For the Dead

by Timothy Hallinan

  “This is in Pratunam,” Andrew says.

  Rafferty says, “Do you know when they were taken?”

  “This one was May sixth. It took three days to take them all,” Andrew says. “The last one was May eighth, four days before the first man was killed. This guy.”

  He pushes a key, and there’s Sawat again, one of the same hired biceps at his side. He’s coming out of a department store, glaring at the world. His hands are empty, but the bicep is carrying several bags.

  “See?” Andrew says. “He doesn’t know he’s being photographed. It was one of the first things Miaow noticed.” He pauses, but there’s no sign Miaow has even heard him. Andrew says, “Look here.”

  He pushes the key again and brings up a blur of motion, the world sliding sideways. “I think someone was about to look at the man with the phone, and he turned away. That happens again, five or six shots from now, but with the other guy.”

  “Thongchai,” Rafferty says. “Sawat’s coordinator. He put together the hits and paid the cops.”

  “Miaow said looking at the pictures was like spying.” He brings up another: Sawat, on another sidewalk, giving someone a hard time on a cell phone.

  “It is spying,” Nguyen says.

  Rafferty says, “Best anyone can figure, the pictures were for the killers, so they’d hit the right people.” He rubs his eyes. “Although I have to tell you, now that I say that out loud, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not?” Nguyen asks.

  “The guy who killed these two said something both times. He named a certain number of women and children. Because of that, everyone’s been assuming that these are revenge killings. But wouldn’t someone who’s taking revenge know who he came to Bangkok to kill? Why would he need pictures?”

  “It was a professional.” Nguyen says. “The victims’ families hired someone?”

  “Probably. But then, it’s odd that a pro, with no emotional involvement, would bother to deliver a parting message. Sure, tell the client you did it, but why waste the time to actually say it? It’s not like the victim is going to contradict him if he fibs about it.”

  “They were on video,” Miaow says.

  The room falls silent. Andrew swallows.

  “They showed it to us,” she says. “At the police station. To see whether the guys who chased us—”

  “These guys,” Andrew says, flipping through the pictures fast: Sawat, Sawat, Sawat, Thongchai, Thongchai, another blurred camera move, Thongchai—

  —two men in a room, an inexpensive hotel room from the look of it. There’s a window with a lot of light coming through it and, sitting on a bed in front of it, two men. They’re talking.

  “The tall one,” Miaow says, leaning forward. “That’s the golden man. I mean, that’s what I thought of him as. The other one was with him.”

  Another shot. This time, the men on the bed are looking at the camera, and the tall man has a hand up, palm out, clearly meaning, Stop.

  “The third one,” Miaow says, “the one who’s taking the pictures, he’s the one who chased me with the knife.”

  Rafferty says, his head spinning, “Of course, they were on video.”

  “I need to show you this one picture,” Andrew says.

  “You think they staged that?” Nguyen says. “Said it for the camera?”

  “I think something is wrong with the way everyone is thinking about this. And we all know what the killers look like. What’s so valuable about these pictures that someone would try to kill Miaow? Or trash your apartment?”

  Andrew says, “Mr. Rafferty, look. Listen to me. Look.”

  He’s paging back through several photos of Thongchai, and then he stops it. Thongchai, facing the camera three-quarters, laughing at something the man next to him has said. They’re on yet another sidewalk, in front of a big display window.

  “What are we looking at, Anh Duong?”

  Andrew uses the cursor to describe a scribbly, off-center circle on the window. “That,” he says.

  Rafferty says, “Holy Jesus.”

  “It’s not very clear,” Andrew says, his voice cracking again, with excitement this time, “but here he is.”

  Reflected in the window, pale and semitransparent, a man holds up an iPhone.

  “It’s him,” Andrew says. “The guy who took the pictures.” Rafferty’s cell phone rings. He’s fishing for it as he says, “I can’t see him very clearly.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing,” Andrew says, flipping through the pictures. “That’s why I needed that software you—”

  The phone says ARTHIT, and Rafferty looks at his watch. Well past ten.

  “Hang on,” he says to the room, as a new picture comes onto the screen. He accepts the call and says again, “Hang on,” just as Andrew brings up a new photo.

  “Who?” Nguyen says. “Who should hang—” He breaks off, looking at the screen. Says, “Anh Duong.”

  Staring at the picture, Rafferty says into the phone, “Can I get back to you?”

  “We’re at your apartment and it’s the middle of the night,” Arthit says. “Are you all okay?”

  “We’re fine.” To Andrew he says, “Well done, Andrew,” and then, to Arthit, “Who’s we?”

  “Thanom and me. You need to know a few things.”

  “And you need to see what I’m looking at, but I don’t want Thanom to. And I don’t want him to know where we are.”

  “It’s no problem,” Arthit says. “He’s been visited by three spirits, and they repaired his moral compass.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He needs help,” Arthit says, and Rafferty hears a querulous voice in the background. “And he’s reminding me that he’s got a piece of information that makes his company worth it. Oh, and so do I. Have information, I mean.”

  “Well,” Rafferty says, “that makes it unanimous.” He looks at the screen, at the digital magic Andrew has done to pull a face from the almost-ephemeral image reflected in the window. “But I don’t want to share mine with Thanom.”

  “Then don’t. Where are you?”

  “Give me a second.” He mutes the phone and says to Nguyen, “Two cops. One is my best friend, and the other one isn’t, but my friend says he’s had his teeth pulled. And they both have something to tell us.”

  Nguyen says, “Here?”

  “Unless you’ve got someplace better.”

  Nguyen looks at his watch and grimaces. “I’ll get the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.” He stands and puts a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Good work, Anh Duong,” he says. Andrew closes his mouth so quickly he bites his lower lip. His low moan of pain brings Miaow’s head halfway around.

  But only halfway.

  Part Four

  AIM AND IGNITE

  36

  There’s No Way They’ve Been Allowed to Go Anywhere

  THE EFFECT, RAFFERTY thinks, is a perfect space for conspiracy.

  Homer and Chinh have brought three brass student lamps with green glass shades into the room and positioned them on the table. With the lamps on and the overhead lights dimmed, the table and the chairs around it seem to have been carved from the darkness.

  Rose and Miaow have been taken to the rooms that will be theirs for the duration, side-by-side bedrooms with a connecting door. The beds are all full-size, just a little larger than twins. Rose chooses the one farther from the door, sits on it, and says, “I like you enough tonight to share this.”

  Rafferty says, “The way it’s going, I’ll be lucky to be back by daybreak.”

  “But you’re happier,” she says. “You’re doing something.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Men are so much simpler than women.” She turns her head and listens, apparently to something she hears in Miaow’s room. “Represent me well,” she says.

  “We want the same thing.”

  “And I’ll be here, faithfully waiting for you.”

  “Snoring all the while.”

  “Plea
se,” she says. “I’m sleeping for two now.”

  Rafferty says, “How many months does this take?”

  “AT THE RISK of seeming unwelcoming,” Nguyen says, sounding very unwelcoming indeed, “I want to remind you that inside this embassy you have no police power. You’re in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

  Arthit catches Poke’s eye, and Rafferty looks down. The two police officers are framed in the doorway to the room, but Thanom comes further forward before Nguyen has finished speaking.

  “We’re here,” he begins, and then he hesitates. “We’re here to try to help you solve your problem.” His face is flushed and his speech very slightly slurred.

  Nguyen says, “It’s a police problem.”

  Thanom says, “It is. And I was part of it, although I had no idea it would go this far.”

  “Really,” Rafferty says, his longstanding dislike for the man welling up. “Where would you have drawn the line?”

  “Attempts to kill—children,” Thanom says. No one applauds, and he adds, “To kill anyone.”

  “What about tearing my family’s apartment apart?” Nguyen demands.

  “I had no idea,” Thanom says.

  “That’s why we’re here. We’re avoiding your police force.”

  Arthit says, “So is Colonel Thanom.”

  Nguyen looks from Arthit to Rafferty, a silent question. Rafferty gives him a tiny shrug, and Nguyen takes a step back, yielding the room to them. “So it’s your problem, too. Have some coffee. We have sandwiches and—what else do we have, Homer?”

  “American cookies,” Homer says. “They were for the kids.”

  “Have a cookie,” Nguyen says. It sounds more like a dare than an invitation. He turns his back to them and takes a seat.

  The screen and Andrew’s computer are still in place, but both are dark. Andrew has been sent to bed, over much protest.

  Arthit and Thanom pump coffee into thick mugs, and Thanom piles oatmeal cookies on a napkin. By the time he turns around, Poke is sitting next to Nguyen on the far side of the table, and the cops automatically take the nearer side.

  Sitting, Arthit says, “This feels faintly adversarial.”

  “Unintended,” Nguyen says, without much energy. “So. Why are you here?”

  “Before that, if I may,” Rafferty says, “I think it would be nice to get our objectives on the table. Just to make sure they’re the same. Mine is to figure out who tried to take a knife to Miaow, and who was behind that person, and either kill them or neutralize them permanently.”

  Everyone looks at everyone else for a second, and Nguyen says, “I’m not sanctioning killing, but I want this episode brought to a close, with appropriate penalties for those responsible, and ironclad guarantees that it’s over.”

  Arthit looks inquiringly at Thanom gets a nod, and says, “I want what Poke wants, and I wouldn’t be upset by a death or two. I’m ashamed that my department has anything to do with creating the sewer of secrecy behind all this.” He says to Thanom, “Colonel?”

  Thanom picks up his coffee cup and puts it down without even glancing at it. “I was a passive part of what Sawat did. I knew about it and I kept my mouth shut.”

  “And you’ve had a change of heart?” Nguyen says.

  Thanom’s face tightens, and he clears his throat. “I’m being set up. I was the obvious scapegoat as Sawat’s superior, and they’re going to try to blame me for all of it.” He looks at Nguyen and Rafferty in turn. “But that’s not the only reason I’m here.” No one responds, and he adds, “It’s a moral stand, too.”

  “Good to hear it,” Nguyen says.

  Arthit says, “If they do in fact make it look like it was the Colonel here—and they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to create a convincing case—they’ll be able to close the door on the whole thing. Everybody will walk away. All clean and shiny.”

  Rafferty says, “But they’re still not going to feel safe until they’ve removed the people who saw the pictures on that phone.”

  Arthit holds up both hands to break in on Poke and says, “Okay. Recap. For the benefit of everybody in the room. A police officer set up a murder-for-profit operation within the department. They committed a number of murders, arrested suspects, got convictions, and wrapped the cases. They made millions of baht doing it. Then they got caught, at least unofficially, and when the rumors about that got out, the department sidestepped the public demands to take the case to court and the two men who were responsible, Sawat and Thongchai, were retired in disgrace, with no official admission that they were guilty. That was six years ago. Everything simmered under the lid until Thursday night, when Sawat was killed, and Friday morning, when they got Thongchai.”

  “Presumably in revenge,” Rafferty says. “Except that it doesn’t make sense.”

  Arthit says, “I’m getting to that. And on Friday morning, Andrew and Miaow buy a used phone, and all hell breaks loose. They get chased, then there’s an attempt on Miaow’s life. And you don’t know this yet, but the Sikh who sold them the phone, plus his whole family, are sitting in custody as illegal immigrants, waiting for deportation and not allowed to talk to anyone.”

  He looks over at Thanom, who’s slumped back in his chair, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring at the surface of the table. “And as I told the colonel here, I searched the databases today and there are no murders linked to Sawat that have the number of female and juvenile victims that Sawat and Thongchai’s killer so carefully mentioned on those surveillance videos.” It takes Rafferty a second or two to make sense out of the sentence, and when he does, the back of his neck begins to prickle. He says, “Really.”

  “Nope. There were a few matches, but not linked to Sawat.”

  “Miaow was right,” Rafferty says, trying to put things together in a way that makes sense, or at least isn’t laughable. “The shooter knew he was on video. He said it for the camera.”

  Nguyen says, “But what does this tell us? Why wouldn’t they use—how would you say this—a count from two of the real cases? If, as you say, there are really so many killings involving women and children?”

  There’s a silence. Arthit breaks it by saying to Nguyen, “This is just one of the things you don’t know about.”

  Thanom says, “Before we go past this, let me suggest something. The plan was always to frame me. To stick me for all of it. If they’d used real numbers, maybe those would have pointed at a killing I couldn’t have been involved in.”

  “How?” Rafferty says. “You’re being framed as a conspirator, not a killer. I mean, alibis wouldn’t matter, since no one is suggesting you were at the scene.”

  “I don’t know, I’m just looking for an explanation, same as you. For this to be closed out as far as we—I mean, the police—are concerned, it has to be resolved with a sacrifice from inside the department. That’s the only thing that will shut up the media and the political opposition. It has to look like someone inside the department, killing Sawat because he’d become a threat. Me.”

  He spreads his fingers on the table, hands flat, and looks down at them. “And let me also say that the men who actually killed Sawat and Thongchai are almost certainly dead by now. There’s no way they’ve been allowed to go anywhere.”

  “I don’t buy the explanation for why the murders on the surveillance videos don’t fit,” Poke says. “But maybe we can make them fit when we answer the real question, which is, if it’s not you, who is it? Obviously, someone with a lot of clout, if the immigration people have been roped into it.”

  Thanom says, “I know who’s behind the way the investigation is being run. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s behind the murders of Sawat and Thongchai or the attempt on your daughter’s life. It doesn’t necessarily mean he was the one who was shielding Sawat in the first place.”

  “Do you know who it is, Arthit?” Rafferty asks.

  “I do,” Arthit says. “And you’ve already had one dance with him, and nothing about him would surprise me.�
� He turns to Thanom. “Colonel?”

  “He’s a princeling,” Thanom says. “Came into the department near the top. His name is Ton.”

  “A FEW YEARS ago,” Rafferty says as he pours coffee, “I was put in the position of writing a biography of a guy named Pan.”

  Thanom’s head comes up, his eyes fixed on Rafferty’s face. “That’s when we met,” he says. “I remember your wife.”

  “Everyone does. Yeah, at that ridiculous fund-raising dinner he threw for that malaria charity, whatever it was called.”

  “Net Profits,” Thanom says.

  “It’s interesting, considering why you’re here tonight, that Pan described you back then as the cop who ran the murder-for-hire ring inside the department.”

  Thanom rests his chin on his hand and says, “Did he.” He doesn’t make it sound like a question.

  “By the time you and I met, I had been threatened by two factions if I didn’t write the biography. Problem was, they wanted diametrically opposite books. The more dangerous faction, one that managed to drive my wife and child into hiding, was headed by Ton.”

  “But you survived,” Thanom says. “Here you are.”

  Rafferty looks at Arthit and smiles, although it feels more like a baring of the teeth. “That’s right. Here I am, with my wife and child in hiding, again. And you know what? Now that I know who it is, it seems impossible to me that he isn’t into it up to his eyebrows.”

  “In the investigation, yes,” Thanom says,

  Rafferty says, “All of it.”

  Thanom holds up both hands, asking for his minute. “You have no evidence that he’s not running the case the way he is to protect—to whitewash—the department, avoid further embarrassment.”

  Arthit says, “In a way that’s consistent with the plan to frame you. And you say that goes back a long way.”

  Thanom is nodding, but he looks like someone who’s just been told he has ten minutes to live. “But—” Thanom swallows. “He’s worth billions and billions of baht. Hundreds of millions of dollars. His family is one of the richest in the kingdom. Why would he be interested in the kind of money Sawat was pulling in?”