Fools' River

by Timothy Hallinan

  Free of bugs.

  She realizes she’s scratching her head and stops.

  It’s important that Eliza is stubborn. Through the whole play, no one except Freddy will ever be kind to her, but she stays there in Higgins’s house and takes the nastiness, soaks it up and uses it for energy, because Higgins can teach her to talk. He can teach her to sound like a lady.

  She closes her eyes and says a little prayer of thanks for Poke and Rose. They snatched her off the street, allowed her to shower to her heart’s content—sometimes four or five times a day, using all the hot water—allowed her to have clean clothes, with their own tiny room to hang in, to have more than one pair of shoes, and real pairs of shoes at that, pairs where the left and right look alike. She suddenly remembers sitting on the floor in her new bedroom (her bedroom!), not long after she moved in, with the door shut—she’d never had a door to shut before—just lining up her three pairs of shoes, straight as soldiers. She’d done it over and over again.

  And now she’s in school. Now she speaks good English and she’s been in a play by Shakespeare and another one by an American, and she is—she is—going to play Eliza in Pygmalion.

  Last night she hadn’t even known what the play was about.

  It’s a different world. And without Poke and Rose, she’d be cutting purses on the sidewalk. Or dead from an overdose. Or a cherry girl in some massage parlor. She knows girls who did that. Her own mother, her adoptive mother, Rose, did, although she worked in bars, which was the next rung up, because the girls could say no to the customers they really didn’t want.

  The rain strums more loudly against the balcony. The pages of the play are everywhere. She’s gotten pink dye from the maraschino cherries on the pages she’s been studying. Pages from the play she’ll star in. She has a future. She’s in a room she loves.

  For a terrifying moment, she’s pierced by a thought: I’ve lost my second mother. I’ve lost Rose.

  She’s sitting bolt upright, her hand over her pounding heart, when she hears a key in the lock.

  32

  It’s Worldwide Don’t Answer Your Fucking Phone Night

  It’s raining harder, naturally. He shouldn’t have said he’d walk, but he couldn’t be stuck in the car with them anymore, couldn’t keep hiding his anxiety under a blanket so he could pretend to carry on a conversation. He’d come out of the fog of worry briefly, while Mr. Awful was getting what he’d earned, but now the situation hits him twice as hard, a punch in the gut.

  He’s always believed that there are things that can be done in difficult situations. He thinks that fretting is a waste of energy that could be better used elsewhere and that there’s always a way out of a box, no matter how tightly sealed it may seem. He’s never been an advocate of waiting. It’s passive, it’s ineffectual, it accomplishes nothing other than fertilizing your anxiety. He lacks—he decides, as he does absolutely nothing but get wetter and wetter—waiting skills.

  He’s splitting his skin with anxiety, and there’s fuck-all he can do about it.

  A dripping ATM comes up on his left. He stops, fishes for his wallet, and slips in a card. He makes a mental note, for the fourth or fifth time this week, to transfer some money from his American bank accounts; he’s getting too low here in Thailand. The Thais may top the list of the world’s most charming people, but they’re not noted for their eagerness to offer large amounts of credit to foreigners. This might have something to do, he thinks, with some of the foreigners their country attracts.

  He withdraws ten thousand baht. Tomorrow is Friday, so he can take care of the transfer from the States. And by tomorrow they’ll all be back together. Everything will be fine. All this will be behind them. They’ll be together.

  Reclaiming the card from the machine makes him think about Buddy Dell. Has Arthit gotten new information from the banks that issued the missing man’s bank cards? Has he made any progress with the location—

  His phone rings.

  He slaps at the pocket where his phone is, so eagerly that he drops his wallet onto the wet pavement. Without even looking at the display, he punches the button, covers the wallet with his foot and says, “Hello?”

  “We’re moving on a couple of fronts,” Arthit says, and Poke’s heart plummets at the sound of his friend’s voice. He’d known the call would be about Rose, maybe even from Rose. “A woman cashed a check on Dell’s account at Thai Ploughman’s Bank just before closing time, although it’s hard to tell what she actually looks like. But that’s not as important as it sounds, because I think we know where they’re keeping him.”

  “Well,” Rafferty says, squeezing his eyes closed in an attempt to focus, “that’s good, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s solid. I’m rounding up a small group I can trust to go in and get him. Do you have any idea where Clemente is?”

  “Yes, they’re—she’s—over here, near Patpong. I was just with her. And Anand, too. They’re taking Lutanh home.”

  “Two police officers,” Arthit says neutrally, “taking a bar girl home.”

  “They’re off duty.”

  “And, apparently, enjoying an evening out with you. No one invites me anywhere.”

  “It’s a long story.” He bends down and picks up his sopping wallet.

  “Spare me. The word your witness saw part of is ‘Trinity,’ and the sign is outside a building that houses the Bangkok office of a Christian adoption organization that offers godly homes to heathen children. Trinity House. It’s on a little dead-end stub of a soi bordering a canal, a few miles east of Baiyoke Tower.”

  “Matches like a fingerprint.” Rafferty is fishing wet pieces of paper out of his wallet, many of them receipts that are printed on the thin, infuriating thermal paper that glues itself to everything in sight when it gets damp. He’ll never be able to separate them.

  “You don’t sound very excited.”

  “I am, I am. I’m just worried about Rose.”

  “She’s not back yet?”

  “No, and no one can reach her. Listen, what time is it?”

  “One twenty or so.”

  “Jesus.” Rafferty blows out a couple liters of air.

  “Do you want to hang up? Is there something you can do about locating her?”

  “If there were, I’d be doing it.”

  “Of course you would. Out of curiosity, why were you with Anand and Clemente?”

  “We were being frighteners.”

  “And the frightening. Was it legal?”

  “Not even remotely.” He’s patting the receipts a little drier on the underside of his shirt. It won’t help him pry them apart, but he knows from long experience that pointless activity, while it never accomplishes anything, can temporarily minimize anxiety.

  “Well, then,” Arthit says, “was it justified?”

  “Totally.”

  “Good. Be awful to know that my cops are committing illegal acts that aren’t justified even by the standards of a moral code as flexible as yours. Maybe you should go home.”

  “And do what?” He hears movement behind him and turns to see a farang who is considerably wetter than he is waiting for a crack at the ATM. He steps aside and keeps going until he figures he’s out of earshot. “Miaow is there. She’ll call me if anything happens. Hell, for that matter, Rose and Fon could call me if there were anything to say.”

  “Do you want me to have someone check the hospitals?”

  “Would you?” He wants to slap his forehead. Why hadn’t he thought to ask?

  “I’ve got Rose’s full name. Do you know Fon’s?”

  “No. But Rose is the one who’s having a medical problem.”

  “Fine. I’ll get it started right now, and then I’m going to line up a couple more people—more than Anand and Clemente, I mean—and head out there. Do you know why they’re not answering their phones?”
/>
  “Because it’s Worldwide Don’t Answer Your Fucking Phone Night, that’s why. Why should they be any different?” He stops walking and tosses away the wad of receipts. “Wait, wait, wait. We all turned our phones off before we did the frightening so they wouldn’t ring and tip the frightenee. They might have forgotten to turn theirs back on.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “My whole world is on the other end of this phone, Arthit. I didn’t even turn it off when I was told to.”

  “So if I can reach them, do you want me to have them come by and pick you up?”

  “Sure. I’ll go down to the entrance of the hospital on Silom. Tell them I’ll be at the far end of the driveway.”

  “I’ll call you after I talk to them, assuming their phones are on, and I’ll get someone on the hospitals right now. You’re not armed, right?”

  “No, Arthit, I’m not armed. I’m almost never—”

  “Good,” he says. “When a foreigner shoots a Thai, even a rotten Thai, it’s always a mess.”

  The shock, when it happens at last, is so head-spinning that he almost passes out. He can feel it. It’s right there.

  It’s taken him God only knows how long to get both legs dangling over the side of the bed, and he’s had to cross the cuffs, on their too-short chains, one over the other, to allow him to roll over. Stomach side down, with his waist bent, he can move his feet much more easily. The one with the cast on it is obviously useless, except for accidentally booting the bobby pin to hell and gone, so he’s keeping it motionless. The position he’s in is one he won’t be able to get out of in the amount of time it takes them to climb the stairs. If they come up, he’s dead.

  But he’s dead anyway, he thought, and he forced himself to stop listening for them and direct all his attention to using the bare toes on his unencumbered right foot to search the dirty floor. At first he swept his foot slowly from side to side, but when he realized how much crap was down there, he lost confidence in his ability to distinguish the bobby pin from the dust rats and pieces of paper and bits of old dried food and whatever else the litter is made of, so he’d wedged the cast in place against the table leg, put his weight on the elbows sunk into the mattress, and very carefully raised his right foot and put the toes down again, raised it, put it down an inch or two to the side, then raised it . . .

  If he kicks it under the bed, it’s hopeless. He has no way to angle his leg so he could reach under . . .

  There it is. Beneath his foot. Colder than the floor. Hard-edged.

  Now what?

  He knows he needs to think the whole sequence through before he begins it. One slip, one mistake, will cost him the only chance he has. He relaxes his neck, lets his head droop for a moment, and it’s a huge mistake. The room lurches and rocks, launching the swell, a big one, at him from the front and slightly below, and it takes him away. When he’s back, trying not to vomit whatever is left in his stomach, the bobby pin isn’t there anymore. He has to fight not to scream his rage.

  Learn. Don’t look down. Get calm. No matter how heavy your head gets, don’t let it fall forward. The fluids in the inner ear, they feel the change in position as a wave, and for some reason that brings a wave, a druggy, internal, terrifying imitation of the real thing. Got to keep that fluid still, don’t let it slosh. Picture it as the bubble in a carpenter’s level and keep it dead center.

  When he graduated from high school and faced the plans the old man had made for him, every year accounted for, his college major chosen for him, his grade-point average mandated at no lower than 3.5 if he wanted to keep his allowance coming, he rebelled. Told the old man he’d decided to work with his hands, to make something real, not jerk around with pieces of paper all his life, dictating memos that affect no one, compounding intangibles. To his surprise, the old man had gotten him a job with his friend Milt Eichenwald, a builder who ran a sweet scam, making rock-bottom bids for state and federal grants to put up low-income housing and then skimping at every turn: materials, foundation, insulation, wiring and plumbing, structural safeguards—slipping a little something every few weeks to the inspectors to keep them happy. For four months Buddy had worked on the site as an apprentice carpenter, and that damn little bubble became the symbol of his self-esteem. When they were done, what they’d built, beneath the cheerful coats of paint, was a straggling row of tacked-up, soda-cracker shacks that could have been blown to bits by a Big Bad Wolf who smoked six packs a day, but they were all fucking level.

  Keep that little bit of fluid level.

  He’s on his third or fourth pre-race breath—in slowly, hold a few seconds, out slowly, concentrating on keeping his head still—when he hears the first ticktock of rain on the roof.

  What does it mean? Will it complicate their plan to get rid of him or make it easier? Fewer people out in the rain to see anything, visibility is worse, but it has to get heavy, he thinks, to give them any real advantage.

  So it gets heavy.

  It doesn’t matter whether it’s raining. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a local sprinkle or the epicenter of a nationwide, a continent-wide storm. It doesn’t matter if the whole city is swept away into the gulf, skyscrapers tumbling end over end in front of two-hundred-foot waves. What matters is one bobby pin.

  Holding his head up, he lifts his bare foot, moves it a few inches to the right, and slowly puts it down. Paper. He sighs without even hearing it, focuses his eyes on the dark window to keep his head still, to prevent the room from spinning, and then raises the foot and lowers it again, an inch or two farther to the right. Nothing. Does it again and again.

  And again.

  The rain hammers down. Over the noise he thinks he hears an argument downstairs. Sometimes when they fight, they come up to take it out on him. If they do, he’s dead. If he can’t find the bobby pin, he’s dead. Dead to the left, dead to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight. He sends a promise in the general direction of God, or maybe just the rain: If he gets out of here, he’ll be a better man. Inside, someone—one of the Buddys who caused all the trouble in the first place—says, Sure you will, and he remakes the promise, right on top of the sneering inner voice, and raises his foot again.

  Holds it in the air, thinking. He can’t go much farther to the right without moving the foot that has the cast on it, and he doesn’t want to touch the floor with anything that can’t send him the tactile information he needs to recognize the bobby pin. So instead he moves the upraised foot as far to the left as he can and gently lowers it just beside the cast on his left foot, feeling the roughness of the plaster on the ball of his ankle and the side of his foot, and then—touching his toes to the floor—he feels the edge of the pin.

  To make sure it’s the bobby pin, he points his foot straight down, the way he learned to do for a racing dive, and brings it down very slowly onto the pin. Then he slides it an inch to the right. It moves; it’s not some obscure part of the hospital setup, a construction staple to hold cords in place, something like that. It slides. He can almost feel its shape, the little U at the bent end.

  He starts to lower his head to relax a little but stops in a flash of panic, remembering the bubble in the carpenter’s level. There’s a small swell, a ripple, but it’s nothing he can’t handle, and he rides it out, holding himself as immobile as possible. In order to do the next step, the big one, he has to get up on the mattress again and roll over, untwisting the short chains on the cuffs, so his back will be on the bed when he puts his foot down to try to retrieve the bobby pin. He needs to be facing away from the bed to pick the thing up and flex his knee to lift it. He works up some saliva, not easy with all the dope drying him out, and spits it down onto the sheet as a marker. His head spins as he leans down, but he tries to position the spit exactly beneath his left shoulder joint. Near as he can figure, that’s directly over the bobby pin.

  Now comes the part of the task he hadn’t envisioned
: getting onto the bed and turning himself on his back again without shifting the position of the sheet.

  And he looks at the sheet, which is loose and bunched and twisted, and realizes he won’t be able to.

  33

  Easy Peasy

  “I don’t see you,” Clemente says on the phone.

  “I’m not there yet.” Rafferty looks up at the rain and gets a faceful of water. “You’re not as far away as I’d figured.”

  “Kid lives pretty close.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “All tucked in with her big stuffed panda bear.”

  “Good. Thanks for taking charge of her.”

  “No,” Anand says into Clemente’s phone, “thank you for telling the colonel about it. He had the radio operators tell us to turn on our phones.”

  “Oh, well,” Rafferty says. “What’s he going to do, fire you? Listen, the driveway is a long, shallow U. Go on in and pull over in front of the building, near the front doors. I should be there in a minute, minute and a half.”

  “In this rain? Why don’t I come to you?”

  “I’m a minute away. Just hang on.” He breaks into a trot, running past street vendors huddled beneath their plastic sheeting to pack up the unsold stuff. They barely glance at him; it’s late, they’re getting wet, and a running farang is nothing they haven’t seen a thousand times. One or two of them look back to see whether anyone is chasing him and then, disappointed, go back to their work.

  The rain hasn’t cooled the air much, so Rafferty is both soaked and sweating when he climbs into the back of the car. The air-con is on full, and the chill is enough to make him sneeze. He says, “Excuse me,” having learned not to wait for any Thai person to bless him. When he’d asked Rose about it, long ago, she’d said, “Would you expect someone to bless you if you farted?”