The Fear Artist pr-5

by Timothy Hallinan

  The crying man keeps his eyes on Rafferty as he picks up the gun, his hand shaking so badly he almost drops it again. Then, with great care, as though he’s navigating a landscape of broken glass, he backs up several steps and turns his back.

  Rafferty waits a moment, partly because he can’t believe it and partly because he’s not certain he can move. Then he brings himself to a sitting position and from there to all fours. When he stands, he finds that his legs will more or less carry him.

  And he hears the men coming up the stairs.

  The fire escape is where it should be. It stops at the eighth-floor window, but it’s only about nine feet down. He jams his feet into his shoes, grabs the leather bag and commits to the jump before he has time to think about it, going over the low wall on his belly and hanging by his hands before making the drop.

  He’s gone down two floors on the rusted stairs on wobbly legs, descending in a barely controlled fall, before the man on the roof fires his gun twice.

  His cab is where it’s supposed to be, the driver working on a new wet cigarette. Everything that just happened to him took less than eight minutes.

  IF I GOT away with that that, Rafferty thinks, tonight I can get away with anything.

  He gives the driver the address on Soi Pipat and leans back. He stinks with sweat and fear, and he finds the man looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Would you sell me a cigarette?” Rafferty asks. He hasn’t smoked in years.

  “It’s a present,” the driver says, passing one back. “Looks like that was a rough visit.”

  “Easy to check in,” Rafferty says, hearing his voice shake. “Hard to check out. Got a lighter?”

  “Can’t smoke in the cab.” The driver leans right, his hand fishing for something, and then holds up a disposable plastic lighter. “Put your head out the window.”

  “Eat one yourself,” Rafferty says. He’s feeling light-headed, and the first lungful of smoke tilts the horizon alarmingly. For a ghastly, weightless moment, he thinks he’ll pass out.

  “Feeling better?” the driver asks.

  “I must be,” Rafferty says over the noise of the wind. “It’s a big, surprising world, and it must contain at least one thing I feel better than. I’m alive, right?”

  “And married,” the driver says.

  Rafferty brings his head back in but leaves the hand with the cigarette in it dangling out of the cab. “How can you tell?”

  “In the eyes. You have married eyes.”

  “Really. That’s amazing.”

  “Joking,” the driver says. “The way you speak Thai, you must speak it at home. You don’t have that up-on-tiptoes thing in your voice that most people have when they’re speaking a foreign language. You speak it to somebody who’s not going to laugh at you. So you’re married to a Thai woman.”

  Rafferty says, “Very impressive.”

  “When you drive one of these things ten hours a day, you get good with people.”

  “I have a Thai daughter, too.”

  “Yes? Not fifty-fifty?”

  “No. We adopted her.”

  “Was she poor?”

  “Living on the sidewalk.”

  “Good for you. Good merit for your karma.” He looks back again. “Who do you love most, the wife or the daughter?”

  “How can I answer that? I love them both so much it makes my teeth hurt. What about you?”

  “Four,” he says. “Two sons and two daughters. I’m supposed to love the sons most, but I don’t.”

  “And your wife? Is she beautiful?”

  “Beautiful enough for me,” the driver says with a grin. “Beautiful enough that I’m beginning to worry about my daughters.”

  “I know how you feel. They’re babies, and then they’re not.”

  “And we’re all surrounded by boys.”

  Rafferty sees Andrew’s earnest face, his black glasses, the anxiety in his eyes. “It’s hard not to feel sorry for the boys,” he says. “They haven’t got a chance.”

  The driver laughs. “Girls can eat boys alive,” he says. “It’s a good thing they don’t know it.” He eases the car left, checking the outside mirrors, getting ready to turn. “So you’re better off than a lot of people,” he says. “Wife, daughter, love.”

  “I am, aren’t I?” He leans back. “That was a terrible cigarette.”

  He’s in and out of the apartment building in less than five minutes. He takes the elevator to his floor and goes straight to the door to the stairs. He’s not worried about running into anyone, because Mrs. Pongsiri will be at her bar, lying to customers and keeping the girls in line. The smell of paint haunts the hallway like a ghost of his former life, when the color on his walls mattered. In front of the door to the stairs, he stretches up to work the masking tape free from the top of the doorjamb. When he’s got the yellow ticket, he puts it in his pocket without looking at it. Then he goes into the stairwell and once again dials the number in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

  This time he doesn’t break her heart. “My name is Poke Rafferty,” he says to the answering machine. “P-O-K-E. I’m in Bangkok. When you get this message, please call me at this number.”

  Then he goes down the stairs, thinking about Murphy.

  Part Three

  THE FEAR ARTIST

  16

  A Hand Grenade on a Pool Table

  The stewardess who has accompanied Murphy from the first-class cabin indicates the express lane for VIP passports with an extended arm, fingers together and slightly curved, plus the hint of a bow at the waist. He walks on without acknowledging her, speeding up just enough to cut in front of a red-faced Korean businessman who starts to protest and then, looking at Murphy’s jeans and wrinkled shirt, grimaces and slows to let him in.

  The flight from Kuala Lumpur should have been only a couple of hours long, but a thunderstorm kept them on the runway for ninety minutes and its little sister made them circle Suvarnabhumi’s sprawling runways for another forty, the city wet and dark below them. He’d looked down, checking to see whether the flooding in the low-lying areas was visible and not much caring one way or the other. As far as he’s concerned, the river and canals could sink the whole city. Might clean it up a little.

  Murphy is not good with delays. It takes him about two minutes to get to the woman who’s processing the passports, and when she takes her time leafing through his to find a blank page-it’s the thickness of a small-town phone book-he holds up his right hand in a loose fist and moves the thumb like a mouth so it appears to be saying, in Humphrey Bogart’s voice, “Hurry it up, sweetheart.”

  The woman, startled, looks first at the fist and then at Murphy. He leans into the counter and says, in a conversational tone, “Either stamp the fucking thing or get your boss over here to do it. You may be on Thai time, but I’m not.”

  The woman’s face reddens. She rises as though to call for assistance, but a flicker on her monitor draws her attention. She glances down at it and her eyes come up to his for a second and then down again, instantly. She straightens, grabs her stamp, hammers it onto a blank quarter page, and hands it back to him. She says, “Enjoy your stay, sir.”

  He’s already on his way.

  Murphy is traveling with nothing but a fat, battered briefcase-so full that the only way he can keep it closed is by cinching a belt around it-so he angles around the baggage carousels with their tiers of slowly rotating bags and all the schlemiels waiting for them, and he wonders for the ten-thousandth time why people buy black luggage that looks exactly like everybody else’s black luggage. On cue, a tired-looking Anglo man wrestles a giant black bag halfway off the conveyor belt, sees the number on the ticket, and crossly shoves it back on. His wife, who hasn’t moved a muscle to help, says, “Told you.”

  What we need, Murphy thinks, is a selective battery law. He should get a hundred bucks from the Global Civility Fund for pasting her. The thought cheers him slightly, and he bulls his way through the Nothing to Declare line, glaring down a q
uestioning glance from the official behind the table.

  He’s headed to the taxi line when one of the uniforms from Shen’s outfit materializes at his shoulder. “No bags, sir?”

  Murphy hoists the briefcase and says, “Whaddaya call this?” and pushes it at him. “I didn’t expect you. I’m a day early, and I didn’t call anyone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Shen’s showing off, isn’t he? Where’s the car?”

  “Right outside.”

  He follows the uniform, musing about whether Shen’s insistence on having tall men in his outfit is a strategic decision or the expression of some sexual kink. Shen seems to be as close to sexless as any man his age Murphy has ever met. Maybe Nirvana for him is being surrounded by tall, identically dressed men. Murphy’s come up against weirder glimmers.

  “Do you think there’s anything, however repulsive,” he says to the man he’s following, “that doesn’t turn somebody on?”

  “I’m a driver, sir.” The man steps into the revolving glass door.

  “What’s that mean?” Murphy says when he’s through the door himself. “They cut ’em off?”

  “Here’s the car, sir,” the driver says, and sure enough there it is, a mirror-polished Lincoln Town Car guarded by a pair of airport policemen, who step away and offer two-finger salutes, touching just the index and middle fingers to the brims of their caps as both of them avoid Murphy’s eyes.

  “Nice to see you guys doing something,” Murphy says in Thai to the one who holds open the rear passenger door. He slides in, and the cop closes the door. A moment later the driver’s door opens and the driver gets in with a little difficulty, ducking his head as he squeezes through the door.

  Murphy says, “You know where we’re going, right?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “Okay, then, where?”

  The driver eases into the traffic loop. “Major Shen-”

  “No, we’re not going to see Major Shen. Fuck Major Shen. I’m going home. Do you know where that is?”

  “No, sir, but Major Shen-”

  “Major Shen isn’t in the car, son. But I am. And right this minute I’m looking at the back of your neck.”

  After a moment the driver says, “Yes, sir.”

  “Aaaahhhh,” Murphy says in disgust. He pulls out a cell phone and hits a speed-dial number. When it’s answered, he says, “Hey, y’all.”

  Major Shen says, “Murphy? Is that you?”

  “No,” Murphy says in falsetto. “It’s Dolly Parton. I was just sitting in the tub, lookin’ down and watching ’em float, and I thought of you.”

  “I need you in here.”

  “And I need to go home. You tell me you got that little shit-head tied up in a room with his feet on fire, I’ll come in.”

  “We almost had him.”

  “Well, that’s inspiring. What happened?”

  “We put teams of men on cheap hotels around Khao San and found him in one of them.”

  “So. I guess he shot his way out? Kill a bunch of your guys?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You don’t have a lot of dead guys?”

  “No.”

  “Then how the hell-”

  “They chased him up onto the roof, but he jumped down a floor onto a fire escape-”

  “You want to tell me how-No, wait a minute, wait a minute. I want whichever one of your violets saw him last, whoever had him on that roof, I want that man kicked in the gut until he’s told you everything about how a fucking travel writer gets away from a trained, armed officer. A trained, armed officer you chose, remember? And you e-mail me the transcript, and if anything smells even a little, I’ll come over there and talk to him myself. He won’t like that. And even if it doesn’t smell, break him. Put him on landmine duty down south and make sure the word gets out. Next guy who fucks up will be digging the things up barehanded while fuzzy-wuzzies snipe from the woods. Do you doubt I could arrange that?”

  “No,” Shen says.

  “And you’re right. Not to be unpleasant, but it’s Uncle’s money that pays for those fancy uniforms, all extra-long.”

  “You’re the only one arguing,” Shen says.

  “Why do you pick such tall guys?” Murphy asks. “Have you always wanted to be the shortest little boy in the room or something?”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Shen says.

  “I want to hear that guy screaming all the way to my house, you got it?”

  “Certainly, Murphy. Everyone here knows what you want.” Shen disconnects.

  “Hey,” Murphy calls to the driver, “you want me to give you directions, or you gonna read my mind?”

  TIME TO LIGHTEN up, he thinks. Time to shake loose again. Dump all the weight and break free. They’re snarled in the perpetual Bangkok traffic jam, made worse by the flooded streets, the world just a blur of drizzle, taillights, and shining asphalt, with the occasional lightning pitchfork thrusting toward the city. He leans back and closes his eyes. How does this happen? Why do you let it happen? Every few years you look around and you’ve got all this shit. You’ve got a big fucking house with piles of expensive junk in it, you’ve picked up some women, and with the women there’s usually a kid sooner or later, and you’re living in some barn behind gates with people to drive your car and clean your rooms and wipe your ass. And a hundred people know who you are.

  How many kids now, over the years? He can think of seven, five of whom he hasn’t seen in decades, but he knows he’s missing a few. No point in even trying to remember all the women. They were pretty much all the same woman anyway.

  Some of the kids were okay. Some of them made it to college, and a couple are in the States. Had a few dominants in there. But some of them were eaten in the jungle.

  Then, of course, there’s Treasure. What the hell is he going to do with Treasure? The only kid he’s ever had who he knows without a tenth of a drop of doubt is his. She’s his from teeth to toenails.

  And that’s the problem. She’s her daddy’s girl. Leave her with some unsuspecting couple, she’d cook them over an open flame and serve them to their children. He can’t put her with anyone, he can’t let her mother have her, and he can’t leave her alone. He needs to think about this, and fast, because he’s got to move.

  He’s not having fun. And he’s got a footprint a mile wide.

  He grunts at the thought of how much effort it’s going to take.

  The driver says, “Sir?”

  “When I want you,” Murphy says, “I’ll say, ‘Hey.’ Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You just get me home and I’ll see they give you another one of those pretty medals.” Get rid of the house first, he thinks. Sell it under the name he used to buy it and leave the money in that account forever because the Thais hover like flies around a transaction that big. Bring in some fruitcake to buy all the fake antiques and all the real antiques and the fancy couches and rugs and Song’s goddamn mahogany table. Give some money to the little women so they can go home rich to Mudville. Pay off the help-enough so they don’t complain but not so much that they brag about it.

  Just like before. Except for Treasure. This is, what? The third time? But the first since Treasure-since it was clear who Treasure was.

  Disappear and roll up the street behind him. Get a room somewhere, just him and his briefcase and his jeans and his shirt and his brains and his reflexes, someplace shadowy in the middle of the concrete jungle, the lines laid out like a spider to tip him if anyone’s looking for him. Tell everybody who matters that he’ll be back when he feels like it.

  Let the weekly money accumulate in the bank accounts. Let people begin to miss him so he can raise his prices when he’s ready to start up again.

  Find someplace for Treasure. Somehow.

  Tuck her away under something very heavy with a high fence around it and then cut the strings, go rogue. Play some games, operate on his own without all these assholes looking over his shoulder all the t
ime, doing the official tsk-tsk-tsk for the microphones while they urge him on with their hands. Plausible deniability, another concept born in ’Nam, using euphemisms like “action” for “killing” in case they were being recorded. Well, fuck plausible deniability, fuck the politicians, so busy covering their asses they’d blow a hand off if they farted, fuck the career officers with their eyes on the next star on their shoulder, who want the results but not the tactics. Fuck them all.

  Do what he wants for a change.

  Play without rules. Blow away some ragheads, maybe. Even up the odds down south. Operate the way he used to operate, back … back …

  Back when he was young.

  He hears himself groan and says to the driver, “No, I’m not talking to you.”

  There are times when he sees himself as a hand grenade on a pool table. All the neat little balls rolling politely around according to the laws of physics, clacking off at their precious Euclidean angles, and here comes this kind of odd-looking ball that wobbles a bit and then blows all the balls near it to powder and creates a whole new order on the green felt, or what remains of the green felt. When the felt’s ripped to shit and all the balls are banging back and forth and hopping off the table and hitting the floor and breaking apart, that’s when a man can do some real work.

  He had thought his time was over forever. People with his skill set and his experience were an embarrassment, like scraps of memory from an epic national drunk a few decades ago. America had fled the jungles and the rice paddies, it had abandoned the napalm and the Agent Orange and Phoenix Program tactics and entered into its World Policeman phase, and the way they played it, there was Good Cop and there was Gooder Cop. Benign capitalism pasteurizing the globe with blue jeans and shampoo and fine dentistry. Someone like Murphy, or an enterprise like Phoenix-which had taken out a couple thousand civilians a month, shredded the Geneva Conventions, interrogated with extreme prejudice around the clock on the faintest suspicion-well, as far as the new and improved United States was concerned, it was shocking to hear reports. The accounts of those things had been overblown, misreported, misinterpreted, or-if all the evidence hadn’t been destroyed-they’d been the work of a few out-of-control individuals who’d twisted circumstances to their own personal purposes. Tragedies of war, never to be repeated.