Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller pr-3

by Timothy Hallinan

  “And if they can’t? I mean, if he resists? Or if he goes nuts? What happens when they get him where they’re-”

  “Just make me happy,” Ton says, and disconnects.

  “He wants us to make him happy,” Ren says, tossing his phone onto the console. “Who’s making us happy?” He gets up and goes behind Ton’s desk and sits in the big chair. “If Rafferty’s dead, the man doesn’t need us. We could be hanging in the breeze.”

  “You worry too much,” Captain Teeth says. He gets up. “Where is he? I’ll go over there myself.”

  “Thai Fisherman’s Bank, Silom.”

  Captain Teeth checks the holster in the middle of his back. When he’s satisfied, he slips into a sport coat and heads for the door. As he goes through it, he says, without looking over his shoulder, “If he catches you in that chair, you’ll need a new ass next time you sit down.”

  The sweat pops on Rafferty’s upper lip in less than a heartbeat. He’d been timing himself in the apartment, staying within his ten-minute limit, hurrying to get to Pan’s early enough to let him come here so he could walk into a trap. And he hadn’t done the most important thing. He’d left the tape recorder running on batteries. He hadn’t plugged it in.

  He turns to face the sidewalk. Still busy, still full of people he doesn’t recognize.

  And then he sees one he does recognize, the man who was driving the car behind him all the way to Pan’s. He’s leaning against a parked truck, doing nothing. Looking everywhere except at the window.

  “Umm,” says the teller, and Rafferty turns to her.

  “You’ve been banking here a long time, right?” Her face is full of uncertainty.

  “Years.”

  “I see you in here sometimes,” she says. “With a little girl?”

  “My daughter.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She picks up a pad of old photocopies that have been turned blank side up and stapled together to create a scratch pad. She begins to draw a girl’s face, all big eyes and long curling hair. She inks a heart above the girl’s head, then several more, a little cloud of hearts floating in midair. Without looking up, she says, “It’s a police hold.”

  “Police.”

  “That’s who he’s talking to. It was on the computer. A police number to call for any withdrawal from your account for more than two thousand U.S.”

  “It’s a mistake of some kind,” Rafferty says. He needs to mop his forehead, but he doesn’t want to draw the attention of the man in the office. “Was there a name?”

  “No,” she says. “But I’m sure you’re right. It’s a mistake.”

  “Of course it is.” The teller’s station is behind a plate of glass, and by taking a step to his left, Rafferty can see a reflection of the window that opens onto the street, but not clearly enough to identify any individuals. He looks instead for quick movement. “You draw well,” he says, his eyes on the reflection.

  “I draw like every other girl in Thailand,” the teller says. “We all imitate Japanese anime.”

  “I like the heart.” Someone hurries past the window, head down.

  “Which heart? There are five of them.”

  Rafferty focuses through the glass at the drawing. “The first one,” he says. “The big one. I like big hearts.” He has nothing he can use as a weapon.

  “We all do,” the teller says. “But try to find one. Ah, here he comes.”

  And the fat man has come out of his office, wearing a smile that looks like it was crimped into his face with a vise. Circles of sweat turn his white shirt translucent beneath the arms.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Just a bit of delay.” He looks down at the scratch pad, at the girl’s face with the hearts around it, and winces. “Do you have enough in your drawer?”

  The teller says, “No,” in a tone that makes it clear that the answer was obvious.

  “I’ll get the rest from the vault,” the fat man says. “Get started. Give the man his money.”

  “Yes, sir.” She slides the cash drawer open, pulls out a three-inch stack of thousand-baht bills, and drops it into the counting machine. The bills flip by as the total on the readout increases. “That’s five hundred twenty thousand baht,” she says. “We need another seven hundred thousand. How are you going to carry all this?”

  “Carefully,” Rafferty says. It’s more money than he’d expected-about forty thousand dollars.

  “You’ll never get it into your pockets,” she says. “I’ll lend you a bag, okay?” She lifts an inexpensive nylon bag above the counter. “It’s my shopping bag. I’m going to buy groceries after I punch out here.”

  Reflected in the glass partition, two men peer through the window behind him. “I’ll buy it from you.”

  She gives him a smile. “Just bring it back.” The fat man returns, a banded stack of bills in each hand.

  “If it’s humanly possible,” Rafferty says. He turns around, and the men at the window separate quickly. One of them turns away to show the back of his head, and the other slides out of sight to the right. The first one he saw, the one who had been following him, is still leaning against the car, so there are at least three of them-the one who was behind him, and the two who were supposed to be watching Rose and Miaow, which certainly means that the tape recorder ran out of juice and wound down.

  Which, in turn, means that it’s open season.

  And there might be more out there. He hears the bills snapping through the machine behind him.

  “Here we are,” the teller says. She holds up the nylon bag, which has what look like coffee stains on it. “I’ll go around to the door and give it to you,” she says. “It’s too thick to slip under the partition.”

  “Thanks,” he says. He follows her, and she buzzes the door open and hands him the bag, which is heavy enough to tug his uninjured hand downward.

  She says, “Take care.”

  “I’ll try,” Rafferty says. “It’s murder out there.”

  “I think the door’s locked,” she says. She precedes him, rattles the door once, and slips a key into the lock. Pulling it open, she steps aside and gives him a little back-and-forth wave.

  Rafferty smiles, fills his lungs with air, and goes through the door.

  The day is even brighter than it had seemed through the tinted windows of the bank. It takes him a second to adjust to the glare and scan the sidewalk. The man leaning against the car turns away as Rafferty’s eyes find him. Rafferty looks left and sees one of the men who had been waiting outside the apartment building coming toward him, one hand in his pocket. This one doesn’t look away. His eyes drift beyond Rafferty, who turns to see a third man coming from the other direction. The third man doesn’t have a hand hidden in a pocket, so Rafferty heads toward him, moving briskly, and then something catches his eye from the left, and he sees Captain Teeth getting out of a cab.

  Captain Teeth is shorter than Rafferty remembers him, and wider. He’s got the chest and shoulders of someone who bench-presses Chevrolets. All that overdeveloped muscle tissue has been wrapped in a sport coat, and in this heat he might just as well be wearing a sandwich board that says HEAVILY ARMED. He throws some bills at the cabdriver and makes for the curb.

  Rafferty carefully slips the bag over the bandaged hand, slides it up his arm, and crooks his elbow so the money dangles from his forearm. He puts his good hand under his shirt and leaves it there, at waistband level, and strides forward purposefully. The man who is coming toward him falters, his eyes on the concealed hand. The question is clear in his face: keep moving toward Rafferty and maybe get shot now or back off and maybe get shot later by his friends? Getting shot later wins, and the man veers off to his right, toward the parked cars.

  That leaves the other two and Captain Teeth, and Rafferty doesn’t think Captain Teeth is going to be so easy to bluff.

  When in doubt, take the offensive.

  Rafferty moves left, on a course to intercept the man who chose being shot later. The man works farther to his righ
t, his eyes flicking side to side, until he’s almost brushing a parked car, and then Rafferty cuts behind him and steps up against him, circling the man’s neck with the arm that has the bag hanging from it and pushing the index finger of his good hand hard into the man’s back. The man throws his hands into the air spasmodically, striking a glancing blow off Rafferty’s bandaged left, and Rafferty emits a hiss of pain that loosens the other man’s knees. Rafferty has to hold him up until the man can get his feet under him again. Captain Teeth is closing fast, reaching back beneath his sport coat, undoubtedly for a gun.

  “Stop there,” Rafferty says.

  Captain Teeth comes to a halt about five feet away. He keeps his hand hidden. “You think I care if he dies? Shoot him. When he falls, I’ll have a target.”

  “Move that hand,” Rafferty says, “and I’ll shoot you instead.”

  Captain Teeth bares his awful incisors in a grin and says, “Watch the hand move,” and then his eyes lift and widen, focused behind Rafferty, the teeth disappear, and his hand comes out empty and open. He takes a few steps back. Something cold noses the nape of Rafferty’s neck.

  “Drop the gun.” The tone is businesslike.

  “Love to,” Rafferty says. “But I haven’t got one.”

  “Hands behind you.” The gun is pushed half an inch forward. “Now.”

  “Okay, okay.” He lets go of the man he’s been holding, who stumbles away and then turns to face him. Whatever he sees over Rafferty’s shoulder, it freezes him.

  “Don’t move,” says the man behind Rafferty. The bag is lifted from his arm, and something circles his wrists, and he hears a sharp click. The cuff is tight around the bandages on his left wrist. “You two,” the man says, “go.” Captain Teeth and the man Rafferty has been holding pivot in unison and retreat down the sidewalk without a backward glance.

  “You’re going to turn around, and I’m going to stay behind you,” the man says. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t do anything I might think is stupid.”

  A sharp tug yanks Rafferty’s cuffed hands to one side, and he turns, the other man pivoting with him so the gun never loses contact with the back of Rafferty’s neck. A circle of people has gathered around them, a safe five or six paces away, their eyes wide. “Walk now. Toward the van.”

  Rafferty heads for a vehicle that’s double-parked in the first traffic lane. It’s a police van, its windows covered in a silvery reflective coating. The rear door has been slid open. Another man in a police uniform comes around the front end of the van. It takes Rafferty a moment to recognize him as Kosit.

  “Hey,” Rafferty says, and the gun probes the back of his neck as though it’s looking for a path between the vertebrae.

  “That’s stupid,” the man says.

  The face Kosit turns to Rafferty as he approaches the van is all cop. Without a glimmer of recognition, he yanks hold of Rafferty’s shirt and pulls him toward the open door, and Rafferty sees another man in the van, hunched down on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He tries to stop, but the man behind him adds a shove to Kosit’s pull, and with his wrists cuffed, all Rafferty can manage is a stagger-step to keep from falling forward. Kosit grabs his shoulders, puts an expert hand on top of his head, and pushes him down onto the seat of the van, and as the door slams shut, the man crouched behind the driver’s seat brings his head up and regards Rafferty.

  It’s Arthit.

  43

  She Has a Different Life Now

  From the corner where she had folded the cashmere shawl to give her something to sit on-Rafferty was right, it had come in handy-Rose watches the kids. The younger ones are manic, adrenaline-jacked from the adventure of the escape. They’ve replayed the chase, argued over their speed and their acting skills, and they’ve had occasional words about the value of their individual contributions. A couple of these ended in minor tussles, broken up by the older kids, who are maintaining a disdainful cool that’s either assumed or, in the case of a few of the more frayed and weathered of them, hard-earned.

  Miaow had tried to join in the roughhousing for a while, but the kids kept their distance from her. None of them had been with Boo when she was, and they’re all strangers to her. It’s obvious that they don’t see her as one of them. They skirmished with one another, but they treated her as though she were made of glass and already chipped. Watching them, watching her daughter try to enter the field of play, Rose is struck by how much Miaow has changed. The filthy, tattered clothes can’t conceal the differences between her and the others. It’s not just the weight she has gained, although she probably weighs 20 percent more than any other kid her height in the room. It’s not just the newly colored and carefully cut hair, or her obvious cleanliness. She moves differently than they do. Her reactions aren’t as fast, and she seems to have a narrower awareness. Boo’s kids appear to be able to track simultaneously everything that’s happening in the big room, while Miaow focuses only on what’s in front of her. Rose sees the kids behind her and on either side exchange glances, and it’s obvious that the unspoken topic is Miaow.

  Now Miaow is sitting beside Rose, her head lowered, plucking at the shawl. Her lower lip protrudes, and there are little dimples in her chin. Her end of the conversation, when Rose attempts to start one, is limited to monosyllables, some of them not even words. Looking down at the top of her adopted daughter’s head, at the part in her hair, straighter-as Rafferty once said-than the path of a subatomic particle, Rose feels her heart swell. She feels as if her heart has a color, a kind of sad, bruised purple. She slides a hand over Miaow’s, but Miaow pulls away and puts her hand in her lap. It looks lonely there.

  Rose gives up and rests her back against the wall. The kids are settling down now, and the temperature in the room, which was fearsome when they arrived, is dropping slightly as the light outside dims. Rose looks at her watch-four o’clock.

  Where is Poke?

  She pulls out her phone to dial him and then thinks better of it. He was going to buy a stolen phone and use that to call her, in case they-whoever “they” are-are triangulating on his old number. Maybe he just hasn’t bought the new phone yet. She’s trying to visualize “triangulating” when the door to the shack opens and Boo and Da come in, Boo carrying Peep in the crook of one arm as if he’s had a baby in his arms his entire life. The other hand is full of white plastic bags, as are both of Da’s. Even across the room, Rose can see Da follow Boo with her eyes, watching him as though he changes into something more interesting every moment he’s in sight. Exactly, Rose thinks, what Miaow doesn’t need.

  Miaow sits bolt upright as the door opens. She leans forward, trying to shorten the distance between them without getting up.

  But Boo doesn’t even look in their direction. He has stopped and bought supplies: brooms, toilet paper, bags of food, bottled water, and he begins immediately to parcel them out and give orders, delegating three kids to clean out the toilet room, handing money to another and assigning five to go with her and bring back hot food. The smallest kids are handed the new reed brooms and told to sweep the dirt floor.

  Not until the the random energy in the room has been harnessed and the kids are all engaged in their tasks does Boo lift his eyes to them and wave them over. Rose gets up and then leans down to pick up the shawl, and by the time she straightens up again, Miaow is already all the way across the room, standing next to Boo.

  “Let’s go outside,” he says. “It gets dusty in here when they sweep.” He turns, Da following in almost perfect synchronization, and Rose and Miaow trail along behind.

  “How long have you all lived here?” Miaow asks as she passes through the door.

  Rose can’t hear the beginning of the boy’s reply, but when she comes out into the late-afternoon sunshine, he is saying “…maybe three or four more days, and then we’ll move.”

  Miaow says, “Where?”

  Boo laughs. “You have forgotten,” he says. “When did I ever know where we’d go next? What did I used to say?”

/>   “Whatever opens up,’” Miaow says.

  “Well, that’s where we’re going.”

  “Why do you have to move?” Da says.

  “Too many kids in one place. People see us. Sooner or later somebody says something to the cops or the weepies who help us poor kids so they can make enough money to buy SUVs and live in villas. Then they show up in the middle of the night and we all have to run, and sometimes one or two of us get caught.”

  “The small ones,” Miaow says.

  “Listen to that,” Boo says. “You haven’t completely turned into a schoolgirl. There’s still a little bit left.”

  “I haven’t-” Miaow begins.

  “Even with that hair.”

  Miaow’s hand goes to her hair. “There’s nothing wrong with my-” Suddenly she’s blushing.

  “What’s next, skin-whitening cream? Now you’re an American?” He is keeping his voice light, but Rose can see the tension in the cords of his neck.

  “Wait,” Miaow says. “I’m not trying-”

  “You’re not?” he demands. “Okay, you’re not on the streets now. But why pretend to be something you aren’t?”

  “I don’t know what-”

  “Have you told anybody at your school about it?” He squeezes the word “school” as though he’s trying to juice it. “Does anyone know you were on the street? If I showed up, would you introduce me to your friends?”

  “But…” Miaow says, “but they’re…those kids, they’re-”

  “Leave her alone,” Da says.

  “No,” Miaow snaps, just barely not stamping her foot. “Don’t you tell him not to…uhh, not to talk to me the way he…um, the way he wants to, to talk to…” And then she’s crying, and she turns to Rose and wraps her arms around her mother and buries her head against Rose’s blouse.

  “Well,” Rose says, looking at Boo. Miaow’s shoulders are shaking, but she’s absolutely silent.

  Da says, “That was mean.”