A Nail Through the Heart pr-1

by Timothy Hallinan

  "We're coming in," says the toad-faced one.

  "Actually," Rafferty says, "you're not."

  "We're the police," says the toad-faced one. "We'll go wherever we like."

  Rafferty keeps his eyes on the gun. "At the moment you're just a couple of shitheads who are off the clock," he says. His voice is surprisingly steady. "And if anything happens to me, your own department will be up your assholes before you've had time to loosen your belts."

  "Be nice." The fat one with the toad face is doing all the talking. "Just give us the money she gave you and we'll go away."

  "She didn't give me any money."

  Skeletor's gun comes up to focus its single eye on Rafferty's forehead, but the toad-faced man pushes it down. "Think about it," he says. He gestures at the door to Rafferty's apartment. "And remember that we know where you live. We know where your cop friend lives, too. Remember, his wife can't move very fast."

  Rafferty feels the heat rise to the back of his neck. He lowers the duffel slowly to the floor, reaches into his shirt pocket, and pulls out his notebook, too angry to be frightened. He flips through it until he finds the page he wants and then turns it toward them. "Your home addresses," he says. "So if you invite me over, I won't need a map."

  Toadface studies it, although Rafferty doubts he can read the English in which he wrote the information. The numbers should be clear, though. "Is this supposed to frighten us?"

  "Of course not," Rafferty says. "But you should know that if anything happens to Noi, or if you try something with me that doesn't actually kill me, I'll be coming after you one at a time."

  "This is a mistake," Toadface says. "A very big mistake."

  "I'm good at mistakes." Rafferty closes the notebook. "I've made lots of them." He crosses the hall and pushes the button for the elevator. The doors open instantly. Rafferty says, "Get out of here."

  Toadface takes a step toward him but stops dead when Rafferty's neighbor, Mrs. Pongsiri, bustles out of the elevator, a sheaf of papers tucked under one arm. Seeing the three of them, she halts, an expectant half smile on her face. Then she takes the papers out from under her arm and fans herself with them. "You have friends among the police, Mr. Rafferty?"

  "Yes and no," Rafferty says. "These gentlemen are in the wrong apartment house."

  "Bangkok can be so confusing," Mrs. Pongsiri says, her eyes bright with interest. The three men stand there as she watches them, still as figures in a display window. "Well," she says, "I wish you luck finding the right place." And she edges past Skeletor and down to the door of her apartment.

  When they hear the lock thrown behind her, Toadface says, "You're the one who needs luck."

  "All the time you had," Rafferty says, "and that's the best you could come up with? Bet you think of something better tonight." He presses the elevator button once more.

  They stare at him so long that the doors open and close again, and Rafferty feels sweat prickling his scalp. Then the toad-faced one takes the other by the elbow and leads him to the elevator. The doors open, and the two of them step inside. As the doors slide closed, the one with the gun lifts it again and points it at Rafferty.

  "Bang," he says. The doors close.

  Rafferty lets the wall support him, not trusting his knees. His breath is shallow. It feels as if a steel band has been tightened around his chest. Not until it has eased, not until he knows he can walk a straight line, does he relax his grip on the keys, pick up the duffel, and go to the door.

  He undoes the locks quietly and slowly pushes the door open, not wanting to awake the boy if he is still asleep.

  The door bumps against something that should not be there, and Rafferty looks up to find himself being regarded by a dozen pairs of eyes. A hand comes around the door and pulls it the rest of the way open. A young woman had been sitting with her back to it.

  From the couch Rose says, "Come in, we're almost finished."

  "In many ways," says one of the others.

  "Passing through," Rafferty says. Suddenly his voice is shaky. "I'll be out of the way in a minute." The women are regarding him with undisguised curiosity. So this is the farang Rose snagged, the brass ring so many of them hoped for when they worked the bars. One of them catches his eye, and, despite the fear, he feels himself blush. "Hello, Jit," he says.

  "I forgot," Rose says, enjoying his embarrassment. "You know Jit already."

  "Pretty well, too," Jit says in Thai. The women laugh.

  "You forget me?" It is the woman who had been sitting against the door. Her face is scrubbed, unadorned by the garish makeup of the stage, and her age shows; she is ten years older than most of the other women in the room. It takes a moment for Rafferty to place her. "Fon," he says, wishing he were anywhere else in the world. "How are you?"

  "Poor," Fon says, earning another laugh.

  "Come the rest of the way in," Rose says. "For all I know, you'll recognize every one of them."

  He closes the door behind him and forces a smile in the general direction of the group, scanning for, and failing to find, another familiar face. They sit easily on the floor in jeans and T-shirts. The air is thick with cigarette smoke. Looking more closely at them, he sees strain in some of their faces even though they laughed so easily. He knows that laughter does not necessarily mean that Thai women are happy. He has often seen them literally laugh while they're crying.

  "We needed to talk," Rose says. Then she smiles and says, "And I thought it would give you a chance to see some of your girlfriends."

  "Always a pleasure," he says, feeling like a minor character in a bad English play. "Where's the boy?"

  "He said he was going out. Just out. But he drank a cup of coffee with me before he left."

  "He's too young for coffee." The response is automatic, something his mother would have said.

  "Coffee's pretty mild compared to some of the things he's already done. But the point was that he sat with me for half an hour. He even talked a little."

  "About what?" Rafferty makes an erasing gesture, palms out. "Sorry. Later. Go ahead with your meeting."

  "Come back soon, Poke," Fon says breathily in bar-girl English. "Miss you too much." Another wave of laughter.

  In the bedroom Rafferty exhales heavily several times. Then he pulls the tools out of the bag, stops, asks himself what he is doing, and puts them in again. Normally they're stored in the kitchen, and it would take a fire to drive him back into the living room. He hoists the bag again and totes it to the closet, moving some clothes aside so he can put it behind them. Where Ulrich's suitcase was, he thinks. He rearranges the clothes to mask the bag and goes to the bed.

  Built into the headboard, behind a sliding panel, is a small safe. He pulls a chain from around his neck, noticing that it is slick with his sweat. Dangling beside the Buddhist amulet Rose gave him for protection is a key. The safe's hinges squeal, so he opens the door slowly. Inside he sees the thick envelope containing most of Madame Wing's advance, converted into smaller bills, and an oil-stained cloth wrapped around something heavy. He removes the bundle and grasps one corner of the cloth, letting it unspool over the bed. The gun that hits the mattress is a Glock nine-millimeter, blue-black, with the forward-leaning lines that make so many guns look as if they are designed by small boys. Two spare magazines, already loaded, also tumble to the bed.

  With a murder-perhaps two-plus a couple of renegade cops at the door, the gun seems like a sensible precaution. He is buffing it with the cloth when the door opens and Rose comes in with several sheets of paper in her hand. The sight of the gun stops her.

  "Nothing to worry about," he says. He checks the safety and slips the gun into his pants.

  "Of course not. We've got the boy on our hands, you're doing errands for the police, and now you're carrying a gun. And my business is falling apart. Other than that, everything's fine."

  "What do you mean, the business is falling apart?"

  She waves the hand with the papers in it in the direction of the living room. "
Three of them are going back to the bars. One of them is Fon."

  "Fon's too old to work the bars."

  "Not the blow-job bars," Rose says. "They might not take her if she was dead, but as it is, she'll get work fast enough."

  "This is about money." The blow-job bars are the most dismal of Bangkok's commercial sex venues, tiny, filthy holes where customers belly up to a bar with a curtain beneath it and a woman parts the curtain, kneels, and services them as they drink. He does not want to think of Fon in one of them.

  "It's always money," she says. "Why do you think they work the bars in the first place?"

  "Come on. All the guys hear the same stories: Mama's sick, Papa drinks, little brother has to go to school, the buffalo skinned its knee. You know as well as I do, half the time Mama spends the money on a color television set or a year-round Christmas tree because she likes the way it sparkles."

  Rose's chin comes up. "So?"

  "Not exactly life-and-death issues."

  "To these girls Mama's color TV is the least they owe her. It's about family, Poke, not that I expect a farang to understand that. If a child can give something to the family, that makes merit, and it also makes Mama happy."

  "So we're in a world where this makes sense somehow: blow jobs for a permanent Christmas tree."

  She waves a hand as though she could scatter the words across the room. "It's not really about money. It's about failure," she says. "My failure. I can't get them work."

  His irritation dissipates instantly. "Rose," he says.

  She balls her fists, crumpling the papers. "Don't comfort me. I really couldn't stand to be comforted right now."

  "You're just getting started," he says. "You can't expect it to work right away."

  "They're hungry, Poke. And, worse than that, their families are hungry. Whether it's for food or a new leather couch. Say whatever you want, you have to remember there are brothers and sisters who need to go to school. Those kids are real. Papa's drinking problems are real. And in the meantime these girls are hungry."

  "They can't work if they're hungry," Rafferty says. "How many of them are out there?"

  "Thirteen. If Fon and the others haven't already left."

  "Three hundred dollars each," Rafferty says, reaching for the wad in his pocket. "That's thirty-nine hundred dollars. Tell them it's an advance." He begins to count out the bills.

  She watches him count for a moment, her eyes on the bills. "This money," she says. "This is why you're carrying the gun?"

  "Mmmm. Yes and no."

  She takes a step back. "Well, keep it. I mean, give it back. Put the gun away and let's just go back to the way we were."

  "There," he says, finishing the count. "I can't give it back. The woman who's paying me is not someone I care to disappoint."

  "Well, I don't want it. They'll never be able to repay it."

  "Yes, they will. They'll be working in two weeks, most of them."

  "Poke, you're not listening. I can't do this."

  "That's part two of my plan," he says. "The advances are part one. Part two is to get you a partner."

  "A partner." Her tone is flat, and she locks eyes with him, leans toward him, and takes a quick sniff. "Have you been drinking?"

  "I'll explain it all later." He indicates the papers under her arm. "What are those?"

  She has forgotten she had them. "They were on the floor. The paper tray on your fax is still broken."

  "I'm going to ask the boy to try to fix it. Hank Morrison says the trick is to make them feel useful."

  She hands him the papers, and he gives her the money. She glances down at it and shakes her head, and then she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him on the mouth. When she leaves the room, she is almost running.

  Rafferty slips the remaining money back into his pocket. It is significantly slimmer than before. If his spontaneously generated plan for the partnership doesn't work out, Rose's business could leave him completely broke. He licks his lips, a little nervously, and tastes her lipstick, and the anxiety eases.

  The faxed pages are from Arthit. The first is a Bangkok Police Department cover sheet addressed to LIEUTENANT PHILIP RAFFERTY, RCMP, probably using Poke's full name and giving him this entirely spurious rank for the benefit of the fax operators who actually sent the message. He scans the pages quickly and then reads them carefully.

  Claus Ulrich lacks a police record and has never been mentioned prominently in the Bangkok newspapers. On the other hand, Immigration definitely records two Claus Ulrichs of the same age but with different middle names, one Australian and one British. Both passports have been scanned by Immigration multiple times over the past dozen years or so, coming from points of origin scattered around Southeast Asia-the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia. The most recent record of the British Claus Ulrich is a departure. Two weeks and three days later, the Australian Claus Ulrich reentered the country and has not left it. That was five months ago.

  "So he's here," Rafferty says. "One way or another."

  There is less hard data on Madame Wing-to whom Arthit gives the cryptic designation "unknown Chinese woman"-but the single paragraph is rich in implication. She had purchased the house in 1980 for the baht equivalent of $325,000, a tidy sum, especially since it was made in a single cash payment. The walls and gate-and, for all Rafferty knows, a moat full of crocodiles-were added almost immediately afterward with the appropriate permits, a euphemism for bribes. No police record, but several complaints of servant abuse have gone uninvestigated and eventually been dismissed. The source of her income is listed as "unknown."

  It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Madame Wing is among the privileged few, those who are immune from police interference for anything short of mass murder. Arthit won't even put her name in a fax. Complaints are filed, but no one follows up. Either it's the weight of sheer wealth or she's connected. Or-third choice-she's paying through the nose.

  If she were paying the police for immunity, though, wouldn't she have turned to them when her safe was burgled? Why involve a foreigner who doesn't even have official status in a matter that is apparently so important? Did the safe contain something even her protectors can't know about-something that would make the price of their services prohibitive?

  That would have to be something, he thinks, with massive juju.

  He draws a deep breath, wipes away the last of Rose's lipstick and licks it off his finger, and leaves the apartment to go terrorize somebody.

  22

  I Go Where I Am Kicked

  The bang the door makes when it strikes the wall is louder than the cannon in the 1812 Overture and has even more impact than Rafferty had meant it to have. Its effect on the woman behind the desk at Bangkok Domestics is galvanic: She goes two feet straight into the air and lands standing. Now she waits, with her fingertips over her mouth and her back to the filing cabinet, keeping the desk between them.

  "You lied to me." Rafferty grabs the desk by its edge and tilts it a couple of feet, spilling papers to the floor. He lets it drop with a loud thump that prompts a second instant levitation, this one backward as well as vertical, driving her all the way to the wall. "You told me Ulrich's maid was killed. That's bullshit." The woman's eyes slide past him to the wall and search it frantically. "She's working downstairs. Probably a job you got her. You want to tell me why?"

  A little defensive tug downward on the jacket of today's suit, a yellow the color of congealing butter. Her eyes drop to the spill of papers at her feet. "You have no right to speak to me like this."

  Rafferty takes a folder from the desk. "Claus Ulrich is probably dead, do you realize that?" He slaps the folder onto the desk on the word "dead." "He's not some impoverished laborer, he's a rich foreigner." Slap, slap. The muscles around her eyes bunch up each time, and her fingernails pick at a peel of skin on her lower lip. "He has an embassy, for Christ's sake." Slap. "What do you think they're going to do? How high do you think the cops are going to jump when they get the cal
l? You think they're going to question you politely, maybe over dinner or something? What kind of trouble do you want to be in anyway?"

  "I…I just," she says. She is watching the folder, hoping it stays in the air. "My business…"

  "Your business is the least of your worries. This girl was stalking this man, and you knew it. And you helped her get to him." Slap, slap. "Then, when I asked you what happened, you lied to me. Where do you think all this is going?"

  "I…I don't know."

  "Here's where it's going." He shifts to the left, as though he is going to come around the desk, and she dodges away. "If you don't want to see a picture of yourself wearing handcuffs in the Bangkok Post, you'll tell me what happened, and you'll do it right now."

  Her fingers come away from her mouth to tug at a large button. She licks her lower lip where she picked at it. "She…ah, she paid me."

  "Yeah, yeah, I already figured that out. Give me details."

  Now the fingers have hold of each other, twisting as though she is trying to find new ways to bend them. "It's just that we-I mean, I-"

  "She came in here a few months ago. With money." Another slap of the file.

  "A lot." She swallows.

  "What's a lot?"

  The hand comes up with all the fingers spread to indicate five. "Five thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand baht."

  Rafferty sits in the visitor's chair. "Sit down. Now. Keep talking."

  The woman feels her way to her chair as though the room is pitch-black and lowers herself into it very carefully. "She…well, she said she wanted to work for Mr. Ulrich. I explained that we don't do things that way. She said procedures could always be changed, and she began to put money on my desk."

  "And?"

  "And she…she said she was sure I could find a way. She had all this money in her lap, and she kept putting bundles of it on the desk."

  "Business any good?" Rafferty asks, looking up at the photos of happier times.

  "Terrible. We've been on the verge of closing forever. The economic crisis, and there are so many agencies now. Every month we say we can't go on, and every month we do anyway."