He shakes his head. "It was easy. It took some time, but it was easy. She had been stealing money for years, taking everything people owned-cash, gold, art, everything-and promising them freedom. Then she had them killed. She put it all in Thai banks, millions and millions of baht. With that kind of money here, I knew she'd buy a house. She needed the security of a house, someplace she could hide in, someplace with open space around it, where she could see people coming. Where she could have guards. So it had to be a house, a big house. With walls. She needed a prison. From one prison to another." He sighs. "I searched the city records. Not that many expensive houses are registered in women's names. I found about forty that had been bought fifteen to twenty years ago. Out of those, only a dozen were walled off. I went to those one at a time, waiting outside until I saw a woman of the right age. She drove out of the ninth house I watched, the second day I was there. I knew her the moment I saw her."
"The eyes," Rafferty says.
"Of course."
"Did she see you?"
"It didn't matter. She wouldn't have recognized me anyway. I was one of thousands. When she was finished, she forgot us instantly. We were interesting only while she had us chained to the bed frame."
"Well, shit," Rafferty says. "It's a shame you didn't get her before I found you."
"Nothing to be done," Chouk says. "I took too long. This is what I deserve. It wasn't right for me to want her to suffer that way."
"Yeah, but it's not what she deserves. Why not give the pictures to the cops or send them to the newspapers?" He knows the answer as he asks the questions.
"The papers wouldn't print them without proof the woman in them was Madame Wing. The police would just go to her and demand more money. There's no way to prove who she is, and she's got enough money to satisfy even them."
"A little while ago, you said it was too late for you to finish. What did that mean?"
"I made myself a promise," he says. "Two days from now is the twenty-seventh anniversary of my wife's death. I vowed that one of us would be dead by then." He lifts the chained hand and lets it drop again. "And now look at me." The tears start to flow again. "So she lives to a ripe old age."
Rafferty automatically picks up the plate and the empty bottles. His mind is working so fast he doesn't know what his hands are doing. "Well," he says, "let's not leap to conclusions."
36
As Poisonous as a Krait
Dinner is pineapple pizza, brought back from Silom by Superman. During the time he is gone, Miaow sets the table, filling a vase with cutouts of flowers she has colored on heavy paper, which seems to be a special touch for the boy. The flowers give the table a bright, cartoonish touch, although Superman barely seems to notice them. He keeps his eyes on the table. But he eats.
Rafferty moves aimlessly from room to room in a fog of fury, arguing with himself and losing. It's not so much, he tells himself, that what he has in mind will probably result in Madame Wing's death; it's that he will be having others do the dirty work. Rafferty has always believed that bad deeds, if they must be done, should be done personally.
But he can't just let her walk away.
While they are eating, Arthit knocks at the door. He comes in wearing his plaid trousers, eyes the pizza, and accepts a slice. While Rafferty is getting him a beer, he appears in the kitchen door.
"Thanks for coming," Rafferty says.
"I was coming anyway, even if you hadn't called. My two colleagues, the ones who were helping Clarissa spend her money, put an interesting file on my desk this afternoon."
"This is exactly what I need to hear right now," Rafferty says, opening a second beer. He is gripping the can so hard that it crumples as the top pops, and beer sloshes over his hand. He stares down at it and then licks it off.
Arthit is watching him with interest. "It's a complaint against you. Alleging that you're keeping children here for immoral purposes."
Rafferty lets the counter take all his weight. "I'll kill them. I mean it, Arthit. I'll kill both of them."
"No you won't." Arthit looks at the beer in his own hand but doesn't drink. "Not yet anyway. They told me you had two days to pay them off or they'll file the complaint officially."
"Two days. There seems to be something magical about the day after tomorrow. How much?"
"Fifty thousand dollars."
"Fifty?"
"They think big."
Miaow comes into the kitchen with a plate containing a second slice of pizza for Arthit, looks at their faces, and leaves, still carrying the plate.
"So back to Plan A." Rafferty lowers his voice. "I kill them."
"We have two days to come up with Plan B," Arthit says. "When you called, you said something about a market for fugitives."
"Is there one?"
"This is a vague area. Talking about it puts me in a difficult position, Poke. Normally, of course, what one does with fugitives is turn them over to the police."
"This particular fugitive has the police in her pocket."
Arthit looks past Rafferty for a second and then right at him. He takes his first pull on the beer, a good long one. "Is this somebody we've discussed before? Lives on the river?"
"It is."
"And you can verify her fugitive status?"
"Can I ever."
A pause long enough for Arthit to be doing addition in his head. "Do you have a name? Other than the one I already know?"
Rafferty watches Arthit's eyes. "Keck."
For a moment Arthit has no reaction. Then he says, "My, my. One of the top beasts."
"I've got pictures."
"I'll bet they're lovely."
"If you're going to look at them, you'll be glad you didn't have that second slice of pizza."
Arthit drops his eyes to the can in his hand and then lifts them to the ceiling. "I need to think." He goes to the kitchen counter and pulls out a chair. "Join me?" he says.
"Always a pleasure." Rafferty sits opposite him and watches him think. Looking at the sallow skin, the lines of strain around his friend's eyes, he feels a sudden surge of affection. He reaches over and clumsily pats the back of Arthit's hand. Arthit grabs his hand for a second, then releases it and straightens, all business.
"If you have the pictures, I assume that you also have the person who stole them, since they were obviously in the safe."
"Assume away."
"Okay, three things. First, I wasn't kidding about this being dangerous for me. It's beyond illegal. I can't be involved in any way. It could end my career, such as it is. More important, it could endanger Noi. Her medical bills are eating me alive. If I were to lose my job-"
A wave of shame washes over Rafferty. "Forget it. I shouldn't have asked. I wasn't thinking."
Arthit raises a hand. "And I wasn't finished. That was the first thing. The second thing is that you're going to need agents, for want of a better word, agents who can shop her. She's not a Nazi or a Serbian war criminal. People like that you can turn over to a number of organizations, even governments. But no one is hunting for Khmer Rouge executioners. The Cambodians would probably pay you not to find her. Many of the ranking members of Hun Sen's government were KR not so long ago. Someone like Keck could tell stories that would be intensely embarrassing."
"So?"
"So that means the clients, such as they are, will be individuals. There should be plenty of those, but they'll have limited funds."
Rafferty shakes his head. "I don't care about the money."
"No, but your agents will."
"You said three things. What was the third?"
"You're going to think I'm crazy."
"If I were going to think you were crazy, Arthit, I'd have started long ago."
"It's about your agents. You need to consider the skills they'll have to possess."
This is going somewhere, although Rafferty doesn't know where. "Maybe you could save me the effort. Since you already seem to know."
"Righty-oh." Arthit holds up a handful of
fingers and ticks them off one at a time. "They need to be connected to the criminal underground. They need to know Bangkok extremely well. They need to be familiar with the protocols of delivering prisoners. They need to be greedy. And they can't be afraid of a little violence."
Rafferty's mind is going off on an extremely unattractive tangent. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this."
"Think of it," Arthit says, "as two birds with one stone."
"I take it back. You are crazy."
"It would save them face. It would give them a little money-not as much as they want, but enough to salve their wounds." He drinks again. "It would kill the report on my desk."
"It would bring those two assholes back into my life."
"You're not paying attention. It would kill the report on my desk. It takes care of this vile woman. Poke. Just once in your life, as a favor to me, be rational."
"They're not smart enough. This is no ordinary old lady. She's as poisonous as a krait."
"You need greedy and brutal, and you're getting greedy and brutal. You supply the smart." He drums his fingers on the table, waiting. "Shall I set up a meeting?"
From the living room, Rafferty hears Miaow and Superman talking. "Fine," he says brusquely. "But I'll call them, not you." Then he looks again at the man seated across the table: tired, rumpled, homely, wearing awful trousers. "Arthit," he begins, but Arthit raises a hand.
"You're my friend," he says.
"There'll come a time."
Arthit picks up the can of beer and sloshes it experimentally, hears nothing, and puts it down with a disappointed expression. "And what about our murderer? Do you plan to notify me officially at any point?"
"Eventually."
"When?"
"As soon as he's better," Rafferty says.
"What? Is he down with the flu or something?"
"Iron poisoning."
"Not lead?"
"Nothing that technologically advanced."
"And you're tending his wounds?" Arthit cranes his head in the direction of the living room. "My, my. You're running a regular little hotel here."
"Arthit," Rafferty says. "The people she'll be sold to…"
"What about them?"
"They're not likely to wish her well."
Arthit picks up the beer can and peers through the hole in the top, then looks back up. "That's a safe assumption," he says.
37
The Hinges
He matches the phone numbers to the faces in the file Arthit gave him and chooses the toad-faced one, the one who seemed to be calling the shots during their single encounter. While the phone rings, he surveys his little domain: two homeless children tucked away in one bedroom, a murderer chained to the bed in the other, sweetheart temporarily displaced. A tomato-soup-can burglar alarm stacked beside the door. His dream home.
A child answers the phone.
Rafferty has a sinking feeling he's been experiencing a lot lately. The last thing he wants to do is begin to think of Toadface as an actual human being. "Can I speak to your father, please?" he asks in Thai.
"Sure," the child says. Then she shrills, "Papaaaaaaa!"
Papa. Just what he wanted to hear.
"Hello?" Toadface says.
"This is Poke Rafferty."
"That was fast." The man's tone is fat with satisfaction.
"Yeah, well, don't get ahead of yourself. Clarissa hasn't given me any money, and I couldn't raise fifty thousand dollars if you gave me a year."
"And you've only got two days. Doesn't sound like we've got much to talk about." Rafferty hears a child's question, and Toadface says, "In a minute, sweetie." His voice is completely different.
"That's one way to look at it," Rafferty says. "Two days from now, I don't come up with the money and you go ahead and destroy my family. And I lose a child I love, and you get zero. Nothing. Not a baht. Think about it. Does that sound like a worthwhile objective?"
The child asks another question, but it goes unanswered. It is repeated. Finally Toadface says, "Have you got something else in mind?"
"I do," Rafferty says. "And you guys are perfect for it."
Rafferty is picking up the tomato cans when the boy comes into the room. He immediately begins to help.
"We don't need these anymore?"
"I don't think so. Everybody who wants to kill us is busy."
Miaow has gone to her room. She seems upset about Chouk's presence, especially the information that he is handcuffed, and Rafferty wonders whether she'll turn it into a bulletin for Hank Morrison at their next meeting. The boy is wearing his new blue sweatpants and the pink T-shirt Miaow bought Rafferty as a gift. It's too small for Rafferty, but on the boy it hangs like a poncho.
"Let's put these away for Rose," Rafferty says. The boy follows him into the kitchen.
"The policeman who was here," the boy says. "Is he your friend?"
"One of them. I actually have several."
A pause as the boy works something through in his head. "You like him, even though he's a policeman."
"I like some crooks, too."
"Huh," the boy says, unconvinced.
Rafferty closes the cabinet door and heads back to the living room, the boy trailing in his wake. He sits at one end of the couch, leaving room for Superman, but the boy sinks into a cross-legged stance on the floor. He fluffs the rug with the palms of both hands, something Rafferty has watched him do dozens of times. "Soft," he says.
"That's the point."
He opens his mouth, thinks about it, and strokes the carpet as he would a puppy. At last he says, "Too bad the world isn't soft."
"Ah," Rafferty says with a twinge of unease. They seem to be having a talk.
"Do you know why it isn't?"
Rafferty gives the question some thought. "You mean, why is it softer for some people than for others?"
"Yes."
"I have no idea."
The boy doesn't even blink. "Who does?"
"Oh, well," Rafferty says. "Lots of people have theories. Priests, politicians, philosophers. I think they're all guessing, though."
"What's your guess?"
"Dumb luck," Rafferty says, glad Rose isn't there to hear him.
"That just makes me angry." The boy's jaw comes forward, bull-doglike.
"Then believe something else. Karma, reincarnation, Cosmic Lotto. Being angry's just going to make things worse."
A shrug, too weary for a child his age. "Like it matters if I'm angry."
"Right now you're dry, you're wearing clean clothes, you just had that awful pizza with all the pineapple on it. You've got a bed to sleep in tonight. You've got friends."
"Because you gave it all to me," the boy challenges. "Tomorrow if you change your mind, I'll be on the street again. How do you think that feels?"
"Better than being there tonight. And I didn't give it to you, we all did. Why do you think we did that?"
The boy looks down at the carpet. He makes scissors from his fingers and pretends to trim the nap. He shows Rafferty nothing but the top of his head. When he speaks, Rafferty can barely hear him. "Phuket," he says.
Rafferty had thought he had used up his evening's supply of apprehension, but there it is again, dead center in the middle of his chest. "Right," he says. "Phuket."
The boy looks up at him and then away. "You won't tell Miaow."
"I won't tell anybody. Look, there are lots of things I've never asked Miaow. I figure it's her business to tell me when she wants to. It's the same with you. It's your story, and you tell it to her when it's time."
"I'll never tell it to her."
"Your call."
He plays with the carpet again. "It was a man," he says.
Immediately Rafferty thinks of Ulrich. He breathes a couple of times to make sure his voice will be steady. "What happened?"
"I went down there because the police were looking for me here. And I wanted to be someplace where I didn't have to be, you know…" His voice trails off. "Where I didn't ha
ve to be Superman." He tugs the carpet hard enough to lift it from the floor. "I wanted to stop taking yaa baa."
"Good for you."
"And I met a man. He saw me on the street and talked to me. He was an American, like you, and he…he seemed to like me. Not just for sex. He took me to movies. Real movies, in theaters, not videos. He bought me things." Rafferty remembers the boy's sullenness during their shopping expedition and, with a pang of shame, the irritation it had provoked. "He let me stay with him. I slept and slept. I stopped taking pills and smoking. When he wanted me, he gave me whiskey so it wouldn't hurt so much." He lifts his head and looks in the direction of the hallway that leads to Miaow's room. "It still hurt, really, but I said it didn't. I got to like the whiskey." He seems to lose the thread for a moment, gazing down the hall. "I began to think he loved me," he says. "His name was Al."
"What happened?"
"He ran out of money. One day he had money, and the next day he didn't. They were going to throw us out of the room. So one night Al brought home two men and told me they had paid to fuck me, and I was going to fuck them, or he was going to kick me out. I thought about going, but I had seen the money. I fucked them."
"I'm sorry," Rafferty says.
The boy shrugs the sentiment away. "That night, after the two men left, I waited until Al was asleep. Then I got dressed and opened the dresser and took the money. And then I crawled across the bed and bit Al's ear off."
His eyes are locked on Rafferty's. "He bled a lot," he says, still watching. When Rafferty doesn't avert his gaze, the boy looks away. "I ran. All the way back to Bangkok."
First Chouk's story, now this. Rafferty shuffles through a dozen replies and finally says, "You didn't deserve any of that."
"Then why did it happen?" The boy's voice scales so high it almost breaks on the last word. His eyes are enormous, and Rafferty sees them for the first time as what they are: the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy. "Why did it happen to me? Why not somebody else?"
"Wait," Rafferty says. "This is a big question. Give me a second here." He leans back against the couch and rolls his head slowly around to get the stiffness out of his neck. "Okay. Listen to me, even if I make some mistakes, right?"
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