For the Dead

by Timothy Hallinan

  Treasure’s mouth opens, but then she closes it and nods. Rose cleans the fork, turns it around to lick the back, and gives it to Dok. Looks up at Rafferty, surprised. “It’s good,” she says.

  “Boo’s not going to give them slop,” Rafferty says, and Chalee comes into the room, balancing a plate in each hand. She stops in the doorway, not even glancing at Poke, just staring at the group at Boo’s desk.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  “I’m Rose, and you’re Chalee, and you’re just in time, because Treasure and I are really hungry.”

  Chalee, still holding the plates, glances at Poke, and says, “Are those two kids in the other room yours?”

  Rafferty says. “Sort of.”

  Chalee says to Poke, “You came back.”

  “That’s what I do. I come back.”

  “Who’s Rose?”

  “My wife.”

  Chalee looks again at Rose, and the left corner of her mouth travels toward her ear in an expression of pure doubt. She looks back to Poke and shrugs.

  “I know,” Poke says. “I don’t understand it either.”

  “Look,” Chalee says. She watches with something like amazement as Treasure accepts a second mouthful, and whispers, “This is the most she’s eaten, ever.”

  “Maybe she’s getting better.”

  Chalee says, “Maybe, maybe not,” and threads through the maze of furniture to put the other two plates on Boo’s desk.

  Rose says, “I’m eating everything.”

  Chalee says to Rose, “Are you really married to him?”

  Rose says, “Amazing, isn’t it?” and Treasure actually smiles, just long enough for Poke to doubt that he actually saw it, and then Rose is saying to Dok, “Treasure’s turn,” and Rafferty hears Miaow’s voice, raised and tremulous, from the other room. He turns to see Boo standing in the opening, staring slack-jawed at the sight of Treasure eating.

  Rafferty doesn’t hear Miaow say anything more, so he waves for Boo’s attention. “We need to talk.”

  Boo says, “You have no idea.”

  FOLLOWING BOO BACK out into the big room, Rafferty sees Miaow sitting on the cot with the three boys who’d been playing with the phone, which she’s now holding. The two filthy boys have changed cots to get closer to the group; now they’re just one vacant row away.

  Andrew is nowhere in sight.

  Miaow gives him too-bright eyes and a smile that looks like a muscle exercise, and Rafferty looks again for Andrew. He raises his eyebrows in a question, but Miaow looks away and Rafferty can almost hear the metal door clang down between them. One of the boys on the cot says something and the other boys laugh. Miaow just stares at the cell phone screen. Boo taps Rafferty on the shoulder and goes out and down the steps.

  Rafferty hesitates, but Miaow doesn’t send him a signal, so he turns and follows Boo out into the alley. Sees the SUV parked there with Chinh at the wheel and Andrew back in his original seat, his cheek against the glass of the far window and his eyes wide open, apparently reading the night.

  “I don’t know how long we can get away with this,” Boo says.

  “I brought fifty thousand baht,” Rafferty says. “Just to make it clear to Father Bill that I’m working on it.”

  “That’s not the problem.” Boo looks up and down the alley without even knowing he’s doing it, and Rafferty knows it’s instinctive, it’s what he’s been doing for years now: looking for the abandoned, the throw-aways. He does it everywhere he goes. “Dok and Chalee aren’t in school, and they have to go to school, or they won’t get into First Home. I’m only allowed to keep kids here for two weeks until they can be considered to move inside, and if they’re not in school, as far as Father Bill is concerned, they’re not here. I don’t want to have to boot Dok and Chalee out. Father Bill is a good man, but he sticks to his rules.”

  “He has to,” Poke says. “These kids could scam Saint Peter.”

  “And he’s not settling for the two of them taking turns and teaching each other. But they, Dok and Chalee, I mean, they know she can’t be left alone. She needs care, someone who knows how to work with badly damaged kids, someone who can stay here with her, at least some of the time. And she needs a place.”

  Rafferty feels a physical wave ripple through him, emptying him out. The concrete beneath his feet seems to pitch from side to side. He recognizes it as the tidal pull of exhaustion and widens his eyes, prompting Boo to take a step back. “I’m working on it. I am, I’m working on it. And she looks better.”

  “She may look better,” Boo says, “but today she laid open the face of one of the kids in the outer room.”

  “He must have—”

  “He went in to talk to her,” Boo says, and Rafferty sees that he’s weary, too. “Dok and Chalee were both gone, for just a few minutes, and the kid thought she might be lonely. And, yeah, he was curious. The kids who have seen her talk a lot about her, about the way she looks. So he goes in and she’s on her cot, with her arm over her eyes, and he gets closer than he should have and then he makes some kind of noise, trips on the furniture or something, and bang, she’s up and her claws are out, and she swipes him straight down his face. Barely missed his eye.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t touch her?”

  “Seriously?” Boo says. “Of course, I’m not sure he didn’t touch her. But, you know, there are other ways to handle being touched.”

  “Not for her.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re talking about.”

  “Well,” Rafferty says, “yeah. Does the kid need a doctor?”

  “He’s seen one. Poke, I’m not trying to make your life difficult. But I’ve got to think about all these kids. I’m close to the edge here, and I can’t just focus on one. She’s had it rough, I know, but none of these kids grew up in a palace.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to Father Bill. Tomorrow. See what I can set up.” He pulls a fold of money from his pocket and holds it out. “For now.”

  Boo eyes it for a moment but then takes it. “Okay.” He follows Rafferty’s gaze to the SUV, where Andrew is now staring down at his lap. He hasn’t even turned on his computer. “What’s with him?”

  “Oh,” Rafferty says, suddenly furious, “who the fuck cares?” Boo’s startled face brings him back to himself, and he says, “Sorry. This isn’t my best week. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll talk to the whole goddamn world tomorrow.”

  He goes in to collect Rose and Miaow, and when they come out Miaow cuts in front of him to climb into the SUV’s front seat. Rafferty takes the seat she vacated, opposite Andrew, who doesn’t even look up. As Chinh starts the engine, there’s a knock at the window, and Rafferty lowers it for Boo.

  “Forgot to tell you,” Boo says. “Your friend was here today, after the fight.”

  “Which friend?”

  “That woman,” Boo says. “The one who doesn’t talk.”

  Rafferty puts a hand on Chinh’s shoulder to make sure he’s not going to pull away, and says, “What did she want?”

  “I wasn’t here. A couple of kids told me she looked around, went upstairs and into my office. She had that little pad and she wrote on it.”

  “Great. Exactly what I needed.”

  “Problem?” Boo says.

  Rafferty says, “Yeah. Yeah, it could be a problem.”

  35

  They Repaired His Moral Compass

  “WE’RE READY,” NGUYEN says from the doorway. The room, like the other parts of the embassy they’ve seen, is an odd blend of institutional and traditional: bland wall-to-wall carpets, white walls, and recessed pinspots in the ceilings, offset by dark, ornate wooden doors framed in lustrous hardwoods. The small meeting room they’re in has a mahogany table in the center that seats twelve, and when they arrived, the table was covered in food. Rafferty chewed on things, not even registering what they were, Rose ate with both hands, and Miaow looked down at her plate as though she was trying to warm it with her gaze.

  She hasn�
��t said a word since they got into the SUV outside Boo’s refuge.

  Nguyen turns away, saying, “Turn right. Third door on the left,” and disappears. Rose has already risen, and as he pushes his chair back, Rafferty says to Miaow, “Coming?”

  “I guess.” She gets up with the underwater slowness only teenagers can manage, every muscle in her body arguing with every other. When they’d emerged from the thick silence that had filled the SUV and entered the embassy, Andrew had vanished at the first branching of the hallway. They haven’t seen him since.

  Rafferty has no energy at the moment for the Miaow-Andrew drama. He’s on red alert about Anna. When he first met her, Poke was in a bad situation with one bunch of Thai cops, and Anna had secretly been on the other side. His distrust of her had driven the wedge between him and Arthit that’s only now begun to disappear, and here he is again: back in a bad spot with the cops, and bang, there’s Anna, appearing someplace that’s tangled up in his life right now.

  Bringing up the rear, with Rose in the lead, he looks at the stiffness of his daughter’s neck and the neglected, fading dyed chop of hair, once so carefully tended, and sees her perform a quick little hitch-step to catch up with Rose and take her mother’s hand for the first time in months, and through all the anger and the frustration and the exhaustion, he feels his heart crack open.

  “YOU WENT TO school in England,” Thanom says. His hair, usually brushed straight back, hangs over his forehead, and his hands are clasped around his double Scotch as though he’s prepared to defend it. He’s almost shouting to be heard over the din. “This place, look at it. What’s the thing with pubs?”

  They’re in one of the thousands of imitation British public houses that have sprung up all over Bangkok, and, like most of them, it’s bristling with woozy farang and a few red-faced Thais, plus a conspicuous scattering of lissome beer girls dressed in body-hugging sheath dresses that improve the design of the can of beer they’re hustling. They put most of their energy into the farang customers, who persist in believing the girls can successfully be hit on. The Thais know better.

  “The English are serious drinkers,” Arthit says. “Real burn-down-the-football-stadium drinkers. So they’ve invented this sort of theme park setting to do it in. Like they’re sipping spirits in quaint, picturesque Merrie Olde England instead of pouring down enough to send them out to throw up in the street.”

  Thanom looks around the room, keeping his head down so as not to meet anyone’s eyes, and says, “I’ve never been out of the country.”

  “I barely made it myself,” Arthit says, feeling apologetic. “My father was crazy for education, and he piled up some money—”

  “As a cop.”

  “Yes, he was a cop. Not a very good one, but eventually a pretty rich one. He did favors for anybody with weight. His money got me into an English university.”

  Thanom raises his eyebrows, just taking in the information, and drops his gaze to his drink. He rotates it left and then right, like a compass. “I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I was about your wife.”

  “And I appreciate that you didn’t,” Arthit said. “It would have made me uncomfortable. We’ve never had that kind of relationship.”

  Thanom says, “But here we are.”

  Arthit leans in and lowers his head, meeting Thanom’s eyes. “Tell me something. Why did your—whoever it was—think you’d buy the idea that he could stick me with being Sawat’s guy in the department?”

  Thanom tightens his lips and looks over Arthit’s shoulder for a moment, obviously asking himself the question afresh. “Your—position, right next to Sawat in rank. The fact that the phone turned up in the hands of that kid, who’s the daughter of a friend of yours.”

  “That’s not even thin,” Arthit says. “It’s transparent.”

  “But it wasn’t me,” Thanom snaps, leaning in. “I’ve been waiting for that shoe to drop for years. He could have pointed at anybody and I would have bought it, as long as it wasn’t me.”

  “That kid you just mentioned,” Arthit says. “That little girl, twelve, thirteen years old? Someone tried to kill her last night.”

  Thanom picks up the glass, blinking fast, and knocks about half of it back. There’s a little moisture on his brow. “She’s okay?”

  “Yes. But that’s just because of who she is. No thanks to the police. I’m assuming cops were behind the killing of Sawat and Thongchai. They tried to kill that little girl, and they’ll probably try to do it again, and kill the boy, too, although I don’t know why. So that’s your ally. And now they’re coming after you, and you’re talking to me, and you don’t even know if you can trust me.”

  Thanom drinks again.

  Arthit hoists his Jack Daniel’s and pretends to drink. “I need to know what’s so important on that phone. Why even now—now that the department has it—they’re trying to kill everybody who looked at it.”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  Arthit looks around the room, just giving himself a moment to figure out how hard he can push. Two farang at the bar are apparently in a shot-downing contest; each of them has six full glasses in front of him. At the count of three from the men around them, the two drinkers down in unison the shots they’re holding and hand the empty glasses to the barmaid. A beer girl with one arm thrown familiarly around a customer’s shoulder holds in her free hand a wad of baht, apparently the group wager.

  Coming back to Thanom, Arthit shakes his head. “We’re past that. We can trust each other or not, and we’ll just have to judge, moment by moment, whether we want the conversation to continue. I can get up and walk away any time.”

  “I’ve got no idea what’s on it. Honestly. The phone was out of my hands about two hours after I got it. I saw pictures of Thongchai and Sawat and some kind of stupid snapshots of two of the guys who chased the kids. I was going through it a third time when the call came in to release it.” He tilts the glass, almost empty now, back and forth, watching the ice cubes slide. “Here’s how touchy the big guy is about it. The Sikh who sold it to the kids has been in jail, incommunicado, since about two hours after the little girl was brought in. He’s in the country illegally, and he’ll be out of it by this time tomorrow.”

  Arthit says, “He has a family. Miaow—that’s the little girl you keep referring to, Miaow—said he kept talking about his—”

  “All of them, out. Waiting to be deported. Clean sweep.”

  A whoop from the bar announces that two more shots have been put into the past tense. “He’s that powerful,” Arthit says.

  Thanom seems to be searching the tablecloth, but it’s evident to Arthit that he’s not actually looking at anything, and he hasn’t reacted at all to the noise at the bar. He’s relaxed his grip on the glass, and the fingers of his left hand tap the tablecloth in a pattern that might, on a piano, be a melody. He says, “He’s a princeling.”

  “That pares it down,” Arthit says. “But it raises a whole new set of questions. The kind of money Sawat was making—I mean, it’s a lot for you and me, but for any of the three or four current princelings who seem most likely, it’s shoeshine cash. Those families are drowning in money.”

  Thanom says, “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “And what have you come up with?”

  “That I need friends.”

  “That gives you two problems, then, doesn’t it?” Arthit says. “First you have to be certain your new friends are on your side. And before we go any further with this, the only friends I can think of for you aren’t cops.”

  “At this point, that’s in their favor. What’s the second problem?

  “You need to bring something to the party. Something they need and don’t have.”

  “And I’ve got it,” Thanom says. “The name.”

  RAFFERTY FOLLOWS ROSE and Miaow into another meeting room, this one with a projection screen at one end. Seated at the end of the table farthest from the screen, next to his new laptop, is Andrew. He throws a glan
ce at Miaow as they come in, but she brushes past and sits at the table three chairs away, her back to him, facing the screen. Rafferty and Rose sit on the other side, and Rafferty is surprised to see Chinh and Homer come in and stand at the back of the room.

  “I’ve asked Andrew to connect his computer to the projector,” Nguyen says. “Better than everyone crowding around, trying to look at that little screen.”

  Andrew fiddles with the keyboard, but he doesn’t seem to agree that it wouldn’t be better for everyone to crowd around. He looks at Miaow’s back and his shoulders droop.

  “Tell them, Anh Duong,” Nguyen says.

  “When I had these before,” Andrew says. He’s clearly keyed up by all the attention and Miaow’s indifference or anger or whatever it is. He’s tapping his first and second finger against the tabletop, fast. “When I had the phone, and before those cops took my computers, I messed with them. I used the imaging program you bought me today to, uh, make things clearer and, you know, um, make things … clearer.”

  “We understand,” his father says soothingly. “You wanted to make things clearer.”

  “The resolution on the phone isn’t the best,” Andrew says, still tapping. “And there were lighting problems, you know? So I did some filling and contrast adjustments, and I also did some sharpening and stuff like that. So what I mean is, I did it on my old computer before, the one they bagged. I haven’t had much time with this setup, but I remembered what I did before. These could be better, but this is what they are.”

  Poke says, “I’m sure they’re fine, Andrew,” but Andrew is looking at the back of Miaow’s head.

  Without taking his eyes off her, Andrew says, “And I know which picture they don’t want anyone to see. I know why they tried to kill Miaow.”

  Miaow’s head is coming around when Nguyen says, “Homer? The lights, please,” and the pinspots dim and Andrew brings the screen to life. The first thing Rafferty sees is Sawat, wearing an expression that suggests that he’s either just bitten his tongue or would like to bite someone else’s. The two guys nearest him look like hired muscle.