The Fourth Watcher pr-2

by Timothy Hallinan

  The bum-BUM noise has increased in frequency, faster now, and then faster still, until it begins to vibrate inside him, not unpleasantly but with the urgency of an indecipherable message. Bum-BUM, he thinks, pairs; what’s so important about pairs? Pairs of drumbeats, pairs of breaths, pairs of people, pairs of numbers.

  Pairs of numbers?

  Something dims the light. Whatever it is, it’s not between him and the light; it seems to be behind it somehow, throwing a shadow that travels down the vine like dirty water in a clear stream, and as the light thins and clouds, the stones feel heavier and sharper, and they grate against one another, a sand-gritty sound, less like stones than like. . what? A room, he sees a room, and it’s a terrible shade of green. It, too, smells of linoleum. Someone is with him, someone who doesn’t like the sound of a shoe scraping over dirty-

  A shoe. On linoleum.

  Then the vine brightens again, blooming with light, and he opens one eye, just a crack, narrow as a blind drawn against the massed brightness of the day, to see a world of white. Close to him, only a foot or two away, is a white shape, white without outlines but brighter than the white beyond it, and it is moving. Moving parallel to him, away from his feet and toward his head, and he hears the scraping sound again, and then a whisper.

  There is a second figure, this one brown, a brown he knows very well. A brown that makes him think for a second or half a second that he is looking at himself; he is out of his own body and looking at it as it moves across this white room, following the figure in white. He closes the eye, but the urgency of the tom-tom sound warns him to open it again, and he forces the lid up. The light floods into him and strengthens him, and he can focus.

  A hospital room. White but for a darker rectangle where black is in the slow act of giving itself over to blue, with a note of orange bleeding upward, warming it from below. A window. Dawn? What dawn? How long has-

  A doctor, dressed in white. Masked in white. Behind him a Bangkok policeman. Dawn through the window, the sharp pain of the stones on his chest, the smells, the sound of shoes on linoleum, a brilliantly clear sudden memory of a dark room, a big man, some kind of enormous, rib-caving punch to the chest, a slow fall. A girl in white.

  White. The white-clad doctor, at the head of the bed now, reaching up. A gentle tug at the wrist, no more intense than a fly landing on it. The doctor has a clear plastic bag in one hand, filled with a liquid as transparent as water. In the other hand is a hypodermic syringe.

  The policeman comes closer, watching the doctor. He is close enough for the man on the bed to see his face, a new face, a face he doesn’t know, and to read the name tag on the uniform. The name tag says petchara.

  Arthit’s eyes open wider as the doctor inserts the syringe into the top of the clear IV bag and pushes the plunger. Something-some tensing in his body-brings Petchara’s eyes down to the bed, and he starts to speak, but Arthit rides a bolt of ten thousand volts of neural electricity to rip the intravenous needle from his own wrist and shove it into Petchara’s thigh, while with his other hand he grabs the clear plastic bag and squeezes. Petchara leaps away, and Arthit lets the bag drop and sees the policeman stagger, dragging the bag with him, until his back hits the window where dawn is announcing itself, and finally it occurs to him to yank the needle. He stares at it in his hand, stares at the mostly empty bag, and then all his muscles let go, and he drops, loose-jointed and as awkward as a marionette, to the floor.

  The doctor is already out the door when Arthit finds and pushes the big red button on the side of his bed. He can no longer hold his head up. His vision blurs and darkens at the edges, narrows, and the room disappears, leaving nothing but the rectangle of dawn, more orange now, framed by the window.

  He sleeps.

  46

  Monsoon Christmas

  Frank’s a bonanza,” Elson says. “Monsoon Christmas.” He is seated comfortably on an uncomfortable chair as angular and uncompromising as he is, his black suit soaking up a

  surprising amount of the light streaming through the window behind him. The chair, just strips of black leather on a chromium frame, looks like he designed it. “Frank’s the kind of gift that makes you wonder what you’ve been doing right all your life, why you deserve this. I mean, we’re going to be able to dam up one major river of counterfeit into this awful country, without the North Koreans even knowing it, for a few months at least.”

  He bounces a couple of times in the uncomfortable chair, just out of enthusiasm. He’s doing something with his mouth that might pass for a smile if the room was a little dimmer. “And it’s extra-good we’ve got Frank, because Chu’s not talking. And I mean not at all. On the other hand, we’ve got the other cop, the one who was dressed like a doctor, and he can’t stop talking. He talks even when there’s no one else in the room. Seems to think we’re going to send him to Syria for interrogation.” Elson rubs his hands together. “And there’s all that fake money.”

  “For example,” Rafferty says, “about Frank. What kind of things has he given you?”

  “Frank,” Elson says in the tone Miaow uses to say chocolate. “Well, Frank’s just something that happens maybe once in a decade. He’s given us fucking flow charts of the counterfeiting structure. A map of routes used to take money out of China, routes we can seal up. He’s given us a bank in Harbin, China, owned by his former. . um, company, that’s a central distribution point, a bank we can crack into electronically. It’ll let us put enough pressure on the North Koreans that the cash flow will dry up. No more cognac, no more new cars for the fat cats. It’s probably enough to bring them back to the negotiating table.”

  “That’s good,” Rafferty says.

  “And more. There’s an American end, a sleeper who’s been in place for almost twenty years, reporting directly to Chu. And he was nowhere on our radar.”

  “Irwin Lee,” Rafferty says.

  Elson’s eyebrows go up. “Your radar is better than ours.”

  “Shucks,” Rafferty says.

  “Isn’t it a wonderful name?” Elson says. He makes a frame with his hands and says the name into it. “Irwin Lee.”

  “Lee is one of the two most common Chinese names,” Rafferty says, but Elson’s enthusiasm tickles some obscure area of Rafferty’s brain that specializes in obscure connections, and suddenly he’s sitting bolt upright. “That’s what this whole thing was about, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Elson asks.

  “Irwin Lee. My father’s going to be Irwin Lee, right?”

  Elson looks disappointed, as though he’s been deprived of his big surprise. “Nobody knows about Irwin Lee except Chu,” he says. “It’s a perfect fit. Lee has a twenty-year legend, one of the best I’ve ever seen. A house in Richmond, Virginia, that I can guarantee no triad member ever heard of. We’re going to remove the current Irwin Lee and install your father. He’ll live in Richmond and consult with us.”

  Rafferty leans forward. “What has Chu said about Frank?”

  “About Frank? That’s the one thing he’ll talk about. Says he doesn’t understand it, can’t figure out why Frank betrayed him. They were friends, he says. Says he’d have made Frank his successor if Frank had been Chinese.” He starts to add something and thinks better of it.

  “What?” Rafferty demands.

  “The, um, story about Chu insulting Frank’s wife. I mentioned it as a way of suggesting why Frank’s loyalty might be a little weak, and Chu said it never happened.”

  “Of course it didn’t,” Rafferty says. He can feel the blood rise in his face. “I can’t believe I fell for it. You’d think, by now, I’d know. It’s always about my father. Whatever it is, whatever is happening, it’s always about my father.”

  “I’m not following you,” Elson says.

  “He took the goddamn box in the first place because he wanted to be Irwin Lee. The rubies were a bonus. All the stories about Chu being the worst thing since Grendel’s mother were his way of justifying himself to me. His way of making sure I was o
n his side. He needed Chu either dead or put away forever, so he could be Irwin Lee. And I could help, so he sold me that line of crap.”

  Arthit says something that comes out as a croak, and Rafferty says, “Arthit. Don’t try to talk.”

  But Arthit lowers a heavily bandaged hand-the doctors had to do a little emergency repair where he yanked out the intravenous line-and pushes a button that raises the top third of the bed to a forty-five-degree angle. As he comes up, he ages ten years; he has lost fifteen pounds in three days, and his face has slackened and droops downward as it comes toward vertical. His throat is as loose and rippled as a theater curtain. When he is upright, he reaches for a small carton of apple juice, sips it through a straw, closes his eyes for a moment to gather some strength, and says, “Dangerous. Chu. . dangerous.” The words are barely audible, not much louder than someone tearing paper.

  “You bet he is,” Elson says. “He’s got fangs like a wolf spider. Your friend’s right. Your father wanted you to be afraid of Chu, wanted you to realize how dangerous he was. He was doing you a favor.”

  “If you believe that, don’t spend too much time with him,” Rafferty says. “He’ll have you nominating him for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

  “You’re overreacting,” Elson says.

  “Irwin Lee,” Rafferty says, and he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “My father is going to be Irwin Lee. Do you know what Lee means?”

  “No idea,” Elson says.

  “The character used to write it,” Rafferty says, the sentence not coming easily, “is a tree over a child. It’s an image of parental care.”

  “That’s nice,” Elson says. “I can’t see the immediate usefulness of the information, but maybe something will come to me.” He crosses his legs and looks approvingly at the shine on his shoe. “We’re flying him back to America tomorrow. Get him out of here and put him somewhere safe. So we’re going to have to take him away from you, just when you guys have sort of gotten together again.”

  “Take him today,” Rafferty says. “That way I don’t have to feed him dinner tonight.”

  Arthit says, “Poke.” He puts a hand to his throat and tries to clear it. The effort obviously hurts. “He’s. . your father.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “So anyway,” Elson says, “he’ll be leaving. And I won’t forget that I owe you.”

  “Yes,” Rafferty says with some vehemence. “You do.”

  “Well, don’t get too comfortable with it.” Elson turns and looks out the window, which opens onto a world of merciless sunlight. The monsoon has moved on, and it is so hot outside that the air-conditioning in the hospital room is producing a misty film of condensation on the inside of the glass. “You may have overachieved.”

  “That’s the curse of talent,” Rafferty says, still furious, and Arthit lets go with something that sounds like a toy steam engine releasing its first little puff. It’s a laugh, Rafferty realizes, and in spite of everything he finds himself grinning at his friend so hard he feels like his face will split. Arthit has a hand pressed to his chest, damping down the pain of the laugh, but he laughs again. This one doubles him up, and when he sits upright again, he shakes his head and wipes the sweat off his brow and says, “Over. .” He breathes. “Achieved. .” He grabs another breath. “How?”

  “Remember how I hated the monsoon?” Elson says to Rafferty. “Well, I hate this heat more. I hate everything about this climate. I hate the traffic here. I hate the food-it gives me the squirts, and they feel like lighter fluid. So what’s my reward? I’m an expert, they say. I’m the guy with the map, they say. I’m being assigned here for a year.”

  Arthit, who has been sipping at the apple juice, suddenly spurts a substantial amount of it through his nostrils and into his lap. He bends forward, making the puff-puff sound again, and Rafferty takes the apple juice out of his hand and puts it on the tray, letting his free hand rest on his friend’s shoulder.

  To Elson he says, “I’ve got a great maid for you.”

  47

  He’s More Nervous Than You Are

  Four hours later Rafferty opens the apartment door and finds himself in the Seven Dwarfs’ cave. Little white lights create a rectangle of diamond sparkle to frame the evening

  sky, darkening through the sliding glass door. Small colored lights- rubies, emeralds, sapphires-have been strung to outline the inside of the front door. Looking around, focusing through the dazzle, he sees that his desk has been cleared and polished, that the dirt worn into the white leather hassock has been scrubbed away, that three new chairs have been crowded around the living-room table. A white candle flickers on his desk, and another gleams on the coffee table, beside a large crumpled plastic bag from Bangkok’s new Book Tower.

  The room smells like someone is cooking flowers.

  And it is empty.

  Going farther in, he sees a partial explanation for the fragrance of frying lilies. The counter between the living room and the kitchen is teeming with flowers, enough of them to create an optimistic send-off for a midlevel Mafia don. Beyond the flowers, on the kitchen side of the counter, is a sloping ziggurat of cookbooks, all open. Rafferty has never seen a cookbook in the apartment. He starts curiously toward them and remembers the Book Tower bag on the table. He gives the living room a second survey.

  The door to the bedroom opens, and Rose comes in. She stops at the sight of him, so abruptly that for an instant he thinks she has failed to recognize him. Then her eyes clear, and she comes up to him and kisses his cheek, leaving a faint coolness behind. Rafferty touches it involuntarily and quickly pulls his hand away. Rose’s upper lip is damp with perspiration.

  This is practically a first. He has seen her weave through a crowded Bangkok sidewalk in the full glare of the sun, carrying Miaow’s weight in plastic shopping bags, without popping a bead of moisture. When she does deign to perspire, it’s always at the edge of her hairline. He resists the urge to check.

  “How’s Arthit?” she says, but her eyes are everywhere in the room.

  “He’s fine. He’s amazingly fine.”

  He watches her hear the tone of his voice, her mind a mile away, and then put the words together. She gives him the smile that always puddles him where he stands. “That’s wonderful. Noi must be so happy.” Then her gaze wanders off again.

  “Rose?”

  Her eyes come to his, then slide down to take in his clothes. Her lower lip is suddenly between her teeth.

  She says, “You have to get dressed.”

  He looks down at himself. “I am dressed. I’ve been outside and everything.”

  “I mean dressed.” She tugs at his shirt and checks her fingers to make sure the color hasn’t come off on them. “Your good clothes.”

  “I don’t have any good clothes. Since when do we have cookbooks? Have I been complaining about the food?”

  “Don’t talk about the cookbooks,” she says. “Never say ‘cookbook’ to me again.” She goes past him into the kitchen, and he sees that she is dressed entirely in white linen: a flowing, midthigh something that he supposes is a blouse, over a pair of loose pleated slacks. The gold bracelet he gave her hangs on her left wrist. She starts slamming cookbooks closed. Without looking at him, she says, “Tell me you didn’t forget.”

  “Of course I didn’t forget,” he says. “I just don’t know why you need cookbooks.”

  “Oh, Poke,” she says hopelessly. Then she stops, sparing the last couple of cookbooks in the stack, and stands still for a moment. Turning to him, she opens her arms. He’s holding her in an instant, feeling the long arms wrap around him, feeling the cool dampness of her cheek against his, and then all there is in the world is the two of them, trying to press themselves into one.

  “They’ll be here in ten minutes,” she says. “Your father and Ming Li.”

  “The place looks beautiful,” he says. Then he says, “I need a beer.”

  “There isn’t time.”

  “Please, Rose. I c
an actually drink beer while I get dressed.” He opens the refrigerator and stares openmouthed. Every shelf is full of food: dishes, bowls, pans, even cups have been pressed into service and jammed any old way onto the shelves. “How many people are coming?”

  “It’s all terrible,” Rose says. “I’m taking these books back tomorrow, every single one of them. I ordered steak from the Barbican. Your father will like steak. You always like steak.”

  “My father will love anything you cook,” he says, finally locating a Singha and reaching over several dishes to get to it. “Anyway, you don’t want to waste all this.”

  “We’ll eat it tomorrow. After they leave.”

  “Rose,” Rafferty says, popping the can. “My father isn’t even going to taste anything. He’s more nervous than you are.”

  “I’m not nervous,” Rose says nervously. She steps around him and closes the refrigerator with the air of someone drawing a veil over a dicey past. “Your clothes are on the bed. I chose them. I got that stain off your slacks. And he’ll love steak.”

  He knocks back half the beer. “Listen, I have to tell you something.”

  She’s halfway out of the room, but she stops. “You mean now?”

  “It’s about Frank.” And he tells her all of it, about how his father manipulated him, about Irwin Lee. When he is finished, she continues to look at him as though expecting more.

  “And?” she finally says.

  Rafferty looks at the tension in her body, and he thinks his heart will explode. “And I love you,” he says, giving up. “More than I’ve ever been able to say.”

  “Then make me happy,” she says, spinning the bracelet around her wrist like a twenty-four-karat hula hoop. “Get dressed.”

  The doorbell rings as he is buttoning his shirt-one he’s never seen before-and his stomach muscles tie themselves into an instant knot, but from the sound of Rose’s voice it’s the delivery from the Barbican. He hears the clatter of things being cleared away and wonders how many kilos of rare beef Rose ordered. He checks himself in the mirror, decides he’s still relatively nice-looking, and suddenly thinks of Miaow.