The Fourth Watcher pr-2

by Timothy Hallinan

  Rafferty gets up. “We’re going to see if we can’t make it a loan.”

  43

  A World of Wind and Wet

  They’re barely inside the warehouse complex when Rafferty gets the first indication that things are going wrong. “Keep coming,” Chu says into the phone. Blooming in the rain-dimmed headlights, directly in front of them,

  is a long wall of corrugated steel with an enormous red 3 on it. “We’re at three,” Rafferty repeats. “Yes, I heard you. Keep coming. Turn between two and one. I’m

  here.” “Fine,” Rafferty says. “Coming.” He leans forward, says to Leung,

  who is at the wheel, “Stop beside number two.” “Two?” Leung doesn’t sound surprised, but it’s close. Rafferty presses his thumb over the phone’s mouthpiece to mute it

  and says to Pradya, “You said three.” “Maybe he moved them,” says the fat cop from the backseat. Something about his tone accelerates Rafferty’s pulse. He settles back against the upholstery, taking long, slow breaths and looking at alternatives. There aren’t many, and he wishes he could be

  alone for a minute or two. They are packed so close together he feels like his thoughts are audible. The car, which had looked big enough when it was empty, smells of anxiety and wet cloth. They’ve had to open all the windows a few inches to keep them from steaming up. Frank and Ming Li share the front seat with Leung, and Rafferty is bookended by Fon and Lek. Beyond Lek, jammed up against the door, is the fat cop Pradya, his empty gun in his lap. Lek is muttering resentfully as she works her jeans down over her thighs, lifting herself from the seat to get them below her knees. Pradya is watching with more than professional interest.

  Kosit is a minute or two away in his own car, with Elson beside him.

  “We’re at two,” Leung announces, slowing.

  “Turn the car around,” Rafferty says. “I want it pointed at the exit.” He hands Pradya the magazine for his automatic and says, “You can load it now.” Then he reaches across Fon, yanks the door handle, and climbs over her into a world of wind and wet. As he starts to close the door, he feels Fon’s hand on his arm.

  “It’ll be fine,” she says.

  He gives her a nod, suddenly on the edge of tears, and closes the door. Lifting his face to the rain, he opens his eyes wide, letting the fall of water wash them clean. He returns the cell phone to his ear and says, “We’re here.”

  Chu says, “I’m waiting.” Rafferty touches the Glock nestled into the small of his back and walks to the corner of the building.

  The alleyway between the warehouses is wide enough for two trucks to pass each other, and about 120 feet long. Bars of yellow light stripe the asphalt as far as Rafferty can see through the rain, reflecting the bulbs set every ten or fifteen feet beneath the overhangs of the warehouse roofs. Rafferty has expected to be ankle-deep in water, but the entire area slopes down very slightly toward the river. Except for the occasional black puddle, which could be anywhere from an inch to a foot deep, there is almost no water underfoot.

  Rafferty is trying to figure out whether the absence of water is good or bad when the rain eases for a moment, and he sees Chu, gleaming at him in a black rubber slicker that hangs almost to his feet. He is about sixty feet away. Chu lifts an arm and waves like someone in a home movie-Hi there! — and then the rain hammers down again, and Rafferty can barely make out his shape, just a vertical darkness drawing the eye like a cave behind a waterfall.

  “Come on along,” Chu says into the phone. “I want to get a look at you.”

  “This phone’s going to short out,” Rafferty says, moving forward. “It’s too wet. I’m turning it off now.”

  “Up to you.”

  Rafferty’s thumb finds the “disconnect” button and then, very quickly, he highlights the next number he will need. He slips the phone into a small Ziploc bag and puts it in his shirt pocket, buttons facing out. Instinctively he finds the “dial” button with his thumb. Then he does it again, walking all the time. He is about to do it yet again when Chu’s form begins to solidify in front of him. Rafferty drops his hands to his sides and flexes his fingers repeatedly like a pianist about to tackle something difficult. They feel as stiff as sticks.

  Ten feet away he stops and waits. Chu waves him closer, Asian style, palm and fingers down, but Rafferty shakes his head. A moment passes. Rafferty can feel something extending between him and Chu, something taut that pulsates like a high-voltage wire. Chu mutters irritably and trudges forward. Once Chu is moving, Rafferty continues toward him.

  Chu is frailer than Rafferty imagined, and older. Somehow he had continued to see the Colonel Chu his father had described from all those years ago in Wang’s room, not this papery retiree. The sudden image of Wang, stripped and shivering, being offered to dogs and horses, ignites a hot surge of fury. Rafferty damps it down as fast as he can, fearing it will travel the wire to Chu, and in fact Chu slows and regards him quizzically. But then he shakes his head again and smiles.

  “You don’t look like him.” They are three feet apart.

  “I thank my mother daily,” Rafferty says.

  Chu’s face is a nest of creases, a topography of age folded into the skin around his eyes and mouth. His eyelids hang down at weary forty-fivedegree angles, the eyes behind them as dry and hard as stone. His neck is two vertical ropes, the tendons taut beneath the skin. Deep grooves have been carved on either side of his mouth, and they deepen when he smiles. He is smiling now, a kind, grandfatherly, yellow-toothed smile that makes Rafferty wonder how much strength it would take to snap his neck. Beads of water glisten on the hairs sprouting from his mole.

  “You’re smaller than I thought you’d be,” Rafferty says.

  “Our fears always are,” Chu says, “when we finally have the strength to look at them.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  A gust of wind catches Chu’s slicker, billows it out, and snaps a corner up, throwing a spray of water at Rafferty. “This is a filthy city,” Chu says. “I’m quite ready to leave it. I assume you have everything you owe me.”

  “And you?”

  “I never go into a business meeting,” Chu says, “without the currency I’ll need. They’re all here, a little wet but otherwise well. Eager to see you. Shall we begin?”

  “Let’s,” Rafferty says. “I’m ready for you to leave Bangkok, too.”

  “First, though,” Chu says, and he waves his hand. A man comes around the corner of the warehouse behind him. He carries an automatic weapon slung from his shoulder. When he gets closer, Rafferty sees a swollen upper lip, pulled high enough to reveal a broken tooth.

  “This is Ping,” Chu says. “He’s going with you, just to see whom you’ve left around the corner.”

  Rafferty says, “The hell he is.”

  “Be reasonable. For all I know, you’ve got a car full of cops.”

  Rafferty looks at Ping. Ping sucks his tooth and winces.

  “I thought you watched us come in.”

  “You may not have noticed,” Chu says, “but visibility is limited. Ping is not negotiable. He takes a look or we both walk away right now.”

  “The gun stays here,” Rafferty says.

  “Fine,” Chu says, too easily, and it causes Rafferty a twinge of discomfort. “Ping?”

  Ping unshoulders the gun and passes it over to Chu. Rafferty steps forward, pats Ping down, extracts a small, flat automatic from under Ping’s shirt, and holds it out. Chu looks at it but makes no move to take it.

  “Think fast,” Rafferty says. He flicks the safety and drops the gun to the asphalt. It lands with a clatter and a bounce. Chu takes a quick step back-a hop, really-and when his eyes come back, the grandfather is gone and there is murder in them.

  “Don’t worry,” Rafferty says. “Nobody saw you jump except me. And old Ping here. Not much loss of face there.” He turns to go and says, over his shoulder, “And if you’re worried about Ping, you can always kill him later.”

  When they’re ten or eleve
n yards from Chu, Rafferty says, “Have you thought about that? About him killing you later?”

  “Shut up,” Ping says, and then gasps. His tongue probes the tooth again.

  “There must be something about me. Everybody tells me to shut up. How’d you break that tooth?”

  No answer.

  “Hard to break a front tooth like that. Usually it’s a molar. Or did somebody else break it?”

  Ping just slogs through the rain, but he brings a hand up to cover his mouth.

  “You should have it looked at.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course, you may not need to get it looked at. You know how the triads cure a toothache? They amputate the head.”

  “She’s just like you,” Ping says. “Your daughter.”

  Rafferty looks at him quickly but can’t find his voice to speak.

  “Those pajamas,” Ping says. He squints and puts the hand back over his mouth. “They’ve got bunnies all over them, and she acts like they’re a suit of fucking armor. She even told him off. He went out and got her a milk shake or something, and she laid into him because it had melted.”

  The full weight of what he’s doing-what he’s trying to do-is suddenly pushing at Rafferty from all sides. He feels like a man walking the bottom of the ocean. The air and the darkness press in on him. His lungs are an inch deep. “Here we are,” he says as they turn the corner.

  Leung is standing by the car. He shades his eyes against the rain, sees Ping, and raises a hand, palm up, meaning, What the fuck? Rafferty says, “Get everybody out. Open the trunk. This is a paranoia check.”

  In a few moments, the car is empty. Fon and Lek, in bra and panties, huddle against the rain, which is hard enough to sting their bare skin. Ming Li and Leung face the car, their hands folded on their heads, while Pradya holds his gun-loaded now, Rafferty remembers-steady on Frank. Ping motions Rafferty to the trunk, where the suitcase and Chu’s wooden box are stored. “Open them,” he says.

  “The suitcase,” Rafferty says. “I don’t know if I can close it again.”

  “Your problem, not mine.”

  “Fine. Be a hard-ass.” He lifts the suitcase’s latch, and the oiled lid pops up five or six inches as Rafferty holds his breath. Very carefully, he opens it the rest of the way and watches with some satisfaction as Ping’s involuntary gasp sends him into a spasm of pain. Then Rafferty closes the suitcase gently and lifts the lid of the wooden box to display the rubies. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” The car sags suddenly as Fon and Lek scramble into it, ducking the rain. Ping pulls out his cell and dials. Chu takes his time picking it up. “It’s fine,” Ping says at last. “They’ve got everything, and no one is here who shouldn’t be.” The volume of the rain increases, and Ping says, “What?” He presses a palm against his free ear, screwing up his face to hear. “No. No weapons. Nothing obvious anyway.” He listens for a moment and then tilts his chin at Pradya and hands him the phone.

  Rafferty steps under the overhang of the warehouse roof and watches the sheet of water sliding over its edge. He is fighting for air.

  “No problem,” Pradya says into the phone. “Sure, sure he’s here.” He holds the phone out to Frank. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Frank snatches the phone as though he were planning to bite it in half. He puts his mouth to it and says, “I choose the people I talk to,” and then shuts the phone and hands it back to the fat cop. “And fuck him,” he adds.

  Rafferty thinks, Introductions over. Forcing his mind to focus only on what he needs to do in this instant, he goes back to the trunk and lifts the suitcase out, holding it flat. He turns it carefully so the hinges are against his chest and Chu will be able to open it and see the money. To Ping he says, “Let’s go.”

  He follows the man into the rain.

  The bars of light on the asphalt again, the now-familiar landscape of looming warehouse walls, black sky, falling rain. Slowly the form of Chu emerges, shapeless and dark at first, then slender and almost frail, with the wind and rain lashing at him. Chu watches them approach, perfectly still except for the bottom of his slicker blowing around his legs.

  Rafferty stops three feet away, lifts the suitcase an inch or two, someone presenting an infant to a priest. “Noi,” he says.

  Chu takes a step forward.

  “Uh-uh,” Rafferty says. “I see her first.”

  Chu raises two fingers to his lips, inserts them, and lets loose an earsplitting whistle. Two people come around the far corner of Warehouse One. Rafferty keeps his eyes glued to Chu’s until they are close enough to see clearly, and Chu raises a hand to stop them.

  The thin cop, Sriyat, with Noi on his arm. She is bent in agony, one hand thrown up over her shoulder to hold her neck. Something kindles low in Rafferty’s stomach.

  “Your turn,” Chu says.

  Rafferty raises the top of the suitcase all the way, and Chu says, “Bring it.”

  When Rafferty has covered the space between them, Chu reaches into the suitcase and shoves aside the top few inches of loose bills, pulling out the ones beneath. Rafferty tries to keep his exhalation silent. He anticipated this. The real money, some of it wrapped, but quite a bit of it loose, is buried beneath a stratum of the laundered counterfeit bills. Chu rummages through the loose bills and removes five or six stacks, weighing them in his hands and then flipping through them, making sure there’s nothing there except what should be there: no newsprint trimmed to size, no small bills slipped in among the big ones. He drops the packets and says, “More,” and reaches this time completely through the top layers of money to bring up the stuff on the bottom, all of which is counterfeit. To Rafferty it still seems breathtakingly false, the color, despite all his efforts, too uniform, the edges too clean and straight. He smells the back-of-the-throat sweetness of fabric softener, but the wind is blowing toward him. A bright hair scrunchie, the color of a tangerine, circles the top stack in Chu’s hand. Chu gives it a glance and a bemused snap, then drops it back into the suitcase.

  Rafferty lowers the lid and puts the suitcase at Chu’s feet. “I’ll take her now.”

  Chu says, “Certainly.” He waves Sriyat forward. They move slowly, Noi taking tiny steps as Rafferty’s heart pounds angry fists on the inside of his chest. Hoping Fon is in position, he turns to gesture her to them and sees her, arms crossed and shoulders hunched against the cold, halfway to the end of the building. As she nears them, Chu registers her. He looks at her analytically and then brings his eyes, ancient and unsurprisable, to Rafferty. “You must have more charm than you’ve shown me,” he says.

  “Can the chat,” Rafferty says. “Noi’s got to lie down and get dry.”

  Fon is at his arm by now, returning Chu’s interested appraisal with the kind of disdain that could freeze a bar customer at thirty feet. She is covered in goose bumps but not shivering, and Rafferty knows she is denying Chu any pleasure, however small, she can withhold. He wants to kiss her.

  “Go with her, Noi,” Rafferty says. “It’s almost over.”

  “Poke,” Noi says. Her voice is sandpaper on silk. “Is Arthit here?”

  “Not yet,” Rafferty says, surprised by the sudden spark in Chu’s eyes, feeling that there’s something wrong about it. He pushes it aside, forcing himself to stay focused on this moment, this exchange, the need to get Noi around the corner of that building and into that car. “We brought you some painkillers,” he says.

  “Arthit and I love you,” Noi says in the same frayed voice, all strain and tendons. “Miaow and Rose are fine.” Fon puts a sheltering arm around her and leads her slowly into the rain. Sriyat gives the suitcase a curious glance, puts one hand above his eyes to keep the rain out, and retreats, back the way he came.

  Chu says, “One down.” He is watching Fon’s rear end. “If only I were younger.”

  “That would be nice,” Rafferty says. “Maybe someone could kill you before you get to this point.”

  “There is no reason for this business to be any more unpl
easant than necessary. We both want the same thing.”

  “Rose, now,” Rafferty says.

  Chu says, “Rubies.”

  Rafferty doesn’t even look back this time, just raises a hand and brings it down again. Chu leans forward and says, “This one is prettier.”

  “If you want to see her up close, get Rose out here.”

  “Rose,” Chu says. “Unusual name for a Thai girl.”

  Rafferty raises his hand again, the sign for Lek to stop. “Colonel Chu. As you say, I have to do business with you, but I don’t have to make small talk with you.”

  “You’re mistaken, laowai. If I want to chat with you, you’ll chat with me. If I want you to hop up and down on one leg and do birdcalls, you’ll do that, too.” He leans forward, close enough for Rafferty to smell the cigarettes on his breath. “You can walk away when we’re done. Until then you do as I say.”

  Rafferty can’t look at him, can’t let the man see his eyes. “Speech over?”

  “If I choose it to be.”

  “And do you choose it to be?”

  “For the moment.” He whistles again. Rafferty is powerless to keep his head down. He strains to see past Colonel Chu, to see through the rain. To catch a glimpse of Rose.

  “She’s coming,” Chu says. “It’s interesting. You have no feeling at all for one family, but you’ll put your life on the line for the other one.”

  “What do you want, Chu? Do you want me to agree that it’s interesting? Okay, it’s interesting. It’s fucking fascinating. A lot more fascinating than this conversation. Can we get on with it?”

  “Occasionally,” Chu says, “I think it’s too interesting.”

  “I chose one family,” Rafferty says. “I was stuck with the other one.”

  “Mmmm,” Chu says. “Here she is.”

  Sriyat has both hands around Rose’s upper arm, but she pulls it away and gives him a look that, Rafferty thinks, should dissolve him where he stands. Rafferty signals for Lek to come the rest of the way. “Your goddamn rubies,” he says.

  “Not all of them,” Chu says. “Some of them will be yours soon.” He watches Lek come. When she starts to hand Rafferty the box, he snaps his fingers, and she looks up, confused. “To me,” Chu says.