“You did work with Wichat.”
“Of course. I started out with him. Dozens of people could tell you that. I would have told you, if you’d asked. It’s no secret. I was a crook. There weren’t a lot of other employment opportunities for someone like me. And if you wanted to be a crook in those days, at least in the part of Bangkok I was being a crook in, you did business with Wichat. Actually, with Wichat’s boss, Chai. Is this going to be in the book?”
“Unless you can come up with something better.”
Pan seems suddenly to remember that Boo and Da are in the room. The smile returns, and he looks down at Da, who is holding Peep. The baby’s cries have faded to a damp snuffle. “Girls always look most beautiful holding babies,” he says.
Rafferty says, “Not a really contemporary point of view.”
Pan lets his gaze linger on Da for a moment, and then he says, “I’d rather it weren’t in the book, but if it is, you should be very clear on the point that I’ve had nothing to do with Wichat, or anyone like Wichat, for twenty years. I have no idea whether Wichat is-what? — giving out babies? Why would anyone give out babies?” He tugs at the crease in his sky-blue slacks. “And why tell me about it now?”
“I’m sorry,” Rafferty says. “I haven’t done this right. We’re actually here to ask for your help.”
Pan’s eyebrows climb half an inch. “Help.”
“See, this is what I think is happening. Wichat is buying babies from poor families, some of them probably Cambodian, and selling them to rich people, to farang. And he stashes the kids in the interim with female beggars. He hides them in plain sight and even makes a little extra money. Da says people give more to-”
“A woman with a baby,” Pan says with badly masked impatience. “Obviously. But how in the world do you think I can help?”
“I’m not completely sure,” Rafferty says. He leans against the wall beside the door. “Da and Peep ran away from Wichat’s guys because she was going to get raped. Boo helped them escape. And of course they have something that belongs to Wichat, which is to say Peep. So they’re on the run now, and I’m hiding them.”
Pan lets his eyes drift back down to Da and Peep. Behind him, Boo looks past him at Rafferty, his eyebrows elevated in a question. Pan says, “Why? Why are you hiding them?”
“I owe Boo a favor. So I guess the question is whether you can do anything, considering that you used to be buddies with Wichat, to get him to let go of Da and Peep, just stop searching for them.”
Pan surveys the room, not really looking at anything. “I suppose what he really wants is the baby. Why not return it to him?”
Da says immediately, “No.”
“Right,” Pan says. “Of course not. Well, you say he’s for sale, right? If it’s just about money, if Wichat just doesn’t want to lose his profit, then I can probably do something, maybe compensate him. How much is he getting?”
“Thirty to fifty thousand U.S.”
“You’re joking.”
“That’s my best guess,” Rafferty says.
“Still,” Pan says, “even if I bought Peep for Miss…Miss Da here, Wichat might be more worried about what she could tell people. Especially if he’s making that much money.”
“I think he is,” Boo says. “Both making that much money and worried about Da talking to people.”
Pan’s eyes flick to Boo as though he’s surprised at the certainty in the boy’s voice. “So, you see, it’s a little awkward. If I talk to Wichat, let’s say to offer to buy Peep, then he knows that I’m in touch with these kids. It opens up a raft of questions. That’s awkward. He and I aren’t friends anymore.”
“If you say so,” Rafferty says.
“Let me think about it,” Pan says. “They’re safe for the moment, I suppose?”
“I think so.”
“Would they be safer here?”
“I don’t know,” Rafferty says, watching Pan’s eyes. “Maybe.”
“Well, where are they staying now?”
“In my apartment house. An empty unit, down on the fourth floor.”
“Do you have security? Is there a doorman or anything?”
“It’s not that kind of apartment house,” Rafferty says.
“Maybe here, then,” Pan says. “If there’s one thing I have a lot of, it’s guards.”
Rafferty says, “What do you guys think?”
“I like it at your place,” Boo says. It’s what Rafferty told him to say if the question came up. “We don’t get in anybody’s way.” He looks at Da, who nods.
“Fine,” Pan says. “I’ll think about Wichat. I’m sure something will come to me.”
“That’s all we can ask,” Rafferty says. He pushes himself away from the wall. “You kids mind waiting for me outside? You can walk down to the village. I’ll be out in a minute.” He turns to Pan. “That okay with you?”
“Sure. Just don’t get too close to the pigs. Shinawatra can be aggressive.”
Da says, “I know all about pigs.” Then she says, “Shinawatra? Like the prime minister?”
“I’ll explain it later.” Rafferty turns his back to Pan and opens the door to let them out. With his left hand, he pulls the automatic from his pants, and as Boo passes him, Rafferty glances down at it. Boo follows Rafferty’s eyes and takes the gun without missing a step. When Rafferty closes the door and turns back to Pan, nothing in the big man’s face suggests that he registered the transfer.
“So?” Pan says. He turns and goes behind his desk. He sits and pulls a drawer open.
“Da tell you about how they turned off her town’s river?”
“Actually, the boy told me. Terrible, terrible.” He takes the tube of lip balm out of the drawer and applies it. “The sort of thing that should never be allowed to happen.”
“What can you do about it?”
“Me?” Pan drops the tube back into the drawer. “I have no formal power.”
“And if you did?”
“Oh, well. If we’re going to be hypothetical, then hypothetically, I’d prevent it.”
“Would you give them their river back?”
Pan shakes his head in irritation. “It’s done. It’s over. What I’d do is make sure it never happens again.”
“What do you mean, over? A few bulldozers, an afternoon’s work, they’d have their river back. And how long could it take, how much could it cost, to rebuild a few shacks like the ones you put up in that postcard village in your front yard?”
“That’s not the point. The money’s been spent, the golf course has been built, probably a hotel put up. The people who did this are powerful. They’re not going to let go of it. They’ve got clout.”
“In short,” Rafferty says, “it wouldn’t be expedient.”
“You’re oversimplifying, and you know it. The point is to prevent it next time.”
Rafferty gives it a minute, turns and takes a circuit of the office. When he’s facing Pan again, he says, “So. How’d you burn your hands?”
“Sooner or later,” Pan says. He sounds weary. “I knew you’d bump up against that sooner or later. I told you I was in protection, right?”
“Right. With Wichat’s boss, Chai.”
“Chai,” Pan says. “That was a guy. Balls of steel. That was when we had real gangsters, not store dummies like Wichat.”
“Wichat means business.”
“Yeah? You talk to him?”
“Sure. I’ve talked to half a dozen people on the yellow list. A lot of them have wondered how you got burned.”
“Right, the burns. One of the women I was protecting had a three-wok restaurant on the curb, and some guys who had wandered onto the wrong block tried to rob her. I was just down the street. Protection, right? If I’m extorting money for protection, the least I can do is protect them. So I…um, got involved, and while I was taking care of the first guy, the second guy threw a wok at me. Full of hot oil.” Pan opens the top two buttons of his shirt and shows Rafferty an expanse of shiny, hair
less flesh. “So naturally, like a total idiot, I reached out and tried to catch it. Not just my hands, but all the way up my arms and across my chest. Hurt like nothing else in my whole life.”
“So,” Rafferty says, “it happened back when you were working with Wichat. Before the Mounds of Venus.”
“That’s right.” Rafferty holds Pan’s gaze until Pan looks down at his shirtfront. He rebuttons the shirt and pulls a cigar out of his pocket. He centers it in the moist-looking mouth and fires up the smoke.
When Rafferty feels as if the silence has been stretched far enough to snap, he says, “Uh-huh.”
Pan drags on the cigar with every evidence of being completely absorbed in it, but when he finally looks up at Rafferty, he has the eyes of someone who suspects that the guy across the card table has just filled the holes in his straight. “You asked Ravi about Snakeskin,” he says.
“Actually, I didn’t. I just said the word to see whether it would persuade him to let me in. And it did.”
“How interesting,” Pan says. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on.”
“What a coincidence,” Rafferty says. “So am I.”
41
Off to Brunch
Hang on to the gun,” Rafferty says. “Just in case. I’ll get it later.”
The three of them are walking the curving path to the front gate, since no swans were volunteered. Da carries Peep in both arms, staring openmouthed at the garden gleaming in the sun to her right. Boo has the gun wedged into the pocket of his too-large jeans, covered by the tail of his shirt.
“Why do I want a gun?” Boo says. “We’re leaving.”
“I’m leaving first, and you’re waiting about five minutes. There’s someone watching me, and I don’t want him seeing you. I don’t want anyone to see you.”
“Why not?”
“Tell you later.”
Instead of answering, Boo reaches over and slides a fingertip down the side of Da’s neck. She shrugs as though there’s a spider crawling on her, but the smile gives her away. “But the gun?” Boo asks.
“In case they try to keep you here.”
Da turns away from the ruby light of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and looks across Boo at Rafferty. “Do you think they will?”
“No,” Rafferty says. “But right now I can’t come up with a single thing that would surprise me.”
Captain Teeth says, “He’s at Pan’s.”
“That’s not a problem, not now.” Ton’s Saturday-morning outfit is a splendid pair of beige slacks with an almost invisible herringbone weave and a navy silk blazer that sports gold buttons. From his seat at the console, Ren figures they’re probably real gold. Ton checks his cuffs and tugs the left one another tenth of a millimeter out of the jacket sleeve. “Where are the females?”
“At home,” Ren says, holding up the earphones. “Being boring.”
“I’ll be at the club,” Ton says. “I’ve got the cell, but don’t call unless it’s important. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
A cell phone rings, and Captain Teeth fishes his from his pocket and listens for a moment. “He’s coming out of Pan’s. Flagging a cab.”
“Who’s following him?” Ton asks.
“Nobody you know.”
“Good,” Ton says. He pushes the door open. “I’m off.”
When it has swung completely closed, Ren says, “Off to brunch.”
“It’s Saturday,” Captain Teeth says. “Tell me you wouldn’t rather be at brunch.”
“Me?” Ren drops the headset onto the console, leans forward, and rests his head on his crossed arms. “Would I rather be at brunch? I’d rather be anywhere. I’d rather be in a Burmese prison.”
“Floyd,” Raffert says, the phone squeezed between ear and shoulder. “Got another question for you.”
“You got some money that belongs to me, too,” Floyd Preece says. “Shoulda paid me by now.”
“Coming right up. Listen, this is a very important question, and you don’t give me the answer until I hand you the money, okay?”
Preece pauses, probably looking for the catch. “Let’s hear it,” he says at last.
“What’s being done with the factory right now?”
“That’s it? I mean, that’s the big question?”
“You want something harder?”
“No, no. Happy to get paid for nothing. I could answer you right now. I won’t, not till I’m a little richer, but I could.”
“Yeah, well, save it until I give you the money.”
“And when will that be?”
Rafferty looks up and down the street to make sure he’s still unaccompanied. “Well, next stop is the bank.”
“All of it,” he says.
The teller takes the withdrawal slip. The amount to be withdrawn is blank, since Rafferty has no idea how big the “advance” was. The teller says, “You’re closing the account?”
“If emptying will close it, I guess so.” It’s nearly 1:00 P.M., closing time on Saturday, and he’s one of the last customers in the bank. He’d like the place to be much more thickly populated, absolutely jammed with potential witnesses. This is the stop that worries him most.
Punching keys with bright orange nails, the teller says, “Has our service been unsatisfactory in some way?”
“Excuse me?” Rafferty had been looking back, through the picture window that shows him a long, hot-looking rectangle of Silom. The sun is in full beam now, showing off to a world that was already hot enough. Lots of people, a normal crowd for the weekend, sweat their way past the window, going in both directions. “No, no. You’ve all been great. Seriously. I’d live here, if I could.”
“Live here?” The teller has the beginning of a smile on her lips.
“Right in the lobby,” Rafferty says, checking the sidewalk again. “Nice and quiet, good class of people. Put an easy chair over there, get a key to the restroom, have meals sent in.”
“All by yourself?” the teller asks, glancing sideways at him. She’s in her early thirties, tailored, with every hair in place, but something in the way she looks at him makes it easy for Rafferty to imagine her barefoot in some green field, a little perspiration gleaming on her face.
“Oh, no,” Rafferty says, banishing the image. “With my money.”
The teller leans forward and peers at the screen.
“Problem?” Rafferty says.
She comes up at him with a bright bad-news smile. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but I have to talk to my supervisor.”
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no. Just…um, big withdrawal. It has to be authorized.” She gets up.
“Fine.” Rafferty feels the lightness where the Glock used to be and wishes he owned a spare. He turns back to the window, puts his hand into his pants pocket, and finds the 3 on the touch pad of his phone, which he’s assigned to Kosit. He presses it down and counts to five to activate the speed-dial function. After ten seconds or so, long enough for one ring, he hopes, on Kosit’s phone, he disconnects and goes back to scanning the sidewalk. He doesn’t recognize anyone on the street.
Yet.
The teller is in a rear office, visible through a window, talking to a fat man at a desk. The fat man scrabbles at the keyboard of his computer, studies the screen, and then picks up a telephone. The teller stands there for a moment, waiting for another instruction, then turns and comes back through the door.
“It won’t be much longer,” she says. She sits down, takes a strand of hair, wraps it around her finger, and checks the ends. “Sorry to make you wait.”
Rafferty is now the only customer in the bank. The other tellers are counting out, snapping rubber bands around stacks of currency, and slipping dust covers over their terminals. He’d known that the withdrawal would attract attention eventually, but he hadn’t figured it would happen in real time.
“I’m going to be late,” he says. “Either let’s wrap this up in a minute or two or let’s forget it and
I’ll come back on Monday.”
“I’m so sorry. Let me go talk to him.” And she’s up again, on her way back to the fat man’s office.
The guys at the apartment, Rafferty thinks. They’re three minutes away. They’ve got phones. But Rose and Miaow are talking in the apartment, and he doesn’t think Ton’s controllers would move the watchers while they’re hearing-
It feels as if his stomach plummets two feet.
Did he plug in the tape recorder?
42
Open Season
Rose’s voice has dropped several tones, abandoning its normal alto in favor of something that’s beginning to sound like a drug-wobbled baritone. She finishes her sentence, and there is a long pause. When Miaow answers, her voice is almost as low as Rose’s, and her words have a kind of ripple, like something seen underwater.
“Hey,” Captain Teeth says to Ren. “Listen to this.”
Ren puts on his own headset, squints at the sound for a second, turns up the volume, closes his eyes, opens them again, yanks his headset off, throws it onto the console, and says, with considerable vehemence, “Shit.” He meets Captain Teeth’s gaze. “Brunch or no brunch,” he says, “he’s gotta know about this.” He reaches for his phone, and it rings. He grabs it.
“Yes?” he says.
“I just got a call,” Ton says. “Rafferty’s withdrawing all the money. It’s the Thai Fisherman’s Bank on Silom, around the corner from the apartment. I think he’s going to run. Get the other two guys over there right now.”
“The conversation in the apartment,” Ren says. “It’s a tape.”
Ton says nothing for long enough that Ren asks, “Are you there?”
“I’m here. That means the woman and the girl are gone. He’s the only one we’ve got. I’ll have them stall him in the bank. I want those men there right now. They should try to take him.”
Ren says carefully, “Take him.”
“Take him,” Ton says, as though he’s talking to an idiot. “Get him under control. Take him somewhere. Are we speaking different languages?”
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