It’s raining again when he comes out; he can almost feel the weight of the swollen river rushing by several miles to the west. He has an impulse to lift his head and scream curses at the sky. Instead he turns left and takes the sidewalk to the corner, realizing he’s lost yet another umbrella. He makes the right, and there’s Ming Li, waiting for him behind the wheel of the little Toyota.
He gets in, and she starts the car without asking whether it’s okay if she drives. The tires hardly squeal at all as she pulls away from the curb. He doesn’t say anything, just sits back with his eyes closed.
She says, “And?”
“And I’d like to kill myself. But since that wouldn’t accomplish anything, let’s go get something really good to eat and then sleep for twelve hours. I think we’re going to need it.” He pulls out the cell phone he used when he called America. “But first.” He presses SEND and a moment later says, “Helen Eckersley’s room, please.”
29
Women Are Like Cave Paintings
But he doesn’t sleep.
They eat at a Chinese restaurant Mrs. Ma recommended to Ming Li after selling her the guns. The food lives up to her hopes, but the two of them pick at it. The sidewalks are almost empty, the rain blowing down in sheets, and every time a customer climbs the three steps to the door and drips his way in, the waitress mops mud from the floor. People talk anxiously in Cantonese, and Ming Li says they’re discussing the welter of contradictory instructions issuing from the government: stay, go, get your belongings and/or yourself to higher ground, just sit tight-everything’s fine. Through the streaked window, the streetlights gleam below them, reflected in the fast-flowing water that fills the street.
After a few minutes of trying to talk about something-anything-other than what’s coming, they give up and discuss it: what they’ll do, what they’ll have the others do, what they hope to get from it.
The ways it can go wrong and kill them.
“You know,” Ming Li says, “you can’t worry about protecting me. You can’t divide your attention. It’s too dangerous. Believe me, I’m not going to be thinking about you when things get moving. I’ll be focused on myself. You need to do the same.”
There’s a dark, shapeless cloud in his chest, something that feels like a million swarming insects. Everything he’s planned, everything he’s trying to do, seems transparent, clumsy, amateurish, unconvincing. It wouldn’t fool a child. These people, Murphy and Shen, they’re not idiots. Nothing is going to work. He says, without meaning to, “They’re not idiots.”
“They want something,” Ming Li says, following his thought. “Dangle the right purse in front of an American high-school girl and watch her run into traffic to get it.” She makes a motherly gesture with her chopsticks. “Eat the duck before it gets cold. Colder.”
“If I did, I think I’d heave it all over the table.”
“Take some with you.” She raises the hand with the chopsticks in the air, and the waitress is there instantly. “Wrap this up, please.”
“All?” the waitress asks.
“You’ll wind up eating it,” he says to Ming Li.
“I know.” She says to the waitress, “And could you throw in an extra order of rice?”
They sit silently again, both of them looking out the window. “It’s kind of unfair,” Ming Li says. “This weather, I mean, the flooding, all the rest of it. There are cities that could use wiping out, but this isn’t one of them.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Rafferty says. “We’re caught in a meaninglessness node. The weather is just as meaningless as the situation we’re in. If the city drowns, if we get hurt or killed, it’ll all be collateral damage. Nobody, anywhere, is directly responsible for this, but that didn’t stop them from setting the forces in motion.”
“Older brother,” Ming Li says, “with all due respect, please shut up. You don’t have to bring down the world order to stay alive. I mean, we don’t. It’s one guy, or maybe two, and we’re doing something about it. Doesn’t it make you feel better to be doing something about it?”
“It keeps me from being frightened,” Rafferty says, “but fear isn’t the only bad feeling there is, is it? There’s anger, loneliness, self-pity, anxiety for others, the confusion of being overwhelmed, the sense of outraged justice because none of this is right, none of it even makes sense. I’ve got all of those.”
Ming Li is wiping her chopsticks on her napkin. “That’s good,” she says. “You’re probably going to need them.”
It’s the second night in their hotel, since Rafferty couldn’t face the thought of moving again. There’s something almost comforting in the act of closing the door behind him and seeing a room he knows, with the bed in the same place and the bathroom right where he left it, and his awful fake-leather bag on the chair, and his change of clothes, wet when he put them on hangers in the bathroom the previous evening, waiting for him all dry and orderly, the wrinkles hung out of them.
He considers booting up the computer he bought. He’s barely opened it since Ming Li showed up with hers, but he can’t think of anything he wants to look at except the weather forecast, and a glance out the window gives him that: wet and then wetter, with the chance of a biblical deluge. He shucks his wet shoes, pulls out the laptop anyway, and powers it on for about a second and a half, after which it powers itself off. Dead. The power brick is at the bottom of the sodden fake-leather bag, so he pulls it out and plugs it in to charge.
There, he thinks, he’s done something. Lesson for tomorrow: no assumptions. Call everyone first thing in the morning and go over all of it. Go over it twice.
Of course he’s worried about Ming Li, even though she’s probably already asleep in her own room. How could he not be? He’s dragged her into this, even if sometimes she makes him feel like it’s the other way around, since she’s so clearly braver than he is. Going up to the second floor of that coffee place, for example, just to make sure Elson hadn’t overpowered him and put in a call for the marines. He feels himself smile at the thought, the first real smile of the day. The smiles at Arthit’s had been heavy as stone.
What in the world is he going to do about Arthit? How can he repair all that dishonesty?
Not that he’s necessarily going to be in a position to repair anything after tomorrow night.
Since there’s nothing for him to do, he kicks his discarded shoes against the wall so he can’t trip on them in the dark and falls on his stomach on the bed. Naturally, the moment he’s comfortable, he has a pressing reason to stand up again.
It takes him a moment to choose a phone that hasn’t been used for anything dangerous. He launches himself at the bed again, pushes some buttons, and closes his eyes in prayer.
Rose says, “Hello, you.”
Instantly he has tears in his eyes and all his muscles loosen. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“Should I ask how you are?”
“No.” He sniffs. “Okay, ask.”
“How are you?”
“You don’t want to know. But I’m doing what I can, and that’s what I can do.”
“I have faith in you. Just keep your head clear.”
“I’m clearing it as we speak.”
“Meditate. Tonight. Before you go to bed. You know, no one in the history of the world has ever done harm while meditating.”
“I promise.”
“You know,” she says. “All those little monkey voices that start chattering in your head when you have to decide something. You need to shut them up so you can hear the calm voice.”
“Got it,” he says. “Meditate.”
“Is it going to be dangerous?”
“Maybe.”
“Is there a way to avoid it?”
“Not that I can think of. Not if I want all this to end.”
“How dangerous will it be?”
“No, no, I take it back. Not so dangerous. The only person I have to be afraid of will be miles away. I should have an hour or two, easy.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“Murphy’s Law.” He hears the words after he speaks them, and the hairs on his arms stand up.
“What does that mean? What’s Murphy’s Law?”
“It’s an … it’s an old joke.” He looks up at the ceiling, trying to frame an explanation that won’t frighten her. Frighten both of them. “From the army, I think. Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong will.” She says nothing, and he adds, “But it’s just a joke.”
She draws a deep breath. “We’ll go to the temple tomorrow, Miaow and I.”
“Good,” he says. “That would be good.”
Rose says, “It will, you know.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “At the very least, it’ll make me feel better.” He rolls over onto his back and looks down at his feet in their wet socks. “How is Miaow?”
“In love, to hear her tell it.”
“Well, so is Andrew. He’s come by looking for her, as though this whole thing is a plot to separate them. He looks completely lost.”
“I’ll tell her that. It’ll make her feel better.”
“To know that the guy she loves is unhappy? That’ll make her feel better?”
“Of course.”
“I give up,” Rafferty says. “Women are like cave paintings. You know what they look like, but not what they mean.”
“This isn’t mysterious. She’s stuck up here, missing someone who’s probably forgotten her, who’s cutting a swath through the girls of Bangkok-”
“Andrew?”
“And to learn instead that he’s lonely, maybe even a little heartbroken, wandering around, lost in a gray cloud-”
“He is.”
“Good,” she says. “He should be.”
He’s using one foot to peel a soggy sock off the other. “I can’t tell you how much I miss you.”
“Sure you can,” she says. “You haven’t even tried yet.”
“Let me think. Okay, so here you go: A spirit appears before me-”
“Male or female?”
“Male. With a mustache and long, curving blue teeth. And he says, ‘I’m going to give you two choices. You can have one or the other, but you can’t choose neither and you can’t choose both.’ Are you with me?”
“Of course. A million stories begin this way.”
“The first thing the spirit offers me is, I get to see you for an hour. The second thing is, it will rain as long as I live, and I’ll live for centuries.”
“And which one would you choose?”
“Well,” he says, “if my socks weren’t wet-”
“I’d choose the same,” she says. “I’d rather be with you right now, wet socks and all, than anything else in the world. Do they smell?”
“Of course.”
“Send them up to me. I need them.”
He rolls onto his side and comes face-to-face with the little automatic that Ming Li bought him that afternoon. “Whatever happens,” he says, “I want you to know that I love you more than the rest of the world put together.”
“What about Miaow?”
“Miaow’s a special exception.”
“She certainly is,” Rose says. “Right now she’s sitting outside under a big tree, very dramatically getting wet.”
“Give her a kiss from me. Tell her it’s from Andrew.”
“No,” Rose says. “Let her get wet. I’ll keep the kisses for myself.”
HE RACKS THE gun and dry-fires it a few times, trying to get used to the feel of it in his hand. It’s not as heavy as his Glock, but it’s bulkier and more awkward. Then he pops the magazine in and handles it some more, getting used to its loaded weight. He doesn’t like it much, but he figures it’ll put down anything it hits.
The loaded gun and the remaining shells go on the bed table. He gets the hotel hair dryer from the bathroom and sticks it into his socks, one at a time, watching them balloon and steam until they’re dry. Then he uses it on the inside of the fake-leather bag until a sort of chemistry-is-not-your-friend smell makes him stop and let it cool for a while. He uses the time to assemble his clothes for the next day: his better-looking pair of pants, his still-wet belt, and a big shirt he can wear outside the trousers to hide the gun.
He takes the hair dryer to the bag again, getting it mostly dry before it starts to go toxic, then waves the dryer around inside his shoes, getting them warm and wet instead of cold and wet. In the interest of readiness, he puts on the clothes for tomorrow, stashes the gun inside his belt, and practices getting at it until he can clear the shirt most of the time, until his hip has memorized the gun’s position and his index finger has memorized the location of the trigger guard.
He takes the clothes off again and lays them on the armchair, along with the dry socks and the gun and the bullets and the fake-leather bag and the hotel’s umbrella, which he removes from the closet. He makes a semifinal pass through the room to double-check that he’s got everything, because they won’t be coming back the following night. Recognizes that most of what he’s doing is just nervousness finding an outlet and leans against the wall.
All I wanted to do, he thinks, was paint my apartment.
By now, or at the latest by tomorrow morning, Anna will have gotten word to Shen, who either does or doesn’t already know about the arrangement at the shopping mall, depending on whether Murphy saw fit to share it. It’s academic one way or the other, since Rafferty will be on the other side of Bangkok while they wait for him at the mall, but it will still be interesting to see whether the opposing team is intact.
In any case, there’s nothing he can do about it now. There’s really nothing he can do about anything now, except worry about Ming Li. Which, of course, is exactly what she told him not to do.
So he worries about Ming Li until a little after four, when he finally falls asleep.
30
I’m Not Actually One of Them
“This gun is a pig,” Ming Li says, pointing it through the glass of the passenger window. “Did you ever use a steak knife that’s got all the weight in the handle, and every time you lay it on your plate, it falls off?”
“No.” He works his way into the turn lane.
“Oh, you did so.”
“And this gun is like that, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Compared to what?”
She glances at him quickly. “To a good gun.”
“What make? What caliber?”
“A Burpmeister,” she says through her teeth. “Thirty-three-and-a-third caliber.”
“Boy, that was a gun,” he says. “How many guns have you actually fired?”
At first he thinks she won’t answer, but then she says, “Three. No, four. All three-finger specials. But I promise you, they balanced differently than this one.”
“Ever shoot one at somebody?”
“Trees,” she says. “A few bottles. But I’ll tell you something, and you can believe it or not. There are people for whom there’s a big difference between firing at a tree and firing at a person. And I’m not actually one of them.”
He makes the turn. The day is drawing to a dark, wet close, and the street has three or four inches of water in it. “Unless the person is firing back at you.”
“That’s a different issue,” she says. “That’s not getting killed. Killing is different. I’m already good at not getting killed, and I don’t believe I need practice at killing. A person is a target, same as a tree, only it moves faster.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out whether that’s true.”
“You’re such a sexist,” she says. “There was a time in your life when you hadn’t killed anybody, right?”
“Obviously.”
“And then, all of a sudden, you had to, and you … you what?”
“I killed her,” he says, although he still doesn’t like to think about it.
“And you don’t think I can do the same? Why?”
“It’s not that I do
n’t think you can,” he says. “I just hope you won’t have to.”
“You are so lying,” she says, and the phone in Rafferty’s shirt pocket rings.
“Thai kid is waiting,” Vladimir says. “Where you are now?”
A flock of black birds breaks from the trees in front of them and swoops over the car, so low it looks as if the windshield wipers will bat one aside. “Almost there. Let the kid wait, he’s getting paid. Where is he?”
“With me. I should be in backseat. With you and Baby Spy.”
“Stay where you are. Keep the kid with you. We’re not doing anything until we hear from Janos.”
“I should be there, too,” Vladimir says. “With Janos. I should be ewerywhere.”
“You’re where I want you. Just stay there. I’ll call you if you have to move.” The phone beeps to signal an incoming call. “Stay off the phone,” Rafferty says, punching the button to bring up the new call.
“This is interesting,” Janos says.
“Please,” Rafferty says, “don’t make me ask questions.”
“I’m up on the fifth level of the mall with a cup of coffee, looking down at the business center.”
“And?”
“And maybe five minutes ago, two men showed up. About the same height and weight, short hair, big black shoes, looked like they’d be happier in uniform. So they walked together, all the way around the fourth level three times, looking in every window except the business center. They’re starting another circuit now.”
Rafferty says, “What time is it?” and both Janos and Ming Li tell him it’s six-fifteen.
“And there are three more down on the first level,” Janos says. “They wander around alone and then regroup every few minutes.”
“No Shen,” Rafferty says.
“Not yet, but these are his men.”
“No one else?”
Ming Li makes an anxious popping sound with her lips.
The Fear Artist pr-5 Page 29
