The Hot Countries

by Timothy Hallinan

  “We’ll all plan something nice,” Rafferty says, adding mentally, If we’re still alive.

  “Good,” Arthit says. “Hard to believe so much terrible stuff can be packed into fourteen years.” There’s another silence, and as much as Rafferty wants to know about the will, he lets Arthit stew in it. Finally Arthit says, “Anna told me what Miaow said last night. To Treasure, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Rafferty says. “I just told her I love her.” At the table Miaow is making a pile of tangerine pills, and she looks up and flicks one toward him.

  “Right,” Arthit says. He clears his throat. “So she gets everything when she’s eighteen. Here’s the interesting part. Until then the estate will be administered by an executor, one Gerald Terwilliger, which seems to be Varney’s real name. And you can bet he’s kept those papers up to date, because here’s the deal. Once every calendar year between Murphy’s death and the day Treasure turns eighteen, the executor is entitled to withdraw any amount up to two million, to care for Treasure and/or, in the exact words of the will, ‘to spend as he sees fit.’ The only condition is that Mr. Terwilliger must be personally accompanied by Treasure, the ultimate heir, to make the withdrawal. The banks have all received a photograph of Treasure and her thumbprint.”

  Rafferty says, “Hold it.” Miaow wiggles her eyebrows at him, and he realizes he’s been staring at her. He turns away. “For Murphy,” he says, “this is almost human. He found a way to take care of her. He knew she couldn’t survive without him and that Neeni was useless, so he turned her over to Varney, but in a way that forces Varney to keep her alive and well instead of just . . . you know, pushing her out of a plane.”

  “Until she’s eighteen,” Arthit says.

  “Even then, he’ll have to use her to get the rest of the money. But you know what this means. The last thing in the world Varney wants is for something to happen to Treasure.”

  “If I were in his shoes,” Arthit says, “I’d have her cushioned in bubble-wrap. I’d keep her in a vault.”

  Rafferty feels like he’s been hit on the head with a down pillow. “He’s not going to hurt Treasure.”

  “I think we’ve covered that.”

  But Rafferty’s still talking. “Someone said—Wallace, it was Wallace—that I needed to dangle, out in plain sight, the thing that Varney wants and let him come try to take it.”

  “But you can’t do that. He still wants to take her. And, Poke, I made a couple of other calls, starting with the mercenary outfit we know Murphy worked for at times. Terwilliger has been all over the Middle East. He was charged with murder in Iraq for a small massacre in what turned out to be the wrong village, and he was yanked out of the country to avoid an Iraqi trial and then fired. No wonder Murphy built that insurance policy into his will. Varney is too bad for those guys, Poke, and those guys are awful.”

  Despite his distraction, Rafferty hears the concern in Arthit’s tone. He says, “I know. He . . . he talked about Afghanistan last night. But still—knowing that he won’t actually hurt Treasure. Well, this changes things.”

  30

  Sub-Saharan Africa

  New rules.

  New rules for Miaow, who’s obviously at even greater risk. He’ll arrange it with Mrs. Shin to take Miaow to school in her car, on the floor in the backseat, and go home the same way. Rafferty will drop her off at Mrs. Shin’s in the morning and pick her up at night. There’s no way, he thinks, even if Varney figures out which school Miaow goes to, that he’ll be looking at Mrs. Shin, one teacher out of seventy, at the school.

  As long as he doesn’t go anywhere near the school, as long as Miaow is being ferried in by someone with no visible connection to him, then everything should be fine. As far as Varney’s concerned, it’ll be as though Miaow’s going to school in sub-Saharan Africa.

  That pleasant certainty lasts until early Thursday afternoon.

  Making his rounds, he drops by the Expat Bar to double-check that everyone’s still alive and to ask Leon what’s new with Wallace. The gray drizzle has yielded to damp breezes that move the carbon monoxide around in a manner that would probably be pleasant, he thinks, to some species that drinks gasoline. Halfway down the relatively empty street, the boys who will erect the night market huddle to smoke and tell jokes, waiting for someone to unlock the storage area where the bones and the fabrics of the booths are stored.

  More of the colored bulbs in the bar’s window have burned out; now only four remain. The last of the red ones has given up the ghost, which eliminates Christmas from the arrangement and turns it into a meaningless straggle of unevenly spaced green lights. “You need to get some new lights,” he says to Toots as he goes in.

  “Have,” Toots says. She’s sitting on a stool with a newspaper in front of her, folded tightly around the story she’s reading. “Maybe I do tomorrow.” Also in the room are Campeau, who might as well sleep there, and Pinky Holland. The overhead fixtures are off, and the gray light coming through the window seems damp and spectral.

  “This is not a room that would cure depression,” Rafferty says. “What’s the word on Wallace?”

  Pinky says, “He’s getting out today. He made a fuss. Leon’s taking him home. Leon’s home, I mean.”

  “Good,” Rafferty says. “Probably good for Leon, too. He seems pretty lonely.”

  “Tell the man what you’re reading, Toots,” Campeau says.

  “You are . . . bestseller?” Toots says to Rafferty.

  “I turned it into a question when I read it, too,” Campeau says.

  “What?” Rafferty says. “When you read what?”

  Toots holds the paper out to him. “English,” she says. “Cannot read too good.”

  It’s the Bangkok Sun. “small town” has big cast, the headline runs. Beneath it Rafferty reads:

  The first production in Thailand of William Thurgood’s classic American play, “Small Town,” will open tomorrow night (Friday) at Regent International School, Sathorn. The drama, a semirealistic depiction of daily life in a tiny town in the American Midwest, won a Pulitzer Prize when it debuted on Broadway in 1948.

  “This play has special meaning to our students,” says drama teacher and director Kyung-Hee Shin. “It’s about home and family and life and death, and two young people who fall in love.”

  The cast, made up entirely of Regent International students, is headed by Luther So, the son of Taiwanese Consul-General Chih-Ming So, as the Narrator. The two young lovers are played by Mia Rafferty, daughter of bestselling travel writer Poke Rafferty, and Edward Dell Jr., son of an American Bangkok resident. The role of Mrs. Withers is played by tenth-grade student and professional model Siri Lindstrom, daughter of Swedish hotelier Andreas Lindstrom and his wife, the actress Pia Vogler.

  “Small Town” will be presented in English on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings at 8 PM. Tickets can be purchased by telephone from the school.

  “Mother of God,” Rafferty says. He suddenly remembers Mrs. Shin suggesting he tell Miaow to check the papers. He’d forgotten all about it. “This is a disaster.”

  “Look very nice to me,” Toots says. “What it say about you.”

  “We’re all going, right?” Pinky says. “I’m planning on it. I bought a tie.”

  “I don’t know,” Rafferty says, his head spinning. “I mean, I have no idea.”

  “Thought we talked about it,” Campeau says.

  The door opens, and the Growing Younger Man comes in, carrying an umbrella despite the fact that it’s not raining. “Morning pick-me-up, okay, Toots? Heavy on the chlorella. Hey, famous writer, look at this.” He extends a newspaper that’s been folded beneath his arm.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Really?” the Growing Younger Man says. “You read the Polyglot?” The Polyglot is a new enterprise, a slapped-together sheet of computer translations from the Thai-language press, printed in E
nglish, Japanese, and German editions, plus Russian for the gangsters in Pattaya.

  “You’re shitting me.” Rafferty extends his hand and takes the paper, and there it is, word for word. “Is this in everything?

  “I don’t read everything,” the Growing Younger Man says. Rafferty hands him the Sun. “Hey, you and Miaow are both famous.”

  “Which is exactly what I didn’t need,” Rafferty says. He gets up. “Did Leon say how Wallace was?”

  “Bandaged and walking,” Pinky says.

  “I may be back,” Rafferty says. “Or I may leave for South America.” He goes out and turns left, picking up Varney’s designated watcher, Kiet, about halfway to Surawong and waving at him. Kiet, still wearing the long gray coat, mimes a long-distance high five. Rafferty crosses Surawong and goes into the Montien Hotel—still working at fancy but getting shiny at the knees and elbows—and into the bookshop, where he buys the other English-language papers. The story—almost word for word, with Small Town, Miaow’s name, and his own—is in all of them, along with the name of her school and even the area of Bangkok, Sathorn, where it’s located. And, of course, the identity of the teacher he had planned to ask to chauffeur Miaow to and from school.

  It’s two thirty when he finishes reading the papers in the Montien’s lobby, time to go pick up Miaow, which no longer seems like a good idea. As he sits in the armchair, aimlessly sorting and resorting what’s happened, three possible courses of action present themselves. He can pull Miaow out of the play and stay away from the school tomorrow night, which would outrage his daughter, spark a war in his family, and probably ruin the production. He can ignore the story and hope for the best, hedging his bets by showing up heavily armed. Or, since the story is already out there and it might be the only chance he’ll get to draw Varney to him, he can try to take advantage of it.

  And instantly he has an idea. It’s complete and almost fully formed, with a beginning, a middle, and about six endings, only one of which isn’t irredeemably disastrous. He dismisses it and gets up.

  And sits down again. He brings up a map of the Sathorn area on his phone. With his forefinger he traces on the arm of the chair the streets that matter. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe someone can talk me out of it.

  He calls Mrs. Shin and asks her to take Miaow home with her.

  31

  Nowhere to Go

  Varney’s first reaction is, It’s a setup.

  He’s been up for a couple of hours, essentially seething. There’s been nothing on the television news about the old guy those clowns killed down near Petchburi, which means Rafferty might not even know about it, son of a bitch. So, after he makes his instant coffee, he spends twenty minutes returning the furnished condominium to its “unoccupied” state—all the used paper cups and plates, plus the take-out-food containers, in a small trash bag, his clothes and toiletry kit folded tightly into the big computer bag with the shoulder strap, all the porcelain surfaces wiped down and spotless, the shower stall dry, the bedclothes stretched to military tautness, not a wrinkle anywhere. Then he picks up the trash bag and hangs the computer case from his shoulder and lets himself out of the condo. On the way to the elevator, he drops the trash bag down the chute, as he does each time he leaves, and totes the computer bag onto the sidewalk.

  He needs to look at a paper. He’s checked the Bangkok Sun and the World on his cell phone, but not all stories make the cut for the online edition, which means the old guy still might be in the print version. So now he steps into yet another hot, cloudy, damp day and heads for the nearest Starbucks. First, though, he ducks into an Asia Books store and buys the papers. Then it’s back into the world of crowded sidewalks and sweat.

  How he hates this city. He hates the wetness, the smell—the rank stew of exhaust and people, plus the occasional seep of sewage. He hates the Third World power lines overhead even in some of the most expensive neighborhoods, tangles of black that remind him he’s still a prisoner of money, still scrambling for the final score that will put him permanently back in Prague, the only city on earth he loves. The hot countries are the places where the gold can still be seen glittering on the walls of the mines, there for the taking if your hands are fast enough and your knife sharp enough, but he yearns for cold, still winters and silence and the tidiness of several centuries of rigorous, tightly organized civilization.

  The overpriced coffee and sweet roll, naturally, require a long wait in line, listening to the Thais quack at each other, watching the meaningless smiles, wishing he could just blow away everyone in the place and help himself to whatever he wants. Sit down among the bodies for a nice hot cup of coffee and a Danish, basking in the silence of the dead. Somewhere he saw an engraving of Vlad the Impaler having a picnic at a formally set table—white tablecloth and all the other trappings of aristocracy—in the center of a forest of impaled people, Vlad tucking in heartily while a henchman in front of the table uses a hatchet to disassemble some nameless bystander chosen to provide the meal’s entertainment. Vlad, Varney once read, put a solid-gold cup beside a public fountain in the city of Târgoviste so passersby could refresh themselves. During the years of his rule, the cup was never stolen.

  Now, that’s order, Varney thinks. He grabs a tiny table beside the window and sits with his back to the street, shutting out the perpetual crowd, the slow tropical stride. He’s wished passionately at times for a cannon to precede him through these dawdling throngs, cutting a swath for walking at a purposeful pace.

  The papers disappoint him. Nothing about the man in Petchburi. He folds the World, wondering whether it’s possible the old fart survived. The murder of a farang would be reported; a mugging, even a brutal one, might not be. Bad for tourism. He should have checked the man’s pulse.

  Although what does it matter? He’s gradually accepting the possibility that Rafferty might not actually have Treasure. The money, yes, he’s clearly lying about the money. No one would steal $600K and leave $3 million behind. But maybe, just maybe, when Rafferty talked to that dragon of a maid about bringing mother and daughter back together, maybe he was simply close to finding her. Maybe he was being optimistic. Rafferty has the simplicity at his core that often distinguishes optimists and other types who usually lose at the long game. Romantics, idealists.

  And whether Rafferty’s an idealist or not, it’s hard for Varney to believe that the man would put himself and the people he loves at risk for a murderous kid he barely knows. For $3 million, sure. But a girl who tried to blow up a house with him inside it? Doesn’t compute.

  As much as he’d like to get the three mil, and as badly as he needs it, the money in the closet is small change compared to the fortune Treasure could unlock for him, money he’s planned on for years. Money he put up with Murphy for, flattered Murphy for. His money.

  But maybe Rafferty actually doesn’t have her.

  He sighs and unfolds the paper again, looking for the Lifestyle section, where they put the photos of the rich girls. He’s always liked rich girls, if only because their idea of how life works is so breathtakingly wrong. He regrets sometimes that he was born too late for all the great revolutions, when he might have had the opportunity to drag some brittle princess into that room with the drain in the floor and break the world open for her like an old glass Christmas ornament.

  And there are two of them, right on the front page: a pair of fine-looking debutantes, with that expression that says as far as they’re concerned, their shit smells like doughnuts and yours doesn’t, and then a word detaches itself from the bottom of the page, blinks on and off a couple of times, and virtually punches him in the eye. Rafferty, it says. And then SMALL TOWN.

  He says aloud, “Bullshit,” earning him a few reproving glances that he doesn’t notice. He reads it twice, almost laughing at its transparency. Sure, he’ll go to check out that school, sure, he’ll loiter around on the sidewalk with a sign taped to his back saying arrest me.

 
He reads it again. Flips through another paper and finds it.

  Pulls out his phone and brings up the website for Regent International School, Sathorn, Bangkok. Full address duly noted. My, my, the Korean woman, kind of butch-looking, is actually listed as a faculty member. How neat, how plausible. Just for the hell of it, he dials the school and asks to be transferred to whoever is handling tickets. When the woman comes on the line, speaking Thai-accented English, he confirms the dates and the times of the production. She asks how many tickets he needs and how he’ll pay for them, and he disconnects.

  They’ve put real effort into this, he thinks. Hitchhiking on an actual school production.

  This time when he reads the story, he sees the bit he missed. Mia.

  It takes him about twenty seconds to find her Tumblr page. He’d looked for her online once or twice as Miaow, but there she is, Mia Rafferty, a dark-skinned, apparently short, ordinary-looking Thai girl with intelligent, watchful eyes and a bad haircut. In a couple of pictures, she’s with a skinny, big-headed Viet geek in glasses whom the captions identify as Andrew Nguyen. And then, mirabile dictu, there she is, looking a little spoony, a tad adoring, with a ridiculously handsome farang kid named Edward Dell. The caption reads, OMG, Edward is going to play “Ned” in “Small Town.” The picture went up on Tumblr twelve days ago, more than a week before Rafferty had ever heard the name Arthur Varney.

  So.

  He sits absolutely still, looking at the photo of the two teenagers. Rafferty might not have Treasure, but he’s got Mia. Seems like a fair trade: one little girl for another or, at a bare minimum, the three million from Murphy’s closet. The newspaper story might still be a setup, but the information it contains is too valuable to ignore. Whatever Rafferty has, he’ll want to trade it for Miaow. Mia.

  Unlike most Thai women, Lamai has hair with a natural curl in it. It’s not much of a curl, but it’s enough to create frizz when the weather is damp.