The Fourth Watcher pr-2

by Timothy Hallinan

  “The wallet,” Rafferty says, “or you’ll be looking at the outside of the door again. How are you, Fon?”

  “Not good,” Fon says.

  “Sorry to hear it.” To the American he says, “What about it? We need a retake on the wallet.”

  “I can’t get to it,” the man says through his teeth, “with your hand on my chest.”

  “Back up,” Rafferty says. “So I can close the door if it’s a Boy Scout merit badge.”

  “We’re coming in,” says one of the cops. He loses some face by looking to the American for approval.

  Rafferty doesn’t even glance at him. “Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see it.”

  Stiff-faced, the American brings out the wallet again and lets it hang open. A silvery shield with a star in the center reads u.s. secret service.

  “I don’t know how to break this to you,” Rafferty says, “but we’re in Thailand.”

  “That’s why these gentlemen are with me,” the American says.

  “And very terrifying they are, too. This got something to do with you, Fon?”

  “It does,” says the American.

  “I didn’t ask you.” Rafferty looks past him. “Fon?”

  “Yes,” she says. It barely registers as a whisper.

  Rafferty studies her face: desolate as a razed house. “Then I’ll let you in. But hang on a minute,” Rafferty says to the American. “And don’t let these goons knock the door down unless you want to pay for it.” He closes the door in the American’s face and goes into the bedroom. Rose is wearing jeans and the Totoro T-shirt, the sight of which makes Rafferty’s heart constrict. “Maybe a problem,” he says, throwing on a pair of linen slacks and the first T-shirt in the drawer. He has it halfway on before he realizes it says yes i do. but not with you. He stops tugging it down for half a second, says, “The hell with it,” and leaves it on. Motioning Rose to stay put, he goes back into the living room and opens the door.

  “Mi casa es su casa,” he says, moving aside.

  “That may be truer than you know,” says the American. He steps into the center of the room and looks around. He registers the cake on the table, ignores it, and focuses on the view through the sliding glass door to the balcony. “You’ve got it nice here.”

  “Architectural Digest is coming in the morning.” The cops trail in. One of them has his hand on Fon’s upper arm. Rafferty says, “She can walk without help.” The cop gives him hard eyes but lets go of her arm. “Do you want to sit down, Fon?” Rafferty asks in Thai.

  “English only,” says the American.

  “Okay,” Rafferty says, suddenly blind with fury. “How about ‘Fuck you’?”

  There is a moment of silence, and then one of the cops says, “He asked if she wanted to sit down.”

  “Sure,” the American says, his eyes locked on Rafferty’s. “Let her sit.” Fon collapses onto the couch, eyeing them all uncertainly. She sits bent forward, hands in her lap, as though trying to present the smallest possible target. The American smiles at Rafferty, making his lips disappear completely. “You’re forcing me to be unpleasant,” he says. “Unfortunately for you, I enjoy being unpleasant.”

  “A name would be nice,” Rafferty says. “Just so I can be sure they bust the right jerk.”

  “Elson,” the American says. “Richard Elson. E-l-s-o-n.” He looks around again. “Where’s Miss Punchangthong?”

  “In the other room. She’s choosy about her company.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard,” Elson says, and the next thing Rafferty knows, one of the cops has hold of his right arm and is pulling him away from Elson.

  “Actually,” Elson says, “it would be easier if you hit me. We could just take you all in and do this right.”

  “Don’t do anything silly, Poke,” Rose says in Thai, and Rafferty turns to see her in the bedroom door. Elson turns at the sound of her voice, and for a moment he’s just another man getting his first look at Rose. His eyes widen slightly, his thin lips part, and he inhales sharply.

  “Miss Punchangthong?” he says. He pronounces it right this time.

  Rose nods without turning to him. It’s the non-look she gave to customers in the bar who had no chance of getting any closer to her than across the room.

  “Richard Elson, United States Secret Service. You speak English?”

  “Small.”

  Elson flicks a finger at Fon. “Do you know this woman?”

  Rose’s face is stone. “Yes, know. Her my friend.” The crudity of the pidgin surprises Rafferty, and he glances at Rose, who avoids his eyes.

  “And an employee,” Elson says.

  “Where is this going?” Rafferty demands.

  “You’ll know in a second.” Elson doesn’t look at him. “An employee?”

  “You say so,” Rose says. She turns her head to regard Fon. “But her my friend first.”

  “I want to know what this is about right now,” Rafferty says. “Or you can come back here tomorrow with a lawyer.”

  “It’s about this,” Elson says, pulling an envelope out of his jacket. He opens it and displays a thin sheaf of currency. He shows it to Rose. “Did you give this to Miss Sribooncha- Jesus, these names. What the hell did you call her? Fon? Did you give this to Fon today?”

  “Not give,” Rose says.

  “That’s not what she says.”

  “Peachy-” Fon begins, but Elson silences her with a glance. “Miss Punchangthong?”

  “Fon get money today,” Rose says. “But me not give.”

  “But you own the business.”

  Rose shakes her head. “Peachy and me own, same-same. Hasiphasip, you know? You speak Thai?” As angry as he is, Rafferty has to turn to the sliding door to hide his grin.

  “No,” Elson says, a little grimly. “I don’t speak Thai. So, in a sense, you paid her.”

  “In a sense?” Rose asks. “What mean? What mean, in a sense?”

  “It means-” Elson begins. He stops. “It means, um. .”

  “English only,” Rafferty says happily.

  Elson licks his lips and turns to the cops. “One of you explain.”

  The cops look at each other, and one of them shrugs.

  “Want some help?” Rafferty asks.

  “What I’m saying,” Elson says, “is that it doesn’t matter which one of you gave her the money. It came from both of you, since you both own the business.”

  Rose seems to be reviewing the sentence in her head. Then she shrugs. “Not understand. Fon need money. Her want eat, you know? Pay for room. Same you.”

  “Right,” Elson says. He slides the gleaming glasses down and rubs the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Fon needed the money. So let’s go over this. Miss. . um, Fon got the money from you and your partner, right?”

  “From Peachy,” Rose says stubbornly.

  Elson shakes his head. “From your company. The company you own part of. And your partner got it where?”

  Rose spreads her hands, the bewildered peasant girl “Maybe bank? Bank have money, na?”

  Elson turns his head and says something like, “Pssshhhh.”

  “Oh, come on,” Rafferty says. “No matter what this is about, how can you even say that’s the same money Fon was paid? I mean, is it special-issue, just for her? Does it say ‘Fon’ on it or something?”

  Elson slips the money back into the envelope and closes the flap. “Which bank?”

  “Have many bank,” Rose says. She scratches her head at the unreasonable nature of the question. “Have bank too much.” She points through the window and down toward the street. “Have bank there, and there. . ” She points farther off. “And there, and-”

  “Okay, okay,” Elson says. “Banks all over the fucking place. So you don’t personally handle the money.”

  “Me?” Rose asks, giving up on the street and pointing at herself. “I talk you already, me no give money. And ‘fuck’ talk no good. Not polite.”

  Elson emits a sound that could be
a groan.

  “Same question,” Rafferty says. “How can anyone be sure this is the actual money Fon got this morning?”

  For a moment Rafferty thinks Elson is not going to answer him. He gives Rose one last despairing look and then flicks a finger at Fon. “It’s not just old Fon here. Three of the women who work for Miss Punchangthong’s company took money to the bank today.”

  “They probably all did,” Rafferty says.

  “But I was only at the bank three of them used,” Elson says. “And unless all three of them stopped and swapped bills with someone for some reason, every bill they deposited was counterfeit.” He smiles at Rafferty, the smile of the smartest kid in class, the only one with the right answer. “And that’s a problem.”

  “Fine,” Rafferty says. “So three women walked into a bank with a few thousand baht in counterfeit money. And that’s worth a visit at five a.m.? And it’s Thai money, so what the hell does it have to do with the United States government?”

  “Quite a lot, Mr. Rafferty,” Elson says. “As you’ll find out.” He looks around the room again, as though he is memorizing it. “And now you can go back to your English lesson or whatever you were doing.” He gestures for Fon to get up, and the two policemen flank her again. Elson goes to the door.

  “Have good night,” Rose volunteers from the bedroom doorway. “Maybe you find girl, you boom-boom, you feel better.”

  Elson ignores her, but his nostrils are white and pinched, and his lips vanish again. “Just so we’re clear,” he says to Rafferty. “We know where you are if we need you.” Holding open the door to the hallway, he motions Fon and the cops through it. He pauses in the doorway as the cops ring for the elevator. “And don’t think about going anywhere outside Thailand,” he adds, “because as of about ten minutes from now your passport won’t even get you into a movie.”

  9

  Carrots Were the Last Straw

  "H e’s just a bully.” They are in bed again, but the glow they shared an hour earlier is a fading memory. Rafferty’s fury, however, is still very much alive.

  “He’s a government,” Rose says. The sky has paled during the time it took him to talk her into trying to get some rest. Early light leaks balefully through the gaps in the tape over the space around the window air conditioner. Rose gives the new day the look she reserves for uninvited visitors and follows her train of thought. “Worse, with those policemen along, he’s two governments. I may not have written a bunch of books, Poke, but I know you don’t punch a government.”

  “I didn’t punch him.” He can’t bring himself to tell her what Elson said to provoke the aborted attack. “And I’m not the one who told him to go get laid.”

  “He needs it,” Rose says.

  “I don’t think so. He probably jerks off to a spreadsheet.”

  “What mean ‘jerk off’?” Rose asks, reverting to pidgin. “Same-same ‘beef jerky’?” She takes another drag on the cigarette and hits the filter. “He has very bad energy,” she says in Thai. “He likes power too much. He needs to spend some time in a monastery. And you should have been more careful. You should have kept a cool heart.”

  “He had it coming. His behavior was, as they say, ‘inappropriate.’ ” He uses the English word because he can’t think of a Thai equivalent.

  “What does that mean?” Rose lights a new cigarette off her old one, not a good sign. That was the way she smoked when he met her.

  “ ‘Inappropriate’ is government talk.” He slides the ashtray closer to her so she can stub the butt. The stink of burning filter fills the room. “It means someone has fucked up on a planetary scale. When an American congressman is videotaped in bed with a fourteen-year-old male poodle, his behavior is usually described as inappropriate.”

  “Fourteen is old for a dog,” Rose observes.

  “Gee, and I thought you weren’t listening.”

  “I’m listening, Poke. I’m even thinking.” She shifts her back against the pillow propped behind her. The cloud of smoke she exhales is penetrated in a vaguely religious fashion by the invading fingers of light, good morning from Cecil B. DeMille. “This could be very bad for us.”

  “Oh, relax. It’s not like you and Peachy are printing money in the basement. Today they’ll go to the bank where she got the bills, and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “Maybe.” She pulls the sheet up over her shoulders as though she is cold.

  “Sure it will. It was an accident. Bad luck, that’s all.”

  She does not reply. But then she shakes her head and says, “Luck.”

  He slides his knuckles softly up her arm. “Okay, it’s not luck, it’s a kink in somebody’s karma. Worse comes to worst, you have to replace the counterfeit junk with real bills. Come on, Rose. It’s only money.”

  She does not look impressed by the insight.

  It didn’t cheer you up either, Rafferty thinks, and then, pop, he’s got something he’s sure will distract her. “Listen, did I ever tell you that it was money that first made me want to come to Asia?”

  “Really.” She takes a drag and blows the smoke away from him. “I thought you came here because you were destined to meet me.”

  “Ah, but destiny moves in strange ways.” He laces his fingers together on top of his chest and lets his head sink into the pillow, his eyes on her profile. “In my case it was money. When I was a kid.”

  Now he gets the full gaze that always makes his spine tingle. “You never talk about when you were little.”

  “Well, I am now. You want to hear about it?”

  “Of course.” She gives him the first smile he has seen since Elson drove his snowplow through their evening. “Since it’s my job to help you become human.”

  “My father. .” he begins. Then he falters. Rose’s own father has been dead only two months, and he knows she is still grieving.

  “Your father,” she says. She is silent for a moment, and he searches her face, ready to wrap his arms around her. But then she says, “Something else you never talk about.”

  “That’s right,” he says, trying to sidestep the moment. “When you don’t hear me talking, it’s probably my father I’m not talking about. Anyway, he spent a long time in Asia before I was born. Ran away when he was fifteen.” He thinks about it for a second. “He was sort of a specialist at running away.”

  “Fifteen? How do you run away to Asia when you’re fifteen?”

  “Do you want to hear about the money or not?”

  “First things first.”

  In general, Rafferty would rather eat glass than discuss his father, but now that he’s opened the box, there doesn’t seem to be any graceful way to close it. “He had a fake driver’s license, and he used it to get a passport. Things weren’t so tight in those days. He’d saved a bunch of money from mowing lawns and. . I don’t know, whatever kids did in those days.”

  “He told you this?”

  “I asked him. He wasn’t much on volunteering information.”

  She puts out the cigarette and doesn’t light another, which Rafferty interprets as progress. “Why did he run away?”

  “Carrots,” Rafferty says. “Or anyway, carrots were the last straw, so to speak. The inciting incident, as a writer would say. My father hated carrots, especially cooked carrots. When my father was thirteen, my grandmother died, and my grandfather married a woman my father didn’t like. She was probably okay; she was only in her early twenties, and I’m sure she was doing the best she could, but it wasn’t good enough for him. Just like my mother. She wasn’t good enough either.”

  Rose puts her hand on his. “And here you are, trying to build a family.”

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “I’d be holding my breath if I weren’t smoking,” Rose says, pulling out a new Marlboro Light.

  “Well, he’d been planning to leave since my grandfather remarried, but he had to wait until he looked old enough to get his passport. So he got it, and one day he came in for lunch, and in
front of him was a steaming platter of cooked carrots.” He looks over at her. “Are you really interested in this?”

  She waves the match until it gives up and then blows on it for good measure. “Don’t be silly. This is your family you’re talking about.”

  “Okay. The carrots. He shoved the platter away, and his stepmother said something like, ‘Eat those carrots. There are children starving in China.’ ” He can feel Rose’s gaze, and he says, “Americans used to say that when their kids wouldn’t eat. To make them feel guilty about those poor little Chinese kids, I guess. Anyway, that was the end of the road for my father. He got up, went into the kitchen, got a waxed-paper bag, and brought it back to the table. He shoveled a bunch of the carrots into it and headed for the door. His stepmother said, ‘Where are you taking those?’ and my father said, ‘To the children in China.’ Then he went to his room, got his passport and a metal box that had all his money in it and. . I don’t know, a change of socks or something, and went down to the port of San Pedro-they were living in Los Angeles-and took a boat to China.”

  “Strong kid.” Rose picks up the ashtray and balances it on her stomach. She shoves it with a finger to make it wobble. “How long did he stay there?”

  “Years. Until the Communists chased everybody out. Then he went back to California and bought a bunch of property. Eventually he married my mother. Then he packed up and ran away again, when I was sixteen. Back to Asia.”

  Rose gives the ashtray a precise quarter turn. “Are you like him?”

  “No,” Rafferty says immediately. “For one thing, I don’t run away.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I know you’re not going to run out on Miaow and me. But, you know, you both went to Asia, you both wound up with Asian women-”

  “Half Asian in my mother’s case.”

  “Ah,” Rose says. “Well, that’s very different.”

  “We both also have two arms and two legs. And that’s about all we have in common.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” She eyes the ashtray as though she expects it to try to escape.

  Rafferty gives her a minute to elaborate and then asks, “Do you want to hear about the money or not?”