The Hot Countries

by Timothy Hallinan

  “No, I won’t. And don’t argue with me. Give me the letter.”

  Treasure takes a step toward him, glancing up for a second at the doorjamb behind Sriyat’s head. “You promise you won’t give me to my father?”

  “I already said so. Give it. Now, or else your friends here will get hurt.”

  “All right,” Treasure says, unfolding the white rectangle. She takes a step toward him and stops. “Will you read it out loud so I can hear it?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “That’s what I want,” Treasure says. “Please read it out loud,” and she closes her hand around the wooden handle wrapped in the napkin, yanks it free, and lunges at Sriyat, lifting her right hand high and then dragging the edge of Noi’s prized Japanese carving knife down on a diagonal, across the man’s forehead and face, slicing into the side of his neck and continuing down as the blood rains around her, across his chest and stomach, opening his shirt and the skin beneath it, and at the same time Chalee leaps from the desk and brings the iron bar down on the wrist of the man’s gun hand.

  Sriyat yelps, spouting blood from his forehead and nose as the gun clatters to the floor, and he stretches both hands toward Treasure, reaching for her the way Paul had in her dream, and she shrills a high, taut-string sound and brings the knife’s edge down again, over his left arm and hand this time, as Chalee swings the iron bar against his right elbow. Sriyat backs up fast and hits his head against the doorjamb. He can retreat no farther without turning around or bending down, and as he begins to fold himself at the waist, Dok comes at him through the air, feetfirst. Both feet slam into Sriyat’s left kneecap, and Treasure, who has been screaming that same single note ever since Sriyat reached for her, takes the knife to her left, extending her right arm all the way across her chest, and then swings the blade right, slicing Sriyat across the abdomen. The man turns a quarter of the way around, dragging one useless leg, and goes down, so heavily that the floor shakes. He curls himself into a ball, whimpering.

  The three children stand there gasping, looking down at him as the blood pools around him. Chalee kicks the gun away, toward the desk. After a few false starts, she manages to say, “Will he . . . will he die?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Dok says. “But he’s bleeding pretty bad.”

  Treasure stares down at the man, her face slack and her mouth half open, and then she steps forward and kicks him with all her strength. Sriyat makes a sound like whuff and begins to moan again, and Treasure kicks him a second time and then a third. She’s drawing back her leg again when Chalee puts her arm around Treasure’s shoulders. Instantly all the force drains out of her body, and she sways as though she’s going to collapse.

  “You’ve been cut,” Dok says. He and Chalee pull Treasure, as gently as possible, to the desk and sit her down.

  “It’s his,” Treasure says, her voice a single rough edge. “All of it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not hurt.” She nods toward the gun on the floor. “Take that,” she says.

  “For what? We can’t keep it.”

  “I want it!” she screams, and she’s halfway up before Dok grabs her arm and she sits back on the desk, hard, as Chalee goes and picks up the gun.

  Sriyat says, “Help me.”

  Treasure bends forward at the waist, both hands gripping the edge of the desk, and says, “I’m going to watch you die.”

  “No you’re not,” Dok says. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Treasure turns to look at him, and Dok realizes she has to reprocess his words to understand their meaning. In a moment she says, “Where?”

  “You’re covered in blood. You can’t go anywhere except back to the shelter to clean up. Then we’ll figure something out.”

  Chalee, her eyes wide, says, “Ummm . . .”

  Sriyat has one arm up against the doorjamb, and he appears to be trying to pull himself upright. Treasure snatches the bar from Chalee’s hand, crosses the office, and swings it into the back of Sriyat’s hand, smashing bone and even denting the wood on the corner of the jamb. Sriyat screams hoarsely and snatches his hand back down to the floor. Lying on his side with his knees raised, he begins to rock back and forth, cradling the hand. He seems to be weeping.

  Treasure clears her throat and spits on him.

  “You don’t know whether that story is true,” Arthit says, with a glance at Anna. “Varney has lots of reasons to lie to you about her.” Arthit looks weary, and the fluorescents put deep greenish circles beneath his eyes. To his left, leaning back against the desk in Boo’s office as though she’d tip over backward without it, Anna watches Arthit’s lips, her own lips the perfect circle of no. Crumpled in her hand is the note Hofstedler gave Poke. Although the boys in the other room are all awake, the three of them have been talking in whispers, trying to keep the news in the room.

  Rafferty says, “I looked it up online. C-4 can’t be detonated by fire.”

  “That doesn’t—” Arthit stops, and his eyes go back to Anna, who is shaking her head in what could be disagreement or defeat. Behind her, on the whiteboard, is her last assignment of the day.

  “I think it’s true,” Rafferty says. Anna looks like someone who has anticipated the worst possible news and is hearing it at last. “I know she lit the fire. It’s not all that hard to see her turning on the gas, too.”

  Arthit says, “But you were in there.” Anna squints with effort as she follows his words.

  “So were her mother and Ming Li,” Rafferty says. “But Treasure didn’t have any affection for her mother, didn’t know Ming Li. Didn’t really know me either.”

  Anna raises the hand with the note in it. “Her mother—”

  “Her mother was a zombie.” He can’t hold back a yawn, but it’s nerves, not sleepiness. “Murphy had been abusing the girl for years, and her mother just sucked up the codeine. All I can say is, even if Treasure did it, which I think she did, you weren’t in that house. It was a torture chamber. You have no idea how bad it was.”

  Turning away, Arthit draws an enormous breath, lets it out slowly, and says, “But I do know what murder is.”

  Anna springs from the desk, grabs his shoulders, and twists him to her. Says, “Face me when you talk.”

  “I said,” Arthit says, and then he cups his face in his hands and rubs. When he takes his hands away, he says, “I said I know what murder is.”

  Pulling back, Anna says. “You’ve heard Poke. You know what she went through.”

  “I do. And if she did it, it doesn’t matter what she went through. If that note is true, I can’t have her in the house.”

  Anna rocks back as though ducking the words. Her face is rigid with control. “We need to talk about this.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She needs help,” Anna says.

  “From doctors,” Arthit says.

  Anna says, “I’m not going to let you—I mean, I’m not going to let her—” and breaks off as Boo comes into the room towing a small dark girl with a bumpy face. The girl slides her palm under a runny nose and stares up at them, ready to deny everything.

  “This is Apple,” Boo says. He puts a hand on the child’s shoulder and brings her forward a couple of reluctant steps. “Apple saw them leave.”

  After a moment of silence and a light double tap on her shoulder, Apple says, “Two of them.” She wipes her nose again and studies her grimy palm. “The half-half and that skinny boy.”

  “What about the other girl?” Rafferty says. “Chalee?”

  “Didn’t see her,” Apple says. Boo taps her again. “I didn’t.”

  Anna says to Boo, “Are you sure Chalee went with them?”

  Apple says, “You talk funny.”

  “You saw the three of them together earlier, didn’t you?” Boo says.

  “Talking,” Apple says. She looks at
all the faces in the room, trying to pick one, and then says to them all, “I’m hungry.”

  Arthit says, “I’ll send someone to get you whatever you want. What would you like?”

  “Tom yum koong,” Apple says, very fast. “Som tam. Ice cream.”

  She opens her mouth to add something, but Arthit says, “Fine. Be right back.” He leaves the room, presumably to go to the front steps, where his off-duty cop is waiting.

  “What were they talking about?” Rafferty says.

  “Running away, I think.” Apple puts one foot in front of her, points her toe, ballet style, and lifts her heel so she can swivel it side to side. She watches the movement with interest. When no one replies, she glances up and finds them all looking down at her. “And about some man that the half-half, the one with the curly hair, was afraid of.”

  Arthit comes in and says to Apple, “Fifteen minutes. My man knows somewhere close by.”

  “And some people she didn’t want to stay with,” Apple says.

  “Sorry?” Arthit goes and stands next to Anna. “I missed something.”

  “There were people the half-half didn’t want to stay with,” Apple says. “She could have gone back to their house, but she didn’t want to. I told her she was crazy. She would have had her own bed. The other girl had stayed with them, too, but they didn’t want her, they only wanted the fifty-fifty.”

  Anna blinks slowly and lowers her head. She says, “I never should have—”

  “You were trying to help,” Arthit says, putting an arm around her, but Anna shrugs it off.

  “I don’t need to be comforted,” she says. “I need a plan.” Then she asks Apple, “Why didn’t she want to go back?”

  Apple has been scratching the bites on her neck. “She was afraid of the man. She said he smelled like leather.”

  Arthit looks at Anna for a moment and then closes his eyes.

  “This shouldn’t surprise anybody,” Rafferty says. “She’s terrified at the thought of having another father.”

  Anna says, “And she’s terrified of that man, whatever his name is, who’s out there somewhere.” She’s looking at Poke but obviously speaking to Arthit. “You can’t begin to understand how much pressure the girl is under. Even if she blew up that house, it was her past she was destroying. Damaged children wake up frightened, they go to sleep frightened. They don’t believe there’s anyone who will help them, anywhere in the world. And still they try to love their parents. When they finally realize that their parents aren’t worth their love, the hate can be stronger than anything you or I have ever felt.”

  Apple volunteers, “I hate my father.”

  Arthit says, “But would you kill him?”

  “No,” Apple says.

  Arthit glances at Anna and says, “Why not?”

  Apple scratches her neck and says, “I’m not big enough.”

  Dok has tucked the automatic into his pants to free his hands for the broom, which is once again propped against his shoulder. He has to keep tugging on his waistband to keep his pants up.

  After an agonizing forty-five minutes or so, watching Sriyat cough and try to move, the three of them finally worked up the nerve to jump over the man’s body. His wheezing—a wet, irregular sound—frightened Chalee, although Treasure didn’t even seem to hear it. Occasionally he made a surprising effort to get up. Not once had anyone spoken between the time Sriyat went down for good and the moment Dok said, “We have to jump over him.”

  Once they’re outside, panting in the drizzle, Dok and Chalee pick up the door and lean it back in place, securing it the best they can with a twist of wire although they both know that, with its hinges gone, it will eventually sag to one side. It’s obvious that Sriyat will be found soon.

  Chalee leads them back up the hill. In a block or so, they’ll be at the mouth of the passage. They’re strung out in single file, farther apart than they had been on the way down, as though what’s happened has physically come between them: Chalee, then Treasure, then Dok. Both Dok and Chalee look like they’re studying the pavement, deep in thought. Treasure’s eyes are everywhere. She seems to be rebalancing herself with every step, as though she needs to be ready to run in any direction. Watching her from behind, Dok sighs.

  Chalee stops at the cross street and waits for them to catch up. Treasure gets there first, standing far enough from Chalee that the two of them could just barely graze each other’s fingertips with their arms fully extended. They wait in silence, not looking at each other, for Dok to trudge up to them.

  “Do you want to give me the broom, Dok?” Chalee asks. “I’ll go first.”

  “No.” Dok turns it upside down and looks at the bristles. “It’s silly.”

  “It worked last time,” Chalee says.

  “If there even were any rats.” Dok runs the flat of his hand over the tips of the bristles. “Useless,” he says.

  They hear a shoe scuff and see Treasure stepping off the curb and into the street. Her clothes are brown and stiff with Sriyat’s blood, her hands so saturated that it looks like she’s wearing gloves. The two of them trail behind until she comes to the passageway, and then she turns without a pause and goes in. The other two hurry to catch up.

  For a moment they think they see a small silhouette at the far end of the passageway. Dok stops, but when he’s blinked, the figure—if there had been a figure—is gone.

  A boy runs into the office, his face electric with news: “They’re coming.”

  Rafferty, who had crammed himself onto one of the folding chairs, is up instantly. Boo goes straight to Apple and picks up the tray of food that she’s been eating as fast as she can, and says, “Upstairs.” Still chewing, she trails him out of the room, and by the time Rafferty reaches the door, Boo and Apple are five or six steps up. Rafferty pushes open the outer door, watched by a roomful of wide-awake boys, and jogs to the end of the building, where he slows, takes a very deep breath, and steps into the mouth of the passageway.

  He hears the door to the shelter open behind him, but his attention is on the slight black figure, just a silhouette, coming toward him. He knows it’s Treasure by the mop of hair, once again in rebellion against the brush. Behind her is another figure that, as it moves, resolves itself into two.

  Treasure stops for a moment, probably surprised by the sight of someone standing there. He thinks she might turn and run, but the other two figures keep coming, and after they’ve taken a couple of steps, she seems to remember that they’re back there and she continues toward him. Rafferty hears a skritch-skritch sound like that of someone using a stiff brush to clean a pair of shoes. He backs away from the alley to make himself look less threatening. There’s a whispered argument going on behind him, Anna’s voice overriding Arthit’s and then rolling on, a stream of words. Rafferty tunes it out and watches the black figure advance, the two who are farther away leaning left and right to look over her shoulders and each other’s. The brushing sound gets louder.

  And Treasure steps from the mouth of the passageway. Her gaze slowly sweeps the area, pauses at his face and then continues its survey. He sees her register the people on the steps to the shelter, and then she looks back at him or, he thinks, through him. She’s shaking. She hasn’t taken another step since she emerged from the passageway, and the two children behind her have stopped, too, still in the narrow alley, just a few steps from the end.

  She’s covered in blood, her hands so thickly coated she could have been finger painting with it. Blood has saturated her clothes, dried in flakes on her face and arms, and clotted in her hair. He can smell it, the odor flowing off her like wet heat. He looks into her eyes and sees the emptiness of someone who may have just taken her final blow and doesn’t know whether she can get up again or why she should bother, and all the revulsion he feels disappears. He opens his arms and kneels down, and, to his amazement, she comes.

  She’
s burning hot. The moment his arms go around her, she begins to shiver violently, and then her breath starts to come in gasps and she seems to be trying to say something, but she can get no further than “I . . . I . . . I,” and even that’s all air, and as he tries to think of some way to comfort her, her legs buckle and collapse, and she turns to deadweight in his arms. It catches him completely unprepared and off balance. He’s leaning forward, toward her, and her arms around his neck drag him down. The next thing he knows, they’re both flat on the wet pavement with Arthit and Anna leaning down, Anna trying to help. Treasure’s eyes are closed, and she’s emitting a series of tiny wordless sounds, part sob, part yelp, like an injured animal.

  Boo comes at a run, looks down at her, and says, “My office. I’ll get the doctor.”

  Dok, who has emerged from the passageway with a broom in his hand, says, “It’s not her blood.” Behind him, Chalee’s clothes are also smeared a dark reddish brown, and there are streaks of it on her forearms and forehead. She seems to have wiped her hands on the front of her T-shirt.

  “Are you both all right?” Boo says.

  Chalee says, “Yes. I don’t know about her.”

  Arthit helps Poke up while Anna kneels beside Treasure. The child’s eyes are still closed, and she’s still making that whimpering sound. Anna says, “We have to get her inside, and she needs a sedative.” To Arthit she says, “Go away,” and Arthit backs up a few steps.

  “I’ll send someone to the compound to call the doctor,” Boo says over his shoulder. He’s already on his way back to the building, pulling his phone from his pocket as he runs. “And somebody will get the hospital bed ready.”

  Rafferty calls out, “I don’t think she’s been cut. Please, nobody except us, until we know what’s happened.” He kneels beside Treasure and slowly lifts her to a sitting position. Her head flops forward onto her chest. Waving Anna down on Treasure’s other side, he takes the girl’s near arm and wraps it over his shoulders, grasping her wrist with his other hand. He raises his eyebrows in Anna’s direction, and she nods and gets Treasure’s other arm around her neck. Rafferty says, “Up on three,” and begins to count, the words separated by Treasure’s yelping sounds. He ducks his head on three as an additional signal, since he’s not certain that Anna has followed his lips, and the two of them stand, bringing the girl up with them. Treasure begins to scream, the same high, unwavering sound he’d heard the night she saw her father emerge, still alive, from the big burning house.