Anna reaches into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out the familiar pad with the blue cards, writes quickly, and shows it to Rose. My son is difficult, too. Then she says aloud. “Please. Sit down.”
“How old?” Rose asks.
Anna practices the word silently once, lips only, and then says, “Twelve.”
“Then you know all about it. I don’t want to trouble you, but I know Poke would like some coffee,” Rose says. “Poke always wants coffee. Maybe I could help you?” She loops an elbow under Anna’s arm and more or less hauls her into the kitchen. A moment later, Rafferty hears Anna laugh.
“Rose is surprisingly light-hearted,” Rafferty says.
“You have no idea how she’s feeling,” Arthit says. “Right now, she’s being an angel and making friends with Anna.”
“Still, she’s pretty chipper, considering what we just went through.” He tells Arthit about Nguyen’s visit and the call from Rose’s mother. “I suppose I should be grateful Miaow just left, instead of jumping off the balcony.”
Arthit sits on the couch and waits for Rafferty to settle himself into his usual chair, and then he says, “I don’t know how I can help you. I mean, I could give you the children-are-resilient speech, but I have no idea how resilient children are or aren’t.”
“Well, I’m not really looking for parental guidance.”
“So here’s the other bad news. I don’t think we should involve the cops.”
“Really,” Rafferty says, his heart sinking at Arthit’s tone. “Tell me about that.”
“Things feel bad.” Arthit puts his hands palm-to-palm and squeezes them between his thighs, rocking forward a little as though he’s cold. “Thanom made a big deal out of pulling me into what was supposed to be a tight little circle of people who would be involved in this case. And now he’s sending me hours away to look into the murders the people who killed Sawat are supposedly avenging.”
“Maybe he’s just worried that it’ll leak if you’re doing it closer to home.”
“No one has seen the surveillance tapes. They’ve vanished. That means that almost nobody knows what those combinations of murdered women and children mean. I could search for them all day long, and not even someone who looked over my shoulder would know what I was working on. And now he’s quarantined Andrew’s iPhone, too.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that it’s essentially vanished, just like the tapes. This isn’t about keeping the investigation tight, Poke, it’s about controlling it. And from the moment I learned it was Sawat who’d been killed, I’ve been waiting for Thanom to get yanked off the case.”
“Why?”
“Because he was Sawat’s and Thongchai’s boss. And they were both dirty. So how does it look from outside that Thanom’s been put in charge of the investigation?”
“Like a fix.”
“Doesn’t it.” Arthit sits back, closes his eyes, and massages the bridge of his short, wide nose. “How much do you know about what Sawat was pulling?”
“Murder for hire. It happened just before I got here.”
“Let’s pretend you don’t know anything, and I’ll start at the beginning. It’ll explain why I don’t want to get the department involved in looking for Miaow.” He opens his eyes and looks around the room as though he’s surprised at how much it’s changed. “You are going to find her, you know.”
“Actually, Rose thinks she’ll come home before we do. I’m not sure enough of that to relax. But how could the thing with Sawat affect Miaow?”
Arthit raises a hand. “Give me two minutes to sketch the background. Beginning about twelve years ago we had a spike in murders of people with a lot of money. It continued for roughly five years. There were ten murders—ten that we identified, anyway. A statistically unlikely increase, since most murder victims tend to be lower income.”
“All right.”
“A couple of other things were statistically unlikely. First, the solution rate was one hundred percent. For another, they were bang-up, textbook-perfect cases. We had eyewitnesses, we had arrests, and we had confessions. And finally, one cop solved a remarkable number of them. Sawat.”
“I missed most of this. He got fired but not brought to trial.”
“The cases were closed, officially. And he was sort of a hero at the time. You wouldn’t know it to look at a recent picture, but he had a great smile. Sherlock Holmes, with good teeth. He got fan mail.”
A coffee grinder makes its gravel-chewing noise in the kitchen, and Rose laughs.
“So we had a hero cop, and that caused a certain amount of jealousy. Two officers who felt resentful, or saw their careers endangered, started looking at a few of the cases more carefully. And they found a couple of very interesting things. First, two of the people convicted of these murders got released quite early, four or five years into their sentences, and they seemed to have a surprising amount of money. Second, it turned out that one of the eyewitnesses was being booked for a minor crime at the time he was supposed to have seen the killing.”
Poke says, “That’s embarrassing.”
“And these cops told some reporters. The reporters investigated further and their editors went to the opposition politicians they supported, and between the newspaper stories and the opposition’s calls for an investigation, it took about three weeks for everything to fall apart. Speaking privately to us, the people who had been convicted admitted they’d been paid to confess, the witnesses said they’d been threatened or paid to testify. Even a couple of prosecutors admitted they’d been given what they called ‘special preparation’ by Sawat and his men.”
“Full-service package.”
“That’s why it cost so much. You paid for the hit, you paid for the witnesses, you paid for the person who got convicted. And, of course, you paid for Sawat and Thongchai, who handled the cops who actually did the killings. Still, at two to three million baht for each killing, you got your murder done and it looked safe as a glass of milk. Case closed. No questions, ever. And he pulled this off ten times that we know of, so we’re talking about more than twenty-five million Baht.”
Rafferty does the math in his head. “Around three-quarters of a million dollars.”
Arthit looks past Rafferty, as though embarrassed. “And we shut it down internally, no trial, just fired Sawat and Thongchai, in disgrace, with nothing proved. That took a lot of muscle from someone, but it was worth it because obviously, other cops were involved, some of them considerably above Sawat in rank. One unavoidable suspect was Thanom. But he dodged it—and now they’re leaving him on Sawat’s murder. And that suggests one of two things: first, that someone higher in the department than Thanom, who has a low opinion of his skills, ordered the murders of Sawat and Thongchai—maybe got to the grieving relatives and gave them the phone somehow—and he feels safe with Thanom in charge.”
“Why kill Sawat?”
Arthit shrugs. “Because he was getting out of line? I don’t know. He didn’t go to prison, impossible as that may be to believe. Maybe, all these years later, he was demanding money or something, threatening to reveal just who actually kept the lion’s share of the fees. And that person is actually running this investigation and he’s leaving it with Thanom because, well, he’s Thanom, and he’s not very capable. Or—and here’s the other interpretation—Thanom has been assigned to handle it this way because he’s being set up for it. He’s the perfect fall guy for the whole thing. The plan is probably to catch the guys who chased Miaow and Andrew and kill them, and then promptly arrest Thanom and say look, we’ve handled everything. Case closed, Big Bad Wolf pinched.”
Rafferty says, “It’s like the Kremlin. I don’t know how you work there.”
Arthit leans forward for emphasis. “Same reason as a lot of cops. Once in a while, you get to do the right thing.”
The kitchen door opens and Rose and Anna come through. They’re holding hands, although Anna looks slightly startled about it. Rose says, “Coffee in
a minute. Solving anything?”
“We’re just trying to get our arms around it,” Rafferty says.
“And to continue with my larger point,” Arthit says. He squeezes his eyes shut and blows out some air. “I do not think it’s a good idea to get the department involved right now. I don’t know how Miaow might figure into the plans of whoever is running this. The phone has disappeared, and she and Andrew are the only people outside the department who saw the photos. If this is a cover-up, and it looks like it, the two of them are loose ends.”
Rose drops Anna’s hand.
“That’s what I needed to say,” Arthit says. “But I don’t want to get you any more worried than you need to be.”
Poke says, “I don’t think I could be more worried.”
25
I’ve Changed, But I Haven’t Changed Into Anything
THE CURB FEELS different than it used to. And it’s not solely because she’s bigger, although she’d been surprised, when she first sat down, by the fact that her knees folded so sharply and were too high for her to cross her arms on, the way she used to do.
The pavement is harder, too. Even though she’s gained all the weight that almost trapped Andrew and her in that air duct, the concrete presses uncomfortably on her sit-bones.
It’s not exactly a surprise that she doesn’t fit here any more. Where in the world did she think she was going when she made her grand dramatic exit? What was she expecting? Gasps? Horrified protest? Two minutes later, Rose was probably imitating her.
Did she think she was going back onto the street? To some friend’s house? The only friend she’s really made in the whole world is Andrew, and she doesn’t fit at Andrew’s house, either.
And she won’t fit at school, not that she ever really did. He’ll talk about this sooner or later, she’s certain. It’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to him, judging from the stories he’s told her about his life. So he’ll talk about it and there won’t be any more Mia Rafferty.
Mia was obviously a pretty thin mask. But it was the one she made and forced on people, and she’s stuck now with what those people see when it slips off. Someone who isn’t good enough to be herself.
A bus roars by, less than half a meter from her feet, and she pinches her nose closed and breathes through her mouth in self-defense. No, she’s definitely not who she was then, back on the street. That girl breathed exhaust like fresh spring breezes. That girl could have taken care of herself out here.
She thinks, We all float until we sink.
She doesn’t even have her secret money. After paying for Andrew’s stupid phone and a few other things, she’s got only about 700 baht. She’s blinking against the bus exhaust, and then she realizes she’s not blinking against the exhaust at all, and she just lets herself cry. She’s quiet about it, no loud, gulping sobs that would get the attention of the people crowding by on the sidewalk behind her, but crying nonetheless, until it seems to her that all she’s done recently is cry, and that’s about enough of it.
She wipes her face with her forearm, hoping it looks like she’s mopping sweat, and instantly thinks, No one is looking at me. No one ever looks at me. If I’d just realized that, I wouldn’t have pretended to be someone else.
But now she’s stuck with all those lies. Stuck with being Miaow.
Stuck with being a big sister to a baby. Poke and Rose’s real baby. She’s wanted a television forever, and they bought it for a baby who’s not even here yet.
She thinks, in so many words, I’m feeling sorry for myself.
The world flickers and blinks on. She’s sitting on a curb on Sukhumvit, between the tented tables of two vendors. Their fluorescent tubes have buzzed into life, putting a sparkle on the cheap watches and the cheap clothes, picking out the names of the cheap generic drugs from China printed in faded ink on the cheap boxes, brightening all these useless, ugly things.
And creating a pool of relative darkness for her to huddle in. Behind her, tourists push up and down the sidewalk, speaking every language in the world and probably saying nothing. There are a lot of Arabs in this area of Sukhumvit, both immigrants who have opened shops here and tourists staying at the nearby Grace Hotel with its Arab clientele. The men are either fashionably three-day unshaven or bristling with assertive facial hair, the women like black cut-outs, the little boys acting like emperors in spite of their big, soft eyes.
She doesn’t think she’ll lose Poke. She knows that the baby won’t change Poke. He’ll go on loving her because he told her he would when he took her in, and he always does what he says, the chump. The problem is Rose, Rose who is growing her own child inside her own body, and what love could be stronger than that? It will be in there for months, sharing Rose’s blood and breath, assembling itself from her beneath her skin, beneath the caressing palms of her hands. As long as it lives, it will be someone made of Rose. How could Rose’s feelings not change? And it’s been mostly Rose’s love that she’s been basking in all these years. Now she’ll be the ugly step-sister, the one who’s always so hateful in the fairy tales. There will be the real baby—the one Rose made herself—and the one she found in the street. The other one.
And when were they going to tell her? If they hadn’t known it would hurt her, they would have told her right away. For all she knows, they found out weeks ago. They lied to her because they knew the news would make her feel like the unattractive, not-very-smart girl they adopted before they found out they could have their own children.
The sound level from the sidewalk drops. She smells cologne.
She turns her head as little as possible and looks at the brown-clad legs of a policeman. Her stomach clenches instinctively, but she forces herself to look up. He’s probably there to write some foreigner a 2000-baht ticket for dropping a cigarette on the sidewalk. She’s expecting him to wave her away, but he just nods down at her and goes back to looking at something on the opposite sidewalk.
Automatically, she reaches up to smooth the hair on either side of her part, and is startled to feel the stiff, uneven chop. If I needed any more proof that I’m not who I was, Miaow thinks, this cop would be it. She’s no longer the girl a policeman would automatically chase away unless he’d been bribed by some godfather to let her beg or sell flowers. For years she had either run away from the cops or paid the crooks.
It’s my clothes, she thinks. But what she’s wearing is ordinary enough, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with an angry duck on it. A street kid could wear these clothes. But they probably wouldn’t be so clean. And her shoes are new, sort of.
So what? Even a street kid could steal a new pair of shoes. I have changed, she thinks, but I haven’t changed into anything. I’m halfway between this and that. I’m not really anything.
The evening is still hot, but she feels cold. And small and dark and forgettable. Someone who isn’t anybody, who may never be anybody.
It was stupid to walk out of the apartment. Now she’ll have to slink back in, and they’ll act like she just went out for an ice cream, and so will she. Nobody will tell the truth.
Her cell phone vibrates in her pocket, and she grabs for it. It can’t be Andrew, she knows, he doesn’t have a phone now, but still—
It’s Rose.
A little bubble pops in the region of her heart. Poke has called twice, but this time it’s Rose. It’s Rose, calling her.
She’s on the sidewalk, feeling lighter than air, weaving between people, before she realizes she’s even gotten up. Stepping down from the curb at a corner, she automatically registers that she’s crossing Soi 7. Cars are at a dead stop on Sukhumvit, and motorcycle taxis thread their way between lanes. By the time the light changes up there, there will be a herd of motorbikes, maybe a hundred of them, racing their motors in front of the cars. Poke had used that traffic pattern once to explain to her how sediments form at the bottom of the ocean, with the smallest particles filtering down through the bigger ones to form clays, just like the motorbikes weave between …
How much time has Poke spent explaining things to her?
She should call Rose back. But not yet.
Stepping up onto the curb on the far side of Soi 7, she gets a little itch between her shoulder blades, an itch that makes her want to look behind her. So she’s been wrong. Her instincts have dulled. Someone is looking at her.
Just to her right, bathed in a chalky fluorescent glare, is a booth selling bootlegged DVDs. Colored sleeves for the current titles are thumb-tacked to the back wall. Hundreds of others are clipped together into thick stacks for customers to flip through.
She stops and begins to leaf through one of the binders, turning just enough to be able to look from beneath her lashes in the direction from which she came.
Waves of people push toward her. There are a lot of what Rose calls “Pattaya executives,” sunburned, unshaven, often-unwashed males in sleeveless T-shirts, arms festooned with tattoos. In their proximity, the conservative Arab women, wrapped in black like night on the move, seem like aliens. She wonders what they think, snatched out of their protective societies and plopped down here among these rampant males, on a street where every fourth booth is selling counterfeit Viagra. Rose says the Viagra is because the men get too drunk. Twice, when Miaow was on the street and men were after her, their drunkenness was the only thing that saved her.
That’s something she’s never talked about with Rose or Poke.
Looking back down the sidewalk, she realizes that some of the Thai women she’s passed are working the pavement, their eyes glancing off those of the oncoming men. Here and there, people stand still, snagged by something or someone for sale. She sees no one she recognizes. No eyes find and then release her.
There’s a tightness in her chest and she can feel her pulse tapping against the skin of her throat, as though demanding her attention. The sidewalk seems to brighten very slightly. Her energy, kicking in.
Something. But she can’t pick it out.
She waits until an Arab man approaches, trailing three women behind him, walking side by side like a platoon. Miaow puts down the stack of DVD sleeves and steps in front of the man, no more than two feet ahead of him, adjusting her speed to his. She knows she’s invisible to anyone behind the group, but also that whoever is back there will see instantly that she’s no longer at the DVD booth. What she needs right now is an inconspicuous way to get off the sidewalk.
For the Dead Page 17