The prospect had all the allure of a glass of warm milk, but his wife and daughter would be happier. He and Rose would economize; they’d pay Miaow’s tuition, and then worry about everything else. He’d left the apartment with every intention of abandoning the project. Then he had been distracted, thinking about the conversation about Elson, and he’d forgotten to tell Prettyman he was quitting.
Or perhaps, he acknowledges, he likes the excitement. Or maybe he doesn’t want to let go of the advance money.
But now he can clear it up.
He passes a drugstore, a restaurant, a small hotel, a hair salon full of women anxiously lining the window, staring at the rain that will ruin their new hairdos, barely paid for. Cars splash by in the street, throwing up sheets of water three feet high. The light increases by several f-stops, and he realizes the rain is lifting. He can see half a block ahead now.
The girl is nowhere in sight.
He breaks into a run, his feet slapping through the water. Then some giant hand turns off the faucet and the rain stops, as suddenly as it began. The boulevard yawns in front of him, gleaming wet, its sidewalk almost deserted.
She must have turned into a side street. He looks back, certain he didn’t pass one, and sees nothing. Half a block ahead, though, a tuktuk fords a temporary lake across the boulevard and vanishes to the right, obviously heading down a soi. Without breaking stride, Rafferty chases it and enters the soi.
And sees her, walking briskly, almost a block away. She turns, checking behind her, and spots him. At the same moment, she sees the tuktuk and raises a hand to flag it. The tuk-tuk swerves suicidally to the curb, its driver having obviously seen her face, and she climbs in. As it pulls away, she looks back at Rafferty again. Then, with that same quarter smile, she lifts her hand and waves good-bye.
13
My Sweetness Is Classified
A magazine article.
His notebook is pocket-size, awkward for anything but brief reminders, but he scribbles in it anyway, sitting at the outdoor table until the rain drives him inside. “Spytown,” he titles it, ten thousand, maybe fifteen thousand words about the oddly matched collection of spies who, like Prettyman, drifted to Bangkok when the world no longer looked like it was heading for a shooting war. He’d met a few of them. His second conversation with Prettyman had taken place in a bar so discreet it didn’t even have a sign. Rafferty had needed half an hour, trekking up and down the soi on foot, to find it, and when he went inside, it was full of spies.
Well, retired spies, or so they said. Now older and fatter, they looked like traveling salesmen whose territories had shrunk out from under them. There was something unanchored about them, something about the way their eyes checked the room without settling on anything, the way they looked at every face twice, and then twice again, that was unnerving. They seemed always to be reassuring themselves that they had an exit, from the room, from the conversation. Rafferty had heard it said that the only people who were at home everywhere were kings and prostitutes. These men were on the other end of the scale. They weren’t at home anywhere.
All of them were men. They congregated in the booths in groups that assembled and broke up constantly, rehashing operations from twenty years ago, operations on which they’d been on opposing sides. It quickly became apparent that half the men in the bar would have killed the other half on sight in 1985.
Nineteen eighty-five: the year his father had returned to China.
Prettyman had been different in the bar. Rafferty is trying to capture the difference in words when he notices that the rain has stopped again, and he grabs his coffee and his notebook and moves back outside. Arthit will be able to see him better out there, and the air-conditioning on his wet clothing has given him a chill.
A waitress mops the table, but Rafferty, eager to write, sits before she tends to his chair, which has half an inch of water gathered in the low point of the seat. He barely notices, seeing in his mind’s eye the loose, confident way Prettyman moved in the bar, as though he were outdoors and in familiar terrain. Until then Prettyman had always struck Rafferty as someone who navigated the world too carefully, the kind of person who checks frequently to make sure the top is screwed tightly on the salt shaker.
Arnold had been in his element in the bar. As Rafferty was when he was writing the kind of material he enjoyed writing.
“Stop that,” he says out loud. He starts to write again, thinking he might have to reevaluate Arnold. The man in the spies’ bar was more formidable than the vaguely comic ex-spook he thought he knew. Suddenly he realizes he’s been patronizing Arnold.
He stops writing, the point of his pen still touching the page.
“Doing a Raymond Chandler?” someone asks, and Rafferty looks up to see Arthit peering down at the notebook.
“What’s that mean?”
“Chandler wrote on little pieces of paper,” Arthit says, pulling out a chair. “About the size of a paperback book. The trick, he said, was to get a tiny bit of magic on every one of those little pages.”
“Is that so?” Rafferty watches Arthit’s expression as his bottom hits the miniature pond on the seat. After his friend’s eyes have widened
rewardingly, Rafferty says, “The seat’s wet.”
“I know,” Arthit says through his teeth. “It’s very cooling.”
“And how does that piece of information about Raymond Chandler come to be in the possession of a Bangkok policeman?”
“Chandler went to Dulwich, my school in England,” Arthit says. “He was the only famous graduate who interested me, so I read about him. He drank too much. Why do writers drink too much?”
“They’re alone too much.”
“Why don’t you drink too much?”
“I more or less live in a permanent crowd. How’s Noi?”
“She hurts,” Arthit says. “It comes and goes. Lately it mostly comes.” Arthit’s wife, Noi, whom he loves without reservation, is taking a defiant stand against multiple sclerosis. She’s two years into the battle now, and despite all the medicine, herbal remedies, prayer, and love, she’s losing. Arthit slides back and forth on the seat and then lifts himself a couple of inches and glares down at the wet chair. “She’d love to see you and Rose.”
“Is tomorrow night okay?”
“That’s what I like about Americans,” Arthit says in his best British-inflected English. “They take small talk literally.” He resigns himself to being wet and settles in. He’s wearing his uniform, natty brown police duds stretched tight over broad shoulders and a hard little bowling ball of a belly. Arthit gives the cop’s eye to the other people in the outdoor cafe, and they either look away or return it with wary curiosity. Bangkok cops have worked hard to earn their reputation for unpredictability.
“So here’s the bad news,” Arthit continues as a waitress materializes to hover politely above them. Arthit waves her off. “If this Elson is who he says he is, you’re not going to get much help from my shop. Counterfeiting is a problem we actually share. The Secret Service gets carte blanche.”
“Wow,” Rafferty says. “Bilingual.”
“I don’t want to leave you out of the conversation,” Arthit says, “so let me put it another way. As far as my bosses are concerned, these guys shit silver.”
“A minute ago, when you were still speaking English, you said that was the bad news. That usually implies that there’s also good news.”
Arthit starts to put an elbow on the table and thinks better of it. “The good news is that this is a big deal. The Secret Service didn’t come to Bangkok to bust maids. They’re looking for a source, and we both know that Rose and- What’s her name?”
“Peachy.”
Arthit’s mouth tightens in distaste. “Self-named, no doubt.”
“Seems like a safe bet.”
“They’re probably not passing out millions, are they? Your Mr. Elson will backtrack it to the bank, and that’ll be it.”
“That’s pretty much what I told Rose.�
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Arthit leans back in his chair and folds his hands over his belly. “Then why are you bothering me?”
“Just an excuse to get together. And I figured, this being a day of rest for ordinary mortals, that you’d be rattling around, bored senseless, and looking for something to do. Instead here you are, all suited up and spit-shined.”
“You may have heard that we’ve had a coup,” Arthit says. “When people wake up and see tanks in the streets and then learn they’ve got a new government-one they didn’t elect-the police find themselves putting in a lot of overtime. The official line is that our presence is reassuring, although you and I know that having a whole bunch of cops all over the place all of a sudden is a pretty effective implied threat.”
“If they only knew how sweet you actually are.”
“My sweetness is classified. And if it were to become public knowledge, it would no doubt be blamed on the former prime minister.” Arthit does a quick local survey to make sure no one is listening. “As part of the never-ending effort to find something else to blame on the former prime minister.”
“I’d have thought the airport would satisfy anyone.” In the wake of the coup, the sparkling new Suvarnabhumi International Airport has been found to be quite literally falling apart. “Cracked runways, no bathrooms, leaking roofs. Sagging Jetways. Should be enough corruption there to keep everybody’s pointing finger busy for a couple of years.”
“As a loyal servant of the Thai government,” Arthit says, “I prefer to think of the problem as one of misplaced optimism. We Thais have a sunny turn of mind. Who but optimists would build an airport on a piece of land called Cobra Swamp? Even if one ignores the cobras, the word ‘swamp’ should have given someone pause.”
“They probably paused long enough to buy it,” Rafferty says. “Somebody sold that land to the government. Of course, it’ll probably turn out to have been the former prime minister.”
Arthit glances at his watch. “As much as I’m enjoying sitting here in this nice, wet chair and chatting with you about the state of the nation, I’ve got things to do. But before I go, I want to make sure that you took my larger meaning, which I implied with all the Asian subtlety at my command. Do not do anything to anger Agent Elson.”
“That’s pretty much what Arnold Prettyman said.”
“Arnold’s good at survival,” Arthit says.
“How’s Fon? Is there anything I can do for her?”
“She’s fine,” Arthit says. “Nothing severe, just sitting in a cell with the two other girls who deposited Peachy’s money, talking up a storm. How do women do that? They’ve known each other for years, and sometimes two of them are talking at once. Don’t women ever run out of things to say?”
“My guess is that they’re sort of furnishing the cell,” Rafferty says. “They’re in an uncongenial environment, probably feeling threatened, so they fill it up with words and feelings until it’s more comfortable.”
“Aren’t you Mr. Sensitivity?” Arthit says. “Anyway, they’ll probably get out on Monday, when the banks open.”
“Not until then?”
“Probably not. Your Mr. Elson seems to be a bit of a hardnose.”
“That’s what worries me. Rose says he enjoys power too much.”
“Rose is a good Buddhist.” Arthit checks his watch again.
“Arthit,” Rafferty says. He pauses, looking for a way to frame it, and then plunges straight in. “Rose said yes.”
Arthit looks at him blankly. “In a vacuum? When she was by herself? Was there a question involved?”
“I asked her to marry me.” Even now he can feel his pulse accelerate.
Arthit’s smile seems to reach all the way to his hairline. “And she said yes?”
“Believe it or not.”
Arthit reaches over and pats Rafferty’s hand. “Noi will be so happy.” He gets up and pushes his chair back. “See what I mean? We Thais are optimists.”
Rafferty has been writing for fifteen minutes, working on his magazine story with a certain amount of guilty enjoyment, when the first one hits. It strikes him in the temple, hard enough to brighten the day for a heartbeat. For one absurd, soul-shriveling tenth of a second, he thinks he is dead, and in that transparent slice of time he forms two complete thoughts. The first is a question-Will I hear the shot before I die? — and the second is a statement-I will never marry Rose. And then the world does not end, and he glances down to see the small black ball that is rolling back and forth at his feet, smooth and gleaming, about the size of a large marble.
A chill at his temple brings his fingers up, and they come away wet. Whatever the fluid is, it is clear. So at least he’s not bleeding. He touches the tip of his tongue to his finger. Sweet.
The restaurant has filled now that the rain is gone, but no one seems to have noticed anything. Since the world has not ended, time continues to flow. Traffic creeps by on the boulevard uninterrupted.
Rafferty looks for the source of the missile. No eyes are turned his way, so he bends and picks up the little ball. He is holding the pit of a fresh lychee nut, from which someone has just gnawed the sugary pulp. Hard as a marble, although not exactly a lethal weapon. But what produces that kind of accuracy-some sort of blowgun?
Yeah, he is thinking, a fruit-hurling blowgun, when the second one catches him square between the eyes. He sees a burst of stars, something out of a cartoon, and then he’s blinking away tears. He looks in the direction from which the seed was blown, shot, thrown, catapulted, projected. There are no likely suspects, so he gets up and surveys the outdoor portion of the restaurant, which is now crowded almost to capacity: round white plastic tables jammed together in a space about forty feet wide and eight feet deep, from the building’s glass wall to the quaint white picket fence that borders the sidewalk. People glance over at him, but they’re all occupied, eating, talking. The sidewalk is crowded, but every sidewalk in Bangkok is crowded when the rain stops.
He sits down again, and instantly a wasp stings his cheek. This time he sees her, finishing up a follow-through that would impress Randy Johnson. The girl from the tuk-tuk. He shoves his chair back, drops some money on the table, and begins to push his way between the tables.
14
It’s Not Coming from the Direction You Expect
She is taking her time. She can afford to dawdle. She has a half-block head start.
Rafferty had to negotiate his way between the tables of the restaurant, had to explain to the woman at the front that he’d left the money on the table. He’s walking fast but not running.
She makes a turn into an elbow-shaped soi that Rafferty knows is a dead end. As she rounds the corner, she glances back at him. The smile is a little fuller this time.
When he enters the soi, she has vanished.
Nothing. An empty sidewalk, some parked vehicles. A few shops, closed early for Saturday. Rafferty picks up the pace, trying to avoid looking at any one thing, taking in as much of the picture as possible. Prettyman’s Third Law: It’s not coming from the direction you expect.
Studying the street, he feels another pang of regret for his abandoned book. This is exactly the kind of episode he enjoys writing. Except, in the final draft, he wouldn’t have lost her.
And then, halfway down the short block, he sees it.
A van, sitting at the curb. With the passenger door wide open. He steps off the curb and approaches it from the traffic side, only to find the girl gazing at him through the open window.
“You’re not very good at this,” she says. She is sitting sideways on the backseat, looking over her shoulder, legs curled comfortably under her. On her lap is a purse large enough to satisfy Rose.
“You speak English,” Rafferty says.
Her eyes widen. “I do?” She reaches up and scratches her head in mock amazement. “How about that?”
“Listen,” he says, “you can leave me alone now.”
“I’m just getting started,” she says. “If you want to talk, come
around to the other side. I’m getting a stiff neck.” Her English is pure American.
“No, I mean it’s off,” Rafferty says through the window. “Wait a minute.” He goes around to the other side of the van. He can see her better this way, and he is struck once again by her beauty. “I meant to tell Arnold, but I forgot. I’m not going to write the book.”
She shakes her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Just tell Arnold,” Rafferty says. “And you’ve got quite an arm.”
“Years of practice. The old inner-tube-hanging-from-the-tree technique.”
“Very impressive. Anyway, good-bye. Go back to Little League or whatever it is.”
“Stop,” she says, and her hand comes out of the big purse with a gun in it. “Don’t take a step. And put your hands about chest-high. Nothing obvious, just away from your belt.” If she’s nervous about holding a gun on him, it doesn’t show. Her hand is as steady as a photograph, and her eyes are calm.
“This is silly,” Rafferty says. “Arnold never-”
“I don’t know who Arnold is,” the girl says. “And I don’t want to use this.” She produces an apologetic smile. “But I will.” She slides further across the seat, away from him. “Slowly, now. Get in.”
Rafferty’s cell phone rings. He reaches automatically toward his shirt pocket, but she says, “Uh-uh.”
Rafferty says, “So shoot me.” He pulls out the phone and looks at it. Sees rose and peachy, opens it, and puts it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Poke,” someone wails. “Poke, it’s Peachy. I need- I need to talk to you. Now. Now, can you come?”
The girl extends the hand with the gun in it and lifts her eyebrows. There is no way she can miss at this distance.
“I’m a little tied up at the moment.”
The girl says, “You certainly are.”
“You have to,” Peachy says, and then she starts to sob. “It’s-it’s the end of the world.”
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