The Hot Countries

by Timothy Hallinan

  “Not so great. Not much whiter than mine. Do you drink a lot of coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’ll do it. You could drink it through a straw, you know.”

  “You came here to talk to me. Talk.”

  “At my own pace. And we’re actually here so you can talk to me, since you have what I want. And that leads us back to the topic at hand. You haul the subject into the room, remember? Circumstances didn’t permit me to drag you into a room, so I got your attention with a kind of metaphorical room, that first note, the question it implied: Where’s the money? I always hope that a subject will be forthcoming and helpful, spare us all a lot of trouble, but it rarely works out that way.”

  “Maybe it’s something about you,” Rafferty says. “Maybe people just don’t like—”

  “So I asked you again, a different question, but on the same topic. The money, the girl.”

  “Well, if you ever do this again, let me make a suggestion. Give whoever it is a chance to answer.”

  “One school of thought says there’s no point in letting the subject answer early on. First answers are always lies. Anyhow, you knew perfectly well who sent those first two notes. There were any number of ways you could have signaled me. You could have said something to the people you saw watching you. Instead you got all clever, didn’t you? When the subject gets dodgy, it means only one thing: the truth is not on tap.”

  “I don’t have—”

  Varney lets his hand drop, open and flat, onto the table. The bang it makes draws eyes from all over the room. “So the next step is to establish the subject’s pain threshold. With some people, only thing you need is the drain on the floor. The world is full of people who would sell their mother to avoid learning what that drain is for. But most people—if the answer concerns something or someone they care about—need to scream a little first. Makes them feel better about themselves later.”

  “I don’t have the money.”

  “What money?” Varney’s face is bland. “What money are we talking about?”

  “The three million—”

  “That money,” Varney says. “Of course you do. So, as I was saying, we try to locate the pain threshold and then push just a little past it. In your case, since I couldn’t grab you someplace where you weren’t surrounded by people, physical pain wasn’t in the cards, so I put you instead into an ethical dilemma that I thought would cause you emotional pain. But it seems I was mistaken.” He picks up the dark glasses in his free hand and holds them in front of his face, sighting Rafferty through the lenses. “See, I had you sized up as a good-hearted progressive, the way you put all those solid one-world principles into practice: marrying the bar girl, adopting the street kid, turning your whole life into a step up for the downtrodden. Rescuing the downtrodden, one beautiful woman at a time. I figured you for one of those moist souls who think we’re all responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world. You know—a truckload of ignorant but devout dickwads shoot a schoolgirl in the face, and the progressives seize the blame and share it with the rest of us: ‘Oh, it’s the result of nineteenth-century European imperialism and our greed for oil. Shame on us, shame on us.’”

  He sits back in the booth, puts the glasses down again, and rests his left arm on top of the seat back. Rafferty says, “Finished?”

  “But you see, I’ve always read that reaction, shouldering all that guilt so selflessly, as cowards soothing their consciences. What’s easier than accepting blame on some vague cosmic level when it’s safe to do it and the killing is over?” He shrugs, overplaying it, hands palm up. “Where are all those good-hearted people when those things are being planned, when they’re taking place? Why aren’t these exquisitely attuned souls hauling their fine convictions behind them as they form a human shield around a girls’ school in Afghanistan or protect villagers in Nigeria? I mean, that’s the basic question, isn’t it? Isn’t that where the rubber meets the road on the whole idea of moral responsibility, the concept suggested by the phrase ‘our fellow man’? How much would you do to prevent the deaths of people you don’t even know?” He makes a loose fist and drums lightly on the table. “As it turns out, for you, not much.”

  Rafferty says again, “You can talk until sunrise. I don’t have the money.”

  “I know, I know. No money, no girl.” He looks up and smiles at the waitress as she brings Rafferty’s food: the fragrant, oily, stir-fried mess of pork and basil and a neat, pristine mound of white rice. “Doesn’t that look good,” Varney says. “Dig in, dig in. Don’t want to interfere with your meal.”

  “No matter who you kill,” Rafferty says, pushing the plates away, “I can’t give you what I don’t have. And you didn’t do the first thing a good interrogator always does, which is to make sure he’s got the right person.”

  “Well,” Varney says, and he taps the fingernails of his left hand on the tabletop, making a little snare-drum sound. “As to that point. My best estimate is that you spent about a hundred thousand bucks on that muzzy little drug addict, Neeni, what with her doctor and that apartment, and then maybe half that again on her unpleasant Vietnamese maid. Maybe, altogether, a hundred fifty, hundred sixty thousand US.”

  The bottom falls out of Rafferty’s stomach. He says, reflexively, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And you were in Murphy’s house that night, and the money is gone. You haven’t been facing facts. Like a lot of good-hearted people, you tend to avoid ideas with unpleasant consequences. You haven’t asked yourself how do I know about the money you spent on Neeni.”

  Rafferty has to swallow against an upsurge of rage. “Did you hurt her?”

  “Neeni? Don’t be silly. She opened like a flower. All I had to do was show her a case of Corex, that cherry-flavored cough syrup with codeine. Her very favorite, from India. How I used to enjoy watching her knock it back and fall downstairs. She said you put her in a swell apartment for a few months, paid the maid to stay with her, had a doctor in from time to time, and now you send her money every month, regular as clockwork. So, see, you really can do some good in the world.”

  The smell of Rafferty’s food is making him queasy. He moves it to the edge of the table and glances up for the waitress to signal her to come get it, but Varney says, “May I?” and grabs a spoon. “Naturally,” he says around a mouthful of pork, “I was curious about the money you were being so generous with. Maybe, just maybe, you were rich. I looked you up online, had someone check the BookScan figures, which are amazingly easy to get, and near as I can figure, your income last year was in the lower third of the five-figure range. Burger-flipping sector. Your book on Thailand—hope you got the copy I left you—is your first new one in five years, and you’re probably not seeing royalties from it yet. So it’s obvious that the money came from old Murph’s closet.”

  “I’ve been moonlighting,” Rafferty says, “writing copy for a mail-order clothes catalog.” He’s talking just to give himself a little time. “The cutline on those nice gabardine pants, ‘The Twill Is Gone’? That was me.”

  Varney deliberately puts another spoonful of food in his mouth, chews deliberately, an index finger raised in the one-minute sign, swallows, and says, “You really need to take this seriously.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rafferty says, “but whenever I see a really big asshole, I just have to blow some smoke up it.”

  “That wasn’t Murphy’s money, it was mine,” Varney says, unruffled. “And I know you took it. So that leaves the girl, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re telling it.”

  “After Neeni,” Varney says, “I went to see that cobra of a maid. She was a little more difficult, but she told me the most interesting thing of all: that you were going to put Neeni and Treasure back together, although that’s a case of the halt leading the blind if I ever heard one.” He puts down the spoon with a clack. “So, you see, even before I got
here, I knew you had the money and the girl.”

  “I don’t have the girl. And I only took one suitcase out of that closet.”

  “Right.” He points his spoon at the beer. “You going to drink that? You stole six hundred K and left three million and change. That does not have the ring of truth. So here’s the point. You remember this?” He swigs the beer and puts it down, then drags his forefinger through the oily gravy and writes 1, 2, and 3 on the tabletop. “How far did you get with this?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Rafferty says, pointing at the number closest to him. “A halfwit could figure it out.”

  “You see,” Varney says, digging around for a piece of pork, “this is the problem when you have to improvise. You get obvious. None of this would have been necessary if I’d had a room with a floor that had a drain in it. Although you learn to take it on the fly when you’re working in some of the shitholes Uncle Sam seems to covet. Camel World, you know, place like Afghanistan. Most structures don’t even have a proper floor, much less a drain. Just dirt, probably swarming with the fecal bacteria of goats. So you make do. I can’t tell you the effect you can achieve with a tin washing tub full of water and the blood a couple of chickens carry around. Splash it on the walls, drain some of it in the water, close the place up and let the heat hit it for a few hours. First time I did it, the guy started screaming the minute we hauled him through the door.”

  “I’m sure your mother is very proud.”

  “So,” he says, tapping the chunk of pork on the oily numbers, “one with a check, two with a check, and three. It made the obvious point, that it was up to you to avoid a third killing, stepping up to your moral responsibility for the innocent, but it didn’t drum up the atmosphere of dread you get with a tub and a little chicken blood. The dread that would lead you to what we’ve been hinting at all along: that those people, those innocent people who died because you want to keep a bunch of money that belongs to me, and a psychotic child who does, too—that they were surrogates for people who were close to you.”

  “That was painfully obvious.”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t achieve the spin that would have told you the truth, which is, in fact the reason I’m sitting here. I failed to communicate that we’re finished with surrogates. No more replacements.”

  Rafferty feels as though his body has vanished, as though he’s just a point of consciousness floating a few feet above the table, focused on Varney.

  “Three,” Varney says, scrabbling his forefinger back and forth through the slick number and then drawing an oily circle around it, “will be closer to you. As will four and five if they’re necessary. See the old bag over there?” He inclines his head toward the table with the two women at it. “She says she knows your wife.”

  Rafferty looks at her again; she’s not all that old but she looks kind of beat up. While there’s something familiar about her, he can’t place her. “I don’t know her,” he says.

  “Says her name is Nana,” Varney says.

  “Oh.” Rafferty almost feels like laughing. “Well, do whatever you want to her. She cheated my wife, double-crossed her. Did her best to fuck her up. Nobody’s going to miss her.”

  Varney shrugs. “Could be true, could be untrue. Anyway, I’ve got a block full of people to kill. Do you want to prevent it? Just tell me where the money is, tell me where the girl is.” He leans forward, tapping a nail on the tabletop with each syllable. “And I mean that literally, any minute now.”

  “The cops took the money, the firemen took the money.”

  “And the girl? Why would they take her? For humanitarian purposes?”

  “You can’t get away with this,” Rafferty says. “This country has a police force, they’ve got passport control—”

  “Look, I’ll tell you a little something about myself,” Varney says, sliding to the end of the booth. “Between wars and the occasional intervals of peace, I’ve been living like this for almost thirty years, and I know how to do it. By the time anyone’s really looking for me, I’ll be fifteen thousand miles and three names from here.” He struggles for a moment with his right arm, probably shoving the gun back into his pocket, and nods at the two bar workers. “So the old bag will get off,” he says. “Not going to waste my time. But your friends had better keep their eyes open.

  “And all you have to do to prevent all that,” he says, getting up, “is give me what’s mine. Just look around and spot old Kiet out there or whoever else is around, and hold up three fingers. Within, oh, ninety minutes.” Turning away, he says, “’Scuse.” He goes across the room to the women he abandoned and drops half a dozen thousand-baht notes on the table, kisses the tip of his index finger, and presses it against the center of the older woman’s—Nana’s—forehead, pushing just hard enough to rock her head back a few inches. Then he puts the round sunglasses on again and shoves his way out through the restaurant door. When Rafferty turns from the door back to the window, Varney is already gone, but Kiet is grinning at him, one hand inside his coat.

  28

  Teerak

  The road is far too wide.

  He comes onto the sidewalk from the apartment house’s single squealing elevator, feeling light on his feet, decisive, and clearheaded, as though he were back walking point in ’Nam. The Rolex says 1:44, plenty of time to get to Jah’s bar. But as the door shuts behind him, he sees the road and takes a stumble that forces him to step forward quickly or fall on his face. It’s six lanes wide, a Mekong River of lights, the demon red of taillights, the hard diamond yellow of headlights. He stands there for a second, loose-jointed and bewildered, as the narrow, lazy soi in front of the old shophouse thins, shimmers, and disappears, giving way to the clogged urban boulevard he lives on now.

  He says, “Sukhumvit,” aloud, identifying the street, and the kernel of dread in his chest softens at the name. His own voice reassures him. He says again, “Sukhumvit.” Where was he going? Yes, Jah. Jah works at . . . Thai . . . Thai something. Thai Paradise?

  Well, he knows where it is, even if the name eludes him. He steps to the curb, one arm upraised, palm down, a gesture of habit, blocking out the extraneous lanes of traffic and turning it back into that lost, earlier road. A couple of taxis slow, but he waves them by until he flags down a tuk-tuk. The driver, a skinny, dark kid with a shadowy mustache and a shoulder-length, center-parted fall of black hair, almost runs over Wallace’s foot. Wallace climbs in, sits back, and says, “Golden Mile.”

  The tuk-tuk vibrates as its little two-stroke engine chugs and pops, but it doesn’t move. The boy’s eyes find Wallace’s in the mirror. “You say where?”

  “Golden Mile, the Golden Mile,” Wallace says. He smiles so his sudden anger won’t show but gets no smile in return.

  “Hotel?” the boy asks.

  “No, no, no. Golden Mile. Bars. New Petchburi Road.”

  “Okay,” the boy says with a nod. “Golden Mile. Petchburi.”

  “Thai Heaven,” Wallace says as the cab pulls out. Jah works at Thai Heaven. He knows something is wrong with that; the idea ripples for a moment, but then the boy hits the gas.

  He sits back and closes his eyes. The exhaust is perfume, the chuk-chuk of the engine is music. For a moment he feels as though the seat has dissolved beneath him and he’s falling through some kind of dark, undifferentiated space, but the tuk-tuk hits a bump and he’s back, like a snapped finger: tuk-tuk, Golden Mile, Jah. Waiting for him. For a second he thinks he remembers someone on the sidewalk outside his apartment, looking at him as he flagged down the tuk-tuk, but when he turns to check behind him, he sees a dense, almost blinding curtain of headlights, and in his surprise at the sight the concern evaporates.

  The second night she stayed in the hotel with him—just the two of them this time—she’d raised herself onto one elbow just as he’d been about to drop off and said, “This room. How much?”

  He’d told her, naming a sum
that seemed insubstantial to him, especially when it was paid in this dreamy, ornate money. Her eyes had gone round and her mouth had dropped open, and she’d emitted a sound like a puff of steam, and then she was up and pulling on her clothes, her shoulders rigid with determination. A moment later the door closed behind her.

  He thought, I didn’t pay her. He panicked briefly, thinking she might have taken the money from the pocket of his pants on the sofa, but when he checked, it was right there. He had refolded his trousers and was sitting on the bed, wondering how he’d offended her, when the phone rang and the desk clerk said, “Mr. Palmer? The young lady has pointed out that you have accidentally been overcharged, and she’s renegotiated your room rate. You’ve been given a discount of thirty percent.” And then she’d knocked on the door, and when he’d turned away after closing it, she’d whipped her T-shirt over her head and flogged him with it all the way back to the bed.

  She’s going to be so happy. He’ll walk into the club, and she’ll scream “Wallet!” and abandon whoever she was sitting with and run across the dance floor to him. With that smile, brighter than Liberty’s torch . . .

  “Okay,” the driver says. “Golden Mile.”

  The tuk-tuk stops. Wallace has his hand in his pocket when the boy says, “One hundred twenty baht.”

  “One hundred twenty?” Wallace sits there, a wad of money in his hand. “Twenty, twenty baht.”

  “One-twenty,” the boy says. “Twenty baht, one hundred year ago, maybe.”

  “Forty,” Wallace snaps. “And that’s it.” He drops two twenties over the back of the seat, feeling the rudeness of the gesture, and climbs down onto the pavement, tuning out the boy’s yells. He finds himself on a narrow street, nowhere near as wide as New Petchburi. A couple of cars, each with a wheel up on the sidewalk, are almost too close together to allow him to pass, but he turns sideways and hears the tuk-tuk sputter away, the boy still shouting angrily.