion, a Parthenon of twenty or twenty-five rooms, marble columns and all. In front of it is a small, rickety, blow-the-house-down northeastern farm village: four raggedy stilt houses and a rice paddy half the size of an Olympic swimming pool. A bamboo fence surrounds a churned-up sea of filth in which five mammoth pigs wallow. From the sheer volume of the stink, rich enough to thicken the air to an unwholesome syrup, it’s clear that the pen has not been mucked out in some time. During Rafferty’s weeks in Rose’s village, he has become familiar with pigsties.

  “It’s not usually this bad,” Dr. Ravi says, averting his face from the smell without taking his eyes off the road. The paved track, Rafferty sees, will take them past the pigsty before delivering them to the classical pretension of the front porch. “As I said, he’s got an event tonight, an antimalaria fund-raiser, and lots of the big folks will come. He likes to let it all ripen when they’re here.”

  “My wife says he rubs their noses in it, but I didn’t know she meant literally.”

  “Your wife is Thai?”

  “As Thai as tom yum kung.” Tom yum kung is the national soup, eaten everywhere.

  “Was she poor?”

  Rafferty glances over at Dr. Ravi, but he seems to be giving all his attention to the task of steering the cart. “Very.”

  “Then she’ll appreciate this,” he says as the stench envelops them. “The pigs are named after our last five prime ministers.”

  After the scrambled symbolism of the grounds, the house is just another ordinary Greek Revival mansion roughly the size of the Taj Mahal. Rafferty follows Dr. Ravi across gleaming marble floors until they reach the big, closed double doors at the back of the house.

  Dr. Ravi’s knock, so feathery it wouldn’t wrinkle linen, is answered by something that sounds like a sea lion nailed to a rock. With a final glance that combines haughtiness and supplication, Dr. Ravi opens the door and gestures Rafferty through. Rafferty has the feeling that Dr. Ravi wants to hide behind him.

  The room they enter is square, with walls approximately twenty-five feet long. The focal point is a teak desk inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The far wall is glass, opening onto a sun-soaked vista of plants and flowers. Seated behind the desk, his back hunched defensively against the glare, is Pan. Without looking up, he says, “You.”

  “Always a good guess.” Rafferty bends down to look at Pan’s face. The man cradles his head in both hands as though afraid it will roll off his neck and crack open on the desk. His eyes are deep-sunk and red-rimmed, and a silvery little aura of gray bristle glints on his chin. He has not shaved this morning. The silver dusting his chin looks odd beneath the bootblack sheen of his hair.

  “You didn’t waste any time, did you?” Pan snaps in Thai. Dr. Ravi starts to translate, but Rafferty raises a hand.

  “If you mean the newspapers,” he replies, also in Thai, “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Of course you did.”

  Rafferty says, “Good-bye, and good luck with your hangover.”

  “Wait,” Dr. Ravi says, putting a placating hand on Rafferty’s arm.

  “Like I said in the cart, fuck him. I took all the shit last night I’m willing to take.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t mean to offend you,” Dr. Ravi says with an imploring glance at Pan.

  “Who else?” Pan squeaks. “Who else had anything to gain?”

  Rafferty has a hand on the doorknob. “Any of them. Anybody who wanted a journalist in his pocket.”

  After an evaluative moment, Pan mops his face, lowers his head even farther, and says, “Owwwwww. I hurt.”

  “Tell somebody who cares.”

  “Okay, okay,” Pan says. He closes his eyes in a long wince. “How much not to write it?”

  Rafferty hasn’t expected this, although he realizes he should have. He thinks for a moment and says, “I’m not sure I can have this conversation.”

  “Five hundred thousand baht. Cash, right now.” Pan slowly opens a drawer, like someone pushing his way through a thick liquid, and pulls out a wad of thousand-baht notes.

  “Even disregarding everything else,” Rafferty says, “and there’s a lot to disregard, that’s peanuts.”

  Pan’s face is suddenly a deep, choleric red, and he slams the drawer closed with a sound like a pistol shot. He starts to sputter something, then removes one hand from his temple and actually covers his mouth with his fingers and lets his eyes droop shut. He sits there for a moment, breathing heavily, then lowers his hand, opens his eyes, and says, “All right. You’re angry. Pim told me it was my fault.”

  “Pim?”

  “One of my bodyguards. He said I was terrible.”

  “You were.”

  “I’m not-I’m not a good drinker,” Pan says.

  “You were-” Rafferty turns to Dr. Ravi and says, in English, “I don’t know the Thai. Tell him he was appalling.”

  “I think…” Dr. Ravi swallows. “I think he’s already gotten that message.”

  “A bodyguard can level with him and you can’t? What kind of amanuensis are you?”

  “I’m not an amanuensis. I’m his media director.”

  “Goddamn it,” Pan says in heavily accented English. “Speak Thai. Or translate.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” Dr. Ravi switches to Thai. “The farang said he also sometimes behaves unwisely when he drinks.”

  “I did?” Rafferty asks.

  “He is certain he contributed to the problem.” There is a sheen of perspiration at Dr. Ravi’s hairline.

  Pan’s eyes look like they were pounded into his head solely to hold up the bags of fluid hanging beneath them. They creak around to Rafferty’s. Pan waits, the pink mouth half open, like someone watching to see whether the water will ever boil.

  “I did,” Rafferty says. “We all did.”

  A sigh escapes Dr. Ravi.

  “All of us,” Pan says. He burps and pats the center of his chest. “We all behaved badly.”

  “Fine.”

  Pan nods. “One million baht.”

  Rafferty says to Dr. Ravi, “Am I allowed to sit down or what?”

  “Please, please,” Dr. Ravi says. “Sit.”

  “Thanks.” Rafferty pulls a chair to the edge of the desk. “I need to think for a second.”

  “Fine.” Pan puts his forehead back into his hands. “If I start to snore, wake me up.”

  “How are you going to get in shape for your party tonight?”

  Pan says to the desk, “Steam, sauna, herbal tea, massage, b
oom-boom with triplets from Laos, a few drinks.”

  “Triplets?”

  Pan grunts. “I really only like one of them, but I’m never sure which one it is.”

  “I want to ask you a question.”

  “So?”

  “Why do you care about sex workers with HIV?”

  Pan separates his fingers and peers at Rafferty between them. “Who says I do?”

  “The hundred and fifty of them you’re taking care of.”

  Pan brings the scarred hands back together. All Rafferty can see is the Elvis-black hair and the silver grizzle on the chin. “Who else will?” Pan says.

  “I didn’t think you liked prostitutes.”

  “You were wrong. It’s farang I don’t like. Those women and me, we’re mushrooms, sprung from the same shit. They’re my sisters for life. ‘Whore’ is just a word for something they have to do for a while.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Look at me,” Pan says. He opens his desk drawer, pulls out a tube of lip balm, and applies it. “Look how handsome I am. Am I any better than they are?”

  Rafferty thinks, No, and he’s heard enough. “We need to talk.” He moves his head a quarter of an inch in Dr. Ravi’s direction. “Alone.”

  Pan’s glistening mouth contracts as though he’s about to whistle. Dr. Ravi sputters.

  Pan says, in English, “Go.”

  “Khun Pan,” Dr. Ravi says, “I don’t advise-”

  “If I have to get up and push you out the door,” Pan says, “I’ll probably break your back.”

  “Very well.” Rafferty can hear Dr. Ravi’s lips tighten around the words. Then the door closes.

  Rafferty says, “I’m going to put my life in your hands.”

  Pan is watching the door as though he’s trying to see through it. He seems to be listening, but not to Rafferty. After ten or fifteen seconds, he nods and says, “Why would you do that?”

  “Because my wife thinks you’re a great man.”

  “Women are bad judges of character.”

  “Oh, turn it off. You’ve already outraged me. Give it a rest.”

  Pan puts his fingertips to his temples and rubs circles, about the size of a quarter. “This is about why you don’t want the million baht.”

  “Actually, the million baht confuses me.”

  “Why? A million is a thousand thousands, right? What’s confusing?”

  “I had a threatening call this morning, telling me not to write the book.”

  The circles stop. “You did? Who-Oh, oh, I see. No, not me. I don’t do things that way.”

  “You used to. Back in the old days.”

  “Think about it,” Pan says. “I have someone threaten you this morning-what? Four, five hours ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And then I ask you to come here so I can offer you money. Without even waiting to see if you’ve been scared off. Does that make sense?”

  “Then you have no idea who-”

  “None. But I’ll think about it. So,” Pan says, leaning back in a relaxed position for the first time, “are you going to write the book or not? The million’s still on the table.”

  “It’ll have to stay there. I had two conversations this morning, not one. In the second chat, my life and the lives of my wife and daughter were threatened if I don’t write the book.”

  He jerks forward as though Rafferty had yanked a rope tied around his chest. “If you don’t-”

  “And the book they want me to write is probably not the monument of your dreams.”

  Pan settles back in the chair. The wet-looking eyes go from side to side for a second, as though Rafferty were moving, and then something ignites in them. He leans forward again, almost eagerly, and says, “Who?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re serious.” He tells Pan about the snatch in front of Miaow’s school and what followed.

  “Do you have the list?”

  “Sure.” He hands it across the desk.

  Pan scans it, and the color mounts in his face. “No,” he says. “Not the book I’d want.” His eyes come up from the page. “Do you know any of these people?”

  “I recognize some of the names. Anyone would.”

  “Spiders, the bunch of them.” Pan passes the side of a scarred hand across the page as though he could erase the names. “Bloated, greedy, venomous. They suck people dry and spit out the husks. Strip the land, poison the rivers, turn men into drunks and women into whores. Buy rice at low prices and sell it at high ones. Let people starve and count the money.” He fills his cheeks with air and releases it. Rafferty can smell the sourness of the previous evening’s cognac all the way across the desk.

  Rafferty says, “You’re saying they’re pigs.”

  “Not on their best days,” Pan says. “Give me a good pig any time.”

  “When these people threaten my family, how seriously should I take it?”

  “How seriously do you take breathing?” Pan squirms himself a bit lower in his chair. Then one foot, clad only in a sock, hits the top of the desk. He laces his fingers across his belly and regards his foot critically. “What you said last night,” he says, “about there being a great crime somewhere. That didn’t sound like you were planning to write a fan letter.”

  “I was pissed off. I was surprised you took the bet.”

  Pan drops his eyes to the center of Rafferty’s chest, and then, suddenly, he grins. “I’m really not a good drinker.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “So, just to be clear, you want to get out of writing the book.”

  “With a qualifier,” Rafferty says. “I have to get out of it alive.”

  Pan waves a hand in the air, as though to clear smoke. “Be specific. Let’s say I’m disposed to help you. How would I do that?”

  “To start, I want a list of everybody who will tell me the story you’d want the book to tell. That way, I can let them know you’re cooperating.”

  Pan nods. “And you’ll look busy, if someone is watching.”

  “Someone will be watching.”

  “Yes, they will.” He looks over Rafferty’s shoulder and then raises his eyes to the ceiling. Then he closes them. After a moment he says, “I’m having an event here tonight. Malaria relief.”

  “I heard. How many of the people on that list will be here?”

  “A lot of them.”

  Rafferty says, “Got an extra ticket?”

  Pan opens his eyes, still looking at the ceiling, and says, “Your wife, the one who thinks I’m a great man. Is she from Isaan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “I think it’s absolutely safe,” Rafferty replies, “to say she’s pretty.”

  “Good.” Pan leans back and puts his other foot on the desk. His eyes close again. “You get two tickets.”

  15

  No Witnesses

  He leans against the carved Mesopotamian wall, his shoulders midway between a king’s sandaled feet. After the mausoleum chill of the house, the heat actually feels good. He settles his shoulders against the warm brick, reaches into the rear pocket of his jeans, and pulls out the yellow sheets containing the list he copied on the thirty-sixth floor.

  The list Dr. Ravi gave him at Pan’s command is in his shirt pocket. He opens it, too, and spends three or four minutes going back and forth between them.

  Not a single name appears on both lists.

  He is pushing that around in his mind when the low growl of an engine brings his head up.

  Idling at the curb six or seven feet from him is a carbon-black, dark-windowed SUV, expensively pimped out in customized chrome. The word LEXUS is inscribed on the door in silvery italics eighteen inches high. Deep blue lights blink beneath the chassis and bounce off the asphalt, in time to a throbbing bass line that makes the entire vehicle pulsate. The windows are heavily tinted. The behemoth just sits there, a sort of right-hand drive Death Star energized by techno music. It doesn’t seem to be goi
ng anywhere.

  A movement at the edge of his vision draws his gaze. In the turret beside the gate, the guard has picked up the phone. His eyes, like Rafferty’s, are on the SUV.

  There is no one on the sidewalk. Except for the guard behind his bulletproof glass and whoever is in the SUV, there are, Rafferty realizes, no witnesses.

  Not a comfortable way to look at it.

  He could move, but there’s nowhere to go, just the wall with its frozen kings and hanging gardens, which he can neither climb nor melt into. A look at the guard’s anxious face makes it clear he’s not going to open any doors. Even if Rafferty turns and runs the long block to the corner, the SUV can keep up with him easily, and there’s no place to run to.

  The SUV’s horn is tapped twice, like it’s clearing its throat for attention. A back window goes down five or six inches, and something long and shiny comes through the opening and points at Rafferty. It is the barrel of a rifle.

  Rafferty can feel the precise spot in the center of his chest on which the rifle is trained, as though a stream of cold air were pouring through the muzzle of the gun. He can feel his knees loosen. He rests more of his weight against the wall just to stay upright. He feels his pulse bump against the band of his wristwatch.

  After what feels like an eternity, someone in the vehicle laughs, and it pulls slowly away from the curb.

  The license plate is not Thai. It has only five digits. Rafferty doesn’t even need to write them down.

  “THIS IS ELORA.” The voice is brisk and cool. Rafferty has an image of a slender vamp from the 1940s, wearing seamed stockings and a dress with shoulder pads, her hair loosely rolled up around her head. A sort of executive big-band singer.

  “Ms. Weecherat. This is Poke Rafferty.” This is his third cab in twenty minutes, and no one seems to be following it. His body still feels loose and nerveless, emptied by the draining of all that adrenaline.