The Fear Artist

by Timothy Hallinan

  “What else?” Vladimir says.

  “Hair coming out of his nose. If he was Rapunzel, he could lower his nose hair to let the prince climb up.”

  Vladimir nods sadly and says, “More money.”

  “Where’s the nearest ATM?”

  “Around the corner,” says Dr. Evil in his frayed voice. “I’ll go with you.”

  Vladimir says immediately, “We all go.”

  “Nobody goes,” Rafferty says. “First you tell me a little more, and if I decide I want you to keep talking, I’ll go get the money.”

  Vladimir says, “You no trust us.”

  “Sure I do. I just don’t want to have to get up if it’s not necessary.”

  Vladimir nods at Dr. Evil, and Dr. Evil says, “Maybe Murphy.”

  “Maybe?” Rafferty says.

  Vladimir fingers the cleft in his chin and looks disappointed. “Please,” he says. “You think my name Vladimir? Him, you think his name Janos? This one Pierre? We think your name really Poke?”

  “Of course not,” Dr. Evil says. “But Murphy, that’s what he called himself then. Sometimes Murph.”

  “Where? When?”

  “Wietnam.” Vladimir is watching Rafferty’s eyes. “American in Wietnam, not always white hat, you know?”

  “I know.”

  Dr. Evil leans in and lowers his rustle of a voice to the point where Rafferty has to strain to hear him. “Murphy was Phoenix.” He straightens a bit, watching for a reaction. “You know about Phoenix?”

  “Targeting?” Rafferty says. He read something about this years ago. “Targeting … targeting what? Collaborators, Vietcong sympathizers?” He knows he’s about to hear something he doesn’t want to hear.

  “Arnold, he know Murphy,” Vladimir says sleepily, his eyes half-closed. “Arnold say Murphy hard-core. Wery hard-core.”

  Dr. Evil says, “To be hard-core in Phoenix is to be very, very hard-core.”

  Silence falls again. The three men gaze at Rafferty as though they’re waiting for him to wave his hands and materialize their dinner, and Rafferty says, “Back in a minute.” He gets up.

  “Thirty thousand,” Vladimir says. “Ten, ten, ten.”

  8

  Wery Bad

  HE PLUNGES INTO the thickening dusk, the fumes of the beer clouding his head. Part of him wants just to keep going, not return to the dark bar and what he’s about to learn. But instead he rounds the nearest corner to make sure he can’t be seen from the bar, grabs a huge, anxious breath and blows it out, then pulls his remaining money from the hip pocket of his jeans. He’s got forty-seven thousand left of his combined assets, plus a salad of small bills. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he counts out thirty thousand, all in thousand-baht bills. He puts the remainder back in his pocket, then pulls out five thousand more to cover the bar tab they’re running up. Heading back to the bar, he wonders where he’s going to sleep this evening and what he’ll use to pay for it.

  He nods at the bartender, who looks straight through him, and moves toward the booth. When he gets there, the three of them are huddled together over the table, all talking at once. They fall silent and sit back as he slides in. He makes a show of reaching into his pocket and counts out the thirty thousand, putting a stack of ten in front of each of them. Janos reaches for his, and Rafferty says, “Ah-ah. Leave them there for now.”

  Vladimir says, “Okay. I talking, everybody else keeping mouth closed. If I make mistake, Janos, Pierre, you fix.” Vladimir puts his hands on the table on either side of the money, palms down, as though preparing for a magic trick, and clears his throat. “The Phoenix Program,” he says. “Some of it wery bad. Murphy maybe the most bad. Ewen some Phoenix guys, they tell boss, no, they not working with him no more.”

  “How would you know that? Phoenix was military, right?”

  “Under CIA,” Vladimir says. He touches the side of his beak with a straight index finger, a gesture that’s apparently full of meaning that Rafferty doesn’t understand. “William Colby, yes? Later head of CIA. Right now,” he says, “we have two CIA here, in this bar.”

  “Maybe you should bring them over,” Rafferty says, “and we’ll split the money five ways. Six thousand each.”

  “Or maybe,” Vladimir says, “you pay twenty thousand more.” He smiles like a man braving pain.

  “What do they know that you don’t?”

  “I was other side,” Vladimir says. “Pierre was working with Chinese. Maybe we know more than CIA.”

  “I’m going to listen,” Rafferty says. “And if I feel shorted, I’m going to start peeling bills off the stacks, and then we’re going to get the CIA guys.”

  “You know,” Vladimir says. He knocks back half of his drink and picks up the thought. “You know, when you talking, you not learning.” He makes the other half of the whiskey disappear and refills the glass. “So. Looking for Wietcong supporters, yes? Problem in Wietnam is, nobody know who is this side, who is other side. Ewerybody Wietnamese, ewerybody have family ewerywhere, have family in north, have family in south. Ewerybody wear black pajama. Gowernment in South wery unpopular. So who is who, yes? Difficult question.”

  “Okay.”

  “The Phoenix Program, big project. America think big, always think big. So CIA decide, ewery month, find secret traitor. How many, Pierre?”

  “Eighteen hundred,” Dr. Evil says.

  “Only eighteen hundred? In the whole south?” Rafferty asks.

  “Ewery month,” Vladimir says, tapping the table with his fingernail on each syllable. “Eighteen hundred ewery month. One year more than twenty thousand.”

  “And do what with them?” Rafferty asks. He gets a flat look from all three of them, and it makes him feel ten years old.

  “Supposed to double some of them,” Vladimir says, the tone of his voice making it clear what he thinks of the notion. “They work for Hanoi but supposed to be they work for U.S., but really you know they work for Hanoi, ewen if they take U.S. money. U.S. never get one good double in whole war. We have hundreds, you don’t have none. You was on wrong side.”

  “So,” Dr. Evil says, with an impatience that suggests he wants to pocket his money, “since they couldn’t double them, they took some of them out of the picture.”

  “I see.”

  “No.” Vladimir is looking at the center of the table, which has nothing on it. “You don’t see. Not so nice like shooting. Not ‘Hello, you are traitor,’ bang. Nothing nice at all. Not Murphy. First, have problem, find Wietcong guy. Wietcong spy is name Nguyen, yes? And he live in this willage. Ewerybody in willage is name Nguyen. Have five willage same name. Ewerybody in all of them name Nguyen. So Murphy, he find somebody, maybe working in rice paddy, maybe walking with buffalo. Murphy and three or four ARVN—South Wietnam troop—they beat the guy up, hurt him bad. Then they say, ‘You tell us what house is Nguyen or we kill you.’ So man say, ‘That house, ower there.’ Maybe right house, maybe wrong. Maybe house is mother-in-law, maybe somebody guy owe money to. How can Murphy know?”

  “Well,” Rafferty says, “how could he?”

  “He don’t care,” Vladimir says, waving the question away. “Somebody say, ‘This is Nguyen,’ okay, no problem. He can play game. He like game. Wait until dark, use makeup and make his face look bad, like dead for long time. Old clothes, many hole. Smell like dead animal. Puts around his neck—” He draws a broad U dangling from his shoulders.

  “A necklace.”

  “Made from these.” Vladimir tugs on his right ear. “Two rope full. Like Elizabeth Taylor, but with ear. Ewen ARVN soldier afraid. Murphy go alone into willage, make woices—”

  Fighting the image of the ears, Rafferty says, “Woices?”

  “Voices,” Janos says. Dr. Evil is drumming his fingers on the tabletop; he’s heard the story already.

  “Many woices. Man woice, lady woice, ghost woice. Talk Wietnamese, talk English. Woice come from ewerywhere.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

 
“Ventriloquism,” Dr. Evil says. It’s nearly a snap. “This is the most famous part of Murphy’s legend. He was the Voice Man.”

  “I am talking again now?” Vladimir asks from an affronted height.

  “All yours,” Rafferty says.

  “Ewerybody run inside. Dead man in willage, ghost woices, bad smell, ewerybody run. Murphy goes to Nguyen house—maybe, maybe not—and kick open door. Then he kill ewerybody inside. Babababababa.” Vladimir mimes a machine pistol with a jerky right hand. “Ffffft,” he says, and blows on his finger. “Murphy goes home, makes line through name Nguyen.”

  “Seventeen hundred ninety-nine to go,” Janos says.

  “Helicopter,” Dr. Evil says.

  Vladimir says, “I don’t think—”

  “Maybe the CIA does,” Rafferty says.

  “He’s just trying to pry a few more baht out of you,” Dr. Evil says, leaning in again. “But you really should know all this, since the guy you saw is probably Murphy. Sometimes they don’t want to turn Charlie or kill him. They want information. What does the double know? Any operations coming up? Where are the village’s weapons hidden? Where are the supply trails? What’s the chain of command? Who else should they be talking to?”

  “Right.”

  “And let’s say the old electric clips on the scrotum or getting beaten half to death doesn’t open the man up.”

  “Cuts,” Vladimir says. He sounds like he’s sulking.

  “Or cuts. Murphy loves to cut. He was the best America had at making very long, very shallow cuts that hurt forever. Some people who can handle being punched and kicked for days go all jelly inside when somebody takes a knife to their skin.”

  “Eyes,” Vladimir says.

  “More of the same,” Dr. Evil says, “but worse. One thing Murphy liked to do was try to frighten villagers out of keeping Charlie’s secrets. He loved to cause fear. His favorite trick was to cut off Charlie’s eyelids and then haul him into the middle of the village and announce, ‘This man closed his eyes to what the Vietcong is doing here. He closed his eyes when I looked into them to see if he was telling the truth. Now he’ll never close his eyes again. Don’t close your eyes, or I’ll be back.’ That was one of the things that made other people in Phoenix refuse to work with him.”

  “One of many,” says Janos.

  “Okay, helicopter,” Vladimir says, reclaiming center stage. “Wietcong won’t talk, yes? Nothing is working. So Murphy send ARVN for somebody, anybody, some farmer or carpenter. Take both men, farmer and Cong guy, up in helicopter, beat both of them up, ask questions, beat up some more. Other man, he don’t know shit, don’t know nothing, but Murphy still ask question, beat up more and more. And then open door of helicopter and throw other man out. Maybe one hundred, two hundred meters up. Scream all the way down. Take first man and drag him to door. Suddenly he talking. Tell ewerything, tell about soldiers, guns, wife, children, ewerything.”

  “So,” Janos says, with an undercurrent of satisfaction. “That’s Murphy.”

  Rafferty sits back against the wall between the booths, taking the weight off his spine, and shuts his eyes.

  “Enough?” Dr. Evil asks.

  “I’m thinking.” His throat feels half closed.

  “While you thinking,” Vladimir says, trying for casual and missing by a wide margin, “Murphy. He is here?”

  Rafferty opens his eyes and looks at the man for a long moment as he brings himself back into the room and out of the world Murphy had haunted. When he knows that his voice will be there when he wants it, he says, “You’re asking me for information?”

  Vladimir winces. Then he nods.

  Rafferty says, “One more description.”

  “After,” Vladimir says.

  Rafferty says, “First.”

  Dr. Evil lets out a ribbon of air, his eyes on Vladimir’s.

  “Sixty-five, maybe a little older,” Rafferty says. “Big, six-four or so. Light brown hair, not quite blond, going gray, cut military but longer. Blue eyes, wide, thick nose, maybe broken. Big chin. Fat now, but probably not when you knew him, if you did.”

  “Could be five hundred people,” Vladimir says. “Anything more?”

  Rafferty brings back the man’s face but can’t find anything distinctive. “No.”

  “My turn,” Vladimir says. “Do you know who Murphy is working with?”

  He can think of a million reasons not to tell them, but who else is he going to talk to? “You know a Major Shen?”

  Vladimir says, in an almost-worshipful tone, “Shit. You are joking?”

  “I’ll give you that for free. No.”

  Vladimir taps his fingertips against his lips and says something that sounds like “Yooey, yooey, yooey. You have another question?”

  “Where has Murphy been since Vietnam?”

  Vladimir says, “This is not enough money for that question.”

  “It’s what I’ve got.”

  “Then we trade.”

  “Okay. Where has Murphy been since Vietnam?”

  “Here. Southeast Asia. Not usually Thailand.”

  “Where, usually?”

  Vladimir seems to be weighing the value of the answer. “Other countries in the region. China, too.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Fixing.”

  “Fixing what?”

  “Major Shen,” Vladimir says. “Him and Murphy. Working on what?”

  “Fixing what?”

  “I give you this instead,” Vladimir says. He slips two bills off each stack and hands them to Rafferty. “Working on what?”

  Rafferty waits, but no one objects to being short-stacked, and if they’re willing to lose money, it’s unlikely they’ll tell him what he needs to know. They’re all looking at him. “A guy who was killed yesterday.”

  Dr. Evil says, “The one who wasn’t in the papers.” It isn’t a question, so Rafferty doesn’t volunteer anything.

  Rafferty puts one bill back on each stack. “Can you guys get me more information?”

  “Not going near Murphy,” Vladimir says.

  “No. But you must know somebody who knows somebody who—You know.” He holds out the remaining bills.

  “We do.” Janos says, staring at the money.

  “Then I’ll just top these up,” Rafferty says. He looks Vladimir directly in the eyes. “And when one of you gets something or thinks of something, call my cell and leave a message.” He writes his number on each of the three bills still in his hand and puts one on top of each stack. “Are we even?”

  The men pull the money to them, and Vladimir says, “Until you owe us again.”

  Rafferty gets up, then leans forward and touches his fingertip to the cleft in Vladimir’s chin. “How do you shave in there?”

  “Not shaving,” Vladimir says. “I hit them with hammer and bite them off inside.”

  As he opens the door, Rafferty hears Vladimir say, “Hah.”

  9

  The Safest Place to Be Is Nowhere

  THE DIAMOND SUTRA. He forgot the Diamond Sutra, the laundry ticket the dying man slipped into his shirt pocket. It’s still in his apartment house, taped above the door leading to the stairs.

  He gives the cabbie the address and settles back. He won’t know whether he can get in if he doesn’t try.

  Money is an issue. He’s going to have to get some, and it’ll have to be right away, in case they put a stop on his cards. He’s pretty certain that Shen’s outfit could do it with a phone call.

  Somebody who could squash you by snapping my fingers, Murphy had said.

  Power in the dark.

  What scares him most about Murphy is that he’s an American and he had official American help, in the person of Elson. That means that Rafferty’s Get Out of Jail Free card, the American embassy, is probably off-limits. Not that he’d ever go there; that would mean good-bye to Rose and Miaow and his life here, since the only thing the embassy could do for him, in an extreme situation, is to spirit him out of the country, and
that’s never been an option.

  Still, part of him had been aware that the option was always there, and now it isn’t.

  Maybe he’s reading the situation wrong. Maybe he’s caught paranoia from Shen and the trio at the no-name bar, and this whole thing is actually blowing past him, not at him. After all, he really doesn’t know anything. Maybe by morning he won’t be on anybody’s mind.

  He hangs on to that thought like it’s a life preserver until the cabbie makes the turn into Soi Pipat and he sees the red lights strobing—two police cars and a military van pulled up in front of his apartment house. He says to the driver, “Keep going. Change of mind. Take me down to the Indian district.”

  It’s a long haul, and the driver’s eyes, flicking to him in the rearview mirror, don’t make it any shorter. He’ll remember Rafferty’s face. The evening’s traffic is in between waves, the business traffic thinning and the night traffic building, and the average speed is probably seven or eight miles per hour. Rafferty’s legs are crossed, and his dangling foot bobs up and down mechanically. He stills it, and a minute later it’s in motion again. He puts both feet on the floor for the remainder of the ride.

  When he gets there, he pays the driver and hurries along the maze of dim alleys. The fragrance of spices and the tang of grilling meat hang heavy in the air. Along the right side of the fifth or sixth alley he enters, he sees a line of portable booths selling stolen cell phones. He checks his money and bargains back and forth from one shop to another until he buys the cheapest one on sale.

  He moves on a few yards and uses the phone to call a policeman named Anand, one of the few cops Arthit trusts. When Anand answers, Rafferty asks him to go to Arthit’s house and lend Arthit his phone, so Arthit can call the new cell number. Then he closes the new phone and waits, pacing the alleyways for almost half an hour, drawing some odd attention.

  In fact, it’s very odd attention. He can understand people looking at him the third time he goes by, but a few of them aren’t just looking, they’re staring. Two men in particular watch him pass, talking to each other in an energetic fashion.