The elevator car arrives, and the man standing in front of it steps back and pulls out his weapon. He turns, and makes the okay sign: it’s empty. He puts out an arm to keep the doors from closing.
One of the two men outside the elevator hurries to the first SUV, pulls open the rear door, and takes a deferential step back. A short, bulky man in jeans and a thin, soft, satin-shiny black leather jacket emerges. He has pitted skin, oiled hair, a wide nose, and the bunched mouth of someone who’s just tasted something bitter when he expected sweet. The men with him scramble into a loose formation, one on either side, and the tight-faced man leads them to the elevator. As the doors close behind all of them, the drivers move the SUVs into the shadows.
In the security bunker behind the lobby, two uniformed guards sit in wheeled chairs. On one of the screens they face—more than a dozen of them in all, ranging across the wall in front of the guards—the men from the garage crowd into the elevator. The silence of the security bunker is broken as one of the office chairs slides backward a foot, and the guard who is in it—who had been sitting slumped forward—falls facedown, striking his chin on the edge of the control console. His neck bends bonelessly as his head snaps back, and when he hits the floor, his head is cocked so acutely it rests on his left shoulder. The other guard does not react. The room is silent except for the slow, dripping sound of fluid hitting carpet after it falls from the dangling hand of the seated guard.
Upstairs, the three men in front fan out into the hallway. One of them waits for the man inside while the others hurry to a door halfway down on the right, unlock it, and go in, fast. About thirty seconds later, one of them sticks his head out. “Clear,” he says. The sour-faced man and his companion trudge down the hall and into the apartment.
The front door opens into an enormous room, cream-carpeted, that ends in floor-to-ceiling draperies hanging over the external wall, which is all glass. The furniture is heavy and ornate, lots of gilt wood and marble, the kind of decor associated with Saudi royalty.
One of the guards goes toward the back of the apartment. Another remains in the open doorway, and the third trails behind the bulky man in the black leather jacket as he heads for a small flat-screen display on a table against the left wall.
The bulky man says, impatiently, “Come on, come on.” The screen fills instantly with an image of the room they’re in, from a camera high on the back wall that’s pointed at the door they just came through. The bulky man says, loudly enough to be heard several rooms away, “We left at four twenty.”
The screen goes dark for a second and then fills again. It looks like the same shot, but there’s a time-code in the lower-right-hand corner that reads 16:20. The bulky man watches as the image flickers through almost ten hours of video in a little more than eight minutes. Nothing happens on the screen. No one comes through the door.
The bulky man grunts. His eyes are deeply sunk and rimmed with red from drinking. His oily, black-dyed hair begins well back on his head and ends in greasy curls at the collar of his shirt. The hair frames a smashed nose that looks like it’s taken a lot of blunt force, the small, bunched mouth, and three puffy chins. Three steel earrings glint in his left ear.
As the screen goes black, the bulky man turns away. One of the others is still standing in front of it, and another is standing in the door to the hallway. The third is in another room, where he has been operating the hidden hard drive with the security video on it.
“Tomorrow,” the bulky man says, his back to the door, heading toward the bar at the rear of the room. “Two o’clock.”
The guard standing in the front door opens his mouth wide, throws out one arm, and goes straight down, landing in a seated position and toppling sideways. At the sound of his body hitting the floor, the man standing at the screen turns quickly to see a man in tight black clothes topped by a snug hood that’s drawn down over his hair. His face is streaked diagonally with black but otherwise uncovered. He brings up a stubby FN P90 compact submachine gun, braces it against his hip, and squeezes the trigger.
The sound seems to tear the room in half. The man in the black leather jacket, who moved very quickly at the first sound, is almost all the way to the bar by the time the man who has been shot crumples to the carpet. He dives behind the bar as the man in the doorway leaps across the room and disappears from sight into the back of the apartment—toward the closet that houses the hard drive. A moment later, the gun rattles again.
Crouching behind the bar, the man in the shiny black jacket yanks out a black automatic. He grips it in both hands and starts to rise, just far enough to get a quick look over the top of the bar, but the man with the submachine gun is back, raking the top of the bar with gunfire. The long white curtains hanging behind the bar are blown backward, and the floor-to ceiling windows behind them shiver into a million pieces and fall into the fog of the clouds. The curtains are sucked through the opening, billowing outward into the mist.
By now the man behind the bar is down on his stomach. He doesn’t see the one holding the machine gun go back into the hallway, doesn’t see him step back into the room, holding a bottle with a rag trailing from it. The man in the door lets the submachine gun dangle in its sling as he touches a disposable lighter to the tip of the rag. The rag ignites instantly. The man with the gun waits a long, relaxed second and pitches the bottle over the bar.
The space between the bar and the blowing curtains explodes into flame. A bloom of yellow fire rises above the top of the bar, and a hunched form, bent low and burning, charges around the end of the bar and into the room. Half-wrapped in flame, the man in the black jacket has his gun extended, but no one is there. Fire from his jacket licks at his face. The oil in his hair ignites, and he throws himself flat on the carpet, frantically rolling over and over again to extinguish the fire.
He rolls up against something.
It is the foot of the man with the submachine gun. He kicks the automatic out of the burning man’s hand and bends down, bringing his face close to that of the burning man.
The overhead fire sprinklers come on. The man on the carpet begins to steam. He and the man with the gun stare at each other through the falling water.
The man holding the gun says two words in Thai, words the burning man sees but doesn’t hear over the roaring in his ears. Straightening the gun, the man says two more words and pulls the trigger.
In the guard room, the time-code on the monitors reads 03:09.
3
The Forest
THREE SEVENTEEN A.M.
The buildings are vertical spikes, sharp-edged against a low-hanging sky the color of a scrape of graphite. They’re mostly dark at this hour but here and there, high above the street, a yellow rectangle gleams.
The rain has left a shiny line of trickling water in the gutter and puddles half an inch deep where the sidewalk dips. The girl skirts them without a downward glance. The boy stomps through them, trying to splash her. They’re small figures, and their clothes are all too big—dark, long-sleeved pullover shirts and loose jeans, handed down apparently by a long sequence of children. The jeans are cinched around their tiny waists with cracked, ratty-looking belts that have dozens of holes punched in them. The one around the boy’s waist has been wrapped around him twice. As they pass beneath the streetlight, the dark knitted caps into which they have tucked their hair glisten from the drizzle.
The boy yawns ostentatiously.
“Not yet,” the girl says without slowing. Her name is Anchali, and she goes by Chalee, which is what she thinks Charlie Sheen’s first name is. She’s seen Charlie Sheen on television, and even though she’s only heard him dubbed into Thai she admires the way he tells people to fuck off. “There’s a dumpster up here. I know a kid who knew a kid who found a laptop in it.”
“Working?” The boy’s name is Dok, but as long as he can remember, most people have called him Noo, which means rat.
“Of course not. But he got nine hundred baht for the battery and the keyboard.”
Dok says, “I’m sleepy.”
“Poor little baby, up past his bedtime.” She is eight months older than he and two inches taller.
“I’m the one who got us out.”
The girl wraps her arm around the boy’s neck and squeezes, part affection and part threat. “We’re going to get caught, that’s why we need to find something to take back. How mad can Boo be if we’ve got something worth a thousand baht?”
“We haven’t found anything so far.”
“This is the last one.”
“Promise?” He holds out a curled pinky.
She hooks her own pinky through his and tugs. “Promise.” They separate and she strikes out again, the boy a couple of steps behind. “Some day,” the boy says, looking up at the building they’re passing, “I’ll work in a place like this.”
“Not unless your reading gets better.”
The boy stops. He’s been hungry ever since he slipped part of his dinner into a plastic bag and took it to her after she was sent from the dining room for getting into a shoving match. His stomach growls, and he speaks more loudly to drown it out because he told her he ate his whole dinner and got extra for her. He’d be embarrassed if she knew the truth. “Let’s go, then.”
To their right the street is a dark river, obsidian, flat, black, empty. To their left, well-dressed women stand motionless behind plate glass like people whose best moment has been frozen for eternity. Carefree and well-groomed and unoccupied by anything specific, they wear clothes that have never shrugged off a wrinkle. Even the soles of their shoes are immaculate. Chalee slows slightly at the sight of a pale yellow sweater with flat pearlescent buttons, but Dok, passing, jostles her shoulder and says, “Come on.”
“I just want to look, Dok,” she says. “It’s the King’s color.”
Ahead of her, he smiles. He likes that she doesn’t call him Noo, even though the other children do.
At the alley, he pauses until she’s caught up with him. About halfway down there’s a single lamp on a pole, throwing a circle of light that’s a weak, corrupted shade of yellow, but there are many dark meters between them and it, and those meters are dim enough to be populated by clouds of rats.
“Last dumpster,” she says, passing him.
Dok’s terror of rats, coupled with two oversize front teeth, earned him his nickname. He grabs a deep breath and holds it, fighting off the thought of naked tails and clawed skittering feet. Seeking a thimbleful of comfort, he looks up at the ribbon of grayish sky above him. Cool mist sprinkles onto his upturned face, and he’s trying to enjoy it as he walks into the girl’s back.
Chalee swears with surprising and precocious filthiness. “You made me drop it,” she hisses.
“What? Drop what?”
“The lighter, stupid. How can we see anything without the lighter?”
He knows immediately what she wants him to do, and he’s not going to do it. “Forget it. We’ll go home.”
“You made me drop it,” she says. “You find it. Find it with your foot. Just stand in one place and feel around with your foot.”
“You find it with your foot if you’re so smart.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she says. “Look at you. You might as well be a farm kid.”
He was a farm kid, but so was she, so he lets it pass. “Nope.”
“I’ve walked for hours to get here. I’ve put up with you. I’m not going back without trying one more time to find something.”
The words I’ve put up with you feel like a slap in the face. “Fine,” Dok says, turning away. “Do whatever you—” He kicks something small and hard that makes a little scraping noise across the concrete.
“That’s it,” she says. “How far did it go?”
“Not far.”
“Which foot?”
“Right.”
“Okay, here’s what you do. Bring your other foot up with it, so they’re even. Then stick your right foot out just a little and move it side to side, slowly.”
“Got it,” he says. He puts his foot on it so it can’t go anywhere and then, with great reluctance, bends, finds the lighter with his fingertips, and snatches it up.
“Don’t light it yet,” she says. “We’re in front of the wrong dumpster. The next one is the one we want.” Chalee’s hand, warm and soft, lands on his arm. “I’ll count the steps, okay? One … two … three …”
Dok likes the way her hand feels. At the count of fourteen, she stops and says, “Okay. Light it.”
He flicks the little wheel, and the lighter sparks to life. Two big dumpsters leap out at them, solidified, right-angled darkness, a space of about four meters between them.
“We’re in between them,” Chalee says. “A little farther.”
As Dok steps to his left, holding the lighter, something low and irregular casts a moving shadow in the corner formed by the wall and the first dumpster, which reeks of rotten food. It has no recognizable shape, but it’s dark and rounded and almost knee-high. Chalee stops moving, her eyes locked on it, but Dok is the one who says, “What’s that?”
HER BODY IS too big for her, too hot for her, too heavy for her; it hangs on her skeleton like a penalty. As cold as she was before, she’s hot now. She’s dragged herself through the night for weeks, and she knows she’s almost finished.
She’d thought the night was her time. She’d thought she could hunt in the night, hide in the night. She’d thought nothing could see her. Thought, for once in her life, she’d have an advantage. But the people in the house she’d lived in were just humoring her. They could see her even when she thought she was invisible. The night doesn’t care about her any more than the sun does or the rain does. Doesn’t care whether she lives or dies. She’s just one more weak animal.
And the night is too big and too small. Too big for her to learn its paths and too small to keep her out of the way of the things that want to eat her. She’s been running for weeks, lost all the time, hungry forever. Everything she eats out of the big trash cans smells awful and makes her sick. Whenever she rests, they find her and chase her, with their loud voices and their big hands and their awful wet lips.
She had thought she could laugh at them.
The forest she’s dreaming is dark now and empty, or pretending to be. She’s burrowed down beneath a large stone and pulled a mound of leaves and twigs over her. She can sleep here, she hopes, get strong here. Maybe something harmless will hop by and she can reach out, so fast she’s invisible, and snatch it up and sink her nails into it and cram it, still living, into her mouth.
She’s decided she can eat fur as long as there’s meat under it.
But it’s rained as she slept and the wet has come down through the twigs and leaves and chilled her. She should move, she knows, try to find a tree with a hollow trunk or broad leaves, but she can’t. Her arms and legs weigh too much. She feels as though the weight of her body will push her deeper into the hole she dug, so deep that the earth covers her and she can finally give up and sleep in the dark. Sleep with her mouth open and let the dirt fill it.
She hears a sound, something hard scraping against something else. It’s both here and not here. It’s on the other side of the world, on the other side of the mound of leaves and twigs. It’s on the other side of her eyelids.
It may be the most difficult thing she’s ever done, but she opens her eyes.
“IT’S A COAT,” Chalee says. “Just a coat.”
Dok doesn’t like the shape or the size of the thing, but all he says is, “Does it look any good?”
“You’re as close to it as I am.”
“Old and dirty.” He gives it a second look and turns away. “Let’s search in the dumpster, fast, and then go.”
She makes a quick grab for the lighter and misses. “Maybe there’s something in the pockets.”
“Fine,” Dok says. “I’ll be right here.”
“I might as well be with a girl,” she says. “Give me the lighter.”
&nb
sp; He says, “Ummmmm …”
“I’m going to look,” she says, taking it from his hand. She licks her lips and turns to make sure he’s listening. “I’m taking three steps closer, okay? One, two, three.” She stops. “Now every time I take a step, you take one, too, behind me.”
Dok says, “I don’t want to.”
“Then go away,” she says. “Just run away, Noo.” She holds the lighter in front of her, a little to the side so the flame doesn’t create a halo of darkness, and she takes the eight or ten steps that carry her to the coat.
“I’m right behind you,” he says, his ears stinging with the sound of his nickname.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have—” She reaches out to touch the coat, puts a hand on the cloth, then emits a small, high yip. She’s up in an instant, backing away. “Someone’s in there,” she says, “under the coat, someone is there.”
He knew it, but that doesn’t mean he wants to hear it. “Are you sure?”
“A shoulder, I felt a shoulder. Or a knee, maybe a knee. And I—I smelled it.”
The two of them are standing very close to each other now. The coat is motionless in the corner.
“Smelled it? Is it dead?”
“No, it moved. Just a little.”
“Big?”
She thinks. “Big? No. Didn’t feel big.”
“Not big, not dead,” he says. “What are you afraid of?”
“What am I afraid of? I’m not the one who hid behind a girl.”
“Give me that.” He snatches the lighter and squats, reaches out for the nearest edge of the coat, pinches the tip of his tongue between his teeth, and tugs the cloth back.
And wets his pants.
A bramble of dark hair. A face patched with black except for a pinkish-white strip across the bridge of the nose and the eyes. As he realizes he’s wet himself, the eyes snap open, wide enough to see the whites all the way around the iris, and the lips peel back to reveal gray teeth.
“Ghost,” he screams, scrabbling back on all fours like a crab, the lighter going out in his hand. “Ghost ghost ghost ghost. Run run run—”
For the Dead Page 2