Street Music

by Timothy Hallinan

  Bob was no fool. He knew that his life and all the other lives sacrificed on both sides of the battlefield had been dropped and stepped on like cigarette butts by men who never gave them a second thought.

  And then he’d had his heart, or whatever remained of his heart, broken.

  Rafferty made a right and headed toward Soi Kathoey.

  He never looked behind him.

  14

  If I Had a Favorite Aunt

  Trix is not at all what Rafferty had expected. For one thing, in a profession that burns youth as its primary fuel, she’s in her mid-forties and seems comfortable with it; she’s wearing virtually no makeup beyond heavy, smoky-looking eyeliner that reminds Rafferty of the woman who long served as the White House press secretary, although Trix looks more cheerful than that woman, less likely to whip out an automatic weapon at the first syllable of dissent. She’s toting fifteen or twenty contented-looking pounds that seem to have found a place where they can feel secure. In fact, she seems contented with everything: contented and somehow familiar, like a family member you only see at widely spaced intervals but who usually brings a present.

  Neither of Rafferty’s parents had kept in touch with their brothers and sisters, but the thought that comes to Rafferty as he returns Trix’s smile is she could be my favorite aunt, if I had a favorite aunt. The homey impression is dented somewhat by the lopsided, vastly complicated sculpture of vaguely country-western hair that’s been sprayed into asymmetrical submission on her head. It’s been dyed a black so deep that the highlights are blue.

  “Bob,” Trix says. She gives him an assessing gaze, tilting her head to one side—the side with the majority of the hair on it—and for an instant Rafferty sees it as the beginning of a sight gag in which she topples all the way over, dragged by the sheer weight of the coiffure. Instead, she puts a manicured hand down on the bathtub’s porcelain edge, which is where she’s sitting, and leans on it. Her nails are a bright corn yellow. The room—small, windowless, and lavender-scented by some ersatz flower that came in a can—contains the tub, a blow-up mattress on the floor, a narrow, rock-hard massage table, and a single metal chair, currently folded flat and leaning against one wall. Trix wears a soft-looking pale yellow terrycloth robe, parted over a crossed leg to display most of a memorable knee. Rafferty is sitting on the massage table.

  “You want talk about Bob.” Her English pronunciation is excellent.

  “I’m going to pay you,” he says, reaching for his wallet. “In fact—”

  “Talk about customer, not for sale,” she says. “Especially some customer.”

  “I’m a friend of his.” Rafferty suddenly finds himself unable to produce any aspect of his relationship with Campeau that might persuade this woman that he and Bob actually like each other. “I know his brother just died—”

  Trix says, “He very sad.”

  “Well, sure—I mean, no.” He flips a mental coin and it comes up candor. “He thought his brother was a horse’s ass.”

  She gazes at him for a count of three or four and then she laughs. “That just what he say. Zactly. Why you ask about him?”

  He runs through a summary of the events of the afternoon, not dramatizing it but not playing it down, either. “So,” he concludes, “noise, blood, and he’s missing. Looks like some kind of trouble.”

  “Maybe him fighting himself,” Trix says. “Bob not like Bob.”

  “That was my first thought, too. I might still believe it. But I’ve known him eight or nine years, and if something has happened, I feel like I should try to figure out where he is.”

  “Because you are friend.”

  “He, umm, he named me to some people as the person to call if anything happened to him. So they called me.”

  She cocks her head again. “He respect you. Maybe not friend, like drinking, laughing, but he respect you.”

  “I guess.” His eyes drift to the bare knee, and he looks away. “I guess that’s a kind of friend. But whatever our relationship is, I want to find him, make sure everything is all right.”

  “And if not all right?”

  The very question he’s avoided asking himself. “Try to find a way to make it right.”

  “Yes,” Trix says. “Friend.”

  He sits there, feeling like a pool ball that’s just been dropped into the least likely pocket. “I, uhh, I guess what I need to know is who he talks about, if you know anyone he might have gone to if he was in trouble, if he ever mentioned anyone who might help him when he needs help.”

  “He never think he need help.” She uses the yellow nails to drum a little rhythmic figure on the edge of the tub, a noise like hail on a windscreen. Then she reaches over to the head of the tub and turns on the water, full force. He sees for the first time that the showerhead and the faucets are gold colored, perhaps even gold plated. For a minute or so she adjusts the hot and cold controls until she has to yank her hand out of the steaming stream. The room grows warmer and damper. He waits as she continues to play with the faucet, twisting it slowly toward the red. Rafferty feels himself begin to sweat.

  “He like it like this,” she says, pulling her hand back. “He say he never knew how much he like wet weather, hot weather, until he go to Vietnam and Thailand. He say it slow people down, make them think before they do something, because it too hot here to do something two time. So people not so stupid: do right thing first. He say women here so beautiful because skin never dry out, they not look old same way women in dry country do. How old you think I am?”

  This is always a treacherous question. “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight?”

  “Sweet mouth,” Trix says, and it’s not a compliment. She turns the water off and seems quite interested in watching it drain. “I forty-eight, next month I be forty-nine.” Delicately, she uses the edge of her left index finger to wipe moisture off the bridge of her nose, first the right side, then the left. “I have three baby. The oldest one is boy. Now him thirty-two, no good. Fight, steal, drink too much. Take my money. Bob boxing him, old man not look strong, my son laughing at him, but Bob win, break my son nose. Tell him he take my money again, Bob kill him.”

  “Did he ever steal from you again?”

  “No, but I give him money. Not tell Bob. I pay for him to fix nose, too, not tell Bob. Money not important. Important is, Bob care about me. Have one daughter, in school for being a nurse. Bob, him help. Help her learn English, help her buy book. She need many, many book. Now she working hospital, still go school but work hospital too.”

  Rafferty says, “Which hospital?”

  She names the one where Rose gave birth.

  “Where was your son last night?”

  She shrugs. “Him gone from my house now, but I think he never fight with Bob again. Shoot with gun, maybe, but not fight. Anyway, him not Bangkok now. Go Pattaya.”

  “You said you have three kids.”

  She passes the edge of the same index finger across her forehead. It’s the most elegant reaction to perspiration he’s ever seen. “One die. Long time before I come to Bangkok. When I still in village. Die five week old.”

  Rafferty says, “Oh,” but it’s actually a response to something that feels like a punch to the gut; he has immediately imagined Rose’s devastation if something were to go wrong with the baby—with Frank—and the only words he can find are, “I’m so sorry. Boy or girl?”

  “Girl. Now, no problem. She come in my dream many time, she say everything okay. Her spirit happy.”

  “Good.” He waits a moment to slow his breathing, and then he says, “My wife’s grandmother comes into her dreams. She was the one who said our baby would be a boy.”

  Trix smiles and nods. Rose’s dead grandmother dropping in from time to time is nice, but nothing special. Dream spirits are all over the place.

  “I see Bob mainly at a little bar on Patpong One,” Rafferty says. “
Do you know anywhere else he goes?”

  “Sometime him talk about bar in Sukhumvit. Have music, sometime he like.”

  “I think I know it. Anything else?”

  “Expat something.”

  “Yeah, on Patpong. That’s where I see him.” He gets up. “Are you sure I can’t pay you for your time?”

  “Bob my friend.”

  “Well, thank you. If you hear from him, please tell him I’m looking for him, and let me know that you talked to him.” He takes one of his business cards out of his wallet. It’s been in there so long the ink sticks to the leather and he has to pry it loose. “My phone number,” he says, giving it to her.

  “Him have girlfriend one time,” Trix says, slipping the card into a pocket of her robe. “Before. Him have broken heart.”

  “I know.”

  “Some Thai lady,” Trix says, shaking her head. “Some Thai lady no good.”

  Down in the street, he walks for a bit in the general direction of home, considering and then rejecting going to Sukhumvit to check out the new Swizzle Stick, probably the club where Bob had listened to music; the original venue got evicted to make room for God knows what, and he hasn’t been to the new location. Unlike Miaow, he can’t just order his phone to find it and then lead him, like a docile four-year-old, to his destination. The thought of Miaow brings with it a guilty little prompt: he hasn’t called home in a few hours. He stops and pulls out his phone.

  “What?” she says, sounding like his call has delayed the granting of a lifelong wish.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Edward and I are on YouTube, watching the old movie of Pygmalion. I’m trying to show him Freddy’s not just a snooze.”

  “Good idea, I guess, although I’ve always thought he was a human Xanax.”

  “Just the perspective we’re looking for.” To Edward, she says, “Tell you later.”

  “Have the troops left?”

  “Yeah, and here’s a surprise. Mom went with them.”

  “You’re kidding. She took the baby out of the house?”

  “No,” Miaow says. “She taught the baby how to work the remote, and it’s watching a Korean soap opera. It picks better shows than you do.”

  “He. Whatever happened to respect for your elders?”

  “Wow,” she says. “Maybe we’re all old enough to know better? Anyway, Fon said it was time for the kid to see the big city and that if Rose didn’t start walking, her legs would fall off.”

  “I didn’t think she was supposed to be—”

  “They’re two blocks away.” There’s a voice in the background, Edward’s. Miaow says, “Hang on.”

  Rafferty says, “Hang on, please,” but he’s talking to himself.

  “Good idea,” Miaow says, but not into the phone. Then she says, “Can you pick up something for us to eat?”

  “You’re a terrible negotiator. See, when you want something, the thing is to be nice. Maybe even respectful.”

  “Oh, please? I’ll do anything. I’ll listen to your awful music. No, I can’t. I’ve never been that hungry. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell everybody you like the Bee Gees.”

  In the background, Edward says, “He likes the Bee Gees?”

  “I have never said I liked the—”

  “And Linkin Park, and—”

  “How do you even know about Linkin Park?”

  “—and ABBA. And Maroon 5.”

  Rafferty says, “I was just talking about Maroon—you wouldn’t dare.”

  “Som tam,” Miaow says. “Edward is going to learn to like som tam if it kills him.”

  “You know, you and Edward have legs, same as me. There are restaurants all over—”

  “Yeah, but we’re working. We can’t watch the movie in a restaurant.”

  “Sure, you can.”

  “It’s too embarrassing,” she says. “People would hear how loudly I breathe when Leslie Howard comes on. And we’d have to pay.”

  “Well, hell. Wait a minute. I need to see where I am. Som tam, right?” He makes a slow turn, realizing he’s already passed the sidewalk food cart that makes the best in the neighborhood and, in a tardy spurt of resolve, decides not to go back. At the edge of his vision, he sees someone in white step aside and into a doorway, but there’s the usual early evening sidewalk glut, and he doesn’t think about it. There’s a restaurant coming up that’s aggressively second-rate but on the way to the apartment. Miaow might make a face, but Edward won’t know the difference; he doesn’t like som tam anyway. Rose avoids the restaurant, but she’s not home, so he decides that Miaow is outvoted and slips the phone back into his pocket; second-rate som tam is better than none. He has to cross the street to get to the restaurant, so he looks in both directions, catching another glimpse of the person in white, and then he mentally crosses himself and dives into the traffic.

  15

  I Know Where You Are

  Her head is ringing, high, tinny, electrical sounds, like the music made by a child’s cheap toy. It comes from all directions, and it’s all she can hear. It’s there even when she covers her ears. The world beneath her feet seems to be rising and falling in waves so pronounced and so steep that she has to wrap a hand around the railing beside the driveway and force her eyes wide, wide open to keep from throwing up.

  She’s already thrown up once, because of what the Sour Man had said after she called to report that she’d followed the man home to his apartment with its doorman, and now she’s fighting to keep from vomiting again. She already stinks, she’s already filthy, and now she’s come up against the only thing in the world that has the force to wake her up at night, gasping for breath, even after the pipe and the dope have wrung her out, exhausted her.

  All she wants to do is turn and run, not to the park or anywhere she’s ever been before, not anywhere where anyone knows her or will even see her, not anywhere that reminds her of who she is. Of what she is. Someplace empty and quiet, just her and the sky and a soft place where she can lie down and die. As she should have done years ago.

  But.

  But she can’t.

  But.

  He’s there, somewhere where he can see her. He’d proved it when she called him; he’d said, “I know where you are. I can see you.” He’d told her to hold up one arm, and she’d raised the right, and he’d identified it. He made her do it three more times until there could be no doubt: if she runs, he’ll see her. And he’ll catch her. She’s big and slow, he’s small and wiry and fast.

  Had he followed her? Or had he been waiting, had he already known where . . .

  That’s too complicated. Her head is pounding, the high sounds have turned into the squeals of tiny pigs, into insect songs. She waves away, like smoke, the certainty that he’d already known where the man lives; the drugstore from which she’d called him was just around the corner. Still, that’s nothing, compared to the rest of it, just something to think about later. In the meantime.

  In the meantime.

  Is it that he doesn’t want anyone to see them together, doesn’t want anyone to see that she’s had help finding the place? But why?

  The answer takes its time coming, but when it arrives she knows it’s right. Because something bad is going to happen. The kind of thing people ask questions about later.

  But it’s not as though she has a choice. She has to go up there. And what could be worse than the way things are now?

  She looks at her palm again, at the words she’d written on it only a few minutes earlier, so she’d remember what the Sour Man said. He told her he’d kill her if she forgot, and she used the pen she’d found to write them down.

  Two sums of money, both large, one for her and one for him, the word garage, an apartment number, and a name. And the word knife. The money was what she’d get if she did what she was told, and the kn
ife was what she’d get if she didn’t.

  But she couldn’t.

  But she has to.

  An apartment number, the apartment number. On the eighth floor.

  The apartment number.

  For a light-headed moment, she thinks she’ll turn and run, let him catch her, let him kill her. Her fingers have cramped around the railing she’s been clinging to while the earth heaved and shuddered beneath her. She’s working to loosen her fingers when bright, bright light sweeps over her. She takes an involuntary step back, her arm, with its fingers still clinging to the rail, goes taut like a rope, and she hears the car and watches it go by, angling down the driveway on the other side of the rail as a huge metal door rackets itself open with a squeal that tells her that the door needs to be oiled. She once lived in a house where people seemed to listen all the time, just so they could get angry when she made noise, and she had learned to oil hinges.

  And it seems to her that years of her life have come down to this squealing moment, to this choice: which way to run—in, behind the car, or away, to—to what? Into the arms of the Sour Man, into the pincers of his fingernails? Or those dogs?

  She doesn’t, she tells herself, really believe in that cage full of dogs.