For the Dead

by Timothy Hallinan

  He apparently expects an answer, so she says, “The school.”

  “Well, about half the kids are Asians and about half of them aren’t, you know?”

  She says, “Please stop saying you know.”

  “Well, come on, look at us. Most of the Asian kids are short. Maybe half the school. And the other half—you know, most of the non-Asians—they’re tall. It’s not like a standard distribution, where there’d be a smooth gradient connecting the extremes—”

  “Sorry?”

  “You know, where you could line everybody up with the tallest kid on one end and the shortest on the other, and there’d be a smooth line running from high to low. Look, look, look.” He pulls a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “Our class picture,” he says, not unfolding it. “What we have is a whole bunch of kids on the short end and a whole bunch of kids on the tall end with a big jump in the middle. Like a stair step. It’s an anomaly, because of the racial mix.” He’s looking a little anxious. “The phenotypes,” he says, for clarification. “Nonstandard distribution of phenotypes.”

  Miaow says, “Okay. So? So some of us are tall and some of us are—”

  “Two productions,” Andrew says, pushing his way into her sentence. “I think Mrs. Shin should do two productions. A tall production and—”

  Miaow gives him a big nod, says, “Oh, sure,” and starts walking again.

  “—and a short production. Some of the best actors are short,” he says, a couple of steps behind her. “You’re short. I’m going to suggest it.”

  “There’s no way she’ll—”

  “I’m going to say it’ll be discrimination if she doesn’t do it.”

  “Discrimination?” Miaow says. “Against who?”

  “Whom. Asian kids, short kids. Preferential treatment for, uh, non-Asian tall kids. Look.” He unfolds the page, and Miaow finds herself looking at the class picture. A circle has been inscribed around the taller kids, with the words BIG PARTS: MOSTLY ANGLO, while the circle around the short kids says, SMALL PARTS: MOSTLY ASIAN. Beside the picture is a little circular graph, breaking out the heights by racial group.

  It takes Miaow a second, and then she starts laughing. She looks at the crowd of people around them, all dark-skinned, and laughs again, “That’s totally on. They’re all crazy about discrimination now. You’re really smart, Andrew.”

  “She’ll have to listen,” he says triumphantly. And then he adds, talking very fast, “And if you’ll try out for Julie, I’ll try out for Ned.” He stands there, blinking down at the pavement as the declaration echoes around them. He’s fidgeting from foot to foot.

  She says, “You would?”

  “I wouldn’t get it,” he says instantly. He uses an index finger to blot moisture from his upper lip. “But we could rehearse together before we audition.”

  “We could,” she says carefully. He’s given a lot of thought to this. Ned and Julie fall in love, but neither of them is going to mention that.

  He says, “I already know some of it. Some of Ned’s lines, I mean. Not just your—I mean, Julie’s—lines.”

  She leans toward him, as though she’s trying to peer in through his eyes, and then she smiles from ear to ear, and he sees the single dimple in her right cheek for only the third time since they met. She says, “I’ll talk to Mrs. Shin with you.”

  “Okay,” Andrew says, swallowing between the syllables so it comes out, “Oh kay,” and Miaow laughs again and takes his arm.

  “Let’s get your phone,” she says.

  6

  Going Down

  TEN EIGHTEEN A.M.

  An apartment house hallway, its sole occupant a silver-haired man in a gray janitorial outfit. He shuffles arthritically, each step an effort, burdened by a big, heavy, open-topped wooden box with a handle, jammed with a jumble of rags, bottles, and jars of cleaning solutions. When he gets to the elevator at the end of the hallway he shifts the case from one hand to the other, lets out a grunt that sounds more like bad temper than exertion, and turns and starts back up the corridor.

  This is the third time he’s taken this walk since ten o’clock, counting the steps without even knowing he was doing it and then scurrying back in the other direction to be in position if the door should open, which it was supposed to have done at ten.

  The man he’s waiting for has a reputation for being punctual, and the janitor is growing impatient. This is the last bit before he can leave Bangkok. He and his partners have done everything they’ve been paid to do, except this, and now the man in the apartment is late.

  Of course, the man in the apartment has heard about Colonel Sawat’s death by now. He’s probably inside on the phone, sweating like a horse, trying to get answers from people at the station, and wondering what Colonel Sawat’s death has to do with him. Wondering whether it’s the obvious connection. Whether he’ll be next.

  As the janitor trudges back to the doorway to the service stairs, the elevator groans. Someone coming up.

  Moving much more quickly, the janitor covers in a few seconds the seven point three meters separating him from the service stairs, pushes open the swinging doors, and ducks through. He puts a shoulder against the left-hand door and cracks it open half an inch, his eye to the gap.

  Two men in brown police uniforms get off. One of them wears dark glasses. He raises them to his forehead, revealing a hard face with a broad, humorous mouth. The cops talk for a second or two and then come down the hall, staying in the center. It’s a broad, thickly carpeted corridor with the elevator at one end and an angular floor-to-ceiling multicolored glass window at the other. The janitor will have the cold blue light from the window behind him, which will make it difficult for them to get a close look at him. Not that he needs an advantage.

  The officers stop at a door about four meters from the stairway. The one with the sunglasses punches a number into a cell phone and says, “We’re here. Knocking now.”

  The other man knocks briskly, three times in rapid succession.

  The cops hear locks being undone on the other side of the door. One of them makes a joke, perhaps about the number of locks, but both men straighten instantly as the door opens. They back off a few steps to allow the man inside to come out.

  Inside the stairwell, the janitor peers through the crack between the doors. He sees his man, almost as wide as he is tall, come out of the apartment. The big man nods at the policemen and turns to re-lock the door. Behind him, one of the cops taps his watch: they’re late.

  The big man is in his early fifties, loose-lipped and red-faced with the spider-veined complexion of a heavy drinker. He has sloping, powerful shoulders, oddly long arms that let his hands dangle almost at his knees, and a relatively small head. His hair stands up on one side, as though he’s forgotten to smooth it down after a nap. His white shirt is wet enough beneath the arms to be almost transparent. He pushes between the policemen and trundles stiff-hipped toward the elevator. The cops follow, the one with the sunglasses briefly imitating the wide man’s walk.

  Looking back, the wide man says, “Something funny?” His voice is unexpectedly high-pitched.

  The cop who had been imitating him says, “Got a rock in my shoe.” The wide man pushes the button to summon the elevator car.

  Behind the swinging doors, the man in the janitorial uniform makes a final check of everything in his case, touches the pockets on his work shirt, counts to three, and pushes through into the hallway.

  One of the doors creaks, and the big man and one of the cops turn their heads at the sound. They see a thin, stooped, white-haired man silhouetted against the window’s glare, carrying a wooden box clearly too heavy for him. His halting step suggests a limp although it’s unclear which leg he’s favoring.

  The elevator door opens. The cop with the sunglasses steps into the compartment and holds the door for the big man. The other cop and the big man get in.

  The janitor calls, “Can you wait for me, please?”

  The big man says, “Fu
ck off” in his high, aggrieved voice and pushes the button to close the door.

  The janitor drops the case of bottles with a crash and makes a leap for the elevator. He has an automatic pistol in one hand and a bottle of cleaning solution in the other. The policeman wearing sunglasses makes a snatch at his gun, but the automatic in the janitor’s hand jumps twice with a muffled sound like pfuttt, and blows a pair of holes in the elevator’s back wall. Both cops raise their hands above waist level, the big man screaming for them to shoot. He flails at the elevator doors with small, plump hands, as though he thinks he can hurry their closing.

  The janitor reaches the elevator as the doors start to slide shut. He pitches the bottle of cleaning solution, overhand, between the doors. It smashes against the wall, and the hallway fills with the scent of gasoline. One of the policemen tries to force his way out, but the janitor shoots him low in the stomach, and the cop is thrown back against the wall. He slides down into the pool of gasoline on the floor, his hands grasping his abdomen, his eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing. The sunglasses fall off his nose and land in his lap, which is a bright, shiny red. The big man is screaming and kicking at the fallen policeman. The other cop backs to the far side of the elevator as though he’s hoping he can push his way through the wall. Just before the elevator doors meet, the janitor yanks a handful of wooden matches from the pocket of his work shirt, strikes them on the zipper on his pants, and pitches them into the elevator, shouting four words as he backs away.

  But not fast enough. The plume of flame billowing through the narrow gap between the closing doors is so hot it burns off his eyebrows and eyelashes.

  The screams grow fainter as the car descends. The janitor steps back, waving cool air at his face and smelling his own singed hair as he watches the digital numbers above the elevator doors, the remnants of his eyebrows raised in surprise. The elevator compartment obediently carries its burning passengers down five slow floors before the sprinklers kick in and trigger the automatic emergency override.

  The janitor goes back up the hall, picks up his case of cleaning solutions, and pushes his way through the door to the stairs. He doesn’t hurry on his way down.

  7

  If You Are Me, Maybe Four Thousand Seven Hundred

  THE MAN IN the orange turban is a Sikh. He has the blackest beard and mustache Miaow has ever seen, apparently darkened with eyebrow pencil. His shop is just an overhang of cloth dangling from poles over a scrap of carpet and two scratched and battered glass display cases that look like they fell off a truck. Masking tape runs all the way from corner to corner on the front panel of the right-hand case. Behind the glass is a miscellaneous scatter of cell phones.

  When Miaow spotted the shop, there had been two sunburned farang tourists, a boy and a girl, wearing the thrift-shop clothes of backpackers. The Sikh had motioned to Miaow to wait, although his eyes kept floating back to her and Andrew as though he expected them to kick in the glass, snatch the phones, and run. After a few minutes of back-and-forth, the tourists leave without buying anything, although Miaow sees the girl slip a phone under her blouse. When she looks up, she finds the Sikh eying her, penciled eyebrows raised. He says, “Watch, small lady.”

  He lifts his head to look beyond her and points a single finger in the direction the tourists had taken, and two teenage boys take off at a run.

  “You think easy, you children?” He raises a finger and wags it side to side. “Not so easy. Maybe two days, that boy walk very bad. Lady have maybe headache.” He smiles, and his face is transformed into a wreath of benevolence. “But you children, you good children. Nice clothes. Good shoes.” He looks down at Andrew’s feet. “Adidas, real, maybe five thousand baht.”

  “Seven thousand, two hundred,” Andrew says.

  “Too much,” the Indian says in a tone that brooks no argument. “Five thousand, or if you are me, maybe four thousand seven hundred.”

  Andrew says, “Never.”

  The Indian says, “You are wanting something? If we bargain we will see who wins.”

  Andrew says, “Apple iPhone 5.”

  The Sikh wiggles his head left to right. “Too rich for you. Get nice cheap phone, you don’t need—”

  “Don’t you have one?”

  The Sikh pauses, possibly evaluating Andrew’s tone, which had bordered in imperious. Then he gives them a shrug. “Of course. Wait here.” He goes to the rear of the shop and opens a large cardboard box that’s resting on top of another box. Crouching beside it, he says, “I am looking here, but others are looking at you.”

  Miaow says, “We’re not thieves.”

  “No, no, not,” the Sikh says, sorting quickly through the box. “But sometimes we learn things about ourselves, yes? Many phones, man not looking, you very young, you can run fast. Maybe we learn something about you, yes?”

  “And maybe you don’t have what we want,” Miaow snaps. Irritation is a good starting point for bargaining.

  “I have, I have.” He stands and comes back to the counter with a phone in each hand, and a boy of seventeen or so materializes from thin air and casually puts onto the counter the phone the backpacking girl had taken. “Femily,” the man says confidentially, with a gesture toward the retreating boy. “Everything is femily.”

  He puts the two iPhones on the counter. They look identical to Miaow, but Andrew shoves one aside and says, “Too beat up.” He picks up the other one and powers it on. Raises his eyebrows in an expression of approval that makes Miaow want to step on his toe. “Very nice. SIM card?”

  The Sikh shrugs, but Miaow can practically see him adding a thousand baht to the price. “If you want.”

  “Whoever sold this didn’t take his SIM card?”

  There’s a tiny glimmer of humor in the Sikh’s eyes. “Maybe he forget.”

  “It’s got all his stuff on it,” Andrew says, finger-dancing on the screen. “His phone numbers, his apps, his pictures. Why would he forget it?”

  “Pipple,” the Sikh says with a shrug. “Everybody different.”

  “Maybe he stole it,” Andrew says severely.

  “Maybe,” the Sikh says. The dazzling smile again. “Maybe all of these stolen.” He looks at the two of them and makes a decision. “You want cold water?”

  “Thank you,” Miaow says. The man goes to the rear of the shop area again and comes back with a thermos and a stack of paper cups. “Nobody use before,” he says, separating the cups into uneven stacks and taking two from the middle. “Very clean.”

  Andrew puts down the phone and tries to look at it indifferently. He says, “I can pay you—”

  Miaow shoulders him aside. “Five thousand baht.”

  The Indian laughs, although it doesn’t disturb the precision of his pour. “You making joke,” he says. “My femily. My femily, they eat and eat.”

  Miaow picks up a cup and drains the cool water. Then she says, “Show him, Andrew.”

  Andrew moves the phone aside and then, as though to make it clear he’s not being sneaky, hands it to the Sikh. He pulls his wallet from his backpack, peels the red rubber band off it, and opens it. The Sikh cranes for a look, and Miaow steps on Andrew’s foot and tries to put a hand over the wallet, but he ignores her and fans the entire wad of currency. “Sixty-three hundred,” he says proudly. He glances at Miaow, and a crafty look comes over his face. She wants to kick him. “But we need to eat,” he says. “We need a taxi.”

  “We have more than one pocket,” the Sikh says.

  Between her teeth, Miaow makes a noise like frying bacon.

  “That’s it,” Andrew says. He turns his trouser pockets inside out. “I haven’t got any—”

  “Ahh, well,” the Sikh says. “I put back.”

  “I have three thousand,” Miaow says.

  “And you keep,” the Sikh says. He breathes on the phone and polishes it. “This phone, fourteen thousand eight hundred.”

  “I have three thousand,” Miaow says.

  She gets an expressive Sikh shrug.
“Come on,” she says to Andrew. “We’ll get the other one.”

  Andrew starts to say something but Miaow gives him a look that backs him up a full step.

  “Other one where?” the Sikh man asks.

  “Not a member of your femily,” Miaow says. She grabs the sleeve of Andrew’s T-shirt and jerks.

  The Sikh tilts the phone so it catches the light. “Fourteen thousand.”

  “Twelve thousand, five hundred and that’s it,” Miaow says. It’ll mean she has to spend most of her secret seven-thousand, five hundred-baht stash, the money she always carries, tightly folded, in her rear pocket in case she finds herself abandoned on the street again. She gives one more tug, and this time Andrew comes with her, so suddenly she feels like she should hear a cork pop. Over her shoulder she says to the Sikh, “Up to you.”

  The Sikh says, closing the deal, “Twelve-five.”

  Andrew, confused, says, “How did we get to twelve-five?”

  THE TAXI IS dirty and full of exhaust. Miaow is getting carsick. She and Andrew had to bargain their way down a line of cabs to find one that would take them to school for the amount of money Miaow is willing to pay, so they’re enduring what she thinks must be the filthiest, stinkiest taxi in Bangkok, with an actual hole in the floor and exhaust fumes floating through it, like incense with a grudge.

  “This is kind of creepy,” Andrew says for the third time. He’s apparently indifferent to both the taxi and Miaow’s reaction to it, his eyes on the screen and his finger doing close-up magic with the icons.

  “I can’t look.” She fans herself with her hand. “If I look, I’ll throw up.” She looks out at the street and then cracks the window, exposing herself to a stream of hot carbon monoxide with trace amounts of air. She raises the window in self-defense and asks, “Can you turn up the air-con?”

  “More air-con, more gas,” the driver says. “You’re not paying enough.”

  “How much is it going to cost you to clean this seat if I throw up?”