“Says girl kill two cat,” Vladimir says.
Nodding acknowledgment, Ming Li rearranges the drinks in an expert fashion. She unscrews the cap on a small bottle of vodka and pours for Vladimir, her free hand supporting the hand with the bottle in it, laying on the formal Asian etiquette. Vladimir watches her so intently that Rafferty half expects a long tongue to dart out and snatch her across the table.
To distract him Rafferty pulls out a short stack of money and counts off five hundred. He starts to hold it out and then pulls back. “What do you know about Yala?”
“Yala? Ewerything is in Yala.” Vladimir wrenches his eyes off Ming Li and drinks. Then he puts the glass down and gives Rafferty his full attention. “If Murphy is working with Shen, he is thinking about Yala. If he is thinking about Yala, he is thinking Phoenix, yes?”
“What’s Yala?” Ming Li says. “What’s Phoenix?”
“Tell you later,” Rafferty says. His beer is heart-shrinkingly cold. “But Phoenix, that was against an invisible enemy. The people who carried it out didn’t know who was Vietcong and who wasn’t. Everybody knows who’s Muslim down there.”
“I am disappoint in you. You are thinking like American. Most Muslim wery peaceful. Have Buddhist friend, maybe even Buddhist husband or wife. Is the center of the problem, yes? If all Muslim is dangerous, solution is easy. So same problem like Wietnam. Which is which? What is command infrastructure? Who is giwing order? Are crazies from outside running ewerything? Don’t be so straightforward.”
Rafferty had mentioned Yala mostly to see Vladimir’s reaction, whether he’d been withholding information about Murphy’s trips down there. He still doesn’t know the answer, but what he’s getting is interesting anyway. “Straightforward how?”
“You are liwing here long time,” Vladimir says with an undertone of reproof. “You can see what happens. Many people die, Thai gowernment sits around. Send soldiers, soldiers sit around like gowernment, except they get shot at. Newspaper don’t talk about it so much. Maybe, if Murphy is working for Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam would like to see more action. Think Wietnam. Maybe time for Gulf of Tonkin.”
Ming Li says, “I am so lost.”
“American operation, long time ago, when I am young,” Vladimir says with a glance at his glass. “America want to support gowernment in South Wietnam with troop, so they make phony incident. They say North Wietnam ship make bang-bang at American ship. Not true, but now America can send in many troop. Self-defense, yes?”
“Provocation,” Rafferty says.
Vladimir fills his glass, holds up the bottle, and checks the level. “Why not? Many people, Thai people, want big show in south. Now five thousand, six thousand Buddhists dead and nobody do nothing. America, too, America probably want something big. You ewer see kid make sand painting?”
“Yes,” Ming Li says.
Rafferty shrugs.
“Kid take paper,” Vladimir says. He holds up a finger, knocks the glass back, and then uses the finger to blot his mustache. He puts down his glass, and with his long hands he frames a rectangle on the table. “Paper. Put line of glue on paper-maybe doggie, maybe house with tree. Draw with glue, yes?
“I actually am following this,” Rafferty says.
“Then pour sand all ower paper.” He mimes a big shaker. “All, all now under sand. Cannot see paper, cannot see lines. Then take paper and shake it back and forth and turn ower so sand falls off. And now sand is only where lines of glue were. Doggie was always there, yes? But only wisible now.”
“Because it got shaken up,” Ming Li says approvingly.
“Same in Wietnam, later,” Vladimir says. “Phoenix use many Wietnamese, prisoners from Saigon jails, bad guys, will do anything to stay out of pokey. They dress like Wietcong, blow up willage. America and South Wietnam troops go in to protect peasant. Maybe move them to ‘strategic hamlet,’ just houses in mud, like prison camp. Then watch to see who needs to get out most, because they probably Wietcong, have to talk to boss.” He touches his fingertip to the bottom of his glass and licks it. “Shake paper,” he says.
“So,” Rafferty says, “it would make sense to you if Murphy were going down to Yala from time to time.”
Vladimir’s eyes float to a spot in the air, which he studies with the concentration of a man trying to count money in a strange currency. Ming Li slurps her Coke. After a moment he says, without looking up, “You are saying he goes there?”
“I was asking.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” He picks up the glass and puts it to his lips, but it’s empty.
“If you’re thinking about selling this,” Rafferty says, “it would be a very good idea to reconsider.”
“I tell you, I am honest mercenary.”
“Let’s say you are. Let’s say I didn’t ask you about Yala. Let’s say I asked you about Kuala Lumpur.”
“He is flying around? Maybe this is why you not dead yet. Give me.” Vladimir waggles his fingers at the five hundred, and when Rafferty gives it to him, he drinks. Then he brings the glass down on the table with a bang. “This is how good Vladimir is,” he says. “You pay attention, Baby Spy, maybe you get better role model. In Kuala Lumpur is one wery famous American, Eddie Bland.”
Rafferty says, “And Eddie Bland is-”
Vladimir holds up three fingers, a benediction. “After I tell you this, you trust me forewer.”
“We’ll see.”
“When they blow up willage? When Murphy’s guys blow up willage?”
“I remember.”
“Eddie Bland was sergeant in Wietnam. Sergeant for Murphy. Is the guy who makes things go boom. Almost he kill me once.” He points at the glass and says to Ming Li, “Hurry, hurry.”
“Don’t get used to this,” Ming Li says, but she pours.
“So,” Rafferty says, “Murphy, Yala, Kuala Lumpur, Eddie Bland, provocation. Adds up to what, from your perspective?”
Vladimir raises his glass to Ming Li and drains it in one toss. “Same as for you. Maybe soon something go boom in Yala.”
21
Enough to Break Your Heart
Daeng has been dragged into these rooms twice since the night he almost went off the roof at the hotel near Khao San. The same questions, over and over: How had Rafferty gotten away without a bullet in him? Was he armed? If Rafferty took the fire escape, why hadn’t Daeng chased him? Why hadn’t he radioed the men in the street to tell them Rafferty was coming?
Had Rafferty bribed him? How much? Where was the money? Was someone else there, someone who helped Rafferty? If Rafferty got away from Daeng, how come he, Daeng, was uninjured? How could he just have been standing on the roof with his gun in his hand when the other officers arrived?
Was he working with Rafferty? Where is Rafferty now? What wasn’t he telling them?
What wasn’t he telling them?
But tonight was different.
They’d been watching him somehow, actually looking into his house. At the precise moment he sat down to dinner with his wife and their two children, the men had banged on the door with boots and fists as though they’d been waiting for the signal. There were six of them. They hammered hard enough to splinter it around the top hinge. He’d told the family to stay put and gone to open the door. His feet had been swept out from under him, and then he’d been manhandled onto his stomach as plastic restraints were cinched over his wrists and his children stood screaming in terror.
When they pulled him up, they’d wrenched his shoulder sockets and he’d cried out. His wife had run at the men, trying to help Daeng, and one of them had shoved her hard enough to put her on the carpet. He’d been dragged downstairs, thrown headfirst into the back of a wagon, and hauled down here, his questions unanswered, then slammed into a chair. Two of the men had stood behind him. Waiting for something.
That had been four hours ago. Since then no one has spoken. Two hours or so after his arrival, the two men behind him left the room in unison and were replaced by two others.
Daeng’
s hands are completely numb. He’s certain they’re swollen to double their usual size. He can feel the pulses slamming in his wrists, trying to pump blood in and out, the veins crimped by the tight plastic cuffs. And his nose has been itching for hours. He’s never realized what agony it can be not to be able to scratch his nose.
He has to pee so badly he’s got a cramp. He crossed his legs against it, and one of the guards reached down and pushed the upper leg to the floor.
He’s damp with fear.
The door opens, and a short farang in a bright, terrible old shirt comes in. Someone outside opened the door for him, because he has a paper cup in each hand, and Daeng smells coffee.
In no hurry at all, he plants one haunch on the edge of the table. He looks down at Daeng.
Daeng says, “Hello.”
The red-haired man says, in Thai, “Coffee or tea?”
Daeng says, “Tea, please.”
“Fine,” the red-haired man says. “Catch.” And he throws the contents of one of the cups in Daeng’s face.
It’s scalding. Daeng’s legs straighten convulsively, the chair almost going over behind him, and the red-haired man says, “Take the coffee, too,” and hurls that at him, cup and all. One of the guards yelps in pain. While Daeng is still gasping, his eyes squeezed shut, the red-haired man says, “Get him up.”
Daeng is yanked to his feet. The red-haired man says, “Spread him out.” Holding him under the arms, the guards kick his feet far apart. He hears a grunt of effort from the red-haired man, and his testicles explode.
“Drop him.” The guards let go and step aside as Daeng crumples to the concrete floor and vomits and urinates at the same time. A kick to his cheekbone knocks his head aside. He lies there, choking and-to his shame-weeping.
The red-haired man says, “Hello.”
“Where are we going?” Ming Li calls from behind him. “Shouldn’t we be getting a hotel?”
“I have a hotel. We’re probably not going anywhere. I just need to check up on someone. This has nothing to do with anything.”
“Well, as long as it’s important.”
The women on the sidewalk have taken refuge in the doorways, and they smile at Poke. Ming Li catches up and grabs his arm. The women’s eyes glaze over, and they look back upstream, scanning the oncoming faces for a possible short-time.
“Is he any good?” she asks. “Vladimir?”
“According to a former spy named Arnold Prettyman, he was the best, back in the seventies.”
“Where’s Prettyman?”
“He got killed. When you were here last, actually.” He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is, Collateral damage from your father’s impulsiveness.
“If he’s dead, maybe he wasn’t the best judge.”
“Vladimir is what I’ve got. It’s hard to recruit a team when the other side is a steamroller.”
“When are you going to-”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do it tomorrow.” He stops at the corner of Soi 7. “Go get a hotel. Go back to the-” He motions down the street.
“The Alpine Suites. But why don’t you come with me?”
He counts the reasons impatiently, on his fingers. “I have a hotel, my stuff is in the room, it’s too much of a dump for you, and I have something to do.”
“Then I have something to do, too.”
He says, “No.”
People are bustling past them: men coming alone into the soi from Sukhumvit and men going out with young women.
“Oh,” Ming Li says, watching the crowd flow by. “I see.”
“No. No, you don’t see. Okay, don’t look at me like that. This is an attempt at an errand of mercy, and it’ll probably be a bust.”
“Right,” she says. “Well, you go earn your gold star, and I’ll-”
“Oh, come on,” he says, and sets off down the soi.
Despite the rain there are a lot of people. It’s after midnight by his watch, and the Beer Garden is popping at the seams. Groups of women go in beneath shared umbrellas, arms linked or holding hands with one another, and come out hanging on the darling of the hour. Rafferty and Ming Li take folding chairs across a sticky plastic table in an open-air restaurant on the opposite side of the soi. This is the second time Rafferty has sat here watching for Pim. The first time, eight or ten months ago, he’d met her only moments earlier, and she had bandaged a bad cut on his arm while he wrapped her sprained ankle. They hadn’t so much met as collided. He orders another beer for himself and a Coke for his sister, and for the first time since he caught sight of her that afternoon, Ming Li yawns.
“Jet lag?”
“Nah.” She blinks the tears away. “I just didn’t sleep on the plane.” She brushes at her chin with her fingertips and then points at his. “Mirror reflection,” she says. “Your makeup is streaking.”
“I know. It does that in this weather. I don’t worry about it so much at night.”
“Oh,” she says, and then she sits upright as though her chair has shocked her. “Ohhh. Mr. Delacroix, on the passport? He not wearing, I mean, he doesn’t look like … I don’t know, Gunga Din, or whoever you think you are now.”
“It’s okay. The sketch they’ve got out now looks like this, so I’ve been thinking about getting rid of Gunga anyway. Tomorrow I’ll look like me again.”
“It’s not very convincing.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It’s just to keep the moving eye moving, so to speak. You looked past me, if you’ll recall.”
“I guess I did.” She yawns again. “How’s the errand coming?”
“Haven’t seen her. Let’s give it ten minutes, and we’ll pack it in.”
“Then use the time. Tell me what I don’t know: Phoenix and Lala, and-”
“Yala. Okay. Look at me. I want to see if your eyes close.”
“I’ll stay awake. You watch your awful little street.”
“Before I start,” he says, “I want to tell you that it’s great to have you here.”
“You’re kidding.” She breaks into an enormous grin. Then she punches him on the arm. “Told you.”
“Okay now, listen, and you’ll know why I’m only going to let you help me so much.” He fills her in on Murphy’s background-at least according to Vladimir-and the kinds of things he did under Phoenix. He’s describing what happened in the laundry when she holds up a hand.
“The little thing cut into the ticket?” she says. “It was there for her to feel it, wasn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“That’s really sad. He carried it, whoever he was, figuring he might get killed. And if he was, that little hole would tell the story to someone he cared about, someone blind. Sooner or later someone would take it to the shop, but only she would know what it meant.”
“We need to talk to them tomorrow. Both of us.”
“It’s enough to break your heart,” she says. She sips at her Coke and then rests her forehead on her fingertips. Looking at the table, she says, “Dad had a system for me, so I’d know if he got killed. Back in China. He carried a postcard with an address and a stamp and a written message. All ready to go, but not mailed. He figured if he got … you know …”
“He didn’t,” Rafferty says.
“But if he had, I’m saying, he’d designed a way to get word to me. His daughter.” She exhales heavily and looks back to him. “So who are they to him?”
“I’m guessing, but think the blind woman is his sister-in-law. I think Helen Eckersley was his wife and the blind woman’s sister.”
“Why? Maybe the blind woman was his wife.”
“Maybe. But what he said to me, the only thing he wanted to say, was ‘Helen Eckersley’ and ‘Cheyenne,’ and both women looked stunned when I said the name Helen while I was talking to them. And Helen had an accent, like her sister’s.”
Ming Li leans forward and rests her forearms on the table, then feels the stickiness and purses her mouth in distaste. She unwraps the napkin that her Coke has been sweating i
nto and uses it to scrub at her arms. “What are your big questions?”
“Okay.” He takes a pull on the beer and lets his eyes rove the street while he thinks. “Helen Eckersley was killed in America four days before the dead man bumped into me. That’s fourteen days ago. Why, and what’s it got to do with what’s happening here? Second, why was the dead American in that crowd of protesters-or, to look at it from another angle, how did Murphy and Shen know he’d be there? They had troops on hand, cops with barricades to block traffic, a sniper-everything. No way someone spotted him in the crowd and they put all that together on the fly. That was a setup. Probably the only accident was that I was on that street.”
“How could they set that up?” Ming Li says.
“That’s why I’m confused. It seems unlikely that they created a whole demonstration somehow and then sent him an invitation. And one other question, just something that’s been bothering me. Let’s assume that it was a setup, that that’s the reason everybody was there. The whole point was to catch, or take out, the guy who died in my arms. That’s information you’d want to control. That’s something they’d want to keep secret.”
She’s unaware she’s put her arm back onto the table. “Yeah?”
“So what was a TV news crew doing there? This is Bangkok. They couldn’t have gotten there in time any more than the cops with the barricades could. And the very first thing Shen’s guys did-before they even talked to me-was try to get the tape. Took off after the cameraman like their lives depended on catching him. That crew was not wanted. So what were they doing there?”
Ming Li says slowly, “Maybe somebody isn’t completely on the team.”
Rafferty says, “From your lips to God’s ears. And maybe it’s who I think it might be.”
“You’re not asking the questions I’d be asking. Who was the man they killed, for one.”
“I know who he was. I mean, I don’t know his name, but I know, or at least I’m pretty sure, that he was a grunt in Vietnam when Murphy was there. Something happened there that was completely off the charts, even by the standards of the Phoenix Program. Something that threatens Murphy and his operation here.”
The Fear Artist pr-5 Page 20
