Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller pr-3

by Timothy Hallinan

  The two cops climb the final steps to the third floor. Nothing remains between them and Arthit but a corner and a short flight of stairs. The door to the apartment hallway closes, and Arthit waits, his arms hanging down and slightly apart from his sides, his hands open and empty, with the palms facing outward.

  Shoes scuff concrete. The younger cop comes around to the bottom of the stairs, his gun extended, and looks up.

  Arthit stands there, waiting. He knows the young cop’s face, although he can’t put a name to it. They worked together on something, sometime.

  For five or six very long seconds, the young patrolman stands perfectly still, staring up at Arthit. His eyes drop to the automatic on the floor and come up again to meet Arthit’s. Then, slowly, he transfers his gun from his left hand to his right. He works the free right hand into his trouser pocket, and Arthit follows the movement, expecting a throwdown gun or maybe a taser, but when the young cop’s hand comes out, it holds a fold of currency. He puts the gun barrel to his lips like a hushing finger and tosses the money underhand. The money transcribes a graceful arc and lands at Arthit’s feet. The young cop holds out his free hand, palm out-Wait there-then climbs three steps and turns his back to Arthit, listening.

  After a couple of minutes, the door to the third floor opens, and the young cop makes a point of scraping his shoes against the concrete as he goes down the stairs and disappears around the corner. “Nothing up there except the door to the roof,” he says. “It’s padlocked from inside.”

  “Okay,” says the older cop. “Maybe they’ve already got him down below.”

  Arthit hears them descending. The moment he hears the street door swing shut, his legs fold beneath him and he finds himself sitting among the bags of clothes.

  38

  Nobody Sees Street Kids

  When the door opens, Miaow pushes around Rose and stops as though she’s walked into a window. Her eyes almost double in size as she sees Boo, and then-immediately-they jump to Da, and from Da to the baby in Boo’s lap. She says, “Ahhh, ahhhh.”

  “Why are you down-” Rose starts to ask Poke, and then she sees Boo, too, and her smile fills her face. “Oh,” she says. “You’re here.”

  “I-” Miaow says, and stops, her eyes moving back and forth. “I mean, you-”

  “This is Da,” Boo says. “And the baby is named Peep.”

  “Baby,” Miaow says, as though the word were in a brand-new language.

  “Not mine,” Boo says. “Not really Da’s either.”

  Rose says, “We should get upstairs, Poke. They were behind us when we came back. They’re going to expect to hear something.”

  “Fine,” Rafferty says, heading for the door. “Coming, Miaow?”

  Miaow gives him a look that could turn him to ash.

  “Guess not,” Rafferty says. “We’ll pretend you’re pouting. For a change. Open the door quietly when you come in.” To Superman he says, “See you tomorrow.” The boy nods, but he’s looking at Miaow.

  Rose says, “What’s all that stuff on your hand?”

  “Tell you in the elevator,” he says. He closes the door behind them. In the hall he says, “And I have to tell you something else. About Noi.”

  “What happened to your hair?” Boo says.

  “I fixed it,” Miaow says. Her eyes go to Da again.

  “I liked it better the other way.”

  “Who cares?” Miaow says. Her fists are brown knots at her sides. “Who cares what you like? Where did you go? Where have you been? And who’s she?”

  “I told you. She’s Da.”

  “Who’s Da?”

  Boo says, “Why don’t you ask Da?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “He’s my friend,” Da says. “He got me away from some bad people.”

  Miaow chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “How long have you known him?”

  Da’s eyebrows contract. “How long?” she asks Boo.

  “Couple of days.”

  Da says, “It feels like a week.”

  “What does he mean, it’s not your baby?” Miaow says. “What kind of bad people?” She abandons that line of questioning and turns her eyes to Boo. “Why did you go away?”

  “I made a mistake. About Poke. I thought he was-you know, a bad guy.”

  Miaow says, “Poke?”

  “I was wrong. But I didn’t really go away, not at first. For a few months, I kept an eye on you. To make sure you were okay.”

  “Did not,” Miaow says.

  “I did.”

  She gives him hard eyes. “I never saw you.”

  “I was careful. And I had some other kids watch you from time to time.”

  “If he wants to disappear,” Da says, “he just disappears.”

  “I know that,” Miaow says. “I was with him for a long time. Not just two or three days, like you.”

  “Miaow,” Boo says.

  “He took care of me,” Miaow says, and suddenly she’s swiping at her cheeks with her forearm. “I was almost a baby, and he…he-” She breaks off, grabs air, and dives in again. “I thought…I thought you started again. Started the yaa baa, I mean. I thought you went away because you wanted that. More than you wanted anything. More than you wanted to-I don’t know-to stay with me. With us.”

  “No,” Boo says. “I don’t use that now. Remember Hank Morrison?”

  “Sure.” She scrubs her arm over her eyes as though she’s punishing them. Then she sniffles. “He helped Poke adopt me.”

  “He got me into a monastery up north. The monks got me through it.”

  She looks at him over the top of her arm. “A monastery?”

  The corners of his mouth lift. “I meditated. I even ate vegetables.”

  “But you’re back,” Miaow says. “You’re here. Why did you come back?”

  “I belong here. Where else would I go?”

  “It’s his forest,” Da says.

  Miaow looks at Da as though she doesn’t understand, but then she nods. “It is,” she says. “But why are you here now? I mean here, in this apartment?”

  “I came to ask Poke for help,” Boo says. “But it turns out I’m going to help him.”

  “How?”

  Boo lifts Peep to his shoulder and begins to pat the baby’s back. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “A fire,” Ton says.

  “That’s what he looked for,” says Ren. “They checked the search history on the computer he used in the morgue at the Sun. He was looking for fires. He printed out stuff on four or five of them, a factory and some houses and a couple of slums.”

  Ton is wearing a suit that cost more than three thousand dollars and looks every penny of it. He leans against the edge of the desk, the unbuttoned, silk-lined jacket hanging open in a way that gives Ren an almost sickening pang of envy. No matter what he does, no matter how much money he eventually makes, he will never in his life look like that, like a man who was born to wear expensive clothes.

  Captain Teeth-Kai-has one earphone in place and is listening to Ton and Ren with the free ear. Now he swivels his chair around to face them and says, “So he’s looking for a fire? So what? Anyone could see that Pan’s been in a fire, with those hands.”

  “He saw Pan’s hands the first time they met,” Ton says. “Why go looking for fires now?” He runs his own hand over his jaw as though checking on his shave. “Who did he talk to today?”

  “The cop, Thanom,” Ren says. “And Wichat.”

  “Thanom knows part of it,” Ton says, “but he’d never say anything, not after what he went through to erase those records.” He lowers his eyes, studying an area of the carpet. “Wichat might say things he shouldn’t-he’s stupid enough-but I doubt he knows much of anything. Still,” he says, “Wichat.”

  “But you…” Ren says. He looks like he’s trying to hear something that’s just out of earshot.

  “Yes? I what?”

  “You gave him Wichat.”

  “Of course
I did. Anybody good would have found Wichat. When someone really digs into Pan-and they will if we continue-it’ll be somebody good. You’ve got to assume that the people you go up against will be good, or you’ll be caught stretching your willie when you should be wondering what’s around the corner. And after he talked to Wichat, he went to the morgue at the Sun?”

  Ren says, “He called me to set it up.”

  Ton straightens. “Timing,” he says. “Wichat doesn’t know what the fire means, any more than you two do, but he knows when it happened. He probably gave Rafferty a year, maybe two. Rafferty went looking for fires during that period. Anybody who puts it together is going to have a new set of questions.” He pushes himself away from the desk and puts both hands into his trouser pockets. Ren hears change jingle. “This exercise would have been worth it,” Ton says. He glances at Ren. “If it weren’t for having to kill the reporter. As it is, it may be worth it anyway.”

  He goes to the door and opens it, but instead of going through, he lets it swing closed again and turns back to Ren. “Anything else? I mean anything at all.”

  Ren swallows before answering. “His tail lost him twice today. Just for a few minutes.”

  Ton blinks slowly, leaving his eyes closed for a second. “How? When? Where?”

  “The first time was after he finished at the Sun. He went back to Silom, probably just going home, but he kept looking behind him, like he knew someone was back there.”

  “He undoubtedly did,” Ton says, putting his teeth into it. “I more or less told him he’d be followed.”

  “But Dit-that was who was following him-Dit figured that he shouldn’t let Rafferty see his face. Rafferty went into a building, and when he got into the elevator, he turned around again, so Dit ducked back, and he couldn’t see what floor Rafferty went to.”

  Ton waits. After a long moment, he says, “And?”

  Ren licks his lips and winces as his upper lip brushes the burn on his tongue. “And there was an exit on the side of the building. Rafferty must have used that, because Dit waited in front for a long time. After he found the side exit, he started working his way up and down the block. Checked all the stores, anywhere Rafferty might have ducked inside. About twenty, twenty-five minutes later, he saw Rafferty, back on the sidewalk. He’d done something to his hand. He was holding it like he’d broken it or something. And then Rafferty went into a building that has a lot of doctors in it and took the elevator to the sixth floor. About an hour later, he came back down with bandages on his hand.”

  “This is wonderful,” Ton says. “He goes missing for a few minutes and then shows up injured, and we don’t know how. Where is he now?”

  “In the apartment,” Kai says, pointing at his headphones. “With his wife.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Ton says. He turns to Ren. “You said twice, we lost him twice.”

  “Right after he came out with the bandages. Some street kids stole Dit’s wallet, and he chased them.”

  Ton says, “I am surrounded by idiots. Pull Dit off and put somebody better on it. In fact, pull off everyone who might know who you’re working for.”

  “Dit’s the only one. What do you want me to do with him?”

  “I don’t care. Give him something unpleasant to do.”

  “Anyway, Rafferty went right back to his apartment. We heard him. So nothing happened.”

  “Dit should be thankful for that,” Ton says. He opens the door again. “We’ll give Rafferty one more day, just to see how much closer he gets. By tomorrow night we’ll be done with him. But don’t lose him again. Don’t lose any of them.”

  “After tomorrow,” Ren says, “what should we do with him?”

  Without looking back, Ton says, “You didn’t ask me that question, and I don’t ever want to hear how it was answered.” The door swings closed behind him.

  Ren waits a minute or two to make sure Ton isn’t coming back. He gets up and goes to the door and opens it on an empty hallway. Then he closes it and says, “This makes me very uncomfortable.”

  “What would it take to make you comfortable?” Captain Teeth asks. “It could have taken you years to get this close to the man. You’re almost living in his pocket.”

  “That’s what makes me uncomfortable.”

  “You know why. He couldn’t involve a bunch of people in this thing. It’s too…” His voice trails off.

  “It’s too what?” Ren prompts. “Too dangerous? How about ‘Get rid of everyone who knows who we’re working for’?”

  Captain Teeth puts the other earphone in place and swivels to face the console. With his back to Ren, he says, “I’ll think about it.”

  Boo watched me to make sure I was all right, Miaow writes. Her face is glowing. For a long time after he ran away.

  Rafferty reads the note and takes the pen. How long?

  Miaow grabs the pen away from him and turns the page over. I don’t know. He had other kids watch me, too.

  Did you see any of them? Rafferty writes.

  No. I wasn’t looking. She chews on the end of the pen until Rafferty reaches out and pushes it away from her mouth. But nobody sees street kids, she writes. And she watches Rafferty read her sentence three or four times and then sit back and stare at the opposite wall.

  Wild cards, he thinks again. Street kids can follow anyone.

  39

  Replay

  Rafferty says, “I like the hair.”

  Miaow says, “Really? You’re not just trying to make me feel better? You don’t think it looks dumb? And fake?”

  Rose says in Thai, “It’s very stylish. It’s not supposed to look real, Miaow, not any more than lipstick is. And it catches the light well. Lots of highlights.”

  “Honest? I mean, you really think so? Do you think the kids at school will, um…?”

  “If they don’t like it,” Rafferty says, “it’ll just be because they’re envious.”

  “Oh, come on,” Miaow says.

  Rose says, “It makes you look older.”

  The morning light pours in through the sliding door to the balcony, bouncing off the glass top of the coffee table to create a rectangle of sunlight on the ceiling. Other than the sunlight, nothing in the apartment is moving. The small tape recorder is hooked up, via its expensive connectors, to Rafferty’s amplifier, and the voices come out of the bookshelf speakers on either side of the empty room.

  Down on the fourth floor, Rose says, in person, “This is ridiculous. It’s way too big.”

  She is wearing a gray uniform jacket and matching slacks. The slacks have a black stripe down each side. Under the jacket are a white shirt and a black clip-on tie. Her shoes are cheap black lace-ups with rubber soles.

  “Hair down inside your shirt,” Rafferty says. “All of it. Tie it back with a rubber band or something.”

  “So? Everything will still be too big.” She pulls at the waistband of the pants. “I’m swimming in it.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be.” Rafferty goes behind her and tries to gather her hair between his hands but gives up immediately. “Two-hand job,” he says. “I’m disqualified.”

  “Do you actually think this will work?” She has tugged the back of the shirt away from her neck and is stuffing hair down inside it. “I look like a clown.”

  “It’ll happen fast,” he says, “and we’ll set it up. Like a bluff in poker. They’ll see what we want them to see. They’ll hear a male voice just before they see you. They’ll put it together themselves and see a man for the three or four seconds you’re visible. And don’t forget, there will be other stuff going on.”

  “But why is everything so big? Did Kosit get the wrong size?”

  “No. You and Miaow each have three shirts, two pairs of pants, an extra pair of shoes, a couple of towels, and the other stuff on the list, right?”

  “I put it together myself.”

  “And you brought the wide scarf I took out of your closet.”

  “It’s a shawl,” she says, “a
nd yes, I have it, although I can’t imagine where I’m going to wear a cashmere shawl when I’m supposed to be running for my life.”

  “You’re going to wear it under your shirt, tied around your middle. With all those extra clothes inside it. You’re going to be a guy with a gut. And the uniform will fit once you’ve got your belly on.”

  She gives the collar a tug and puts on the cap. “So?” she says. “Is it me?”

  “Tilt the cap back a little bit to close the gap between it and the collar.”

  Rose uses both hands to reset the cap, being careful not to allow any hair to fall out of it. “Maybe I should just cut it off.”

  “It’ll be fine. We’ll bobby-pin the cap so it can’t slip.”

  “Listen to you,” she says. “I married a hairdresser.”

  “You wish.”

  “Poor Arthit,” Rose says. “How will he get by? She was the only thing he loved in the world.”

  “I have to find him,” Rafferty says.

  “Let him lick his wounds. He’s not someone who asks for help.”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to give him some. And I have to see whether there’s any way I can get him out of this jam with Thanom. Especially since it’s basically my fault.”

  His cell phone rings. “Put the shawl on the table and put the stuff on it,” he says. “Try to get it even. You don’t want a lumpy stomach.” He opens the phone and says, “Yeah?”

  “Snakeskin Industries,” Floyd Preece says. “Am I good or what?”

  “I don’t know, Floyd. What’s Snakeskin Industries?”

  “A snakeskin. It’s something that’s empty when it’s left behind. It’s the company that owned the factory that burned down, the one that made Buffy the Bunny, remember?”