A Nail Through the Heart pr-1

by Timothy Hallinan

  "Miaow," Rafferty says. She turns her face fractionally farther away from him. "Miaow, we have to talk."

  "After," Miaow says in English. She does not say it loudly, but her tone is final.

  The plastic bags hang heavy in his hands. "Fine. But not too much after, okay? Where's Rose?"

  "Using all your soap," Rose says in Thai, coming into the living room. "This boy has so much dirt on him I'm not sure there's anyone underneath." Her sleeves are rolled up, and soapsuds gleam on her dark arms. An archipelago of splash marks decorates the front of her shirt.

  "He doesn't have a house," Miaow says fiercely to the fire. "How clean would you be if you had to wash yourself on the street and they chased you away all the time?"

  "We get the point," Rafferty says. "Nobody meant that he-"

  "I was dirty," Miaow snaps. She still has not looked at them. In the rigidity of her back, Rafferty sees the fury of the powerless. She knows that the decision, whatever it is, will come from the adults.

  "And look how nicely you cleaned up," he says as Rose rolls her eyes. "Here's some special shampoo," Rafferty says to Rose, pulling the bag open to show her a bottle of Kwell. "There's some…ah, salve in there, too."

  "For bugs," Miaow says disdainfully in Thai, without a glance. "As though bugs matter."

  "Bugs do matter," Rose says sharply.

  The words bring Miaow's head around sharply. Rafferty is startled at the fury in her face. "What's more important?" she demands. "Not having bugs or not letting people…play with you?"

  "We're not fighting with you, Miaow," Rose says.

  Miaow shrugs and folds herself into an even smaller knot, hunkering down over her knees. Sharp shoulder blades protrude on either side of her spine, curled back like stunted wings. The movements of her hand as she stirs the flames are short and jerky. Misery emanates from her like a fog. The sky darkens behind her, its lower edge torn jagged against the silhouettes of buildings as the night skyline of Bangkok blinks into being, rectangle by rectangle, one office block of lights at a time.

  "I bought him some new clothes," Rafferty says helplessly. Female unhappiness is as mysterious to him as plant disease. He knows it when he sees it, but he has no idea what to do about it.

  Miaow sniffles, and Rafferty takes a step toward her, but Rose grabs his arm.

  "You're being stupid," Rose whispers in Thai. "She's manipulating you." She yanks at his arm, not gently. "In the kitchen."

  He follows her, still lugging the plastic bags with their bottles of medicated shampoo and whatever else the lady at Siam Drugs foisted off on him. He drops them onto the counter, and Rose puts an exploratory hand on the bags and the other on her hip. "You're both acting like children."

  "One of us is a child, Rose."

  "Not the way you mean. Miaow is short and she has a high voice, but she's not anything you mean when you say 'child.' She can take care of herself better than you can." Rose swipes her forehead with the back of a long brown forearm and leaves a lacy pattern of soapsuds in her hair. "You can't let her act like a baby all of a sudden."

  "So what am I supposed to do?" Rose's eyes widen at the frustration in his voice. "Explain the laws of adoption to her? Maybe bring in a lawyer? Run a spreadsheet to show her how much the kid will cost? A pie chart to illustrate what I have in the bank? How exactly do you think I should deal with this, Rose?"

  Rose puts her fingertips against the front of his throat and begins a gentle downward smoothing motion, the Southeast Asian remedy for unseemly emotional displays. Thais take equanimity very seriously, and no one loses face faster than someone who gets angry. "You deal with it the way you should deal with everything," she says, soothing him. "With a cool heart. You look for what's best for everyone. You create a situation where you can earn merit."

  "So we don't just clean the kid up, dress him in new clothes, slip him a twenty, wish him luck, and put him back on the street."

  Rose looks past Rafferty at the balcony, where Miaow has let her head fall all the way forward onto her chest. "You can't," Rose says. "I think you'll lose Miaow if you do."

  The words straighten Rafferty's spine. "You don't know what I've heard about this kid. Tik says he killed someone."

  "That wouldn't surprise me," Rose says.

  Rafferty abandons the rest of his speech and stares at her.

  "I can see it. When I was dancing, there were men who came into the bar, and I knew immediately I shouldn't go with them. They hated women, and the hatred steamed off them like heat from a road. It rippled. I knew I shouldn't let them buy me drinks, shouldn't let them talk to me, shouldn't give them any reason to think they were going to get me out of the bar. I tried to tell the other girls, but some of them went anyway. They came back with cigarette burns on their arms, a missing tooth, a broken nose, razor cuts on the webbing between the fingers. And those men only shimmered. This boy's aura is a very dark red. It boils the air around him. He's like a cat that's gone wild again and can't decide whether it wants to kill or be fed." She holds out her arm to display a red crescent of bruising, not bad enough to break the skin but bad enough to triple Rafferty's pulse. "He bit me," she says.

  Rafferty slaps a palm against one thigh. "That's that. He's gone."

  A hand on his arm. "Miaow will go with him."

  "She won't." He is whispering, and he can see Miaow straining to hear him. "She's not going to run away with a killer."

  "Even if he is a killer," Rose says, "we don't know who he killed."

  "And?" Rafferty says. "If we knew, that would make everything okay?"

  "There are people who should die." Rose might be discussing the price of milk. "Americans have a hard time with that, because they think everyone who is bad got broken somehow and someone else is at fault. Whoever broke them. But in the real world, people know life would be better if some people were removed from it."

  "Jesus," Rafferty says. Her face is calm and clear. "I feel like I'm back in the States, listening to talk radio."

  "I don't know what that means. But I know you'll lose Miaow if you don't keep your heart cool. Learn what you can. The boy has been hurt terribly. Just listen and go gently, and look for a chance to do something good." She leans forward, kisses his cheek, and taps the nearest plastic bag. "And give me the shampoo."

  He hands it to her and watches her straight back as she leaves the room. The kitchen is immaculately ordered, everything part of a set, everything in the right place. If anything broke, he thinks, it would create disorder and incompletion as obvious as a missing tooth. But, of course, there's nothing in the kitchen that couldn't be replaced.

  "Unless my eyes deceive me, we're burning clothes." Framed in the doorway, despite a yellow polo shirt and a pair of checkered slacks loud enough to draw stares even on a golf course, Rafferty's friend Arthit still looks like a cop. "Are we trying to make someone disappear?"

  "Actually, we're attempting a rebirth," Rafferty says.

  "If you figure it out, let us know," Arthit says. "There are a few hundred thousand people who'd give their all for it." He looks hollowed out, almost to the point of transparency. Total exhaustion identifies honest cops in the days following the great waves, in stark contrast to the sleek cheeriness of their corrupt colleagues. The tsunami has made many of them extremely rich. "How are you, Miaow?" Arthit calls over Rafferty's shoulder. "If you sit all bent over like that too long, you'll fold your lungs." Miaow does not answer, but she straightens a tiny amount and stirs the fire. Arthit brings his eyes to Poke's and says, "I'd love to come in, thanks. And did you say something about a beer?"

  "Sorry, Arthit." Rafferty steps aside and lets Arthit in. The trousers make him look like a giant Scotch tape dispenser. "Take whatever's in the fridge."

  "We all aspire to the manners of the West," Arthit says, stepping past him. "'Take whatever's in the fridge.' In those few words, you can hear generations of breeding. Do you want one?"

  "More than I should. So, no."

  Arthit disappears into
the kitchen, trailing a blur of plaid, and Miaow follows him with her eyes, seeing a possible ally.

  "You're obviously off duty," Rafferty calls. "At least from the waist down."

  "Noi says I'm dreary." Rafferty hears the pop and hiss of a can being opened. "Do you think I'm dreary?" Noi is Arthit's wife, grappling with the early stages of multiple sclerosis. Rafferty suddenly sees the pants differently: Arthit would report for work wearing an ostrich-feather peignoir if he thought it would make Noi happy.

  "No drearier than any of my other friends."

  Arthit emerges from the kitchen, a can of Singha beer in hand. "Not the ringing endorsement I had hoped for. I personally think I'm intriguing." He is speaking British-accented English, a legacy of long, cold, miserable years spent as an exotic brown boy in one of the United Kingdom's better schools. "There's more to me than meets the eye. The younger Claude Rains comes to mind."

  "I always thought Claude Rains looked like someone who secretly kept small animals in a dark room."

  "Aren't you cheery. I see Miaow, pooled in misery out there, but where's Rose?"

  "Doing some washing." Poke and Arthit are friends, but he does not want to talk about the boy until he's figured out how to present the topic.

  "She's washing my friend," Miaow volunteers from the balcony. "He's dirty."

  Arthit's eyebrows go up, and Poke says, "Later, okay? It's a little complicated."

  "Not complicated," Miaow says stubbornly. "He's my friend. Poke let me bring him home."

  "Poke's heart is bigger than his head," Arthit says. "But if the kid is a friend of yours, he has to be okay."

  This is met with silence, even from Miaow.

  Arthit says, "This is what's known in the interrogation room as a pregnant pause."

  "Like I said, later," Rafferty says. "And maybe you do resemble Claude Rains."

  "So." Arthit upends the beer and lowers it again. "Dreary as the movie might be, let's cast your life story. If Claude Rains plays me, who do we give to Sydney Greenstreet?"

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," Rafferty says as Hofstedler, in his flowered fumigation shirt, lumbers into his mind's eye. "That was your handwriting. Leon calling her a woman of mystery-was that your idea, too?"

  "Not at all. He probably just forgot her name, what with her being in her thirties and all. On the other hand, Leon could spot a conspiracy in a water-gun fight."

  "You sent her to the bar. Whoever she is."

  "She's a perfectly nice Australian woman named Clarissa Ulrich whose uncle has gone missing. And I'm sorry about the indirect approach. I've been busy, and I ran into Leon, so I offered him something to do besides throwing money at bar girls. I didn't want to give Clarissa your address."

  "Was he down there?"

  "The uncle? That's my first guess," Arthit says. The can goes up again, and he swallows longer than Rafferty could hold his breath.

  Rafferty waits until the can has been lowered. "And this has what to do with me?"

  "Well, on one level you wrote that piece about finding foreign men in Thailand who didn't want to be found. I gave a copy to Clarissa, and she thought it was very interesting."

  "But you know it was silly. I asked you where they were, and you told me."

  "Our little secret," Arthit says. "On another level-a much more important level-it's an opportunity to do me a favor." He drinks again and smooths his hair with his free hand. "At a time when it might be a good idea for you to be owed a few. We both know how much you hate to ask for favors, so I thought this would make it easier."

  "The adoption." The process of a Westerner adopting a Thai child-as Poke hopes to do with Miaow-is an endless minefield.

  Arthit pats his belly. "Testimonials from four or five of Bangkok's finest, so to speak, would smooth things considerably."

  "What's this Australian got to do with you?"

  "Nothing personal," Arthit says. "She was getting passed around among some of my hungrier colleagues. She arrived a week ago with about six thousand in traveler's checks, and she's down to three thousand now. With nothing to show for it. So I thought, let's snatch her from the jaws of the wolves and turn her over to someone who's going to need a few favors. Do a little something for both of you."

  "I wish I could say I appreciate it."

  "Just talk to her." Arthit lowers his voice. "I'll get you into his apartment, which is something my brother officers couldn't be bothered to do, and you'll probably find something that shows he flitted down to Phuket or Phang Nga. You're a reporter, Poke. You know more about how Thailand works than any other farang I know. A couple days down there, you'll have it wrapped up."

  "He looks much better now," Rose says, coming into the room. "It's amazing what a little soap will do. Hello, Arthit. How's Noi?"

  "She's fine, thanks," Arthit says automatically. It is the lie he always tells.

  Rose turns to the balcony. "Really, Miaow, he's almost handsome."

  "I know," Miaow says. She throws a look at Rose and then turns away again.

  "I'm in your way here," Arthit says. He reaches into the pocket of the plaid pants and pulls out one of his business cards. On the other side is the name "Clarissa Ulrich" in that same disciplined handwriting, followed by a phone number. "Promise me you'll call tomorrow?"

  "Promise," Rafferty says, but Arthit is looking past him.

  Rafferty turns to see Superman glowering at them from the door to the hallway. He is shining clean, his gleaming straight black hair falling below his shoulders. Except for the one swollen eye, Rafferty would not have recognized him. He glances sharply at Arthit, and his nostrils flare as he smells cop. Just as quickly, his eyes skitter away toward the balcony.

  Miaow takes one look at him and bursts into tears.

  The boy drills her with a glare and crosses the room toward her, his posture rigid. If he had spines, Rafferty thinks, they would be bristling. But Rose was right; he is handsome, even though the new blue clothes hang on him in folds. He steps out onto the balcony, and Miaow straightens without rising. He sits beside her, only inches away. Miaow wipes her face fiercely with a palm and resumes poking at the fire. The two of them sit identically, knees up and narrow backs curved, with six inches of air between them. To Rafferty's eyes, something about the effortless way they share the space suggests an old married couple.

  "I know that kid from somewhere," Arthit says. He's wearing his policeman's face.

  On the balcony Miaow curls herself against him as though he were much larger than she and she could shelter herself beneath his arm. Rose watches them gravely, doing emotional arithmetic in her head. Whatever the answer might be, Rafferty knows he has no chance of reaching it on his own. It's a calculus he hasn't mastered.

  Arthit touches his arm. "Call Clarissa tomorrow," he says again. Then he turns to study the boy.

  "He's fine when he's with me," Rose says in Thai. They are sitting in the living room, surrounded by the ruins of a dinner that even Rafferty, who cooked it, has to admit was appalling. The children had sat shoulder to shoulder on the balcony, talking in whispers while Rose carried on a bright stream of chatter, not one word of which Rafferty remembers. When everyone reached a consensus that the endless evening could be abandoned, Superman retreated into Miaow's room without even saying good night.

  "He bit you," Rafferty reminds her.

  "Only once. He was just keeping in practice." Rose rummages through her enormous leather handbag for the ever-present Marlboro Lights. She pulls out a fresh pack of the local bootlegs, complete with its oversize black death's-head, and uses a disposable plastic lighter to burn off the cellophane at one corner of the pack. Then she worries a tiny hole in the foil and taps out a single cigarette. It is an extremely labor-intensive process.

  Rafferty watches the routine for the thousandth time. "Half the Thai women I know open cigarettes that way," he says, "and I've never been able to figure out why."

  "When you arrived here, you smoked," Rose reminds him, lighting up.

 
"I actually recall things that far back, Rose," he says. "It's the short-term memory that's going."

  "And when you went into a bar, you put the pack on the table in front of you, wide open the American way, with a great big hole in it. What happened then?"

  "Women hit me up for cigarettes," Rafferty says.

  "Every girl in the bar. Even the ones who didn't smoke. It's all part of getting as much as possible from the farang. That's what that whole life is about."

  "But the way you open them-"

  "It just makes it harder for people to take them away from me," she says. "These things cost money."

  Money is a sore subject with Rose, whose earnings took a vertical nosedive when she quit dancing go-go and went into cleaning apartments. Now she is trying to start a cleaning business, recruiting women from the bars who are either too old to attract customers or just want out of the life. It's slow going. The women may want to quit the bars, but for years most of them have never washed anything but their hair. Even with occasional help from Rafferty-he put up eight hundred dollars, one-fifth of his savings account, for 20 percent of the business-Rose has intermittent bouts of despair.

  "So the boy only bit you once," Rafferty says, changing the subject. "I suppose that's encouraging."

  "It's not women he has a problem with." She blows a funnel of smoke with enormous satisfaction.

  "Who knows who he has a problem with? Given that he's probably killed somebody and he's alone with Miaow in her room right now."

  "They're friends," Rose says soothingly. "You think too much."

  "The inevitable Thai response. My daughter's shut up in a room with an incipient homicidal maniac who's got an aura like a forest fire, and you tell me I think too much."

  "Miaow is tough," Rose says. "She got along without you for years, and now you're right here in the next room with your ears pointing up like a guard dog. Just sit back and relax."